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My water heater's app is so unreliable I just installed Home Assistant and ordered parts to plug a wifi microcontroller into its diagnostics port
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DJ Sundog - from the toot-lab
@twistylittlepassages you, you just pushed the Dan button that almost invariably goes into a whole rant thread, thank :blobpopcorn:
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Dan Fixes Coin-Ops
@djsundog @twistylittlepassages literally marked a zero to that exact question five minutes after getting off the phone about two hours ago
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DJ Sundog - from the toot-lab
@twistylittlepassages how likely are you to recommend our hot water to friends and/or family over the next year?
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

@djsundog @twistylittlepassages I will explain myself with a reply to the original post and it will be a long and bad explanation, I warn you in advance that you will gain nothing from reading it
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

"Dan you muppet, why did you buy a water heater that uses an app"

Well a couple years ago my roof started leaking

in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

I called out the going-up-ladders people because there's only so many different types of danger my spouse will let me get into, given how many people she knows who've fallen off them. The ladder people tell me alright you've got some shingles damaged and some flashing leaking, that's no big deal, but the mid deal is that my chimney's so badly knackered that it's way beyond a simple slap-some-mortar-in job, there's several courses of bricks unaccounted for, I go "Oh aye I did find some underneath my window," the chimney was bollocksed is the headline, and it was gonna cost a LOT of money to fix it.

It was gonna cost so much money, in fact, that it'd be cheaper to remove the need for a chimney in the first place. The only thing left in the house that still used the chimney was the 20-odd-year-old gas water heater. I figured that thing was probably getting ready to rupture anyway so hell, heat pump water heater time.

in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

So I order this inside-out-fridge contraption from a company called RHEEM, also known as RUUD, and yes I very much am naming and shaming this company, and after going back and forth to the hardware store eight times I was on first name terms with the lady in the plumbing aisle and the proud owner of a new 240v line and a machine that makes my water hot by making my basement cold.

And there was a QR code on the side and a thing saying Download The Econet App! and I said "Pfft no" and if all went sensibly that should have been the end of it

in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

Rheem is a well-known Australian brand. Not surprised they got sucked into the internet of shit vortex.
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

Things didn't go sensibly because an unrelated series of events did not go sensibly a few years before, and now I have a couch that reclines in such a way that my head enters an adjacent room.

Why do I recline into the next room over? For the same reason I had to build a four inch wide coffee table. Don't ask me questions about that today. The important part is that when I settle down at night with a glass of whiskey and some Star Trek, I press a button and lean my head back into a void in a rack that sits in my workshop, which is where this water heater lives, and the water heater, being a fridge, goes BRRRRRRRR

in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

It occurred to me at some point that if I had the app, I could tell this water heater Dude, it's ten o'clock at night, there's no need to be actively making more hot water right now, be quiet.

So I scanned the barcode and downloaded the app, which didn't work.

in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

In fairness to Rheem, the way the app didn't work WAS pretty funny. See, it made you register with them before you could schedule your water heater. So first it'd ask you what username you wanted.

I'm not gonna tell you my Rheem username, you'll have to wait for the inevitable data breach for that, so let's say it was ifixcoinops. So you tap the box (you have to do this on a phone, you can't register in a browser) and you tap the letter i on the keyboard and a little i pops up on the screen, quite clever really, then you press the f and the text hole has iif in it. Hmm. Alright well the next letter in "ifixcoinops" is another i, let's press the i on my keyboard, the text hole now says iififi.

Which is slightly unconventional, but okay, let's see where this is going, iifiifiiififiifix. So I introduce myself as mister iififiifixifixcifixcoifixcoiifixcoinifixcoinoifixcoinopifixcoinops, and it tells me there's not enough digits in my phone number

in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

Now I'm vaguely aware on some level that an awful lot of android apps are just a web browser with no clothes on, and that's certainly what this feels like, and buddy lemme tell you, HTML wants to work. It takes concerted, dedicated effort to make something fail this hard. Like, you've gotta code up some truly trollish javascript to make that kinda thing happen. So I guess hats off to Rheem.

