And the SM57 for things you don’t need a screen on.

With a bit of luck, native RTC support means 2-way comms using reolink doorbells is close at hand.

I’ll write a quick gist for anyone coming along:

One gas boiler in the house, each room has a smart TRV.
PIR sensor to set room presence, each window has an opening mag sensor. HASS has a general presence sensor set.

Each room’s temperature is targeted based on presence and window status:
For each room, if person is home at all, and has been in the room for 5 mins, and the window is closed, TRV to 19, boiler on if <19.
If the room presence is negative and the window is closed, drop TRV target to 16.
If the window is open, drop the TRV target to 7.

There is a little more detail that that in the article, but that’s the basics.

I’m down to two 2.4GHz devices over the whole network now.

The day I can disable it entirely will be a happy one!

It’s pulled from my main router using it’s metric for it. It only updates once a minute or so, but it’s a nice metric.
Once I switch over to more powerful gear, I’ll probably have to start using SNMP, which I don’t look forward to!

I’m currently using the PoE doorbell from Reolink, and regularly use it for intercom, because I don’t like wasting delivery drivers time while I run to the door. I can definitely recommend it. It’s worth the effort running the cable to have something that just works.

The default Reolink integration can raise events on:

• Button press
• Person detection (adjustable sensitivity)
• Motion detection (same)

Recording can be on-device with a micro SD, on network (recording the incoming stream), or by FTP.
Recording can be set like a dashcam too (only save when needed, and overwrite after a certain time)

By default it lights up around the button when it detects movement, I do not like this, so I turned it off.

If the area outside your house isn’t busy, you can do cool things like getting the person detection to alert you as someone approaches, rather than waiting for them to press the bell. Can make the postman jump the first few times.

There are also some features like doing TTS replies if you don’t acknowledge the doorbell inside a certain time.
I haven’t gone through the effort of setting up return audio from Homeassistant, and just use the RL app.

One of my key buying points for hardware is “will this run without any internet, and could I set it all up again without internet?”.

This is why I’m so happy to finally have Hue on my zigbee controller. And it’s why I’m always on the lookout for a second hand Valetudo compatible robovac.

You could also set up a local NTP server, and block them entirely.
Currently, I have mine set with an invalid gateway, and blocked from the internet to be sure.

All pale to the satisfaction of inserting a digibeta tape.

This is actually something I’m paying attention to: Which EVs get hacked and fossed.
I’m hoping the 40KWH zoes get done soon.

I’m a bit late, but if it helps, I’ve had good results with the Sonoff and Tuya zigbee sensors. I prefer the Tuyas, just because they use AA instead of CR2032 batteries.
$50 will easily get you everything you need to start.

You might also want to think about getting a 433MHz radio for the system.
If you live in a built up area, you’d be surprised how many people have equipment transmitting on 433MHz already (free data!).
And a lot of generic wireless temperature sensor kits use it as a standard, making it a good value way to get weatherproof gear.
I got a generic fridge/freezer kit for about £10 that works perfectly with this. Again, $50 or so for a DVB-T2 receiver. Just be aware that it’s a little more technically involved than pairing zigbee devices.

Bother me with DMs if you like, I’ve been fiddling with just about every protocol I can get my hands on for under £100!

Someone else already raised the mains wired safety/budget issue, but I may have a side suggestion for you: Bulbs as repeaters.

I’ve added hue bulbs directly to my zigbee network, where they also act as repeaters.

The problem then was people switching off at the switch. This has been resolved by adding a little zigbee button by the switch (as people can achieve the function without the mains switch).
Which gives the bonus of being able to do different taps.

(So for example, I have one click as toggle on/off, two clicks is daytime+bright, press+hold is evening+dim)

This is the reason I haven’t gone down the smart light switches path yet.
Anything that I’d trust enough on 240v is out of budget!

HEVC is almost entirely down the the licensing. This section of the wikipedia page details it pretty well.

The tl;dr is that the LA group wanted to hike the fees significantly, and that combined with a fear of locking in led to the mozilla group not to support HEVC.

And it’s annoying at times. Some of my security cameras are HEVC only at full resolution, which means I cannot view them in Firefox.

I’ve found this when trying to get a decent USB>9-pin Serial connector.

You think it’s your software, or something weird going wrong. Then you swap over a name-brand adapter, and the thing just works.

I’m shocked, I say. Shocked!
The idea of an app being used to gather additional datea from a customer!

I was eagerly anticipating “I’m looking for a gift for my aunt”.

This is good feedback, the Mint team could definitely streamline things, maybe even with a “help pick”.

Because it’s not immediately apparent which to use (Cinnamon/MATE/Xfce).
I’m not sure how the resolve the mirror issue, sadly.
The cost of serving the data directly would be very high, but doing so would avoid scaring people. Unfortunately, it’s hard for them to 100% guarantee every mirror is safe (even though they are!), which means they have to leave instructions on how to verify.

Selling pre-loaded USB sticks would be very cool, but people would have to be interested enough to spend £20.

It definitely threw me the first time I was out of the house.
I decided the best solution was just to limit alerts to non-sensitive things.
While I’m generally very big on privacy, I really don’t give a monkeys if Apple/Google is relaying a message that says “Cat in garden!”

Thanks for the post, it persuaded me to get off my bottom and add another one to the list.