• 3 Posts
  • 151 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
cake
Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

help-circle
  • That first line is what CGPT helped me with. I wanted something that I don’t need to modify when I add or remove lights, so this just gets everything. Ideally I’d just get the lights that don’t have the power restore feature but most of my lights go via Hue and that doesn’t expose the feature to HA at all.

    The input_boolean is a thing I already had setup. The UPS fires a webhook event when it goes in and out of battery mode and there’s a separate automation that switches the helper based on those.


  • Got a little help from CGPT so it might not be perfect, but this seems to work from my limited testing:

    triggers:
      - trigger: state
        entity_id:
          - input_boolean.ups_power
    conditions: []
    actions:
      - choose:
          - conditions:
              - condition: state
                entity_id: input_boolean.ups_power
                state:
                  - "on"
            sequence:
              - action: scene.create
                data:
                  scene_id: light_states_backup
                  snapshot_entities: |
                    {{ states.light | map(attribute='entity_id') | list }}
          - conditions:
              - condition: state
                entity_id: input_boolean.ups_power
                state:
                  - "off"
            sequence:
              - action: scene.turn_on
                target:
                  entity_id: scene.light_states_backup
                data: {}
              - delay:
                  hours: 0
                  minutes: 0
                  seconds: 10
                  milliseconds: 0
              - action: scene.delete
                data:
                  entity_id: scene.light_states_backup
    mode: single
    

    I’ve only tested it by toggling the UPS boolean manually and not actually cutting the power, so I’m probably going to need to add a delay, or a retry loop or something to make sure the scene applies consistently but so far so good! Thanks for the inspiration.



  • Thank you, that’s food for thought at least.

    Can I ask about your light script? I have a bunch of smart bulbs that either don’t support or don’t expose the ‘power-on behaviour’ option, so in a power cut they come on full bright when power is restored, often in the middle of the night.

    My HA is on a UPS so I’ve been trying to have it store the states of lights when the UPS switches to battery power (before they go to unavailable) and then restore those states when power comes back, but it’s apparently way beyond my skill set. Curious as to how your “input list of lights” works and whether it could help me…






  • I have a mix of normal Hue bulbs and some Innr brand GU10 (spotlight) bulbs. The difference in quality of light from both brands is quite noticeable, with Hue being far and away better in terms of colour blending and accuracy. There’s a reason the Hue bulbs are 2-3x the price of the competition

    That said, I’ve had multiple Hue bulbs either outright fail or one LED die so that it still works but the colour is completely wrong. It’s frustrating for bulbs that are supposed to last decades but maybe the latest generation are more robust.

    They’re also regularly on sale for Black Friday and the like, so I’d advise planning your purchases around those events.

    I wouldn’t worry about leaving them on. Standby power draw is very low and I think even at maximum output they use about 7W each. It’s just not a big deal.






  • This right here. In the UK we have a little box (ONT) where the fibre comes into the home that essentially acts as a modem and converts the fibre to ethernet and back again and then they provide a separate wireless router that plugs into it. Other than for my current ISP where I had to specifically request that they enable bridge mode (which they did for free), I’ve never had any issues plugging my own router into the ethernet side of this box.

    If your ISP’s wireless router plugs directly into the fibre then you should be able to request that it’s set to bridge mode so that it becomes just a dumb ONT box like we have here. Albeit a large and clunky one.


  • Contacting the registrar is worth a shot and could be your best bet. I recently did a similar thing except the expiring domain was on a pretty obscure country-TLD with only one registrar. They told me how long the grace period was and then I setup a script to check the availability every minute and alert me when it came up.

    Probably not feasible with a .com or similar but they might be able to help in some regard. Edit: though having read about drop catching, that’s definitely your best bet if it’s likely to be sniped!



  • This is very impressive and I’m highly likely to give it a whirl. My question is, though: would it be something that my very non-tech savvy wife could use?

    Eg. I’m thinking setup the app on her phone with a default location and when she asks me for a file I can just tell her that I’ve “put it in the app”, and she’ll be able to easily retrieve it. Also same thing but vice versa, though the video seems to cover that via the Android share menu…

    Again, super impressive. Good job!


  • I used to work at a games studio that would get these delivered fairly regularly, usually paired with a particular motherboard and presumably a custom BIOS.

    I think we were technically supposed to return them but the manufacturers never enforced it, so once the chip was actually released to the public - and assuming the sample was stable enough for general use - the PC would rotate into normal stock and eventually get sold for cheap to staff or end up in the spare parts bin.

    While it was cool at first to get pre-production chips before anyone else, it became pretty mundane and I’m not at all surprised to see them out in the wild decades later. Interesting piece of history though!


  • My workplace ran off DL360s (the 1U variant of this) of various generations for 20 or 30 years. I remember getting the first G5 in and being really impressed by the way the components all slotted in so easily and pretty much everything was hot-swappable. And the no-nut rail system was a revalation.

    They were great systems for their time but that power consumption is crazy by today’s standards!

    As for feedback, you have a very confusing sentence about 2.5" and 3.5" drives being the same size. Took me far too long to realise you meant capacity and not physical dimensions!


  • Just a PSA for anybody reading the thread, though it doesn’t really help with the question at hand… On the very slim chance that your workplace uses Bitwarden Enterprise it’s worth knowing that every licensed user gets a free family plan that can be tied to an existing personal account, provided it’s hosted in the same region.

    We do use it but very few of our own users are even aware of the perk so I like to spread it around when I get the chance!