This - the move is to grab some zigbee smart plugs. Once you have HA up and running there are so many applications for these.
I have a door sensor that monitors my kids bedroom door, and when it opens it turns on a desk lamp in my room. This allows me to get to him before he gets to my partner who's sleeping with the new born.
Exactly! I prefer the small power plugs that lets me control fans and other power systems as relays. Family has a habit if switching of light bulbs using light switches and i have not gotten the change approval to disable the physical switches in the house :)
For me the best solution was to use smart switches (mainly dimmers) and dumb lightbulbs. People can use the switches like any other if they want, but I can still have my automations and remote control.
As a another comment said, the smarter way to have a smart light is to replace the switch with a smart one or even better put a relay behind the existing dumb switch to smartify the switch. For me it's important to have a manual override; you shouldn't need an app for a thing as basic as turning the lights on.
Disabling the physical light switch should usually only come after setting up a different way of controlling the light by hand, without a phone.
Most likely there is some sort of motion or presence sensor that turns on the lights which then turn themselves off after some time or no more presence is detected.
There are also small wireless switches that could be used in place of the actual wall switch.
I have done so in my apartment for example. Since the bedroom light switch is for some reason outside of the room I taped it down and put a wireless switch in a more reasonable spot.
Another example is the hallway light, which only turns on by motion sensing when the sun is starting to go down.
The only rooms without a fully automated light on/off systems in our house are the bedrooms + living room.
And even the living room automatically adjusts lights based on the playing status of the AppleTV (playing = dim, pause = brighten up a bit).
Oh and the staircase, haven't found the motivation/courage to climb up 10m to the ceiling to switch out the ye olde light in there :D Maybe this year?
The Living room would need two presence sensors that talk to each other in a smart way (a big room, one isn't enough) and I haven't yet found the semi-manual way of adjusting the lights via phone/Siri to be too cumbersome to bother.
I can recommend Shelly for light switches over smart bulbs. It's a relay that fits inside the wall switch with zigbee to sit between the light and the switch.
They're not mutually exclusive. I have Shelly relays in my light fittings (not the switches) and use smart bulbs. When everything is working the wall switches just control stuff in HA. When HA is not working the switches control the relays in the Shelly directly, without HA.
This is the only solution I'm aware of that gets you all of:
* dimmable,
* colour temp and RGB control,
* regular switches that work as expected,
* no "forbidden" switches,
* lights always available for automations,
* lights go on and off with the switch when HA is down.
Philips Hue, and Zigbee direct-binding in general, can achieve this if you're willing to use their wall switches. Still works if the hub is offline.
Depends on your definition of "regular switches," I suppose -- but anyone with 3-way wiring (i.e. multiple light switches for a single socket) has given up on "up=on" for their switch.
That's what I am doing too, though I did have to drill out some wall to fit it, in some cases.
There is another option that I don't think many people are aware of: You can put a battery powered relay downstream of the (dumb) switch, and have it broadcast events when power comes on and off, to control other smart devices, which just have to listen for the events (via a broker like HA).
Previously this youtuber repurposed used disposable vapes batteries to build a powerbank, then a e-bike battery, then a powerwall. This is the latest in this escalation series where he powers a small electric car. Note that he did take security into consideration, with fuses everywhere, thermal sensor and a proper BMS. The latter also enabled him to charge the whole assembly via USB-C, which I find hilarious.
For me it's missing something to illustrate the relationship between shutter speed and motion blur. If the subject was a running fan instead of of lightbulb that would have been ideal.
If I ever find a good moving prop like a small fan, maybe I'll also re-shoot new previews to demonstrate how shutter speed affects moving objects.
Now, I'm just not sure how would one simulate a running fan with a picture. While for a static image you can have separated foreground and background and then apply effects for simulation (I know iPhone HEIC images have this property), for moving images you have to simulate the blur and the stillness, which is probably more difficult in terms of coding.
Why simulate? Most modern cameras can be controlled through USB. Just actually take each one (except for ISO, which you can easily fake), encode the frames in a reasonable bitrate MP4, then have a lookup for the frame in the video. :D
I don’t know if I follow. You mean to keep a fan moving, take pictures with all the different combinations (aperture and shutter speed). Then merge on an MP4 file that you can lookup somehow the setting combo with the frame?
Sounds… reasonable I guess! I guess it can be simpler than I imagined. The owner of the site just needs a fan :-)
So what. That's a little over an hour [1], and you're done! Some smallish JPG is all that's presented here anyways, so using a reasonable MP capture to JPG should easily fit on its SD card.
Also, there's around 4600 that are pure white, and something near that that are pure black, for the scene above (although more dynamic range would be very cool).
[1] 18000 * 0.5s shutter / 3600 = 2.5 hours for worst case shutter, /2 for average = 1.25 hours of exposure.
If you consider how long lower speed shutters will take and the aperture combinations, it would take a long time to take all the pictures and would stop being feasible.
> I feel like sticky nav and sidenotes aren't particularly unusual?
Not unusual, but you used them with taste and restraint, like the rest of your layout and animations. That's something that HN comments like, I think. Notice the distinct lack of "OMG some fancy presentation trick ! Litteraly unviewable!" comments that often happens when an unusual layout is presented (and often with reason; but sometime to a fault).
