Andrew

Live in Ipswich, Suffolk in the UK, mainly work from home but occasionally in London.

I’m an IT architect by day but I don’t post about work stuff.


Creator of Battery Notes for Home Assistant, core integration owner for Mealie and Mastodon and maintainer of some more niche custom integrations.

In my free time, in no particular order I am interested in #HomeAssistant #HomeAutomation #3dPrinting #macOS #lego#food #cooking #diy #gardening

Andrew boosted:
2025-06-30

#3109 - Dehumidifier

The comic shows two stick figure characters in a store looking at dehumidifiers. The character on the left, standing beside a dehumidifier on a table with a sign that reads “SALE”, says:
“This dehumidifier model features built-in WiFi for remote updates.” The character on the right, standing next to a shelf with more humidifiers on it, responds: “Great! That will be really useful if they discover a new kind of water.”

Hidden text: "It's important for devices to have internet connectivity so the manufacturer can patch remote exploits."
Andrew boosted:
2025-06-29

One of the more convincing reasons for using Zigbee2MQTT instead of the built in ZA Zigbee module in Home Assistant? When a device goes bad you can remove it from MQTT, physically replace it with a new one of the same type, add it to MQTT and rename it (including renaming it in Home Assistant) - and Home Assistant is none the wiser. No scripts or automations to update, you don’t even need to put back things like the zone it’s in.

#HomeAssistant

@ZS I didn’t even know it had onboard storage when I bought it. That will be handy occasionally though I don’t rebuild the machine it’s attached to that often.

Got a little JetKVM with DC power controller (velcroed to a rear power strip) connected to my server.
Bit of a rats nest with barrel jack converters but it seems to work well.
I can now remotely get to my server console rather than dragging it to a monitor and keyboard.
#HomeLab

A JetKVM on top of a small rack with a Dell ultra small form factor PC below it.

@WiteWulf I had seen that, but it doesn’t really work when your meter is in a hole in the street.

@WiteWulf Thank you, I’d never have thought it would have been as popular as it’s become.

@WiteWulf Thanks, my meter doesn’t have the fancy radios so I’ll bookmark and revisit this in a few years.

Andrew boosted:
Gary Parker :party_porg:WiteWulf@cyberplace.social
2025-06-27

The first day of water meter readings are in my #homeAssistant. I was quite surprised to see that we used 475l yesterday, which seemed like a lot to me.

So I’m now going down the rabbit hole of finding out how much water baths, showers, washing machines, dishwashers and toilet flushes use (4-6l!) 😆

@WiteWulf What are you using to do the mains measurement?
Looked at this but haven’t seen anything yet I’d be comfortable with long term.

Andrew boosted:
2025-06-26

Have installed my first Zigbee “behind the switch” controller for a light with two switches. The controller by default expects switches to be momentary. To change the configuration to the more usual on-off switch you need to (checks notes) buy the manufacturer’s own Zigbee hub. So, f*ck open standards, huh? I’m severely under impressed with #Vesternet pulling this a-hole move because the devices themselves are clearly very well made.

#IoT #HomeAssistant #Zigbee

Image features a Zigbee switch from Vesternet, displayed alongside its packaging. The switch is white with green terminals, labeled with technical specifications.
Andrew boosted:
2025-06-24

Where do you put your IoT / smart devices within your home network?

#iot #security #smarthome #smarttv #shelly #arduino #mqtt #botnet #network

@thibaultmol The onboarding screen where you get asked about analytics could really do with explaining what you will send and the benefits it has, or even deferring it to ask later when you’ve got comfortable with it.

Andrew boosted:
Thibaultmol 🌈 🔜@WHY2025thibaultmol@en.osm.town
2025-06-24

#HomeAssistant people:
Do you have analytics turned on or off? (and why)

(I'm referring to the setting under /config/analytics )

@thibaultmol I have analytics on as you are not sharing personal data and the information obtained helps focus development, particularly which integrations are used the most.

@penllawen Yeah I get caught with that a lot, the free shipping freshholds on some sites are even worse temptation.

Every time I do a PiHut order I add on a few extra M5Stack components.
Got an OLED display and an 8Angle working with #ESPHome to play around with.
The display is for pro-typing how I want to add a display to the #HomeAssistant Voice PE.
The 8Angle is just for testing, I like to emulate battery percentages, moisture levels etc in automations and it's great to have a tactile physical thing rather than jumping back and forth to an input number helper.

An M5Stack Atom Echo attached to an M5Stack OLED display
An M5Stack Atom Matrix, powered by an M5Stack TailBat battery attached to an M5Stack 8Angle strip of potentiometers with LED lights indicating their position

@badnetmask I’ve got some not quite as critical sensors I like to keep an eye on to avoid history loss if they go unavailable so that was the real driver, I get triggers once every few months and since doing this I’ve scattered more labels as insurance, hoping they won’t trigger either.

My latest little thing to improve quality of life with #HomeAssistant is now on HACS.

To track critical sensors being unavailable all I need to do is label those entities. A Label State helper provides a boolean flag if any of them has an unavailable state so I can create one automation to alert me when any important device needs attention.

You can create state is, state not and numeric state ranges to cover many scenarios.

github.com/andrew-codechimp/HA

A list of entities with labels assigned to show that they are critical sensors.A binary sensor indicating that a labelled sensor is unavailable, with an Entities attribute listing the unavailable entities.

Seems like HACS approvals to get added to the default repo list have now got a lot quicker with the backlog cleared, what used to be many months waiting is now just a few days.

Should make discovering interesting new custom components a lot easier in #HomeAssistant

@badnetmask Just been working on a thing that might be useful to catch this in future.
Was waiting to post about it in a few days when I will have time to address any early teething issues.

github.com/andrew-codechimp/HA

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