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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 18th, 2023

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  • I had to create an account as per the usual process for these types of apps, but it was all local. I never had to do one to connect to their servers. I know it generates a unique instance ID which I believe phones home to their servers but I don’t mind personally.

    As for my experience, a lot of it is locked behind their paid plans, so I just keep it limited to what I use which is fine. I do like it as it does better than NocoDB for my needs (the input forms is what I needed) and it does better there. I don’t recall the other reasons for not using NocoDB otherwise, but it’s a long while.

    Their pricing is here: https://baserow.io/pricing

    So, that’s mostly what is locked behind. My sleep form I built which feeds the database:

    Overall, it does meet my needs so that’s all I ask. :)


  • In no particular order, the most essential ones are those I constantly use throughout my day and also weekly.

    Proxmox holds all of these in different LXC’s and VM’s

    • Home Assistant
    • Pocket-ID - https://github.com/stonith404/pocket-id (Exclusive Passkey login system as in -no un/pw just your Passkey which - doubles as an OIDC provider)
    • Homepage (By Ben Phelps of gethomepage.dev)
    • Vaultwarden
    • TechnitiumDNS which handles all of my DHCP and Adblocking in a one system, extremely capable software especially useful for SOHO too.
    • Baserow - Airtable alternative. It holds certain items of importance like what MAC address each device in my home network holds and what IP It uses in an intelligent view. I also was using it for a while to log issues with my sleep where I deal with insomnia, so I logged how well I slept, how many times I woke up, how long it took me to fall asleep etc. That was a simple form I created using drag/drop in Baserow and called by a URL.
    • OpenVSCode server - makes editing my Homepage (above) yaml and my docker-compose files a breeze! It’s especially nice when you edit it something and it auto saves almost instantly. Makes some of my services change in real-time!
    • UptimeKuma - Simply one of the best out there for me
    • Gotify - I get alerted to my Tuya based dehumidifer tank being full via Home Assistant, Downtime alerts from UptimeKuma and a variety of other services which I deem higher priority alerts over “fix when you can” ones.

    Aside from that, i do have other services I use every so often like Memos, Joplin Server (holds most of my notes), Pingvin and a few others.



  • Matter runs over your WiFi so as long as your server you run Home Assistant on for example has wired or wireless access you are good to go. My Home Assistant is on LAN and wired so no wireless, but they all communicate through the WiFi network. if you have a Bluetooth dongle or onboard, Home Assistant would also use that to pair and communicate if needed.

    2.4Ghz WiFi is only supported and no newer generations yet.





  • Hands down, Bitwarden app on phone and in browser. Vaultwarden self hosted. Since I host it at home, I know it’s always in my server. The winning thing for me is that Bitwarden Supports Webuathn now, you can use it as it’s own webuathn key you authorize to log in with, so basically go the site you want to login with and when it asks for the webuathn, you can either have Bitwarden use the credentials you stored for it or your own biometric or hardware key instead.

    With this, I sign into Authentik for my SSO just by clicking one link, and Bitwarden prompts to log in and I click the option. I’m auto logged into my server and no UN/PW passed to it.

    I’ve tested others and nothing quite comes close except for KeepassXC, but for me, it’s a matter of personal preference on my side. I’ve been with Bitwarden since the early days.


  • Some examples of using Tasker:

    • When a specific contact sends a text message, it alerts me using TTS so I can be aware they are trying to reach me. I have an older family member she lives closer to, so having an alert from her is important if anything should happen forbid it does. When I plug my phone in to charge, it auto silences the phone and keeps it silenced until I unplug it, built into the same task, if monitors for phone calls from my contact and a few others and overrides it.

    When a specific phone contact or contact calls, it raises the volumes to max. This is useful if you went to an appointment, set your phone on silent or vibrate but forgot to reset it. After the call has been completed, it returns the phone to the original volume you set.

    • When I scan a NFC Tag, i have it send a webhook to my August lock to unlock it. As an apartment dweller, if I go down to the car to unload groceries, the door by default auto locks. This means I have to pull the phone out, unlock it, open the August App, and then tell it to unlock the door and sometimes use the biometric to do so. Having the NFC tag do this means I can put it in my wallet and when I put my phone in the same pocket where the wallet it is, it triggers the door.

    • When connected to my computer only, it keeps the screen on all the time.

    • When I launch certain apps, it keeps the screen on until the app is closed. Very useful when you are at the grocery store working within a strict budget and want to see how much you have put in to the cart!

