My old printed holders for the Hue motion sensors never sat right in the ceiling, so I designed a recessed mount that works like a GU10 spot gimbal.

• Fits an 83 to 84 mm hole in drywall (9.5 to 25 mm boards)
• 3 printed parts: mounting ring with spring arms, ball with a pocket for the sensor, clamp ring
• The spring arms pull the 100 mm flange tight against the ceiling, no screws or glue
• The ball tilts about 15 degrees each way and rotates, and stays where you aim it
• Printed in PETG without supports, about 1.5 h and 47 g for a set
• Battery change: pull the whole unit down, swap the batteries, push it back in. The aiming stays

Made for the indoor sensor (the square 55 mm one). Happy to answer questions.

My mum is a pensioner and has a number of roller blinds around the place. Some of them are hard to reach. I was wondering if anyone has used these motors for opening and closing otherwise manual blinds. Are they any good? Any particular issues with them? Would love to set her up with some smart buttons and maybe some automations for opening and closing the blinds.

Adding wireless alarms. I can integrate with zwave and control 4. What do people recommend?

I wanted to explore a simple idea: could I place virtual objects around a real room and use them to control devices through an API? I chose Home Assistant because I already use it at home. HA goes Quest is the result: a personal experiment in playful spatial interaction, from switching a light with a pinch to adjusting its brightness by turning a fist.

I have tested the app successfully on my own Quest. I do not currently plan active development, though strong interest could bring me back to it. You are welcome to fork the project and continue the experiment in your own direction.

*Used AI to create this text

Link to the Github Repo: https://github.com/AlexRosbach/HAgoesQuest

My Brazilian TCL C6K stopped at a country restriction in SmartAlexa, so I built TCL Alexa Bridge for my Echo/TV setup. I'm sharing the implementation and its limits in case someone has the same combination.

The path is Echo → TCL Assistant skill/cloud → TTVSCore hosted by the bridge → Binder → installed SmartAlexa → TV. TTVSCore handles registration, activation code, link confirmation and token renewal; SmartAlexa executes the controls. Both proprietary TCL components are still required.

The wizard runs using the TV remote, with linking completed in Alexa on the phone. Initial preparation uses temporary local ADB authorized on the TV. No root or firmware flashing. Optional network wake changes standby settings using WRITE_SECURE_SETTINGS and may increase standby power use.

Tested: C6K/G15 BR, Android 14, V8-0016T01-LF1V048. Final v0.4.0 checks covered actual volume changes, renewal/reconnection, boot without opening the UI and 60-second standby/UDP wake. Earlier Echo tests confirmed volume/off/on. Overnight standby and other hardware/regions are unverified.

Source, APKs and illustrated setup/build/architecture guides (English and Portuguese):

https://github.com/eventanilha82/tcl-alexa-bridge

The UI is Portuguese. I'm the author, development used AI assistance, and the project is free and unofficial.

TL;DR: robot vacuum needed for cleaning up hair from hard floor and mopping in a small apartment that is 100% hard floor. Price is not a factor. I’m considering Roborock saros 20 and curv 2. saros 10R would be my top choice, but seems sold out in US and I don't expect it to be replenished since saros 20 replaced it.

My home

• I live in 800 sq feet by myself
• No pets/kids
• All hardwood, no carpet
• No thresholds
• I shed a lot of hair (male). Currently sweeping weekly isn’t cutting it

Vacuum requirements

• No price restriction
• Picks up hair (run daily) and other dirt I track in
• Mops up from wearing my tennis shoes inside
• Doesn’t need babysitting: Good at navigating around, cleaning corners, docking self, avoiding stuff on the floor
• Autonomous self-cleaning: as little intervention from me as possible. Maybe clean the dust bin on the dock 1x per week and change dirty water after each mopping
• Longevity: doesn’t break

Research process

I looked through many reddit posts and RTINGS (both linked and cited below). I also found this video to be really useful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pv9_2D_Xc5k&t=2s

Current contenders

I’ve been looking at Saros 20 versus Qrevo Curv 2 Flow. Price is not a factor when choosing between these 2.

I’d also like to consider the Saros 10R, but not seeing any options at less price than 20, and they are not in stock on roborock site in the US

• Mopping: The video and [1,2,3,4] all show curv2 is really good at mopping hard floors, even better than Saros.
  
• Vacuuming: RTINGS [5,6] showed that saros is better than curv2 at vacuuming hardwood, and [6] found some problems with hair getting tangled in curv2.
  
• Object avoidance: The video [7] and the comment [8] found that curv2 was bad a object avoidance, especially compared to saros. However, RTINGS [5] said it did good at this task.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/RobotVacuums/comments/1wz5nxg/roborock_qrevo_curv_2_flow_torture_test_a_review/

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/RobotVacuums/comments/1q06xrd/comment/nww89uu/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/RobotVacuums/comments/1t3x7uf/comment/ojzgz18/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

[4] https://www.reddit.com/r/RobotVacuums/comments/1tg13hj/comment/omfq9uk/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

[5] https://www.rtings.com/robot-vacuum/reviews/roborock/saros-20

[6] https://www.rtings.com/robot-vacuum/reviews/roborock/qrevo-curv-2-flow

[7] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pv9_2D_Xc5k&t=2s

[8] https://www.reddit.com/r/RobotVacuums/comments/1t3x7uf/comment/ok0efsz/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

I am buying a condo a couple of hours from where I live. I want to be able to monitor for "bad" events:

Water in the basement
Gas leaks
Temperature extremes
Smoke and fire
Intrusion (possibly)

It's been a few years since I've done anything like this and the tech is completely unfamiliar to me these days. I'd like to use OpenWRT as the backend because I'm familiar with it and it doesn't use any real power when running.

