This is more "home networking" than "homelab," but I imagine the people here might be familiar with what in talking about. I'm trying to understand the logic behind ISPs offering asymmetrical connections. From a usage standpoint, the vast majority of traffic goes *to* the end-user instead of *from* the end-user. From a technical standpoint, though, it seems like it would be more difficult and more expensive to offer an asymmetrical connection. While consumers may be connected via fiber, cable, DSL, etc, I assume that the ISP has a number of fiber links to "the internet." Those links are almost surely some symmetrical standard (maybe 40 or 100Gb). So if they assume that they can support 1000 users at a certain download speed, what is the advantage of limiting the upload? If their incoming trunks can support 1000 users at 100Mb download, shouldn't it also support 1000 users at 100Mb upload since the trunks themselves are symmetrical? Limiting the upload speed to a different rate than download seems like it would just add a layer of complexity. I don't see a financial benefit either; if their links are already saturated for download, reducing upload speed doesn't help them add additional users. Upload bandwidth doesn't magically turn into download bandwidth. Obviously there's some reason for this, but I can't think of one.

Asklemmy corroded • 3 weeks ago • 96%

I generally try to stay informed on current events. With the exception of what gets posted here, I normally get my news from CNN. I tend to lean left politically, but not always. The problem I always run into is that every news site I read, regardless of where they stand on the political spectrum, is always filled with pointless bullshit. Specifically, sports, celebrity news, and product placement. "Some shitty pop singer is dating some shitty actor" or "These are our recommendations for the best mass-produced garbage-quality fast fashion from Temu" or "Some overpaid dickhead threw a ball faster than some other overpaid dickhead." What I'd love to find is a news source that's just news that matters. No celebrity gossip, sports, opinion pieces, etc. Just real events that have an impact on some part of the world. Legislation, natural events, economic changes, wars, political changes, that kind of thing. Does this exist, or is all journalism just entertainment?

A few months ago, I upgraded all my network switches. I have a 16-port SFP+ switch and a 1GB switch (LAGG to the SPF+ with two DACs). These work perfectly, and I'm really happy with the setup so far. My main switch ties into a remote switch in another building over a 10Gb fiber line, and this switch ties into another switch of the same model (on a different floor) over a Cat6e cable. These switches are absolute garbage: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B084MH9P8Q I should have known better than to buy a cheap off-brand switch, but I had hoped that Zyxel was a decent enough brand that I'd be okay. Well, you get what you pay for, and that's $360 down the toilett. I constantly have dropped connections, generally resulting in any attached devices completely losing network connectivity, or if I'm lucky, dropping down to dial-up speeds (I'm not exaggerating). The only way to fix it is to pull the power cable to the switch. Even under virtually no load, the switch gets so hot that it's painful to touch. Judging from the fact that my connection is far more stable when the switch is sitting directly in front of an air conditioner, that tells me just about all I need to know. I'm trying to find a pair of replacement switches, but I'm really striking out. I have two ancient Dell PowerConnect switches that are rock solid, but they're massive, they sound like jet engines, and they use a huge amount of power. Since these are remote from my homelab and live in occupied areas, they just won't work. All I need is a switch that has: - At least 2 SFP+ ports (or 1 SFP+ port for fiber and a 10Gb copper port) - At least 4 1Gb ports (or SFP ports; I have a pile of old 1GB SFP adapters) - Management/VLAN capability Everything I find online is either Chinese white-label junk or is much larger than what I need. A 16-port SFP+ switch would work, but I'd never use most of the ports, and I'd be wasting a lot of money on overkill hardware. As an example, one of these switches is in my home office; it exists solely so I have a connection between my server rack, two PCs, and a single WAP. I am never going to need another LAN connection in my home office; any hardware is going to go in the server rack, but I do need 10GB connectivity on at least one of those PCs. Does anyone have a suggestion for a small *reliable* switch that has a few SFP+ ports, is made by a reputable brand, and isn't a fire hazard?

homeassistant corroded • 2 months ago • 100%

I have been using the BlueIris NVR integration (from HACS) for quite some time, and it works great for triggering BI from HA. I've trying to do the opposite now: Fire off automations in HA whenever BI detects motion on one of my cameras. I've never used MQTT before, so I'm learning as I go, but I think I have most of my setup configured properly. I've installed Mosquitto and the MQTT integration in HA. I've configured BI to connect to HA, and running "Test" in the "Edit MQTT Server" menu in BI shows a good connection and no errors. I've set my cameras to post an MQTT event when the alert is triggered (and I've verified that the alerts are in fact being triggered). Nothing happens in HA, though. The "Motion" sensor for my camera in HA stays at "Clear." In fact, the history shows no change at all, ever. I have the events in BI set up as follows: On Alert: MQTT Topic - *BlueIris/&CAM/Status* and Payload - *{ "type": "&TYPE", "trigger": "ON" }* On Reset: Exactly the same, but change *ON* to *OFF*. I've tried change the MQTT autodiscovery header in HA from "homeassistant" to "BlueIris," and it made no difference. The Mosquitto logs show a login from HA, so I feel like I'm close, but I'm not sure where else to look. Edit: I installed MQTT explorer, and I've verified that the messages are making it to Mosquitto, and they appear to be correctly formatted. UPDATE: I set the MQTT integration to listen to the MQTT messages coming from BI, and sure enough, they were coming through just fine. For some reason, the BI integration just wasn't seeing them. Digging through the system logs, I saw some errors "creating a binary sensor" coming from the BI integration. The only thing I can think is that because I didn't have MQTT set up when I first installed the BI integration, something went wrong with the config (although I had already rebooted the system several times). I re-downloaded the BI integration and re-installed it, and now everything works perfectly.