Did I mention there wasn't even a place to put my phone number

in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

I see this on actual websites all the time, usually in the form of my keystrokes coming out in the wrong order when I *know* I typed the right thing

the good news is such fuckery is so common now that there are frameworks for such fuckery these days. you don't have to implement the fuckery yourself anymore. you just make a text box and say `React.useFuckMyShitUp()` and you're done

in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

I'm scratching my head over this and wondering if maybe something in my autocomplete settings are screwing with the input, I eventually figure out that they've somehow managed to make a form field that only works with specific software keyboards.

This is the first time I've ever seen anything like this. There's something new in the world. It's oddly beautiful, but haunting, a little melancholy. Luckily I have a few different keyboards installed on this thing so I change around a bunch until one of them works and lets me input normal words instead of this whimsy.

But there's still nowhere to put this phone number it's been asking me for, and no way to proceed, so I cast the app out of my mind for several more months

in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

Eventually one night listening to it go BRRRRRR I get big mad and want all the functions that I paid the better part of two grand (!) for, and I search around for other people having the same problem.

(note: I want to schedule the water heater's heaty times. There's a big dotmatrix screen and a bunch of buttons on the water heater itself. Someone at some point should have said "Wait.")

Turns out everyone's having this problem! Everyone's been having this problem for over four months! But in the meantime, instead of using the Rheem app, try the Rheem Econet app, or the Econet app.

These are real apps made by Rheem. They all do the same job but fail in different ways at different points

in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

Eventually - and I mean the sort of eventually that's measured in seasons - one of these apps lets me register for a Rheem account (why they couldn't just give me a link to those webpages I could access in a browser, I do not know) and then crashes, but another one lets me get the water heater connected to the wifi (there's no ethernet hole on this 300kg tank of water plumbed and wired into the house, it uses wifi only like your phone or handheld game console) and holy shit it works

It actually works

About 50% of the time

in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

Tip: if Rheem doesn't work try EcoNet, if EcoNet doesn't work try Rheem EcoNet, if Rheem EcoNet doesn't work you can also try Ruud

If one of them works, DO NOT ALLOW IT TO UPDATE

in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

Anyway at some point one of Rheem's other customers got pissed off enough with this tragicomedy to just completely write their own software from scratch, and of COURSE it works way better than the dogshit that Rheem put out

So yeah, the solution is to install Home Assistant on and old Raspberry Pi, get an ESP32 module and some phone wire, plug into the diagnostic port on the front and bypass everything to do with the official app and wifi interface entirely in favour of one that works.

Unfortunately this means you now have Home Assistant in your home, which means you now have a new hobby whether you want it or not

in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

So here I am, whiskey in my hand, trying to watch Captain Picard being competent, head in one room and feet in another, hearing a fridge getting my shower ready, big red angry face shouting at a cylinder
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

You don't expect to have emotions about a water heater

It's supposed to be the most boring machine in the house

in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

I actually rang Rheem today, dude picked straight up on the first ring, his proposed solution was to try another phone

Mate every other app works on my phone

I was like, alright where does this thing spit out its logs, I'll email them to you, he's like I Don't Know

Didn't occur to him to go and find someone who does know

in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

Should never have to get on the phone to talk about a water heater

Yes hello I would like to have a lengthy conversation about a tube that makes water hot, this is a good use of two peoples' time

in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

Let's make the grey cylinder exciting, let's make it part of a hobby

The world isn't complex enough yet

The times are not interesting enough yet

Let's confuse a fridge into heating water and put it on the internet and give it anxiety

in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

this has certainly made me think twice about getting a heat pump water heater.
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

wooooooof. I'm sorry you have to deal with all that. It's ridiculous 🙁
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

all caps shouting and swearing

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in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

The great thing about home assistant is how it automates all of the things so you have more free time to faff about with home assistant :blobthinksmart:
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

all caps shouting and swearing

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in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

re: all caps shouting and swearing

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in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

all caps shouting and swearing

Sensitive content

in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

Well I hope you're happy Fedi because I'm going to ikea tomorrow to buy tradfri bulbs
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

hahahhahaHahhah worth getting a usb zigbee bridge less finikey than using their hub
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

You've broken free from the deflection shield/excuse of waiting for the Matter (and Thread) standards to, well, matter…

May you survive without critical damage to your wallet or your free time. I might need to look away unless I succumb to the pull of Home Assistant as well.

