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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 7th, 2023

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  • Mine is alright, it doesn’t mao the room but kind of finds the perimeter and start to just do lines back and forth. It’s nice to vacuum when I leave the house.

    It’s loud, but at least it’s doing something if only evidenced by how much I empty the damn thing. Every couple months I have to take it and the dock out to the garage to blow it all out with their air compressor.

    I do think it makes me keep shit off the floor more. It wants to eat cords a lot. I want a second one with mapping so I can have it do specific rooms and this one can get sent to the basement where it doesn’t need to be as fancy.

    I really hate the space it takes up, I would love one that was shorter so it could be stored underneath the side tables, or the dock and empty bin were flatter so it could be under the couch or something.










  • I tinker mostly during the holidays. Show control is kind of a hobby. As are haunted houses.

    Otherwise, everything just works at this point. I just have a few useful automation like turning all lights off with a button press, some lights that turn on at sunset and off at sunrise, and back door lights that turn on when the garage opens and it’s after sunset.

    Otherwise everything still works as a switch, well button now, without Internet or my hub. I never need to explain to someone that comes in how to use anything.

    I have some shit broken, like my automation that sent one of the robot vacuums out when I leave the house doesn’t work now that I’ve tried making sure it doesn’t go if my girlfriend is still home. But low priority. The shit I care about just works. The rest is when I get to it, eventually.


  • I hate battery items, and when I can I like wired. But retrofitting a 70 year old home with all that won’t be easy or cheap. I’ve already had to redo all my outlets and run new wires.

    Other disadvantages for me are:

    • I have to know what I want at the beginning
    • The vendor has to support or sell a specific solution for whatever device I want
    • I can’t slow roll it as I can afford it
    • Upgrades aren’t going to be easy or cheap.

    But I am an IT director. So I know my way around networking, programming, and system/server admin. I can segment, design, and secure the networking between the devices and run whatever systems I need for automation. I’ve run Ethernet throughout the house and am not afraid of cutting holes.

    I’m trying to tie in some professional systems like Dante audio instead of smart speakers. Even though that means I’ll probably need a dedicated audio server.

    And I’m tying in a lot of legacy protocols too. Like artnet and DMX for a lot of the show control systems I have. It’s really great being able to use so much dissimilar stuff and be able to control it from a single dashboard.

    I can also automate temporary things like holiday lights or my big Halloween displays. I end up wiring most of my cars lights to DMX controlled relays and dimmers. Add fog machines and audio cues that I can sync up together.

    But I do know that I’m a nerdy edge case here.