This isn't strictly "homelab" related, but I'm not sure if there's a better community to post it. I'm curious what kind of real-world speeds everyone is getting over their wireless network. I was testing tonight, and I'm getting a max of 250Mbit down/up on my laptop. I have 4 Unifi APs, each set to 802.11ac/80Mhz, and my laptop supports 2x2 MIMO. Testing on my phone (Galaxy S23) gives basically the exact same result. The radio spectrum around me is ideal for WiFi; on 5Ghz, there is no AP in close enough range for me to detect. With an 80Mhz channel width, I can space all 4 of my APs so that there's no interference (using a non-DFS channel for testing, btw). Am I wasting my time trying to chase higher speeds with my current setup? What kind of speeds are *you* getting on your WiFi network?

C++ corroded • 4 months ago • 100%

I have been programming in C++ for a very long time, and like a lot of us, I have an established workflow that hasn't really changed much over time. With the exception of bare-metal programming for embedded systems, though, I have been developing for Windows that entire time. With the recent "enshittification" of Windows 11, I'm starting to realize that it's going to be time to make the switch to Linux in the very near future. I've become very accustomed to (spoiled by?) Visual Studio, though, and I'm wondering about the Linux equivalent of features I probably take for granted. - Debugging: In VS, I can set breakpoints, step through my code line-by-line, pause and inspect the contents of variable on-the-fly, switch between threads, etc. My understanding of Linux programming is that it's mostly done in a code editor, then compiled on the command line. How exactly do you debug code when your build process is separate from your code editor? Having to compile my code, run it until I find a bug, then open it up in a debugger and start it all over sounds extremely inefficient. - Build System: I'm aware that cmake exists, and I've used it a bit, but I don't like it. VS lets me just drop a .h and .cpp file into the solution explorer and I'm good-to-go. Is there really no graphical alternative for Linux? It seems like Linux development is very modular; each piece of the development process exists in its own application, many of which are command-line only. Part of what I like about VS is that it ties this all together into a nice package and allows interoperability between the functions. I can create a new header or source file, add some code, build it, run it, and debug it, all within the same IDE. This might come across as a rant against Linux programming, but I don't intend it to. I guess what I'm really looking for is suggestions on how to make the transition from a Visual Studio user to a Linux programmer. How can I transition to Linux and still maintain an efficient workflow? As a note, I am not new to Linux; I have used it extensively. However, the only programming I've done on Linux is bash scripting.

I've noticed recently that my network speed isn't what I would expect from a 10Gb network. For reference, I have a Proxmox server and a TrueNAS server, both connected to my primary switch with DAC. I've tested the speed by transferring files from the NAS with SMB and by using OpenSpeedTest running on a VM in Proxmox. So far, this is what my testing has shown: - Using a Windows PC connected directly to my primary switch with CAT6: OpenSpeedTest shows around 2.5-3Gb to Proxmox, which is much slower than I'd expect. Transferring a file from my NAS hits a max of around 700-800MB (bytes, not bits), which is about what I'd expect given hard drive speed and overhead. - Using a Windows VM on Proxmox: OpenSpeedTest shows around 1.5-2Gb, which is much slower than I would expect. I'm using VirtIO network drivers, so I should realistically only be limited by CPU; it's all running internally in Proxmox. Transferring a file from my NAS hits a max of around 200-300MB, which is still unacceptably slow, even given the HDD bottleneck and SMB overhead. The summary I get from this is: - The slowest transfer rate is between two VMs on my Proxmox server. This *should* be the fastest transfer rate. - Transferring from a VM to a bare-metal PC is significantly slower than expected, but better than between VMs. - Transferring from my NAS to a VM is faster than between two VMs, but still slower than it should be. - Transferring from my NAS to a bare-metal PC gives me the speeds I would expect. Ultimately, this shows that the bottleneck is Proxmox. The more VMs involved in the transfer, the slower it gets. I'm not really sure where to look next, though. Is there a setting in Proxmox I should be looking at? My server is old (two Xeon 2650v2); is it just too slow to pass the data across the Linux network bridge at an acceptable rate? CPU usage on the VMs themselves doesn't get past 60% or so, but maybe Proxmox itself is CPU-bound? The bulk of my network traffic is coming in-and-out of the VMs on Proxmox, so it's important that I figure this out. Any suggestions for testing or for a fix are very much appreciated.

C++ corroded • 5 months ago • 100%

In c++17, std::any was added to t he standard library. Boost had their own version of "any" for quite some time before that. I've been trying to think of a case where std::any is the best solution, and I honestly can't think of one. std::any can hold a variable of any type at runtime, which seems incredibly useful until you consider that at some point, you will need to actually *use* the data in std::any. This is accomplished by calling std::any_cast with a template argument that corresponds to the correct type held in the std::any object. That means that although std::any can hold a type of any object, the list of valid objects must be known at the point that the variable is any_cast out of the std::any object. While the list of types that can be assigned to the object is unlimited, the list of types that can be extracted from the object is still finite. That being said, why not just use a std::variant that can hold all the possible types that could be any_cast out of the object? Set a type alias for the std::variant, and there is no more boilerplate code than you would have otherwise. As an added benefit, you ensure type safety.

