Testing 24 different sensors with temperature and humidity in various environments from the refrigerator, freezer, room temperature, outside, and even the shower for the ultimate humidity test. I've included several Grafana graphs to help determine your BEST sensor for the environment and use case you have.
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Koenkk, the great mastermind behind Zigbee2MQTT and the Z-Stack firmware that runs on the various Zigbee Coordinators, has released a new updated firmware for the CC2652/CC1352 series chipsets. This firmware is for both Zigbee2MQTT and Home Assistant ZHA users. The changelog is as follows:
This update includes the various Ti based coordinators such as the Sonoff Dongle-P, Athom USB/Ethernet, Tubes USB/Ethernet, Zigstar, Electrolama, and others.
The old saying of if isn't broke then don't fix it definitely applies here for the average Zigbee network sizes. I have a mixture of various Zigbee devices of around 50 devices and I've been running this firmware in beta for a few weeks without any issues. I'm using a CC2652P2 based Sonoff Dongle-P USB coordinator with Zigbee2MQTT. Several Home Assistant ZHA users on the Github testing thread have also reported no issues during the beta period. Give it a whirl if you want to, you can always downgrade if you think it is causing issues.
Would you like a video to help walkthrough the processes? If not, skip the video and Jump to the - digiblurDIY How to Upgrade Zigbee Coordinators Page
When things are too good to be true they probably are! Just like the old scams of the knock-off 1TB SD cards but this one is a little different take on it. The whole scam is for someone to buy these, throw a few files on them and wait for the ticking time bomb to hit later much later after the return period expired. They are advertised as 8TB or 16TB drives when they are simply 64GB cheapo micro SD cards inside. See the digiblurDIY video below
Spread the word to friends & family members, turn in these sellers, etc with these scammers whenever you can. The GOPALIWEN Amazon Listing below was luckily removed shortly after the video published. It is simple to pick them out based on just scanning for the large drives with cheap prices. Stick to the major brands such as Samsung, Sandisk, Wester Digital, Crucial, etc., and price them appropriately. If they are too cheap, don't buy them! Be sure to always test and check out your drives before the return period expires no matter the brand.
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Reolink has released their doorbell cameras finally! digiblur DIY Video below or scroll past if you simply want to see frames from the camera itself and skip the video.
Purchase from Reolink - Wi-Fi or PoE (Power over Ethernet)
Purchase from Amazon
It is available in two flavors. PoE and Wi-Fi directly from Reolink.com. The doorbell camera comes with an external wireless chime that is power via a normal wall receptacle in the home. The home automation DIY'ers can also pick up this signal via 433mhz receivers for automation fun as well. If you have the Reolink NVR this camera integrates right into the system but if not you can also use the on-board micro SD card for recordings.
Does it support RTSP/ONVIF? Can I use it with Blue Iris or Frigate? Kinda sort of not really! As of this current firmware the RTSP codec has typical Reolink issues with dropped frames. The video looks jerky but does work. I'm still hoping for Reolink to fix their various codec issues in there cameras but they still can't seem to get that part right.
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As of Home Assistant 2022.12 you are now REQUIRED to change any of your manual MQTT configs in the Configuration YAML file. Any devices that are using Auto Discovery or other automatic integrations are not impacted by this change. I've covered some of the changes and how I edit things in the video linked below. I also included two before and after configs below to see the necessary changes.
light:
- platform: mqtt
name: "Sink Light"
state_topic: "tele/SinkDimmer/STATE"
state_value_template: "{{ value_json.POWER }}"
command_topic: "cmnd/SinkDimmer/POWER"
availability_topic: "tele/SinkDimmer/LWT"
brightness_state_topic: "tele/SinkDimmer/STATE"
brightness_command_topic: "cmnd/SinkDimmer/Dimmer"
brightness_scale: 100
brightness_value_template: "{{ value_json.Dimmer }}"
qos: 2
payload_on: "ON"
payload_off: "OFF"
payload_available: "Online"
payload_not_available: "Offline"
The Home Assistant and ESPHome developers have brought us as promised the active bluetooth proxy! What is this you might ask? Think of a Bluetooth Proxy as kind of a Wi-Fi access point but for Bluetooth devices. This allows you to place a BT proxy across the house or even in the backyard to pick up temperature sensors in the greenhouse to controlling RGB floodlights to picking up the kids toothbrush activities.
Current list of confirmed Bluetooth Compatible Devices
I've tried a bunch of different methods to have some tube looking lights in the yard. I found some simple white wire loom looks great and is easy to keep straight. It has an awesome look at night!
I'm using addressable pixels on a 12v power supply connected to the LEDeez board from WantMoore.tech running WLED. Super simple to setup and wire up.