[-] Buelldozer@lemmy.today -3 points 3 hours ago

...so now I have a permanently poopy-smelling trash bin that receives weekly deposits.

I understand and sympathize with your frustration but did no one ever explain that you're supposed to wash those things out occasionally? 60 seconds with the hose on a semi-regular basis solves the problem. If that doesn't work then you can use can liners to prevent it.

It's not fair that you have to go through extra work or expense to solve a problem that someone else is creating but its better to take action than it is to sit there and stew over it.

[-] Buelldozer@lemmy.today 8 points 3 hours ago

Thank you for this. I know some people won't appreciate it but not every community needs to be a full time political outlet.

[-] Buelldozer@lemmy.today 1 points 3 hours ago

People are correct in not wanting to die for politicians and imaginary lines on a map.

It's a great philosophy but if all of your neighbors don't follow it then you end up being forcibly hijacked.

[-] Buelldozer@lemmy.today 4 points 4 hours ago

I wish the United States would end it's embargo with Cuba. The moves toward doing that were, IMHO, one of the bright spots of the Obama Administration.

As a libertarian myself Milei is an idiot for following the United States on this. True libertarians, not those Mises Caucus assholes, are generally not okay with these kinds of trade barriers.

[-] Buelldozer@lemmy.today 1 points 4 hours ago

There's no such thing as a market so controlled that it's immune to inflation. The Russian Ruble is as controlled as a currency can be and Russia is teetering on the edge of hyper-inflation. It's core inflation rate is over 9% and their version of the "Prime Rate" for lending has now jumped from 19% to a historic 21%.

China has more breathing room than Russia but it's still not going to be pretty, especially if this "bailout" fails.

[-] Buelldozer@lemmy.today 2 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Don’t they have many trillions in reserves?

Right now China has about 3.2 trillion in ForEx of all kinds and currencies which means that this bailout represents nearly half of the total.

ForEx is an extremely complicated subject, way too much for a single post, but it is essentially the lubricant for trade. If you don't have enough of it in the right currency on an hourly (or less) basis to support your imports and exports then the machine will seize up.

So what China is doing here is risky as hell and if it doesn't work they will soon have the same kind of financial problems that Iran does and that is stupendously bad for an export based economy.

[-] Buelldozer@lemmy.today 3 points 4 hours ago

2016 was an absolute shit show on Reddit. It was a dogfight between the Bernie Bros and the Trumpers until Bernie got knocked out of the primaries then knocked off Reddit by CTR. Then it was a dogfight between the ShillDawgs and the MAGAts with the t_d'ers eventually coming out on top because of their willingness to endlessly game the Reddit algorithm.

[-] Buelldozer@lemmy.today 1 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Where do you go for such discussions anyway?

The closest I've ever found was a heavily moderated sub on Reddit. I have no idea if its still any good or not because I haven't been there in over a year.

[-] Buelldozer@lemmy.today 4 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

Remember The Constitution says any rights not specifically granted to the Feds are the States.

The Supreme Court, to thunderous applause and cheering, killed that notion a LONG time ago. I wish California the best of luck in trying to resurrect the idea, I truly do, but I wouldn't hold your breath.

Even now most Progressives wouldn't like the idea in practice. They've spent over a century fighting to create a Federal Government that is Large and In Charge.

[-] Buelldozer@lemmy.today 5 points 5 hours ago

Are we starting to understand yet why it was a horrible idea to give the Federal Government so much power over literally everything? It's precisely why the framers of the Constitution tried so hard to limit what the Federal Government could control and its why the "States Rights" argument has always rung true.

I hope California is successful in their efforts to "Conservative Proof" their State. What they are attempting to do flies in the face of nearly 140 years of precedent but its EXACTLY how this damn country was intended to work.

[-] Buelldozer@lemmy.today 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Every time they lost it’s because they relied on the left that didn’t show up

The left DOES show up...but here's the thing...there's not enough of them to make a difference. I know it FEELS like leftism and even progressivism is super duper popular because its omnipresent on the internet but in the real world there just aren't enough of them to matter for national elections outside of a few specific places.

It's like relying on an 8 year old to help you move furniture. You quickly realize that they just aren't strong enough to do much.

[-] Buelldozer@lemmy.today 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

but I am not.

As the father of a Gen Z Son whose almost done with a degree in Chemical Engineering I can confidently say that you are wrong. There's large numbers of intelligent, educated, and caring young men out there and it's been my privilege to watch quite a few of them grow up.

As a man over 50 I'm going to point out that if everywhere you go smells like shit then you need to check your shoes.

17
submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by Buelldozer@lemmy.today to c/homeassistant@lemmy.world

Always surprises me when I go to do something in HA and realize that I can't figure out how.

This time its lights, specifically making sure that they don't get left on.

Until now I've simply been creating an automation for each light switch so that if it changes state from Off to On and when it's 30 minutes after sunrise it's starts a 15 minute wait and then changes the state of the switch to off.

This approach mostly works but it's less than ideal.

First I'm having to create an automation for each device. How do I do it by Area, or list / group of devices, instead?

Second if a device is turned on too early there's no state change for the automation to catch and it never fires. I could fix this by creating another automation that checks for it but then I'll have even more of them to manage.

