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Rhyno posted:I was going to grab the 5 pack of Blink cameras for outdoor monitoring but it seems they are terrible? A cousin has them, and I'll admit most of the problem is where she mounted them, but I find in her case they're good for motion alerts and seeing if someone/thing is happening in view of them, but the picture quality is not great and they'd be useless for identification purposes the way she has them installed. But like I said, that's 95% on her and where she mounted them. You can't put them 12+ feet off the ground looking down at a 45 to 60 degree angle and expect to get any useful information. Battery life for her has been decent, and she's happy with them for what she wants them to do. I think they serve a purpose and can work OK in certain situations, but I decided against them. A neighbor has an Arlo Pro 2 setup and that works well for him if you can deal with the battery swaps. He has the original Arlo's at a vacation home and he really likes the Pro 2's better. Both are not ideal if you plan on watching or streaming from them often or they're going to catch a ton of motion. They shine in situations where they end up recording only a few minutes a day.
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Jan 3, 2020 18:24
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Hmmm. I planned to put them at the external doors to my house and eventually one facing the house at the end of the driveway. I want to put two standard Blinks in the house as well and having everything work in the same ecosystem is appealing.
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Jan 3, 2020 19:02
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Ok. I need someone to school me on smart stuff, because I think I've been loving up. Mainly on hubs and stuff. I currently have 2 TP-Link Kasa switches, an August smart lock, a Wyze smart plug, and a Nest thermostat. I recently bought a Lutron Caseta switch because my basement lights don't have a neutral wire. After installing it, I realize I cannot connect it to my Google Home because I don't have a Lutron bridge. I don't have any hubs. All of my stuff is just connected to my network and added to Google Home. What is the easiest way to unfuck my situation?
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Jan 4, 2020 00:19
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Klyith posted:#2 it recently has became unresponsive as poo poo. Poking the home screen widgits to turn the light on & off or a preset brightness, half the time it doesn't work or takes several seconds to respond. Nothing in my network has changed but it sucks now. Update on this: it's definitely the app. I think they changed it to bounce more actions off tp-link's servers, rather than just send the instruction directly to the device over local wifi. Opening my network so the devices had internet access helped, but did not resolve the problem. Other people online are reporting slow response or having to click multiple times before things work. So maybe their servers are overloaded or something. I tried out previous releases of their app from apk archive sites, and those work better. However I have to go all the way back to an older v1 version to work forever, as all the v2 ones eventually lock me out with "update required". The v1 doesn't have the desktop on/off widget that I liked to use, but it works fine in local only mode and the devices respond 100% of the time. I also found a open-source project that can control tp-link stuff. Its commands execute instantly. So I can use my laptop, which generally sits on the bedside table, to control the stuff. Almost as good as the phone. All I need is an app that can translate an open-palm slam on the keyboard into "light on". Anyways the only reason for tp-link to centralize more functions to their servers is data collection, for whatever value my use of a lightbulb has. All this has borne out my fear that internet of things is actually things that spy on you, so I won't be getting any more of this poo poo. Unless it's one of those open-source hardware projects.
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Jan 5, 2020 21:17
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Klyith posted:Update on this: it's definitely the app. I think they changed it to bounce more actions off tp-link's servers, rather than just send the instruction directly to the device over local wifi. Opening my network so the devices had internet access helped, but did not resolve the problem. Other people online are reporting slow response or having to click multiple times before things work. So maybe their servers are overloaded or something. FWIW, Home Assistant controls TP-Link plugs/bulbs/switches locally without any cloud intervention.  Also, FWIW, while you might be right about the spying, it's often just that it's way easier to traverse networks if you include a cloud server intermediary. Your mom doesn't haven't to forward ports or anything for the app to work. Thermopyle fucked around with this message at 01:31 on Jan 6, 2020 |
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Jan 6, 2020 01:28
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Thermopyle posted:FWIW, Home Assistant controls TP-Link plugs/bulbs/switches locally without any cloud intervention. Hmmm, I'll keep that one in mind -- I've already got a Pi3 but it's running Volumio (music player) so I'd have to look into how much of a pain it'd be to run both on the same Pi. I have a hard time seeing how a direct connection on the same network could be harder than bouncing through the cloud, though I guess shitters like comcast have sent out routers with AP isolation turned on or something. The app does do local scanning & identification of devices on the network though, so there's no reason it couldn't use the local connection first and fall back to cloud. But no! 