This entry was edited (1 week ago)
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

"Ordinary people have problems understanding me because I converse at a higher level" -> "No, you're just shit at communicating" energy going on here
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

This has significantly undermined my enthusiasm for fixing this damn water heater
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

This whole saga is infinitely more funny, if you, like me, thought the water heater meant the device that makes hot water for tea. That idea started to seem wrong, after the mention of a 300kg hunk of metal
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

Charlie Stross reshared this.

in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

as someone with both that TV situation *and* Home Assistant colour controlled lightbulbs, just @ me next time
in reply to metal gear remembrance

(at least I just have a tablet stuck to the wall in the hallway for Home Assistant shiz though, and mostly it just adjusts the colour temperature automatically)
in reply to metal gear remembrance

@outie the "just" in that sentence is about to have a hernia with the amount of weight it's carrying
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

This is literally why no one in my household ever uses the home cinema system except me.

(Fine, my mum plays Switch on it. But for watching movies and stuff.)

My takeaway is that AV receivers, although cool and useful, are surprisingly user-hostile for devices that have big labelled buttons on the front.

in reply to 13 barn owls in a trenchcoat

Another household member is currently proposing building a DIY, LAN-only control system for smart lightbulbs.

We don't even own any smart lightbulbs.

in reply to 13 barn owls in a trenchcoat

@HauntedOwlbear That's what Home Assistant is, basically; it's cloud-connected smart bulbs and home automation, but without the cloud, it just goes on a raspberry pi in your basement.

The other thing that Home Assistant is, is a baited trap for the terminally curious

in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

@HauntedOwlbear I have the UK bin collections plugin on mine. No idea how to make any use of it, but I have designs on getting a couple of smart solar LEDs and mounting them above the bins, to signify which one is due to go out.

Chance of that ever seeing the light of day is... slim

in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

🦝 Anyway I got some Tradfri lightbulbs and a ZigBee dongle plugged into a spare Pi on a long USB extension to avoid radio interference, and I went on aliexpress and ordered some cheap ZigBee knobs and buttons so I can set up cosier circadian-rhythm-respecting lights as a sidequest to schedule my water heater and monitor my eventual photovoltaic setup.

^ see that sentence? That's both a legit telling of what I've been up to lately, AND a self-parody shitpost. The only people who recognise it as a legit post are other doomed individuals.

in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

my partner brought some Philips Hue lightbulbs with her when we moved in together. she also passionately hates the use of the overhead light. upshot is I need to open the Hue app on my phone if I want the bedroom light on

it's been warning me for six months now I'll need to create a Hue account "soon". to operate the light next to my bed

in reply to jack

@jackeric See, on the one hand you could set up Home Assistant and buy a little battery-powered switch or knob that you can magnet or glue near the lamp so you don't have to use your phone. It'd also take over the whole Hue thing so you wouldn't have to involve Phillips anymore.

But on the other hand, if you did that then you'd be doomed.

I'm sorry for telling you this information, and please extend my sincerest apologies to your partner also

@jack
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

@jackeric I had my business partner on the phone to me the other night, berating me because the pub staff were able to turn the lights in the back room of the pub to slightly too white a colour, when they turned them back from "purple" after their Halloween party a couple of weeks ago.

Apparently Home Assistant needs a feature that lets you lock down light colours now...

I have mollified him by making it email him the colour temperature of the lights each time they turn on. Ha!

@jack
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

I ended up getting a bunch of smart dimmer switches and room presence sensors (PIR + mmWave), so now I have automatic lights that turn on dimly when it's late at night.

Do not ask me how long I spent doing this, you don't want to know.

in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

you're telling me "I'm doomed!"
Tell me something I don't already know! LOL
Maybe not. I haven't had time to start down the Home Assistant rabbit hole.
I just started the Obsidian Notes rabbit hole to maybe organize my PowerShell rabbit hole and if that goes well I'll be transferring my SQL notes there, and maybe my other stuff.
Still need to see if I can remote host Obsidian and self-sync to local devices.(Sorry, I'll pay for a product, but not for a service I can do myself.)
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

It me. The whole thing, it me.

ZigBee stuff everywhere, weather monitoring, ambient monitoring in the house, or even tells me which bin to put out when thanks to something that scrapes my local council website.