homeassistant corroded • 5 months ago • 100%

I'm looking for a portable air conditioner (the kind with 1 or 2 hoses that go to outside air). The problem I'm running into is that every single one I find has some kind of "smart" controller built in. The ones with no WiFi connectivity still have buttons to start/stop the AC, meaning that a simple Zigbee outlet switch won't work. I could switch the AC off, but it would require a button-press to switch it back on. The ones with WiFi connectivity all require "cloud" access; my IoT devices all connect to a VLAN with no internet access, and I plan to keep it that way. I suppose I could hack a relay in place of the "start" button, but I'd really rather just have something I can plug in and use. I can't use a window AC; the room has no windows. I'll need to route intake/exhaust through the wall. So far, I can't find any "portable" AC that will work for me. What I'm looking for is a portable AC that either: - Connects to WiFi and integrates with HA *locally*. - Has no connectivity but uses "dumb" controls so I can switch it with a Zigbee outlet switch. Any ideas?

Unpopular Opinion corroded • 5 months ago • 61%

Yesterday, Brian Dorsey was executed for a crime he committed in 2006. By all accounts, during his time in prison, he became remorseful for his actions and was a "model prisoner," to the point that multiple corrections officers backed his petition for clemency. https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/09/us/brian-dorsey-missouri-execution-tuesday/index.html In general, the media is painting him as the victim of a justice system that fails to recognize rehabilitation. I find this idea disgusting. Brian Dorsey, in a drug-induced stupor, murdered the people who gave him shelter. He brutally ended the life of a woman and her husband, and (allegedly) sexually assaulted her corpse. There is an argument that he had ineffective legal representation, but that doesn't negate the fact that he is guilty. While I do believe that he could have been released or had his sentence converted to life in prison, and he could have potentially been a model citizen, this would have been a perversion of justice. Actions that someone takes after committing a barbaric act do not undo the damage that was done. Those two individuals are still dead, and he needed to face the ramifications for his actions. Rehabilitation should not be an option for someone who committed crimes as depraved as he did. Quite frankly, a lethal injection was far less than what he deserved, given the horror he inflicted on others. If the punishment should fit the crime, then he was given far more leniency than was warranted.

Selfhosted corroded • 6 months ago • 84%

I just set up a local instance of Invidious. I created an account, exported my YouTube subscriptions, and imported them into Invidious. The first time I tried, it imported 5 subscriptions out of 50 or so. The second time I tried, it imported 9. Thinking there might be a problem with the import function, I decided to manually add each subscription. Every time I click "Subscribe," the button will switch to "Unsubscribe," then immediately switch back to "Subscribe." If I look at my subscriptions, it was never added. My first thought was a problem with the PostgreSQL database, but that wouldn't explain why *some* subscriptions work when I import them. I tried rebooting the container, and it made no difference. I'm running Invidious in a Ubuntu 22.04 LXC container in Proxmox. I installed it manually (not with Docker). It has 100GB of HDD space, 4 CPU cores, and 8GB of memory. What the hell is going on?

Unpopular Opinion corroded • 6 months ago • 57%

As is stands, parents are able to claim their children as dependents on their tax returns, which lowers their overall tax liability and in effect means that the parents either pay less in taxes or receive a higher return at the end of each year. Until they reach the age at which they can work, children are a drain on society. They receive public schooling and receive the same benefit from public services that adults do, yet they contribute nothing in return. At the point that they reach maturity and are gainfully employed and paying taxes, they become a functioning member of society. If a parent decides to have a child, they are making a conscious decision to produce another human being. They could choose to get a sterilization surgery, use birth control, or abort the pregnancy (assuming they don't live in a backwards state that's banned it). Yet even if they decide to have 15 children, the rest of society has to foot the bill for their poor decisions until the child reaches adulthood. By increasing taxes on parents instead of reducing them, you not only incentivize safe sex and abortion, but you shift the burden of raising a child solely to the individuals who are responsible for the fact that that child exists. I am a strong advocate for social programs: Single-payer healthcare, welfare programs, low-income housing, etc, but for *adults* who in turn contribute what they can. A child should only be supported by the individuals who created it.

The majority of my homelab consists of two servers: A Proxmox hypervisor and a TrueNAS file server. The bulk of my LAN traffic is between these two servers. At the moment, both servers are on my "main" VLAN. I have separate VLANs for guests and IoT devices, but everything else lives on VLAN2. I have been considering the idea of creating another VLAN for storage, but I'm debating if there is any benefit to this. My NAS still needs to be accessible to non-VLAN-aware devices (my desktop PC, for instance), so from a security standpoint, there's not much benefit; it wouldn't be isolated. Both servers have a 10Gb DAC back to the switch, so bandwidth isn't really a factor; even if it was, my switch is still only going to switch packets between the two servers; it's not like it's flooding the rest of my network. Having a VLAN for storage seems like it's the "best practice," but since both servers still need to be accessible outside the VLAN, the only benefit I can see is limiting broadcast traffic, and as far as I know (correct me if I'm wrong), SMB/NFS/iSCSI are all unicast.

homeassistant corroded • 8 months ago • 96%

I've been running HA for a while, and it's been working well; I haven't had to change much in a few months. That being said, it's fun to tinker with it, and I'm curious to hear what kind of automations the rest of the community is using. What automations are you most proud of? What are your favorite? What kind of interesting automations have you written? My personal favorite is an automation that displays the current "apparent" temperature on a Hue bulb. It takes an average of the temperature, humidity, and luminance around my property and uses the average to compute an "apparent" (feels like) temperature. Then it applies a cosine function to the apparent temperature (to approximate how people feel temperature change), uses the resulting value to calculate a level between blue and red in CIELAB (a perceptually uniform color space), converts the results to RGB, and sets the color value of the hue bulb. The result is a bulb that changes color so that the change in color (as perceived by the eye) mirrors how the temperature "feels" outside. Ultimately what that means is that we can look at a small lamp with the hue bulb and say "It feels cold outside; we should put on a coat." It's probably overkill, but it was a fun programming exercise. We've started saying things like "It's really blue today, I don't feel like going out." I'd really enjoy reading what kind of interesting automations everyone else has written.

