To be honest, I used to have an ISP with dynamic addresses and it wasn’t a huge deal. The address only changed every month or two. I used afraid.org’s dynamic DNS service to get a dynamic address that followed the changes and created CNAME records for my real domain pointing at that. The actual connection was fucking awful but the dynamic IPs never caused any problems.

As for services: Nextcloud is well worth looking into for file sync and photo backup, especially if you’ve already got a file server running.

As it happens, I’ve just finished setting up a system exactly like this for a completely off-grid setup. I needed a Raspberry Pi running Home Assistant to be completely self-contained to monitor an adjacent, larger system that is only powered up intermittently (close enough that the two systems have a common ground).

Short version: the Raspberry Pi and the Huawei LTE router I’m using for connectivity draw a steady 9W between them (there’s a lot of monitoring going on). I went with an old pair of 80W panels in very suboptimal positioning, a simple MPPT charge controller and a 110Ah deep cycle leisure battery which costs about €45, €30 and €120 respectively. The system has been running a few months now and the battery had never, ever dropped below 12.4V. The Pi uses WireGuard to connect to my VPS so Home Assistant can be accessed with a web browser since the network I’m using on-site doesn’t do public IP addresses.

I’m a bit late to the conversation here, but I bought four of these car seat occupancy sensors - https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/316523892197 - and installed them between the mattresses, one at butt level and the other at shoulder level on both sides of the bed - and connected them to an ESP32 on ESPHome. Works a treat. They’re sensitive enough to momentarily disengage if someone rolls over or shuffles about if you need that, otherwise a generous bounce detection allowance smooths it out.

Don’t you dare give me hope.

Edit: Holy shit. Orland actually says that exact line in the linked article. Kudos.

Ten years ago this week.

GNU pTerry

Yeah, ususally at this point someone goes “ugh, I’m never using Firefox again because Mozilla don’t respect people any more… iT’s TiMe To iNsTaLl BRaVe!”

Fuck Microsoft and all, but this headline and article are basically bullshit. The requirements for Windows 11 aren’t changing. This requirement covers future models of PC released by OEMs. It doesn’t affect existing models, home-builds, second hand, refurbished, end-of-line, surplus, etc, etc.

Honestly in rare situations that a device like that needs to be accessible from the wild Internet I think it’d be mad to expose it directly, especially if it’s not manageable as you suggest. At the very least, I’d be leaning on a reverse proxy.

If I had an EV it would make a huge difference. One of the really, really cool features of the Octopus integration is that you can create a binary sensor that triggers for the cheapest hours (consecutive or non-consecutive) between a set time period, so you could create an automation that works out how many hours your car needs to charge at, say, midnight, and have it only charge for the cheapest hours between then and 8am.

In my old place I actually did this: replacing my fridge and freezer’s thermostats with an ESP Home controlled relay and thermometer. This place has a fancy integrated unit that I don’t want to play with too much.

I’m surprised, to be honest, since I worked out a while ago that if I had an EV - even something like a Zoë doing 20 miles a day - I’d be saving a lot of money, but if you’ve done the maths then fair enough. Keep in mind, though, that since you’re alreay with Octupus you could just switch to Agile for a month and switch back if it doesn’t work out.

Dingdingding! Correct. For the chepest two hours a day (or any time cost is negative) Home Assistant gives Portainer a kick and I sail the high seas. Whenever costs are negative I saturate my servers with BOINC CPU-heavy workloads like ClimatePrediction, Rosetta@Home, LHC@Home and World Community Grid.

Whole-home metering is done with a Home Mini, a device that Octupus gives away to any customer that asks nicely and provides real-time data. For devices with plugs is mostly LocalBytes smartplugs or similar. For the heaters, well, hypothetically, that would require installing something like a Shelly PM Mini Gen 3 inside the wall box behind the heater without asking the landlord’s permission.

I’m currently paying £50/mo and that’s with credit building up on my account. My initial investment in HA has paid for itself many time over.

Yup! No EV here, sadly, and I live in a flat but I’ve got storage heaters and a big hot water tank. I’ve got an incredibly janky template sensor that works out how many hours of heating I need for each room based on the weather forecast and an automation that activates the heaters for that many hours a day at the cheapest times. It can also turn the heating on when the price drops below a certain threshold, currently 0p.

Yeah, it’s also exactly what the EU and it’s predecessors exist to prevent. We’ve never had a period of prolonged peace in Europe like we have now. And these utter fucking slabs want to undo it.

SUKBRICK sounds like a demeaning act that we brought on ourselves so lets go with that.

WFM. Looks like you’re using Let’s Encrypt, which is fine, and everything seems to be consistent. I think you’re good.

<Sips licence like a fine wine served at a dinner party.> Ah, yes, GPLv3, exquisite choice.

I don’t know why but I thought they were some special inaccessible computers.

It’s their marketing. Marketing, marketing, bullshit and marketing. Macs get viruses, Macs have vulnerabilities, Macs crash. Doesn’t matter how much their indoctrinated fans might claim otherwise, Macs are just weird PCs. In that context, their refusal to allow their owners to control them is all the more jarring and makes owning the older models like you mentioned all the more sensible.