Maps, location tracking, lights, a Geiger counter in the shed, the doorbell even has an ESP8266 inside to tell me when the bell rings.

I'm not entirely sure if this is a call for help...

in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

I'm glad I'm in a long term committed relationship because yikes can you imagine trying to use this software while dating

🦌 *tugging at shirt* Hey, do you mind if we turn the light off?

🦝 Sure!

🦌 OK~ wait why is there tape on your lightswitch

🦝 Oh wait yeah. Sorry. *grabs phone* Hold on. *fiddles* Just a sec.

🦌 um... ok?

🦝 Sorry. Just gotta do an update. Sorry. Just a sec. It's not normally like this

🦌 Did you just pull out your phone and start doomscrolling? While I'm right here?

🦝 sorry sorry no it's a different kind of doom, just a second, nearly there, sorry this never happens

This entry was edited (6 days ago)
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

I should make myself some self-inflicted doom, I'm tired of imported doom.
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

I feel called out, even though I'm not (yet!) on Home Assistant.

My bedroom lights are controlled via a rickety combo of SSH, HTTP, or an ancient speech recognition Python script made by a Googler in 2014 that uses an API key registered for local Chromium browser development.

All three methods break in fun ways.

in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

🦌 wait my purse is vibrating, someone must be calling me

🤖 HOME ASSISTANT HAS DETECTED. LOVENSE. LUSH. SET UP DEVICE NOW?

🦌 goodnight

in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

Better minds than mine have been warning about this shit since The Twilight Zone was new. What happens in every show that ever had an episode about The House Of The Future? Everyone's impressed for about five minutes and then it all goes wrong and there's usually at least one death.

But on the other hand, cosy lighting and RGB LED coolness so, y'know,

in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

I was debating whether to admit this but I've genuinely considered several times if it would be easier to just make my own WiFi lightbulbs, to try and improve my current 70% success rate for "turn on the lights".

It surely could not be that difficult and at the very least I could pull in a working DHCP implementation

in reply to blinken

@blinken thanks, I was wondering what grim end this rabbithole would lead to
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

*Rod Serling voice* Imagine a house, with a mind. A mechanical mind. Not one built by scientists, but by a pinball machine repairman. One unlucky family is about to discover the ramifications, in, The Twilight Zone
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

jesus, what a voyage.
On the other end, I figure, there's a friend of mine who recently bought a ceiling fan (the cheapest one, of course), on the box there wasn't even if it had a remote or cords to operate.
Turns out it had a small box with a switch and a knob.. almost primitive, but 100 times better than this modern app/web/wifi appliances hell.
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

Next up: wireless coin mechs to turn on your lights for a quarter per hour.
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

You know the best thing about Home Assistant?

There are some things, if you shit all over them on the internet and say all the ways they messed up, their fanboys will come out and tell you hey no, you just don't understand it yet, it's not shit you are

Home Assistant, the fanboys come out and say haha yeah join the club, wait hold on I've got some even wilder stories, just you wait lol

in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

HA is always the opposite, it's more like competing for who's had the weirdest shit happening. And as a result maybe people finding answers! Definitely found answers to weird shit I had going on when laughing at weird shit and then workaround I hacked together. x3
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

haha my wife is absolutely the queen of home automation in sundogistan and I shuffle around muttering very softly about when the light switches used to turn lights on and off.
in reply to jornucopia

Although now I'm remembering two years ago, during the spring thaw, when the float switch on the pump that lifts our sewage up from under our house into the city's system failed. I put the pump on a smart switch and timed how long the well took to fill, and then made an automation in Home Assistant that ran the pump for 30 seconds every X minutes, and that kept us from disaster until the new switch was procured.
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

Got sued by two different companies when I tried to trademark "iBM"
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

for me it's the fact that my lights will randomly not adjust brightness for certain scenes, and I suspect I'm overloading the hub and need to batch the requests, but I haven't found the will to do that yet. It was supposed to make my life easier!
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

And he’s elected PRESIDENT but his AI goes awry and then tries to have sex with a smart phone!
Let’s write the movie
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

This whole thread is brilliant. Paging @ExplodingLemur to appreciate the home automation.
This entry was edited (6 days ago)
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

I’m the one who set up all our Smart Home stuff and are getting fed-up with most of it.

