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#smarthome

4 posts4 participants0 posts today

While looking for new hardware for our home server (a 19'' mini rack server is very tempting...), I just came across project #minirack

10" rack server builds using a mix of off-the-shelf commercial and #diy #3dprinted mounts, panels, frontplates etc.

Looks interesting (and the mini racks are also rather cute).
Maybe interesting to some of you.

github.com/geerlingguy/mini-ra
mini-rack.jeffgeerling.com/

Miniature rack builds, for portable or compact Homelabs. - geerlingguy/mini-rack
GitHubGitHub - geerlingguy/mini-rack: Miniature rack builds, for portable or compact Homelabs.Miniature rack builds, for portable or compact Homelabs. - geerlingguy/mini-rack

We're Matter certified!! 🎉

We've been ahead of the game with Matter implementation, and we're excited to announce both Home Assistant and the Open Home Foundation Matter Server are officially certified by the CSA. 😌

What does this mean for you? Find out on our blog 👇🏼

#SmartHome #HomeAutomation
home-assistant.io/blog/2025/03

Home AssistantHome Assistant officially MattersHome Assistant gains certification, but also a powerful tool for any open source project

🔋 Testing the HomeWizard Plug-In Battery with Home Assistant

This new device claims to be a plug-and-play home battery that should work with Home Assistant—just install it yourself, no electrician required. But does it actually work as promised?

I unbox it, set it up, and put it to the test! Watch here: youtu.be/WOxB-d-ofj4

#HomeWizard #HomeAssistant #SmartHome #HomeBattery #Environment #Energy #SolarPanels #Sustainability
youtu.be/WOxB-d-ofj4

I am—and have been for a while—going through the process of #demeta and #degoogle my life as much as I can. For reasons too numerous to mention, but you‘ll be able to think of the main ones. An appraisal, so far…

#Meta

✅ Stopped using #Facebook years ago but have finally deleted all posts, photos, likes, follows, and interactions I ever had on there (going back to 2007). Batch delete was hardly “batch” so this was laborious (and I know delete isn't really delete but it felt good to see stuff disappear!)

✅ Deleted all of my photos from #Instagram. Now I just use #Pixelfed. On my phone, I use the @impressia app. The next step is to run my own, single-user instance on a #RaspberryPi at home (as I do with Mastodon) and get off pixelfed.social

❌ #WhatsApp is tricky. I'm in groups where I know I have no chance of converting everyone to an alternative platform. Cutting myself off from the herd (of IRL friends) isn't an option. Will reluctantly live with this for the time being.

✅ Don’t use Messenger; never used Threads.

#Google

✅ Switched from Google to #DuckDuckGo for search on all devices. Deleted search history in Google account.

✅ Migrated mail and calendar from Google to @fastmail. I was briefly considering either self-hosting with #Citadel or using #iCloud Mail, but Fastmail was the better option for me. Very pleased so far; thanks to @tekphloyd for sending me in the right direction!

✅ Switched from Google Authenticator to @ente Auth for #2FA

✅ Switched from Google Maps to Apple Maps.

✅ No longer using Google Analytics on any personal sites; currently trialling @Matomo which is #FOSS and self-hosted.

✅ No longer using Google Fonts on any personal sites.

✅ Removed Google’s Gboard as the software keyboard on iPhone; now using the Grammarly keyboard.

✅ Deleted a bunch of old Gmail accounts that hadn't been used in ages. Now using masked email addresses, so don't need these kinds of accounts now.

✅ Don’t use Chrome, only Safari.

✅ iOS since the beginning of smartphones; never used Android.

✅ Already using iCloud+ for photo library sync and any file cloud storage/mirroring; no need for Google Photos or Drive.

✅ Still old school MS Word/Excel for me, so don't use Google Docs.

❌ I don't upload video but I do watch a lot on #YouTube and—as with WhatsApp—I‘m not willing to cut myself off; no current viable alternative.

❌ My #SmartHome setup has quite a lot of Google: home wifi mesh and voice assistant, plus #Nest cameras, doorbell, and thermostat. Hmm. TBD.

✅ And of course I left the bird site in the great migration of Nov ‘22 and came here. As of 2024, I’m self-hosted so my data physically lives in my home office on a #RPi with full and incremental backups running to an external disk. Planning to upgrade from SD card to SSD in 2025.

Happy with my progress so far! 👍

N.B. I have my reasons for not completely deleting some of the above accounts; they will remain dormant.

Continued thread

Stop ✋🏻 what you're doing and take 5 minutes to use Home Assistant's new automatic backup tool to set up offsite and encrypted backups to keep your smart home running securely and smoothly.

Learn how with our latest blog post 👇🏼

#HomeAssistant #SmartHome
home-assistant.io/blog/2025/01

Home Assistant3…2…1… BackupStop what you're doing and take 5 minutes to set up automatic encrypted backups to keep your smart home running smoothly.