Software engineer (video games). Likes dogs, DJing + EDM, running, electronics and loud bangs in Reservoir.
I had a good experience with Daikin split systems, but it’s really going to depend on your region and what’s available in your area, or what you’ve already got. If you’re looking for inspiration on what works well, check the Home Assistant forums.
Best place to start would be to look at the thermostat hardware you’ve currently got, and start searching online if anyone has integrated it into Home Assistant.
I’ve lived at a few houses now with Home Assistant. In all of them I was able to integrate my HVAC and automate it, but some brands and hardware are definitely easier than others.
I think the most extreme of them required a custom esphome device connected to its PCB to talk to Home Assistant, and another required me to write my own custom component.
Hardware and brands make a huge difference, but sometimes you’re stuck with what you’ve got.
I’d argue S10 was the peak - headphone jack and SD card slot. Everything since then has been enshittified aside from minor spec upgrades.
I’m no expert but just helping you kick the tires a little bit - for the audio outs, are you thinking of just running speaker wire from an amp in the server closet to the ceiling of all of the audio out locations?
For what it’s worth, I’ve dabbled with wifi/Bluetooth speakers and while they generally work well, there always seems to be some software update or connectivity dropouts enough that I’d much prefer a wired system to eliminate over-the-air issues for a long-term robust solution.
Another vote for Mikrotik, but only if you’re technical-minded and want to learn how routers work. One of the things I like the most about it is the ability to import/export the router config as plain text. That makes it very easy to do things like bulk-editing (I have a lot of IOT devices I need to configure), storing your config in version control for safe-keeping etc.
I’m confused why the IP address of a resource is changing for you when you’re moving in/out of the wireguard tunnel? In my setup the LAN IP addresses always stay the same whether I’m on the local network or accessing remotely, It’s just the route to them that changes (over a different ethernet adapter). Perhaps that’s what you meant, or there’s some crazy configs out there I’m unaware of.
Q. How do you know an open source project is written in Rust?
A. Don’t worry, they’ll tell you.
It’s up to you to make it cloudless, but Home Assistant is the only solution I know of out there that even allows this possibility. I refuse to use anything in my home that requires a third party app or cloud connection (aside from initial pairing so I can flash it with ESPHome or some other local-only firmware). Admittedly it complicates things, but the payoff is so worth it.
And it’s so nice having zero dependence on the cloud. If the internet drops out, everything still works, including the mobile app.
Similar story here, it’s a great idea until it goes wrong, then you’ve got two appliances down instead of one.
My Home Assistant instance has become so mission critical to my household that I’ve got a dedicated Pi 4 for it, with a fallback Pi 4 and preflashed SD card ready to hot swap and restore from backup.
This is a feature, not a bug. But we definitely need a solution to make subscribing/coalescing them easier for users. Mastodon allows subscribing to topics (hashtags) - I think something similar is needed here, but that will evolve naturally over time.
Especially since so many phones won’t make it 72 hours without a charge, even if sitting unused.