I guess the main praise your page UI is that it looks, well, like a page. But augmented I guess ?
Personnally I really like the way you used a grid to separate the content from the nav. I like that you used both the left sidebar for nav and for the header number (re-using the same space for multiple purpose feels elegant, because those purpose are secondary to the content, if that makes sense). And I like that the grid anchors your eyes by fencing the different chapters along with the nav. (and now that I mention it, it feels weird that the headings are outside their chapters, but it didn't felt like that upon first reading).
I agree with the general vibe of your post but let me make a tangeant:
> I always think of my Roomba in this kind of situation, namely when one tries to imagine a future where tech works outside of the computer. Basically my little vacuum robot mostly sits idling in the corner because... a basic broom or a normal vacuum cleaner is radically more efficient, even if it means I have to do so myself.
For me the whole value of a robot vacuum is that... I don't vacuum, the robot does, and when it does so it when I'm not at home. Reduce the dust periodically by 75% so that it's neater; I'll do a deep clean every few month or so.
(maybe what you're saying is that the cost of vacuuming for you is low enough that it's similar to launching the robot vacuum, in that case I understand you !)
> the whole value of a robot vacuum is that... I don't vacuum, the robot does, and when it does so it when I'm not at home.
I agree, that's indeed the value proposition and that's in fact why I got mine... but do you really "just" do that, namely turn it on (or automatically with scheduling) or rather do you
- very it's charged (because sometimes it doesn't actually get right on its station)
- verify its empty or that its bin isn't full
- remove chairs and cables
then and only then start it?
I had just a few couple of "bad" experiences when it got stuck on something just a few centimeters of the floor or (and that one really sucks) cables entangled inside to reconsider how "worry free" letting it roam without supervision was. I don't have pets but if I did the poop smearing videos would also scare me quite a bit.
I see where you're coming from, because my robot tends to eat the cats toy as well as my computer charger cable. In my case the prep is minimal, as it's just putting them on the sofa. Otherwise the robot has no problem charging and returning home, (I only had issue 3 times in 5 years ?). Concerning the bin I have pets so in my mind I have to empty the bin after each run. But psychologically I see tons of hair so in a way it's satisfying to see a job well done. The pets are fortunately well behaved so poop smearing is a non-issue (some more recent robot also have object detection to avoid this kind of stuff).
In any case, the ritual is to run it every odd day or so just before leaving for work so the mental burden is low.
I join my voice in disgreeing with this. While some games can indeed be rose-tinted (I have fond memory of that Game Boy Spiderman game, and it's a terrible shoverware game), many of them are traiblazer (like, invented a genre) or are still standing on their own very well.
Some? There are tons of horrible old games, vastly outnumbering the good ones. It's just by now it's fairly established what the good games are and the bad ones are mostly forgotten my most.
We simply don't have the same luxury with new games, they can be hit and miss, and reviews are untrustworthy.
I feel as though this reply doesn't really address what is being said in the prior post at all. Yes, bad old games exist. But there were literally dozens of genre-defining games that would go on to shape how games continued to be made in the decades since. Somebody posted a list of indie titles they consider good and probably half of them are outright homages to these older games. Games that are so good they define or reshape genres are few and far between nowadays. They do exist (Vampire Survivors was mentioned, and it is one), but not anywhere near the rate they used to.
You have to consider that it’s easier to create a genre when there are fewer games in existence. On Atari you’d make a game called “basketball” and bam, new genre!
That is why I specifically included "or reshape". Atari was first for many genres, but it didn't meaningfully define them, or to the extent it did they were significantly reshaped by future games. Super Mario Bros. was far from the first platformer but it, and future developments in the franchise, were so much better than everything that came before them that they became the face of the genre. We see Metroidvanias copying the Super Metroid / Castlevania formula for three decades and counting. None of those copies, not even the wildly successful ones like Hollow Knight, reshaped the genre such that future games were made in their image. And so it goes for most genres. It is certainly possible to reshape a genre in the modern era; Stardew Valley did it, for example. But it is rare for new games to pull off a concept so well that everyone after them copies their homework. Everyone is still copying the homework of the games from 20, 30 years ago.
Yeah I was responding to the opinion that old games are good because of nostalgia, which I don't agree with at all. Some are good because of nostalgia, some are good because they're just that good (there's a thriving community around NES Tetris for instance), some are good because they pushed the medium forward (Metal Gear Solid, Warcraft, The Sims, ...).
>Yes, bad old games exist. But there were literally dozens of genre-defining games that would go on to shape how games continued to be made in the decades since
The N64 had one of the smallest videogame libraries ever. It had less than 400 titles. How many of those were "Super great" vs how many were utter garbage?
The SNES had 1749!
The vast vast majority were slop.
A lot of the "great" ones are only really great in context, ie no preceding works to draw from and with the technological limits of the time.
Is Pilotwings good? As someone who grew up with similar age flight simulators but not pilot wings, it is extremely mediocre. Same for StarFox and StuntRaceFX even though both were dramatic at the time, but they do not hold up in the slightest. 12fps is not that fun.
>Games that are so good they define or reshape genres are few and far between nowadays.
Yes, this is called a new domain maturing. This is the expected outcome in all new domains. You pick all the low hanging fruit and explore most of the solution space.
Scroll through this list and tell me things were better back then
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