GreatBlueHeron

joined 1 month ago
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Google reducing the capacity of the Pixel 6a battery after 400 cycles in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 0 points 57 minutes ago

yep - I was still happy with my 4a until they killed its battery. I bought a used 8 Pro. That was about 3 months ago, and it still feels too big.

Home Assistant as security camera PVR?? in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

I wasn't aware when I first posted this, but am now. I'm struggling to get it working though. My automation to record video for person, vehicle etc. events was working but as I read more I learned that, as you say, it should all happen in camera. So, I've turned off the automation and nothing is appearing in the Reolink media folder. I've been through and double checked that everything is turned on - that I can find. I'm wondering if I need to turn on FTP upload, or if the Reolink HA integration pretends to be a Reolink PVR? My camera is a RLC-520A, with no SD card, which, if I understand what I've read correctly, should have this capability.

Edit: I've been reading and playing more. It seems the Reolink media folder is just populated with links to the recordings on the camera SD card - which I don't have. So, I've configured FTP upload to a folder accessible to my Jellyfin - I can now view the videos from my phone, PC and TV. That works for now - I'll keep playing.

1
Home Assistant as security camera PVR?? (piefed.ca)
submitted 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
12 comments fedilink
 

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!

Reevaluating my password management in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I've been using various versions of keepass for ever. Until recently I had the database on Google drive. It's now local and sync'd with syncthing. It's a bit "different", but once you get used to it, it works very well.

External monitor power management issues in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

Does it work if you unplug and replug?

In general, yes.

If you hit a button other than power does it wake up, or does it say "no signal" or something?

Yes.

Does the laptop see it?

I'm assuming not as it does not display on it. Next time it happens I'll see what xrandr says.

Anything in any log?

Nothing in Xorg.0.log and nothing that seems related in the journal. I'll keep journalctl --follow running and see if anything that I didn't pick as being related comes up next time it happens.

Can you force a redetection from the laptop?

Probably, but I don't know how.

External monitor power management issues in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
  1. If you use the same USB port for this all the time, disable power saving on that port

I use the same port all the time. I want power saving on the port. I like to just get up from my PC and have it go to sleep by itself and wake back up when I come and jiggle the mouse. It's working exactly as I would like maybe 90% of the time. Just sometimes the external monitor doesn't wake up.

  1. Make sure this isn't a PD port (this is a laptop design annoyance)

It is a PD port, and it is powering the laptop. I'm not sure why this would be a problem? It's worked fine for 5-6 years with Windows and works 90% of the time now with Linux.

  1. Make sure your monitor's own power saving settings aren't the issue by disabling things like "deep sleep" or similar

Again, I'm not sure how this could be a problem for the scenario I describe. The settings work fine 90% of the time. It's not even time related: sometimes I can come to it first thing in the morning, after it's been asleep all night, and it wakes perfectly; sometimes I can get up to go get a glass of water and come back and the external monitor won't wake up. It seems totally random.

20
External monitor power management issues (piefed.ca)
 

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?

Sexual orientation question to appear on census for first time in 2026 in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 weeks ago (6 children)

100% agree, which is a shame because having real numbers for the proportion of the population that don't fit into what the bigots think is normal might help to convince some of them that they're not so normal. (I'm not saying this very well, but I think you get what I mean.)

JavaScript broke the web (and called it progress) in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder :-)

JavaScript broke the web (and called it progress) in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

OK, I was on my phone. Just checked on my desktop and agree the original could do with some margins. I stand behind the rest of what I said - the default colours for the "best" are awful - the black black and red red is really garish. If I didn't notice the dark/light mode switch and contrast adjustment does it really matter if they were there or not? There is also way to much information on the "best" one - if I'm going to a web site cold, with no expectation at all of what you might find, I'm not going to sit there and read that much text - I need a gentle introduction, that may lead somewhere.

JavaScript broke the web (and called it progress) in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 weeks ago (6 children)

I prefer the original. The "better" one had a bit of a lag (only a fraction of a second, but in this context that's important) loading and the "best" one has the same lag and unreadable colours.

1
Does anyone manage their air exchanger with Home Assistant? (piefed.ca)
 

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.

1
First ever upgrade issue - lost zwave controller (piefed.ca)
 

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.

Discussion: Ideas to take the movement further in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago

I feel that this battle is lost. Many of the cars that blind me are newer models with (presumably) the headlights they came from the factory with. Yes, the lifted redneck trucks with ill adjusted LED "bulbs" in reflectors that were made for halogens, are worse - but not a lot.

As long as design regulations allow it, they will build it. So, anyone wanting to do anything about this should focus their energy on lobbying their relevant government agency.

Maybe someone might invent night driving glasses that can filter the particularly annoying wavelengths.

1
How can I identify this 1Mbps being generated by my UDR? (piefed.ca)
 

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?

1
PCIe M.2 adapters (piefed.ca)
 

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?