Selfhosted corroded • 8 months ago • 94%

I have a decent amount of video footage that I'd like to share with friends and family. My first thought was Youtube, but this is all home videos that I really don't want to share publicly. A large portion of my video footage is 4k/60, so I'm ideally looking for a solution where I can send somebody a link, and it gives a "similar to Youtube" experience when they click on the link. And by "similar to Youtube," I mean that the player automatically adjusts the video bitrate and resolution based on their internet speed. Trying to explain to extended family how to lower the bitrate if the video starts buffering isn't really an option. It needs to "just work" as soon as the link is clicked; some of the individuals I'd like to share video with are very much *not* technically inclined. I'd like to host it on my homelab, but my internet connection only has a 4Mbit upload, which is orders of magnitude lower than my video bitrate, so I'm assuming I would need to either use a 3rd-party video hosting service or set up a VPS with my hosting software of choice. Any suggestions? I prefer open-source self-hosted software, but I'm willing to pay for convenience.

DRONES corroded • 8 months ago • 100%

I've recently purchased a DJI Avata, and I've been reading about the different "hacks" to enable higher power modes and additional channels for the O3 system. I understand that CE mode is specifically for European countries with more restrictive power limitations. I'm in the USA, so I apparently my drone is in "FCC mode" by default. I'm specifically curious about "Ham mode," though. I am a licensed ham radio operator, which means that legally, I can use frequencies and power levels that are outside the range of normal Part 15 devices. In general, the regulations state that my transmissions must be unencrypted, I must transmit my callsign every 10 minutes, and I'm limited to 1.5kW (which is obviously far less than any drone would use). Is there a firmware hack that allows this? I'm not trying to break the line-of-sight rules, but if I can enable a mode that would allow me to get better signal fidelity within the FCC and FAA regulations, I'd like to try it. Even a little bit of extra power can make a significant difference in certain cases.

homeassistant corroded • 8 months ago • 100%

I've been going through my system logs and working on resolving the miscellaneous errors; mostly it's just due to poorly-written automations where the automation would be called while it was still running. Easy fix. What I can't seem to fix is a constant stream of "Unknown cluster command" errors on cluster 0xef00 coming from ZHA. I've discovered that the 0xef00 cluster is a manufacturer-specific cluster. All of my errors come from Tuya mmWave sensors; apparently Tuya uses this cluster for inter-device communication. All of my devices work, but this error is polluting the logs to a large degree; right now it's showing over 100k instances of this error. Is there a way to have HA just ignore this cluster completely? It's not causing any issues with functionality, but I would rather the logs just show *actual* errors so I can more easily identify problems and fix them. I've read that Z2MQTT doesn't have this issue, but swapping from ZHA to Z2MQTT is not an option for me, especially for what amounts to a logging issue. It would require re-pairing almost 100 Zigbee devices and modifying nearly every single automation.

Android corroded • 9 months ago • 90%

I upgraded the head unit in my car recently. The head unit itself runs Android, and it supports Android Auto. So far, I've been using Android Auto via bluetooth, and it works great. I have no complaints. I started using Android Auto just because it seemed logical, but I'm not understanding exactly what the benefits are. Since the head unit runs Android, couldn't I just install the apps I need on the head unit itself and just tether my phone for internet access? It also supports a 5G connection, so if I installed a SIM card, I don't think I'd need my phone at all. To be honest, I'm leading toward that; it just seems easier and a lot more straightforward. I have no complaints about Android Auto, I just don't really see what it brings to the table other than a layer of abstraction over the head unit's native interface. It might be worth mentioning that the only thing I do in my car is streaming music and navigation. What features am I missing? Surely there is a compelling reason for Android Auto to exist.

homeassistant corroded • 10 months ago • 100%

I'm using a variety of PIR motion sensors and mmWave presence sensors; most work fairly well, with a few exceptions. At this point, I have all the lights in my house automated, but with one exception: the master bedroom. I'd like to automate my bedroom lights so that they turn on when someone enters the bedroom unless someone else is already in bed sleeping. So far, none of the sensors I've used are precise or reliable enough to do this. I've thought about using the status of our phones (charging/not charging), but my girlfriend doesn't always plug in her phone when she's asleep. Scheduling won't work, since we both sleep at random times when we're off work, sometimes during the day. Maybe a pressure sensor under the mattress? Aquara makes a[ device that's advertised as being able to detect multiple people as well as sleeping people](https://www.amazon.com/Aqara-Positioning-Multi-Person-Detection-Assistant/dp/B0BXWZMQJ3). This would be perfect if it worked, but Aquara devices seem to be the ones that always cause me the most problems. Any suggestions?

