GreatBlueHeron

I've been running a very simple Home Assistant setup for a while now - just a few lights and a door lock. I've added a bit of monitoring and data gathering basically to see how MQTT works.

I installed a Reolink camera intending to setup Frigate PVR and do all the good stuff (including more cameras) with that, but my hardware is old and I need a TPU and they're all out of stock and back ordered until October, at best. I've tried ZoneMinder but couldn't get over all the false positives with fog and rain etc. So, I had given up on my camera project for a while.

Then I installed the Reolink integration in Home Assistant and see that it has basic "AI" capability and I can trigger automations based on "person seen" etc. I already created a basic "save 30 seconds of video if you see a person". I've got pretty basic requirements and can probably be happy with a few more basic automations like this, but this seems almost a waste - there is so much capability there. I had a bit of a look in the internal integrations repository and HACS and I can't see anything that looks like a PVR.

Does it exist?

Is it something I shouldn't be trying to do with Home Assistant? There was no noticeable increase in CPU usage when I enabled my test automation so I assume the "AI" is happening in the camera. I don't see a downside??

Edit - I've continued working and reading more about the Reolink Integration and now partially answer my own question: I think I'm going to be happy with just the Reolink integration and some automations. It seems to work very well!

It feels weird to just jump into a generic Linux community and ask a question. It's nice being so small - kinda like the internet used to be.

Anyway, I've been running Linux servers for decades but only recently switched my desktop. I first tried Debian 12 and I'm now on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed - I switched in the hope of getting newer drivers and maybe fixing this issue.

I have a HP laptop with onboard Intel graphics and an external monitor connected with USB-C. In general it works great - until it doesn't. From time to time the external monitor does not wake up after a suspend. Normally turning the monitor off and back on will cause some sort of driver reset and it comes back. Once or twice this has not helped and I've had to reboot.

I'm running Xorg as Wayland on Tumbleweed won't start on t his machine. Wayland may have worked with Debian, I don't recall. I don't think it's worth listing details of my versions as it's happened on two distros and through a couple of minor updates to Xorg on openSUSE. It happens with KDE or LXDE.

Any suggestions?

I built a new house last year and moved in this January. This is my first time living in a house that's air tight enough to have an air exchanger. Through the winter it was fine - I just left it run its own Eco mode and everything seemed good. I'm finding spring really frustrating though - most days are nice and warm and we open windows, most nights are cool and we close the windows. I don't like wasting electricity by running the air exchanger all day when the windows are open.

I've considered window sensors and a smart plug on the air exchanger, but I don't really want to install 13 window sensors.

Are there air quality sensors that are accurate, and reliable, enough for me to turn the air exchanger on whenever the CO2, or whatever it is that make a house feel stuffy, level gets high enough?

My air exchanger is a very basic "builder" model and won't do this itself. It has an air quality sensor and changes the fan level to what it thinks we need, but it won't turn off when we don't need it.

I've been running Home Assistant for about a year now and always installed every update as soon as it's released and never had any issues at all.

Yesterday some time in either the zwave js 15.6.0 or core 2025.6.0 update (I am too complacent and did them both in quick succession without testing anything) I lost my Zooz 800 zwave controller. Reloading HA didn't bring it back. I had unplug and replug the Zooz USB stick and then reload again.

Not a big deal, just sharing FYI.

In my home network I have a UniFi Dream Router connected to an EdgeRouter X. The UDR is not being used as designed - I'm using it as a combo WiFi access point and 4 port switch. It also runs my UniFi Network application to manage my other UniFi APs. It complains that it has no internet access, but still does the job I need it to do.

I'm seeing fairly consistent 1Mbps traffic being generated by the UDR. I say it's generated by the UDR because when I look at the ethernet ports and connected WiFi devices I can't see it coming from anywhere - I can see it going out the port connected to the EdgeRouter X, and on the EdgeRouter I can see it coming in from the UDR but I can't see where it goes from there - it's into my main Cisco switch and mixed with all my other traffic.

I was hoping to be able to identify it by turning on Traffic Analysis on ERX, but I see nothing at all. I suspect because the ERX is not routing - it's configured as a switch? Similarly, when I ssh into the ERX and run tcpdump, I only see the broadcast and multicast traffic from the UDR - I can't see anything that might be this 1Mbps.

As I was typing this I thought maybe it's the UniFi Network application updating the browser page I have open to it all the time so I closed that and it made no difference.

Any suggestions what this traffic might be or suggestions for how to identify it?

This isn't specifically Home Assistant, but so many people seem to be using Frigate with Home Assistant it feels close enough.

I recently got my first camera. I tried ZoneMinder for a while, but have given up - just overwhelmed with false positives for fog, rain, insects etc. and not being able to tune them out. Most people seem to be going Frigate so I'll give that a go.

I don't really want to use a USB TPU (no real reason) and my current server has no Mini PCIe or M.2 slots. I recall seeing people say they had bad experiences with PCIe M.2 adapters.

Does anyone here have any experience to share about any specific adapter?