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Jan 6, 2020 03:50
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If the app/device is looking for mysmartserver.tplinkaccount.com it’ll work from anywhere but always go through the tplinkaccount.com server, even when you’re at home. So you are reliant on that server being available and responsive. But since the developers _assume_ you’ll be permanently online it tries that first and maybe falls back to local scanning when it times out. This is probably what you’re seeing. Rapulum_Dei fucked around with this message at 09:55 on Jan 6, 2020 |
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Jan 6, 2020 09:45
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Here's something that might be of interest to some other cheap people like me. Sonoff has a pan/tilt camera that looks like it might be better than a Wyze since it supports RTSP out of the box, has an ethernet port, and is only $30. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WE38eqP84w8
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Jan 6, 2020 16:02
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I need Google home help with smart lights. I have merkury smart lights and when I name them certain things I can get them to turn on through voice commands. Like I can't name my device "couch lamp" or it will do a Google search for couch lamps even if I say Turn on couch lamp lights. Is there a list of words I should try and stay away from when making devices?
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Jan 7, 2020 19:19
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I always found that "lamp" was the best word to use with Google/Alexa. It would get confused if I used the term "light," since it always thought I was talking about multiple things. If it's not a lamp, I don't use either term, and just describe it by where it is. Will it work if you say "turn the couch lamp on," or "turn on the couch lamp?" That's what I always did. I'm using past tense because I replaced my Google Homes with remotes.
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Jan 7, 2020 21:08
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Thermopyle posted:Here's something that might be of interest to some other cheap people like me. Sonoff has a pan/tilt camera that looks like it might be better than a Wyze since it supports RTSP out of the box, has an ethernet port, and is only $30. That looks like a great value, but why the hell is it such an ugly form factor? A normal dome/bullet wouldn't do?
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Jan 7, 2020 21:30
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SlayVus posted:I need Google home help with smart lights. I have merkury smart lights and when I name them certain things I can get them to turn on through voice commands. Like I can't name my device "couch lamp" or it will do a Google search for couch lamps even if I say Turn on couch lamp lights. Is there a list of words I should try and stay away from when making devices? Do the names you're using show up in the Google Home app and are they properly categorized by room? I use Google Home to control my Hue lights and they all work fine. Their names are varied and leave a lot of room for confusion (some are named after the room, there are a mixture of ones called lamps and ones called lights, some have words that are easily misunderstood, etc). If the lights you want are in the room the Google Home you're talking to is in you don't need to use the name at all, i.e. "Turn on the lights" will turn on all the lights in the room the Google Home is in. Additionally you can turn on all the lights in a room by telling Google Assistant to "Turn on the [room]" assuming that you don't have other devices that will turn on or off in that room (TVs, thermostat, Harmony, etc). Lastly, I've never heard of Merkury lights. Do they use a hub or are they just wifi bulbs that connect directly? The latter are always seem to be problematic compared to hub-controlled Zigbee/Z-Wave solutions.
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Jan 8, 2020 05:44
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I have some IKEA tradfri lights and they are trash. I also have a Caseta switch and that has been working really well. I'm thinking of swapping the tradfri stuff for Philips Hue, mainly because I want to be able to change colour temperature and also because the Caseta stuff gets stupid expensive for lamps (one switch is like $50 CAD and even though you can plug in two lamps you can't control them separately.) I know Hue was one of the first big names in the game, but is it a good system? Are there alternatives that I should consider? I like the price point on Tradfri but I don't like how it stops working all the drat time.
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Jan 8, 2020 16:30
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My Tradfri bulbs have been solid but the remotes and dimmers suuuuuuck. I took back the old style dimmers they were such trash and it looks like they have replaced the line completely, have not tried the new design. The other remotes are good except when you have to change the battery it is a huge hassle to re pair or whatever.
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Jan 8, 2020 17:28
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My tradfri was fine when it was just the remote and the bulbs, it was when I added the bridge and got things linked up to HomeKit that it started losing its mind.
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Jan 8, 2020 23:19
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I’ve always ran with the bridge to homekit so I might just be used to its dumb quirks by now  Hue stuff seems to be dropping in price though!
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Jan 8, 2020 23:39
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I have a Nest thermostat but its in kind of a weird spot so it doesn't detect occupancy well. I've tried googling some sort of 3rd party motion sensor integration but it doesn't seem like anything can really tie into it. Anyone done something similar?