Ask Lemmy corroded • 10 months ago • 92%

I've found that when I'm logged into Youtube, the algorithm works fairly well to suggest videos that are at least somewhat related to my interests. I'm specifically curious about how the "default" algorithm works when not logged in. If I open a private window and look at the front page, it almost feels like the algorithm is doing its best to show me the *opposite* of what I want to see. Obviously this isn't true, but I just don't get how it chooses the videos it shows. As an example, I almost always get: - Right-wing news clips (I'm not a Republican) - Sports (I don't watch or play sports) - Gaming streams (I've not once watched a gaming stream) - Christian content (I am not a Christian) - Gen-Z and Gen-Y entertainment (I'm almost 40) I feel like some of this is geographic. My router load-balances between two internet connections, and I can sometimes tell if it's using my "local" connection or my satellite connection (with an endpoint in another state) based on what videos it shows. Regardless, though, the content I see isn't really appropriate for the demographic in either location. Out of curiosity, I tried it with a VPN using an endpoint in Canada (I'm in the USA); the front page was mostly really crappy reality TV content (think stuff on TLC). If I was programming the algorithm, I'd want to have it show content that applies to a broad audience, but that really doesn't seem to be the case. While I don't intend on ever using Youtube without being logged in (and having a ton of browser plugins active to improve the experience), from a technical standpoint, I'm very curious how it chooses what to put on the front page.

homeassistant corroded • 10 months ago • 100%

I have a rainwater collection system that feeds into several water tanks. I'd like to be able to monitor the tank levels for a variety of reasons, first and foremost because of the fact that we get almost no rain in the summer, and I have run the tanks to empty before. In the past, I have used [Milone eTape](https://milonetech.com/products/standard-etape-assembly) connected to an Atmel microcontroller to monitor water levels for a few different applications. I'd like to use this again if possible. The eTape essentially acts as a potentiometer in a circuit. I've done some research on various ways to feed this into HomeAssistant, but I'm not really sure what's best. My water tanks are just behind the wall from my HA server, so I could connect directly with USB, serial, or ethernet. WiFi or Zigbee or also options; nearly every other device I have connected to HA is Zigbee. What I'm ideally looking for is a device that can take a voltage level between 0-5VDC, or a 5k potentiometer, and feed the result into HA. Building something isn't out of the question (as long as I can program it in C or C++), but an off-the-shelf solution that integrates with HA would be ideal.

homeassistant corroded • 11 months ago • 92%

I recently found a box in storage that contains about 10 Philips Hue bulbs; I had completely forgotten that I used them in the past. At the time, I had them paired to a Hue bridge. The newest is probably at least 6 years old, maybe a bit more. I now have a Zigbee network with HA, and so I figure I might as well use the bulbs; they all still work. I can't figure out how to reset them so I can pair them to my Zigbee controller, though. Every article I read assumes that they're already connected to a bridge, to Amazon Alexa, I have a Hue dimmer controller, or something of the sort. Is my only option to sign up for a Hue account, set up my old bridge, and reset them through the Hue app? Surely there must be some other way. I found a thread on [that other site that isn't Lemmy] that gives a routine of switching power on/off to cause a factory reset, but it doesn't work after several tries. UPDATE: I was never able to find a method that worked without using my old Hue bridge. I ended up connecting the bridge and manually deleting each bulb. I few I had to add and delete again, but after about an hour of work, I was able to pair them all with HA.

homeassistant corroded • 11 months ago • 93%

I installed 6 Sonoff SN-ZB03 motion sensors this morning, and I'm getting so many false positives that they're essentially useless. I could understand having one that's bad, but 6? Three of them seem to randomly trigger for no reason at all. One triggers any time the heater comes on, regardless of where I place it. The last two *usually* work but still give random false positives. From what I'm reading, there are a lot of complaints about these. I probably should have done some research before I bought them. I can't shake the feeling that I'm doing *something* wrong. Is ITEAD really selling a motion sensor that just doesn't work properly? I don't see any commands listed under "Manage Zigbee Device" that allow for a sensitivity change, and I can't find a datasheet or a manual for these other than the basic "quick start" guide. As far as I can tell, there's no firmware update available, either. Am I stuck replacing all of these? If so, any suggestions on better ones? I've read good reviews of the Hue motion sensors, but they're not cheap. EDIT: I've had some time to experiment with these a bit more. They can be made to work, but only in very specific circumstances. The ones I had outside would trigger constantly, as would the one I had in a room with a heater. They also seem to interfere with each other if they're too close to each other. I placed one in an attic area, and one in the stairs leading up; these are working flawlessly. So if you need a motion sensor for an indoor area that isn't climate controlled, doesn't have another sensor nearby, and doesn't have frequent lighting changes, these might work. Maybe for a closet? I won't be throwing these away, but there won't be a lot of cases where I use them.