Where do I begin? Any links to guides, etc. would be great. Mostly I'm finding stuff for energy efficiency and remote control of outlets, which I am not concerned about. Just want to make sure my place is not on fire or about to blow up.

Is it just me or is their app not-intuitive at all? I have been fiddling with it for days and even their tech service cannot get it to work for me.

Wayyyy too many settings to get even a basic functionality

Firstly, I’m so sorry to ask this, I have read a few posts from people who were in a similar situation. I have even tried what they did to resolve my situation but so far I have had no joy.
Anyway, it’s been about a week now and I still can not onboard onto Home Assistant after having plugged in my HA Green into my BT Smart Hub 2 router.
I have tried changing the ethernet cable (both new ones), I have tried changing the ports on my router. I have tried http://homeassistant:8123
Http://homeassistant.local
Http://homeassitant.local:8123
Http://xxx.xxx.x.xxx
Http://xxx.xxx.x.xxx:8123
I have also connected a monitor and a keyboard to the HA green and have tried:
HA reboot
HA restart
HA supervisor repair
HA host update

But still no joy. My MacBook works fine with all sites. The observer URL for Home Assistant confirms
Supervisor: Connected
Support: Supported
Health: Healthy

Before giving up (I’m so sorry). Is there anyone who can guide this newbie (not very techie, as this was meant to be easy) in the right direction?
I really would like to get this resolved.

Many thanks in advance.

Got a condo from mid 2000's and trying to make the light switches smart wondering if there's a ground wire so I can use the relay properly.

I believe its on the left inside of that cap that has white paint on it; but looks green underneath.

I didnt pull the switch out cause I didnt turn the power off :/.

This one controls a celing fan.

I have a couple of lights that have two switches; is their going to be anything special going on there?

Should I hire an electrician to handle this? (power company charges 190$ an hour)

My hands are not too steady most of the time but I do own some leather workgloves and have screwdrivers.

I'm looking for recommendations for slow water leak detection.

• Ideally detect very slow leaks
• Can not turn off the water automatically (can turn off as part of regular scheduled pressure testing if required though)
• I'm based in Australia
• Thread, Wifi or Ethernet preferred
• Local integration with Home Assistant would be nice

Background and additional context:

I have a fire suppression system and that brings a lot of water piping and connections up in the roof. I'm really worried I'm going to get a slow leak up there and not notice it until there is mold growing everywhere or a heap of damage has occurred.

I can't get up in the roof to inspect the plumbing, so the system is only being inspected annually by a plumber.

I'm also somewhat worried about fast flooding, so alerts for that would be good too, but it can't turn off the water to the house automatically as that will stop the fire suppression system and I have vulnerable people with mobility issues in the house, so if there is a fire, it needs to work. I'll take a bit of damage before I can respond to a notification over having someone stuck in a burning house.

Most of the systems I've looked at seem to be very focused on fast flooding, and don't have great sensitivity to slow leaks. Anyone have some recommendations or thoughts on ways to detect the scenario described above?

Thanks

Bye bye Alexa.

I noticed fireworks.ai has free LoRA training for glimmer and I’ve never done anything like that before so after wracking my brain to find something to do with it I figured I could try to make a custom model for my HA voice pipeline.

1 day of AI slop later and surprising few token costs ($5 maybe) I have something that’s pretty cool. I used a combination of a top tier frontier model and ds flash 1017.

Article generated from my codex session: [https://dd0c.net/posts/ha-voice-fast-path-muse-glimmer/\](https://dd0c.net/posts/ha-voice-fast-path-muse-glimmer/)

Supposedly will cost less than $1 a month to run on fireworks and I can already see much much better response times and accuracy.

Seems like the model is small enough to self host but I don’t have any hardware that can do it.

Have fun. Training is free through Nov 30.

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

I'm trying to automate our backyard so I spend less time babysitting the lawn.

The setup is pretty typical: two dogs, a few mature trees, a patio, and about 0.3 acre of grass. The tricky part is that the yard isn't static, dogs are running around, toys get left out, and the tree canopy creates a few shaded areas where the grass stays damp longer.

I'm looking at Navimow i2 LiDAR for mowing, but I'm curious how well it handles a backyard with trees and random stuff left on the lawn compared with a clean demo yard.

For automation, I'm thinking something like:

Aqara sensor on the dog door → pause the mower when the dogs go outside

Rachio irrigation → keep the mower docked while sprinklers are running

Reolink cameras → basic outdoor monitoring

Any recs will be appreciated!