I now have everything connected by Ethernet or Matter and am in the process of purging anything that only functions by WiFi or Bluetooth.

in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

yeah, thanks I guess, I was perfectly fine with my zigbee dongle, a few trådfri switches and some old hue and new trådfri bulbs.
Now I am browsing Ali at 1am to check their doodads. Maybe I need some?
in reply to Sara Joy :happy_pepper:

he's not what I'd call a colossal nerd but yeah there's a similar setup with lots of remotes and audio system etc...
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

lolol. Yes.

My dad is 82 and has been a technophile and a DJ (parties back in the 80s, and a local radio station since, playing golden oldies) for years. He loves it.

This entry was edited (6 days ago)
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

How do you watch Netflix in my house? You don't!

Instead I'll ask if you've heard, say, Wooden Overcoats... Or Wolf359... Or...

Yes, I consider myself quite nerdy...

This entry was edited (6 days ago)
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

I used to live next to my elderly aunt. She had a TV hooked up via SCART to a VCR and to satellite receiver. No analogue TV any more so the tuner in the TV was vestigial. TV remote was purely on/off, SCART 1/2, and volume control. Channel selection via the satellite receiver's remote. Regularly she'd forget this, try to select BBC1 etc from the TV remote, and get nothing. So she'd think "What did Alaric do last time? Fiddle with the cables behind", and she'd unplug everything and...
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

i'm in this picture and … well actually it annoys me too, but I can live with it.
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

to be fair it's not the nerd's fault that the manufacturers of those devices are all absolutely shit at integration
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

It's almost worse in our house. Spouse has this belief in the one remote to rule them all.

We're on try number four, I think. Each time, he's sure he's found the perfect one that will autoswitch all the settings seamlessly.

And no, they don't.

in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

my light bulbs have a physical switch on the wall, that sends an mqtt message telling the ought to turn on. Other lights have a zigbee switch which triggers the same via HA.
Just get more physical buttons that do dedicated jobs?
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

@mike you know how this was a metaphor for home assistant? Yeah, no, Thats pretty close to the actual situation with our tv here 🙁 depending on what you want to watch, there are 3 remotes and a control panel in play. Bloody geeks! 🙁

(And there is a scribbled piece of paper somewhere that i had to make him write that badly explains what when 🙁 )

in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

So I say "turn of my bedside light" at least twice because the first time it thinks I said something else - when I could just stretch out my hand and press the switch. But somehow I think this is cool...
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

its me with out the remotes, elexa turn on the tv, picks up apple tv remote lol
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

Something I find interesting about this kind of self-inflicted nerd pain is how it can prefigure a trend of consumer tech that comes later, transformed into a mass market version:

i.e. 2000s nerds build fiddly media PCs for their TVs, by late 2010s every TV is a PC.

1990s home automation was domain of rich nerds, by 2020 most stores that sell light bulbs also sell "smart" ones.

(Admittedly HA isn't a good fit here due to being newer and partly a response to too many crappy consumer light bulb platforms.)

Also, goes without saying the mass market versions may be simplified for usability but are also Torment Nexus Terrible in some way, because capitalism.

This entry was edited (5 days ago)
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

It also has updates more frequently than any other software I use.
in reply to noodle

@noodle I can't tell whether you think that's a good thing or a massive red flag
in reply to noodle

@noodle see normally I wouldn't have to ask but this thread is attracting folk who think it's good that a thermostat gets software updates so you never know
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

I'm in a similar situation to you, I have a couple of things that would benefit from it, but its almost limitless scope and maintenance potential has kept me away so far.
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

as a technical writer, I am happy these people exist. They pay the bills, after all.
in reply to Carsten

@EvilCartyen please please speak to these people and extend to them the gift of a Clue
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

I don't think it's possible, something in the engineer brain prevents it. I think whatever makes you good at doing engineer stuff also makes you bad at documentation. It's practically a law of nature.
in reply to 🍋 Superball ☀️

@superball I forget the exact words but it was about someone sticking their dick in a flyback transformer and it didn't even have the right number of syllables
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

Disgusting. It’s hardly even a limerick without the correct number of syllables.
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