homeassistant corroded • 11 months ago • 92%

Based on a number of excellent suggestions I got in previous thread, I have decided to convert all my smart home devices over to ZigBee. I have about 50 switches and sensors on-order at the moment. One thing I can't seem to find is a controller for my pellet stove. My stove is installed in my workshop, and during the winter, I usually have to run out to the shop in the morning, turn the stove on, then wait for a hour or two for it to warm up. I'm thinking that I'll most likely need to build a controller for the stove. I had some issues with the mainboard in the stove last year, so I'm fairly familiar with how it works. There area few sensors and relays. - An on/off sensor for the lid. - A safety sensor for the hopper (makes sure flames aren't feeding back into the hopper). - A pressure sensor to detect if the door is open. - An external temperature probe. - An internal temperature probe. - A relay for the igniter. - A relay for the motor that rotates the hopper. - A relay for the induction fan. - A relay for the fan that blows warm air out from the stove. - A potentiometer that switches the stove on and controls the temperature set point. I have built a number of custom PCBs in the past, and I'm confident that I could build a replacement for the mainboard that includes a ZigBee radio. This requires a significant amount of design work for the PCB, programming for the microcontroller, etc. I'm also just now learning about how the ZigBee protocol works, so there would be a fair amount of research involved. My other idea was to build a PCB that essentially acts as a programmable potentiometer, replace the pellet stove's pot with this PCB, and leave the mainboard as-is. Has anyone here tried integrating a pellet stove into your home automation? How did you do it? UPDATE: This was actually very easy. The potentiometer that controls my stove acts as a voltage divider. At 5V, it signals the stove to shut off, and at 0V, it's fully on. I just leave the potentiometer in the "off" position, and I added a [zigbee relay](https://www.amazon.com/MHCOZY-Channel-Adjustable-Selflock-Momentary/dp/B0BRJM21CG/) in normally-closed mode in series with the wire feeding from the center. When the relay is "off," the stove sees 5V and does its normal shutdown routine. With the relay "on," the stove starts up. HA switches it based on temperature from a temperature sensor in the room. Depending on your stove, you might need a pull-down resistor (if it expects GND instead of an open), but it works perfectly for me.

Unpopular Opinion corroded • 11 months ago • 37%

I do not have children, and I never will, yet my property taxes still go toward paying for schools. I'm happy to have my taxes pay for roads, infastructure improvement, fire, police, and all the other municipal services that benefit me as a resident of the county. The government needs to determine the cost of educating a child from kindergarten to high school, divide this by 18, and apply it as a yearly tax to parents. Children deserve an education, but children also put an additional strain on society. I should not be forced to pay for someone else's decision to procreate.

homeassistant corroded • 11 months ago • 100%

I have tried Home Assistant several times. Each time I try it, I get it installed on a VM under my Proxmox hypervisor and start configuring my devices. I'll use my most recent try as an example. I have several Wyze WiFi power switches, and two "Smart Life" (Toya internally) combination thermometer/switch devices. The Toya devices integrated with HA after I signed up for a Toya developer account and did a bunch of configuring. I was able to read the temperature values, but switching the devices on/off did absolutely nothing. I didn't even try the Wyze devices; apparently Wyze doesn't integrate with HA. I'm not opposed to buying new "smart home" devices, but I want something that actually works properly. What I'm looking for are: - Devices that don't require internet access and an external API; I want to control them directly over my LAN. - Devices that have built-in integration with HA. Is there a list of devices that just "work" with HA? I've looked at the list of available integrations that "technically" work, but they often require signing up for API access with a 3rd-party company and jumping through hoops to get the devices working. I want something where I can assign it a static IP or DHCP lease and HA just talks to it. I was able to get my BlueIris DVR integration working, and it can double as a motion sensor, so I'm specifically looking for plug-in switches, thermometers, sensors, etc.

Gardening corroded • 1 year ago • 100%

With winter not all that far away, I finally decided to set up a greenhouse. As much as I wanted to build one myself, the cost of materials was going to be about the same as buying a pre-made kit. I ordered a 6x14ft greenhouse kit, somewhere in the mid-range as far as quality goes. I'm having a hard time figuring out where to place it, though. I have a few options in mind, and they all have their pros and cons. The option I like the most is a concrete pad just beside my house. It gets good sun (this time of year, direct sun from about 8am to 5pm), it's a convenient location, and it's already a level surface. I'm not so sure about putting a greenhouse over concrete, though. I'll be using an electric heater in the winter, and I'm worried the concrete will pull a lot of heat away from the air in the greenhouse. I have a few other areas on my property that would work, but they are all a very uneven gravel surface over extremely hard-packed rocky soil. I could dig out a level area for the greenhouse, but I would imagine I still would need to build a raised base, maybe a wooden platform. Is putting a greenhouse over concrete a bad idea in the winter? What if I decide to put it somewhere else and just level the ground. Can it go over dirt and gravel, or would I need a base? Any suggestions are welcome. This is my first foray into greenhouse gardening, and I'd like to start off right.

Jellyfin: The Free Software Media System corroded • 1 year ago • 100%

I have the settings on my Jellyfin server mostly dialed-in, but one of the only problems I have left to fix is HDR and subtitle transcoding. My server transcodes HDR10 and DV with no problem, but often times the client devices don't properly report their HDR capabilites. My Android TV box and my phone can't play DV, but it tries to direct-stream Dv anyway. My desktop PC can't display HDR at all, but it still tries to direct-stream HDR content. Subtitles don't always work on my phone unless they're burned-in. There's an option to force HDR transcoding on the Windows client, but not for Android. Workarounds like lowering the bitrate to below the source bitrate or activating burned-in subtitles work, but I don't want to lower the bitrate, and I don't always want subtitles. What I'm looking for is an option on the server to force transcoding to h264/SDR and burn in subtitles regardless of client. An option to disable direct play and force transcoding for every stream would be perfect. So far, I can't find any way to do this on the server. Is there any way to to disable direct play or at least force transcoding based on source content and *not* client capabilities?