    • I have a widget on my screen which toggles my Private DNS on/off. This allows me to disable the adblock dns I use if I encounter a public wifi which insists I disable it. (I usually stay away from those, and use my mobile data, but sometimes it’s unavoidable when there is so much interference your 5G goes to NONE and you have to be there for a while.)

    • Likewise, I have a widget which toggles my Tailscale connection on/off which comes in handy as well. Again, if the Wifi spot rejects custom DNS’s and I’m in the scenario above.

    • If you have a Google Account (Sadly, this is the only way). You can view the list of profiles/tasks which other people have built. It’s a growing list. https://taskernet.com/shares/

    • Using third party software such as Wake on LAN, when I come home and connect to my WiFi, it wakes my computer. (Or really any condition I set to trigger it).

    I will say that the dev is very responsive and active in releasing updates and new features.

    With that said, it has a slight learning curve which he(the developer) is working on to help simplify things and modernize it more. Since taking over the project from the previous owner, it’s really grown.

    I admit though, I used to have a lot more tasks and profiles, but it seems that Android is starting to bake those functions in so it’s not as used on my end. But don’t let it it sway you. Your imagination is the only limit with what you can do with Tasker.

    Generally, for less than a cup of coffee, it’s worth the purchase price. :)


  • I have a TCL ROKU TV which is way too chatty on my network. It sends every single keypress on the remote to their servers (just look into the dev console which is easy enough to see what is logged). I have an adblock dns server on my network

    These are just in the last 23 minutes of the hour. As I understand, it’s not always doing this if they are not blocked, but when you block them, it starts to panic!

    The advantage of doing this is instead of having the ad on the right side of the home menu, I have a nice translucent adbox with nothing in it… Also, if you look up the secret codes for Roku menus, you can also toggle the ad server they use so sometimes if some slip through, you get some in house tested ones which are sometimes funny. But that’s extremely rare for us.

    Our next TV will probably be a display or offline only and be a streaming box with custom firmware such as Librelec or something else when the time comes.



  • I lost my respect for Asus when I had a Zenwatch 2 (I still have it), and they promised at the time Android Wear 2.0 in front our faces for months promising it would be released, but refused to even give an estimated time of release to OTA. This was well after WearOS 2 was released. Their online forum staff members were rude sometimes about it and other times, never responded to passionate asks about when it would be made available. The fact that they didn’t reply and care about giving any updates or indication at the time, was enough to push me far away from them.


  • node815@lemmy.worldtohomeassistant@lemmy.worldHACS
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    2 months ago

    Mushroom cards Local Tuya - so I can control my Tuya Devices without needing the cloud.
    Wyze - I have a couple of cameras which are Wyze so I use it for those. I’m not against the cloud for some things. :) Spook - not your homie – When I deactivate or rename a device (seasonally), it lets me know which dashboards need updated for example. Playstation Network - so I can show what my PS5 and PS4 are doing while active. Several other items such as themes I’ve tried out and probably more I’ve tried but never removed.


  • I have been using Tailscale, connected it to my domain, I use Authentik for my OIDC/SSO Sign in and tied it that way for the MFA OIDC Login Tailscale let’s you use. All I needed to do is setup a webfinger for it and once it verified my domain, I was able to give them my OIDC settings for them. Tailscale so far for me in the last year or so has been quite simple to use. Plus, being able to log into my admin console and any devices I enroll through Authentik’s front end, has given me peace of mind knowing it’s quite secure. (All of this on a Proxmox server BTW).

    One may argue about self hosting Wireguard and I agree, it’s quite easy to do if you use something like wg-easy which makes it simple to add phones to your network. My concern with it though was having to poke a hole into my firewall for the WG traffic to hit the server, once I got into Tailscale, it’s made it easier and I don’t have any open ports on the router now. I think this is primarily why the Jupiter Broadcasting guys push it so much on their podcasts, not to mention one of the hosts on his podcast is an employee for Tailscale as well, so that probably helps a bit.

    As for funding for both Nebula, or Tailscale, they do cater to enterprise customers so you have the assurance that they do have to answer to them if they revoke a service or ruin it. :)

    For Tailscale, it’s just a matter of them allowing you to add 100 devices for free and it’s simple command to install it on any client via the cli including Apple TV for example. For phones, I have Tailscale on my phone connected 24/7 to my exit node which is my Proxmox server which acts as one, and as a backup, my Raspberry Pi which acts as one as well. So, even if I’m on the road or away from home, I’m always on my home network (unless blocked by overzealous sysadmins on their public WiFi networks). There’s not much to manage via the phone, but I like to think it’s ‘set and forget’ really, once you have it all configured, it just runs in the background and they do not decrypt your traffic much less care what goes through it.