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Jan 9, 2020 06:56
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Regarding occupancy, anyone using vibration sensors or something to detect occupancy? Motion sensors aren't worth that much when sitting at the home office desk for extended time.
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Jan 9, 2020 07:02
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I guess the question is whether you mean people who are supposed to be there or not. If it's just the home occupants you care about, can't you use specific devices connected to wifi?
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Jan 9, 2020 07:34
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prom candy posted:I have some IKEA tradfri lights and they are trash. I also have a Caseta switch and that has been working really well. I'm thinking of swapping the tradfri stuff for Philips Hue, mainly because I want to be able to change colour temperature and also because the Caseta stuff gets stupid expensive for lamps (one switch is like $50 CAD and even though you can plug in two lamps you can't control them separately.) I know Hue was one of the first big names in the game, but is it a good system? Are there alternatives that I should consider? I like the price point on Tradfri but I don't like how it stops working all the drat time. I don't like the Hue native software but I love the lights. At the very least they're better than the LIFX lights I also have (software and the lights). However at this point my main interaction with the lights has either been Homekit, IFTTT, Echo or Home Assistant. It's nice that they pretty much work with everything out of the box, and simultaneously. I've been using them since gen 1 and any sort of connectivity weirdness has been corrected a long time ago. The only caution is the older gen stuff's colors look pretty bad compared to newer gen's lights if you care about colors, but they work fine as mostly white/yellow lights (and the deals on just plain yellow/white are often pretty good).
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Jan 9, 2020 08:01
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Awesome, thanks. I was thinking of getting mostly the white ambiance ones (the ones that change colour temperature) and then maybe just a couple of full colour spectrum ones for my dork lair.
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Jan 9, 2020 15:16
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Teabag Dome Scandal posted:I have a Nest thermostat but its in kind of a weird spot so it doesn't detect occupancy well. I've tried googling some sort of 3rd party motion sensor integration but it doesn't seem like anything can really tie into it. Anyone done something similar? As I recall, the Nest smokes are used as occupancy sensors for the thermostat.
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Jan 9, 2020 15:35
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Motronic posted:As I recall, the Nest smokes are used as occupancy sensors for the thermostat. Yeah, they can. I don't think anything else can be plugged into it, which is unsurprising given the state of the Nest integration "ecosystem".
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Jan 9, 2020 16:16
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Is there any Linux IP camera solution on par with the Windows options? I've got Shinobi up and running but it's settings are essentially an undocumented mess with crazy names that don't mean anything. It's performance is wonderful compared to some other software I've tried. Trying to get sane motion detection has been a 100% crap shoot.
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Jan 9, 2020 17:13
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Laranzu posted:Is there any Linux IP camera solution on par with the Windows options? I've got Shinobi up and running but it's settings are essentially an undocumented mess with crazy names that don't mean anything. It's performance is wonderful compared to some other software I've tried. As far as I know: nope. But if you find it let me know. Blue Iris works great, but it's the only windows VM I'm maintaining and would rather not.
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Jan 9, 2020 17:41
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Motronic posted:As far as I know: nope. But if you find it let me know. Blue Iris works great, but it's the only windows VM I'm maintaining and would rather not. Do you have the HW decode working in a VM? I'd love to hear how if you do.
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Jan 9, 2020 18:24
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Subjunctive posted:Yeah, they can. I don't think anything else can be plugged into it, which is unsurprising given the state of the Nest integration "ecosystem". Yeah, they don't expose it in the API. It's hilarious and embarrassing.
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Jan 9, 2020 18:34
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sharkytm posted:Do you have the HW decode working in a VM? I'd love to hear how if you do. I didn't even know that was a thing. I know plenty of people have gotten plex hardware acceleration working on an ESX VM using GPU passthrough, so it's probably possible. I don't have a graphic card worth a poo poo in the ESX server though, so it's pointless unless I do that - and with a couple of Xeons in the thing I don't really have any need.
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Jan 9, 2020 19:00
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Motronic posted:I didn't even know that was a thing. I know plenty of people have gotten plex hardware acceleration working on an ESX VM using GPU passthrough, so it's probably possible. sharkytm fucked around with this message at 20:29 on Jan 9, 2020 |
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Jan 9, 2020 20:27
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If I was going to set up Blue Iris again, I'd buy something like an i5-6400 pre-owned system off of ebay. They go for less than $200 and are everything you need for like 10 cameras of average rez/framerate. If you really pinned down your requirements and calculated exactly what you need you could probalby go with an i5-3450 pre-owned system which go for less than a hundred bucks.