Daystrom Institute corroded • 1 year ago • 63%

Up until the "modern era" of Trek, my understanding of canon is that the Eugenics War happened in the 1990s and was immediately followed by WW3. It seems like that has changed. Picard season 2 took place in the 2020s, and there was no evidence of widespread devastation that would have taken place in a major war, although it could be argued that it wasn't shown to us on-screen. At the end of the series, we see a folder labeled "Project Kahn," hinting that either Kahn has yet to be born or that the season's "bad guy" is planning to continue Kahn's legacy. In Strange New Worlds Season 2, Episode 3, the focus is on Kahn and how he affects the timeline. We see Kahn as a child, meaning the Eugenics War has yet to take place, even though the episode takes place in what is obviously 2020s or 2030s Toronto. Even more telling is that the Romulan spy says "This should have happened in 1993." Might have been 1992; still, early 1990s. This leaves me with a few questions. If the Federation time-cops are so set on preserving the timeline, why did they allow the timeline to be altered to such a degree that the Eugenics War, a major event in Humanity's history, happened at least 30 years after it was supposed to. In addition, what event actually altered the timeline so that Kahn was born/created decades later than he should have been? As far as I remember, we haven't seen anything to show why this happened. Since we now know from SNW that the Eugenics War happened some time after the 2020s, how does that fit into the timeline for Zefram Cochrane's first warp flight? Assuming the Eugenics War is still followed by WW3, that only leaves a max of 49 years between the start of 2 major conflicts and first contact with the Vulcans. In "First Contact," Cochrane and company assumed the Borg attack was from a hostile force on Earth. Perhaps WW3 was still in progress, and the events of 2069 were what ended the war? On a side note, the destruction of a single ship spawned the Kelvin timeline. Since SNW shows us that events in Earth's history no longer match up with the timeline established in TOS, TNG, VOY, and DS9, does this mean that SNW (and possibly PIC) are *also* in a non-prime timeline?

Gardening corroded • 1 year ago • 100%

Up until very recently, I've never lived anywhere where I had the space to set up an outdoor garden. I've been fortunate to finally own a property where I can, and I'm really enjoying it. So far I've set up an 8 x 25 garden plot, planted 4 fruit trees, and have a thriving wildflower garden in front of the house. I have a *lot* to learn, but I'm certainly enjoying the process. One of my recent projects has been to install gutters on my workshop; it's a 25x50ft building. That got me thinking; why not collect the water from the gutters? I live an area that gets near-constant rain in the fall, winter, and spring, but it turns into a desert here during the summer. We haven't had more than a light mist in about a month or more. I have a roughly 60x20ft section of property hidden behind the shop, and it would be a perfect place to set up some IBC totes to collect the water. For those of you who collect rain water for your garden, how much do you find you need/use? Based on my water bill, it looks like my usage went up by about 75 gallons per month since I've started gardening. I figure round that to 100G just to be safe; for 4 months with little rainfall, that would mean I need about 400G stored. I tend to over-engineer everything I build, so lets double that to 800G. I'd enjoy hearing from anyone who harvests rainwater for their garden. How much water storage do you have? Do you find it's too much, not enough, or exactly what you need?

Jellyfin: The Free Software Media System corroded • 1 year ago • 100%

I'm having a very strange issue with the Jellyfin app for Android (using a Samsung Galaxy S23). Any time I have the player set to the built-in web player, the video will freeze every second or so, then pick up in a few seconds. While it's "frozen," tapping on the screen to bring up the scrollbar will start it playing again. So the video plays fine as long as I keep tapping on the screen every second or so; obviously this won't work. It's not a bandwidth issue; it happens even when I drop the bitrate to 360p. If I open a web browser and log into Jellyfin on the same device, it plays perfectly. It's only when I use the web player built-in to the app. I tried using the built-in ExosPlayer, and it gives me a blank screen when I'm transcoding HDR->SDR with tone mapping. Using an external player (VLC) works, but it doesn't transcode at all; it just direct streams everything, which is no good when I need to play Dolby Vision content or drop the bitrate to stream over my internet connection. I can certainly just use Jellyfin through a web browser, but it would be nice to be able to get the app working.

Selfhosted corroded • 1 year ago • 97%

I'm starting to get more and more HDR content, and I'm noticing an issue with my Jellyfin server. In nearly all cases, it's required to transcode and tone map the HDR content. All of it is in 4k. My little Quadro P400 just can't keep up. Encoder and decoder usage hovers around 15-17%, but the GPU core usage is pinned at 100% the entire time, and my framerate doesn't exceed 19fps, which makes the video skip so badly it's unwatchable. What's a reasonable upgrade? I'm thinking about the P4000, but that might be excessive. Also, it needs to fit in a low-profile slot. Edit: I'm shocked at how much good feedback I received on this post. Hopefully someone else will stumble on it in the future and be able to learn something. Ultimately, I decided to purchase a used RTX A2000 for just about $250. It's massively overkill for transcoding/tone mapping 4k, but once I'm brave enough to risk breaking my Proxmox install and setting up vGPU, I'm hoping to take advantage of the Tensor cores for AI object detection in my Blue Iris VM. Also, the A2000 supports AV1, and while I don't need that at the moment, it will be nice to have in the future, I think. Final Edit: I replaced the Quadro P400 with an RTX A2000 today. With the P400, transcoding 4k HEVC HDR to 4k HEVC (or h264) SDR with tone mapping resulted in transcode rate of about 19fps with 100% GPU usage. With the A2000, I'm getting a transcode rate of about 120fps with around 30% GPU usage; plenty of room for growth if I add 1 or 2 users to the server. For $250, it was well worth the upgrade.