  • I took a quick read of the comments and I apologize in advance if this has been suggested already.

    I use a self hosted DNS server (AdGuardHome) I was using TechnitiumDNS for a long while, but moved over to the other recently so I could do some more blocking as needed (adult special needs house dweller sometimes needs limited internet). It also acts as a DHCP Server so it takes the role of both the DHCP assignments away from the router. As it so happens, this week, I got to experience the benefit of having this setup live when my main router also went down, I was able to switch to a spare router (My ISP provided one) and all I had to do was turn the DHCP off and optionally point the DNS To my AdGuardHome address, set the SSID’s up and I was in business. All of my devices happily reconnected and grabbed their assigned IP’s.

    In short, if you have a spare computer, SBC such as a raspberry PI or whatnot, you can easily host something like that and not have to worry about setting those again.





  • I’ve seen a few mentions of PiHole and AdguardHome, I started on PiHole, then moved to AdguardHome for adblocking. Then I heard about and have been using TechnitiumDNS server which is sort of overkill for our needs, but with the right ad-lists, it is fantastic at blocking advertisements on my home network. Super fast install too, even on a Raspberry Pi 2 :) I run that along with Proxmox-VE (Protected behind OIDC Login) and several other containers on my cranky old Dell Desktop server.

    Mostly Vaultwarden, and a few other services for home private use such as PairDrop for inter system sharing and a self destructing file sharing server for when we need to send documents to our Attorney’s (rarely but sometimes we need to) office via Pingvin.

    I also run:

    • Home Assistant
    • Transmission Dockerized so I can help contribute to the Linux community and share the ISO’s.
    • For some of my externalized sites, I run Authentik It acts sort of like a Reverse Proxy if you configure it to do so. I love that I can simply identify myself with my WebAuthn device skipping any passwords. :)

    With Authentik setup, I can login to things like my Fresh Tomato Router TechnitiumDNS (Both use HTTP Auth headers) and Memos which uses OIDC/SSO. It’s meant to replace our Google Keep notes.

    • Tailscale is installed and I connect to it from my phone when away from home to always stay on my network. Sometimes, hotspots block it so I generally avoid those as much as possible.
    • Wallos to help keep track of our re-occuring subscriptions.
    • Grafana and Promethus - both are staged and ready for configuration and one of those I will get around to eventually.
    • InfluxDB - I plan on moving Home Assistsant logging soon to that which should tie nicely into Grafana later.
    • Ben Phelps’ Homepage - it’s my main server dashboard my wife and I use to access our server. Quite simply one of the best dashboards IMHO.
    • Wyze Cam Bridge - One of the better services in which you can log into your Wyze cams and convert their streams to RTSP, RTMP or HLS streams easily. I have that feed to my Home Assistant Security Dashboard.
    • Baserow It’s a good Airtable alternative and I use it to keep track of my Static IP assignments, Sleep tracker (I suffer from insomnia), and other data points. It’s pretty amazing. I even created a pain logging for for my wife so she just accesses it and answers basic questions about her pain levels and it pushes it to the database for later retrieval.
    • Joplin Server - Sorry, I don’t have the link, but it’s installed via compose. I use Joplin Notes on my phone and computer for keeping my code snippets. I’ve tried Obsidian and it didn’t really meet my needs and Also Anytype, but that’s not self-hosted. Joplin server is for me and that’s become handy a time or two when on the road.
    • Bookstack - my grand plan for that is to build a Wiki for my family to use in the event something should happen to me, they can know how to manage the server with nice screenshots and instructional steps. I have that protected behind Authentik’s OIDC logins.
    • IT-Tools - hands down one of the coolest self hosted tool sets you can use.
    • Webcheck - All-in-one OSINT tool for analyzing any website https://web-check.xyz/ is their demo site. :)
    • Stirling PDF - Kind of like a Swiss-army knife for PDF’s. :)
    • Dozzle - For those times with you really need to see what your Docker logs and too lazy do run a docker logs -follow command.

    I still use Portainer-CE and am happy there, I may try Dockage or the others, but it’s fine for what I need it for (It’s also protected by OIDC)

    I’m sure I may have missed a few, but this post has gone on long enough. :)