I haven’t done any channel optimisation so far, I probably should do. I have the P version of the Sonoff Zigbee dongle, I haven’t tried the E version.

I’ve also been careful with picking router devices. I’ve tried to avoid router devices that have poor reported compatibility with Aqara. There is a page/thread somewhere online where people were compiling lists of devices that do or don’t play nice with Aqara. IKEA devices apparently work very well with Aqara, I’ve been using their smart plugs wherever I can.

My Zigbee network also improved a lot when I set up some IKEA plugs in the loft. My house also has thick walls, but it seems Zigbee signal can propagate more easily through ceilings/floors.

Using quality brand batteries also seems to help a bit, at least from a battery life point of view.

I’m happy to see untracked energy devices covered in the energy graphs. I’d been using a Grafana dashboard to display more detailed energy visualisations including consumption of untracked devices before.

Still a win for Home Assistant to have a big brand like Aqara want to play ball at all.

if they are supporting the current Matter/Thread devices hopefully they will do the same for future devices, especially (if and) when they start to deprecate their Zigbee devices.

Aqara devices can be finicky with non-Aqara devices, especially router devices.

I’ve personally also had much better results with Aqara devices since switching to Zigbee2MQTT and a Sonoff Zigbee stick, I had a lot more dropouts with ZHA and a Conbee II stick.

Depends on your computing platform.

I see another reply has already covered Linux.

On a Mac, press and hold a character key and a list of accent characters will appear. There are also dead key combinations using the option key to enter special characters directly.

Have you got any air quality sensors? Particulates, CO2, VOCs, CO, Radon, there’s a while bunch of sensors, and a variety of DIY projects to put them together.

It also has the practical benefit of maybe improving your health.

I like containers. But they do have a habit of nurturing cludgy temporary hacks into permanent infrastructure, by sweeping all the ugly bits under the big whale-shaped rug.

Might be worth looking into LoRa for longer range, it’s got quite cheap to play with now.

}

I think you dropped this.

The small phone debate is not just about the overall physical size, it’s also about how reachable UI elements are when using a phone with one hand.

For one handed operation, screen size does matter regardless of bezel size. The larger the screen becomes, the harder it is for the thumb to reach the top of the screen because the top gets ever further away from the thumb.

There’s two main reasons to want a smaller phone. A smaller overall physical size so it fits better in a pocket, or a smaller screen so it’s more reachable when used with one hand.

I suppose the new flip foldable phones might satisfy the first but not the second.

It seems crazy when a list of the 12 best “small” phones have an average screen size above 6 inches.

The iPhone 13 mini has also been discontinued, and the reviewer discourages the iPhone SE 3, describing it the “smartphone equivalent of herpes”. So that removes 2 of the smallest of the “small” phones which makes the situation even worse.

It’s a real step up for managing Home Assistant. I was using it earlier to find some devices to reconfigure and it’s a lot faster. The xtra panels in the UI feel a little cramped on smaller screens though.

I wish they would implement a proper permissions system next, the lack of control is the other admin bugbear of mine with Home Assistant.

I always keep Home Assistant as up to date as possible. Home Assistant keeps improving a lot. Month to month each update goes fairly seamlessly if HA is kept up to date, but the further it falls behind the harder it is to catch back up. Recent optimisation improvements have also made the update process faster.

If you can make the time it’s worth the effort. Even if you have to “start over” somewhat there is probably a lot you have learned since that you can use to improve your setup.

The dangers of Active SETI are based on a lot of human-centric assumptions.

Any hypothetical alien civilisation advanced enough to pose a threat may see our radio broadcasts and space probes as being so crude that they consider us too harmless to bother with.

If there are actively “xenocidal” aliens out there they may also have far more effective ways of detecting their targets.

Yeah, as someone who uses public transport having the noise nuisances get 600% louder really doesn’t sound too great.

Is it common for apartments to have shared extractor ducts? I’ve never heard of a setup like this before, and it sounds like both a pain in the arse and a potential safety issue.

Controlling the kitchen fan is probably the easier bit. Depending on the design of the hood, you might be able to control it with a smart outlet or relay. Turn the hood’s switch to always on and control it with the relay. The difficult bit would be sensing when to turn it on.

Cooking will often produce VOCs, and VOC sensors are easy to obtain, but they are also have other sources that are likely in your own apartment. Maybe try using temperature and humidity sensors int the duct to activate the fan when there is elevated temperature and humidity inside the duct?

Frigate seems fairly popular among Home Assistant users for security cameras.

I think ZoneMinder is still going too which used to be the go to Linux option for that.

There are some Zigbee dimming relays/modules which should work with your Zigbee stack of choice. I haven’t used them myself as I use Zigbee dimmer switches instead, but I’ve seen others recommend them. There’s a few different brands depending on your country.

I can also second the recommendation for the Shelly Dimmer 2. Works out of the box with the HA Shelly integration, and can also be flashed with ESPHome or Tasmota if you really want. It can also be used in detached mode to work with smart lights I believe too. My home is mostly Zigbee but I have a few Shelly devices and they have all been solid.

I also have an oil boiler, and a tank in the garden. The tank was fitting with an Apollo Ultrasonic oil level sensor, which sends a signal to base station with a very basic LCD display in the house via 433Mhz radio.

I use an RTL-SDR USB radio dongle, a cheap 433MHz antenna and the rtl_433 software to monitor the signals from the ultrasonic sensor, which transits roughly once an hour. The level measurement transmitted is a fairly accurate centimetre value (I compared it with manual measurements with a dip stick for a few months).

The base station only showed a vague level indication with 10 bars, but now I have more a more precise smart display of the tank level, without any extra modification to the tank system.