HACS is the dark side. HACS is giving up on the community and accepting the code of people who are doing shit just because. When you install HACS you give up all pretense of being a Normal Person who has wound up running home assistant by accident and you now Take Responsibility for What You Have Done
in reply to cibyr

@cibyr but it has community right there in the name

why wasn't this shit written down where I could see it

in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

well there's community and Community. Maybe a better way to put it is are you in the light of Nabu Casa? HACS is all that the light does not shine upon
in reply to cibyr

@cibyr the hell is a nabu casa

I can tell you're right into home assistant because you speak in riddles like in a Grimm's Fairy Tale

in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

sorry I'm drunk and in mexico. Nabu Casa is the company that the core Home Assistant devs work for. For $5 a month they'll run a remote frontend for you, enabling easy alexa integration and such, and it's... Good, Actually? HACS is the "fuck all that corporate noise, we're just gonna give you our code have fun with it" not-quite-offshoot
in reply to cibyr

@cibyr being drunk and in Mexico far away from this water heater sounds grrrrreat right now
in reply to cibyr

my single favorite home assistant integration is community.home-assistant.io/t/…

Hit me up if you want a pcb for it

in reply to cibyr

@cibyr this is the kind of shit I'm talking about, I was most of the way through the second sentence before I figured out that this was something to do with I guess window shades?
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

I was convinced for months that I literally couldn't install HACS (wasn't an option/supported) on my type of instance because the instructions were *that bad*
And I supposedly computer for a living.
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

I just want to rotate the image coming from my camera

How is that hard

I can't physically install said camera in the right orientation, I need to rotate the image

Six hours of conflicting documentation later I still don't have it, including after installing HACS (while muttering "I don't care if it breaks, it's already not doing what I want")

How is the documentation this bad? HOW

in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

if you want yet another home automation hobby you can install micropython on your ikea tradfri bulbs. trmm.net/Ikea
This entry was edited (5 days ago)
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

This app naming scheme is suspiciously similar to how the names of my amateur Python projects always end up.

There’s probably a reason for that.

in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

Fun fact, all versions of Firefox for Android had this problem on a lot of websites for a long time. Many (most FOSS) keyboards would do that same duplication of inputs, but the same sites in Chromium based browsers with the same keyboards had no problems.
in reply to Aaravchen :linux: :suspicious:

@aaravchen I'm assuming it's because on the affected sites, instead of doing <input id="whatever" name="something" type="text" class="pretty"> they did something more like <SIXMEGABYTESOFHORRIFICJAVASCRIPTBULLSHIT>
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

hang on, why aren’t these things incorporated into air conditioners?
<thinking about all the wasted heat blown outdoors by aircon and getting mad>
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

welcome to the good future, where a "smart home" is something that bends to your will and not the whims of some shitty company 😀
Unknown parent

Dan Fixes Coin-Ops
@SarraceniaWilds motorizing my curtains is pretty high on my list, gotta say
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

The situation sucks, but this is hands-down the funniest account of a frustrating situation I've read in a long time.
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

as Paul Hibbert from Hibbert Home Tech says, "Home Assistant is a Tamagochi."

It absolutely is and I love it.

in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

I have a similar setup. I didn't need the extra hardware. Once I got the HW heater on WiFi, and discovered that the app only seems to be able to manage the temp schedule if you open it daily, I also discovered that Home Assistant has a native integration for Econet. It talks to Rheem's servers still, but that part generally works other than having to reauthenticate every few months. Home Assistant can set temp via that, which avoids giving Rheem an excuse to void your warranty.
in reply to Wes George

relevant bits of HomeAssistant:
Rheem integration home-assistant.io/integrations…
Scheduler card (also requires HACS):
github.com/nielsfaber/schedule…
Gives you something like this.
in reply to Wes George

@wesgeorge it's the getting it on the wifi that isn't working anymore and never worked properly to begin with, hence replacing the wifi functionality entirely
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

@SarraceniaWilds if the window is the right size. I’ve be quite happy with ikea powered blinds. Zigbee and does a great job of blocking out all the light.
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops

I am trying to avoid this rabbit hole. But my partner bought philips hue lights because she was mad at the lights in the kitchen not being dimmable, and not being in the right place. So now I can't turn on half the lights in the house.

The real solution is doing more electrical, but that's probably not going to be what happens (soon)