Third this doesn't work very well if you want different things to happen on the weekends as opposed to during the weekday. For instance on a Saturday I may WANT that closet light to stay on longer because I'm putting away clothes.

It'd be really nice if I could program HA like this 'On a weekday if you see any device on this list turn on 30 minutes after Sunrise I want you to turn whichever one(s) it was off again 15 minutes later.'.

I'm must be missing something here because surely HA can do this, right?

1
submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by Buelldozer@lemmy.today to c/general@lemmy.today

Both FireFox on PC and Connect on Android keep signing me out, throwing general "error" messages, and refusing to load the next page.

Liftoff on iOS can't even find lemmy.today in order to add it as an instance!

I'm not seeing any discussion of these kinds of problems elsewhere but they've been consistent since the .19 upgrade and they've persisted after the .19.1 update.

17
submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by Buelldozer@lemmy.today to c/homeassistant@lemmy.world

Shortly after the ratGDO v2.5 was released I ordered one and a couple of days later I ordered a case from Etsy to go with it.

Two days later the Etsy seller messages me asking if have the v2.5 or v2.5i because the cases are different. WTF? There's already a new version?! I tell the seller to make it the v2.5i because that's probably what I'll get.

So last week I received a very nice red case from the Etsy Seller HighTower3D out of the North Carolina. Seriously, this thing is nice. The build quality is high, it has magnets in the bottom for mounting, comes with allen screws (and the allen wrench you need) and a couple of little zip ties.

So this week my ratGDO shows up and...it's v2.52i! A quick check of the website shows that there's now a v2.53 and that makes four revisions in the last month!

You can't make this stuff up so all I can do is laugh...and give away the v2.5i case that I spent $26 on and doesn't fit the ratGDO version I ended up with.

I have no use for this case so I'm giving it away to someone who can; make sure you have a v2.5i though because this call will NOT fit any other version.

If you are in the United States and can use this case then leave a reply below. 😊

16

I ordered some sidewalk heating mats from HeatTrak and I want to automate them with HA so that they come on when it makes sense to do so based on the data from my Tempest Weather Station.

According to HeatTrack my mats will have a combined resistive load of 5A which is well within the spec of the Zooz ZEN05 or ZEN14, both rated for 15A resistive loads, but when I asked them about it they did not recommend using either of them with heated mats. They couldn't, or wouldn't, explain why and it doesn't make sense to me why this wouldn't work.

My next thought was to simply swap the outlet to something smart but this is an outdoor outlet so it needs to be GFCI and there's essentially no Z-Wave GFCI outlets made.

Do I really need to use something like an Enbrighten Z-Wave Plus 40-Amp contactor for this or am I missing something here?

17

I have an automation that turns my driveway lights on when motion is detected. It normally works fairly well but it was windy last night and that caused the automation to trip endlessly as my trees and bushes were whipping around. Lights would come on, shut off 10 minutes later, then turn right back on again. It basically did this all night until I disabled the automation.

I'll do some fine tuning of the motion sensors which will help and I'm considering adding a condition to the automation where it won't trip if the wind speed is above a certain level but how can I add some kind of cool down timer to the automation to prevent it from endlessly engaging?

12

First the layout. My garage is setup similar to this one, although mine is attached, has three light fixtures, and my driveway is 4 cars wide.

The wife wants me to replace the three basic on / off fixtures that we have (they're getting rusty) and keep them all matching. If I'm going to do this I want to add a camera to the setup.

Functionally I'd like the lights to have or work like they have dual bright capability where they come on full bright at sunset then after a couple of hours they dim down unless they detect motion. If they detect motion then they come back to full bright for a period of time then dim back down again. They do this for a set period of hours, say 4, then they turn off completely unless they detect motion.

My current lights are already automated for on / off (but not dimming or motion) through the use of HA and a z-wave switch.

Where I'm getting stuck is that I can see at least three ways to do this but none of them are perfect.

  1. Replace my dumb carriage fixtures with new dumb fixtures then change the switch to a dimming version plus add a motion sensor and camera out front. Then setup HA for the functionality I want. The upside of doing it this way is that it's very easy to get matching fixtures. The downside is that the motion sensor and camera will not be well integrated visually.

  2. Replace my dumb fixtures with ones that have dual bright built in. It's easy to do, and I could even keep the HA Automation I have setup now, but again the camera setup is not going to integrate well visually. I'm also concerned that three motion sensors controlling three lights will cause trouble for the camera (or each other) because they will react to different things and turn themselves on and off independently.

  3. Replace my dumb fixtures with smarter ones. In the center position I'd use one that has an integrated motion sensor and camera. This Reolink seems like it would work pretty well. However RL doesn't make any fixtures that match it, which means my center fixture would look different than the other two.

I may just have to deal with mismatched fixtures but does anyone have any suggestions? Am I missing an option?

36

The next step in my HA journey is adding cameras; indoor, outdoor, and doorbell so I've been exploring my options. I had originally intended to do a Frigate setup, I even have a Coral module and PC to do it with, but then I discovered Reolink.

Without having any experience with them they look nearly ideal. They seem to have tight integration with HA 2023.3 or later and their pricing and functionality look good.

They seem like a no brainer but I've noticed that they're often NOT the first recommendation in the HA Community. Why is that and why shouldn't I use them?

view more: next ›

Buelldozer

joined 1 year ago