Over the next several weeks, I have a few projects planned that will require digging on my property. Of all the utilities coming in, the electrical is overhead, the water has been marked in the past, and my DSL line is on the opposite side of the property (plus I was present when they buried the line, so I know where it is). I have copies of the drawings from when my septic was installed. I'm not concerned about the basic utilities. My concern is a buried electrical line that runs from the breaker panel in my house to a subpanel in my shop; I can see where it enters the ground and exists, but because of the topology of my property, I seriously doubt it's a direct line from point A to point B. As far as I can tell, my local "Call Before You Dig" only marks out the incoming utilities to the home, at least that's all they did last time. Are there services that will mark buried electrical lines between two buildings on private property? I'm certainly willing to pay for the service, but I can't figure out who to call. Surely somebody can do this for a fee? I'm not sure if this question exactly fits into "Home Improvement," but I don't know where else to ask. I looked online for an in-ground AC detector, but everything I find that can detect a buried cable more than a few inches is extremely expensive, and I'd likely never need it again.

Selfhosted corroded • 1 year ago • 92%

I recently set up Nextcloud, and so far I'm really enjoying it. With the exception of Gmail and Backblaze, I'm no longer using any online services that aren't self-hosted on my own hardware; Nextcloud has allowed me to get rid of the last few Google services I was using. One issue I'm having is that images I have uploaded to Nextcloud do not have thumbnails when the image size is large. My phone takes photos at 200MP, so this constitutes a significant number of my photos. I've been researching the problem, and I think I need to set the following: 'preview_max_x' => null 'preview_max_y' => null 'preview_max_filesize_image' => -1 'preview_max_memory' => -1 I'm running Nextcloud on a Proxmox hypervisor with 32 cores and 128GB of memory, so I'm not concerned about using system resources; I can always allocate more. The issue I'm having is that I installed Nextcloud as a snap in Ubuntu Server. The last time I tried to use nextcloud.occ to change a configuration option, it set a string as an array, and triggered a bunch of php errors. As far as I can tell, I need to do something like this: sudo nextcloud.occ config:[something, maybe system]:set preview_max_x [some data goes here] How do I format this so that nextcloud.occ inserts the variable into my php config properly? Any examples of a nextcloud.occ command would be very much appreciated.

Selfhosted corroded • 1 year ago • 95%

I've been considering the idea of hosting my own instance of Lemmy, solely for my own use, maybe with 1 or 2 family members using it as well. I've seen several discussions regarding the requirements for system resources, but not much regarding bandwidth. I have an abundance of processing power, memory, and storage space in my homelab, but my internet connection is terrible. Not much available where I live. I have a 40/3 VDSL connection and a Starlink connection, but neither is particularly good in terms of upload. Seems like a VPS would be a good solution, but to me, that kind of defeats the purpose of self-hosting. I want to use my own hardware. So, for a personal-use Lemmy instance, what kind of bandwidth is recommended? I know my connection would be fine for 1 or 2 users, but I'll admit I'm not entirely sure how servers sync with each other in a federated network, and I could see that using a ton of bandwidth.

C++ corroded • 1 year ago • 100%

I'm working on a project that makes heavy use of multithreading; I think it's been years since I wrote code that didn't at least use std::thread or std::async to some extent. I started programming in C for bare-metal AVR microcontrollers (no threading needed in that case), and I didn't really move into C++ until just after C++11 was already established; that is to say, I have always had access to concurrency tools that are built into the standard library. I'm curious how threads were implemented prior to C++11; I know that 3rd-party libraries exist for this, but how did the libraries themselves handle it? I'm assuming the only option was to use calls to the OS with a lot of preprocessor macros depending on the target OS. Writing loops with a stored state would work, but not only did coroutines not exist in the STL until much later, but this wouldn't take advantage of multi-core CPUs, which were already commonplace before C++11. There are certainly some times I take modern language features for granted. So, for the experienced programmers out there: How did it used to be done?

pfSense CE 2.7.0 has finally been released, which I think for those of us using CE, is probably good news. Looking at the changelog, it seems they have upgraded both PHP and the core OS. [https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/releases/2-7-0.html]() This makes me a bit nervous. They recommend removing any installed packages prior to upgrading, which seems like a way of saying "This update will likely break things." How has everyone's luck been with the upgrade? Any issues so far. EDIT: I have my pfSense instance on a Proxmox VM, so I figured I'd give it a try anyway. Worse case, I can always restore the VM from a backup. Only issue was a few errors loading pfBlockerNG rules after restart, but the errors haven't returned after clearing them and refreshing the blocklists. I'm keeping my pre-upgrade backup for a while, but so far everything seems to be working.

I recently replaced my UPS and set up NUT (Network UPS Tools) for monitoring. Everything works fine for a short time, but after a few hours, NUT reports "error: Data stale" in the web UI. After a few more hours, the web UI just stops responding completely. I have NUT running on a Ubuntu VM in Proxmox. My UPS is a Tripp Lite (Eaton) SU1000RTXL2UA. It's connected to my hypervisor via USB and passed through to the VM. Restarting the container fixes the problem. Any idea what could be causing this?

Black Metal corroded • 1 year ago • 100%

www.youtube.com

DSBM has always been a bit hit-or-miss for me, but None is one of those bands I can listen to on repeat and never get tired of. I'm really looking forward to their new album coming out on the 30th.