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Jan 9, 2020 20:27
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Thermopyle posted:If I was going to set up Blue Iris again, I'd buy something like an i5-6400 pre-owned system off of ebay. They go for less than $200 and are everything you need for like 10 cameras of average rez/framerate. Yeah, I run mine on an i5-6500 HP G2 Tower. $175 on eBay including shipping and had a 256GB SSD boot drive in it. I added a 4-port GBe card and 10TB of storage. Built-in Win10 license, quiet, and very low power.
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Jan 9, 2020 20:34
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Teabag Dome Scandal posted:I have a Nest thermostat but its in kind of a weird spot so it doesn't detect occupancy well. I've tried googling some sort of 3rd party motion sensor integration but it doesn't seem like anything can really tie into it. Anyone done something similar? I believe you can use your phone's geolocation to detect occupancy of your family. Obviously this doesn't work if you have people not in your family over and no family home, or if you don't add all your family members to the account.
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Jan 9, 2020 21:05
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Teabag Dome Scandal posted:I have a Nest thermostat but its in kind of a weird spot so it doesn't detect occupancy well. I've tried googling some sort of 3rd party motion sensor integration but it doesn't seem like anything can really tie into it. Anyone done something similar? If you're using Home Assistant, another option is looking for MAC addresses for cell phones using the Linksys or Unifi modules. That's what I do.
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Jan 9, 2020 22:57
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Motronic posted:As I recall, the Nest smokes are used as occupancy sensors for the thermostat. I am hesitant at spending a hundred dollars on this since it is mostly an inconvenience more than anything. Nitrousoxide posted:I believe you can use your phone's geolocation to detect occupancy of your family. How would this work? I'm on iOS and my understanding is Apple only lets apps get your location at most while you're using it? Hubis posted:If you're using Home Assistant, another option is looking for MAC addresses for cell phones using the Linksys or Unifi modules. That's what I do. I do have an unraid server so assuming there is a good docker for it this might work perfectly. Thanks!
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Jan 9, 2020 23:38
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Teabag Dome Scandal posted:How would this work? I'm on iOS and my understanding is Apple only lets apps get your location at most while you're using it? Apps can get permissions for background location use, but they can also register a “geofence”, which is a defined area for which they get enter/exit notifications without getting your location all the time.
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Jan 10, 2020 02:42
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Teabag Dome Scandal posted:I do have an unraid server so assuming there is a good docker for it this might work perfectly. Thanks! Join usssssss https://www.home-assistant.io/docs/installation/docker/
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Jan 10, 2020 04:02
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Moey posted:That looks like a great value, but why the hell is it such an ugly form factor? A normal dome/bullet wouldn't do? "Better than Wyze" 
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Jan 10, 2020 04:51
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Laranzu posted:Is there any Linux IP camera solution on par with the Windows options? I've got Shinobi up and running but it's settings are essentially an undocumented mess with crazy names that don't mean anything. It's performance is wonderful compared to some other software I've tried. I’m guessing you’re aware of zoneminder which is the only one I’m aware of, but I don’t keep up with the different solutions out there. I’m planning on running blue iris when I finally get around to the outdoor security cameras.
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Jan 10, 2020 05:31
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Subjunctive posted:Apps can get permissions for background location use, but they can also register a “geofence”, which is a defined area for which they get enter/exit notifications without getting your location all the time. ohh ok. So enabling something like that shouldn't do anything to battery life since my phone is already doing that location tracking and just letting the app know when necessary? How good are voice assistants not tied to a tech company these days? I'd probably go all in on this poo poo if I could hollar out things without helping a company monetize.
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Jan 10, 2020 17:57
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Teabag Dome Scandal posted:How good are voice assistants not tied to a tech company these days? I'd probably go all in on this poo poo if I could hollar out things without helping a company monetize. Compared to what you could do 5 years ago? Amazing. Compared to what Google can do now? Not great. That being said, you can use HA with Google Assistant or Alexa. In fact, one of the things I really like about using Home Assistant is that I can control and access all sorts of stuff with Google Assistant that doesn't usually work with it. This is because Home Assistant can mostly expose anything it controls to Google Assistant.
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Jan 10, 2020 18:16
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