His hot take is already posted here, he’s not happy.

I got over wrestling in the early 90’s when I learned it was fake.

Realising the outcome was predetermined gave me a new level of appreciation for what they do in the ring.

I know I shouldn’t be but I find myself disappointed by this.

Yes, Switchbot have a device to do this and I imagine the Chinese ones are to be knock-offs of that. They will be quite expensive because a thing that moves blinds will usually need a decent sized motor. Unfortunately, with plantation blinds, I assume you need more of them than other different types.

So a bit like… connected plantation blinds?

There’s no chain or anything to raise or lower them?

I use Calibre.

I’ve had absolutely no issues and I’ve been using them for years - they’ve been rock solid and reliable. I switched to a ZigBee dongle and packed away the hub. I also use their switches and plugs, all good.

I get mine from IKEA.

I have also since this post purchased MMwave sensors. But they’re worse for picking up the cats.

You can fine tune some and the Aqara FP2 seems to do a good job ignoring pets.

I ended up making binary sensors for each room in Node Red. Did I leave the room? Who else is there, nobody? Ok mark it clear…

Why not use mmWave presence sensors?

Next level bagpiping.

I suppose it’s subtle clickbait - you come in expecting a hut piece and it’s more nuanced than that.

Everyone seems to hate the Google Home app and Nest, should they?

Betteridge’s Law of Headlines suggests the answer is “no” and yet…

We all want a longer dongle extension, brother.

I’m blaming the cold weather.

Do you have any Hue bulbs paired into your zigbee network?

I’m all in in IKEA bulbs.

I’m saving this for reference as Zigbee has stopped working for me and I haven’t had time to troubleshoot it (probably just order a longer dongle extension for starters).

!squaredcircle@lemmy.zip

Running Home Assistant or any other Bridge is a possibly in the future with something like a raspberry pi but I’m not very smart in that area so it’s something I’ll have to learn about and build over time.

It’s all pretty user-friendly these days. I moved house so did a clean installation and it went very smoothly.

I’ll have to research Home Assistant more, as well as the overall price per room to do things such as Blinds, Smart TV (w/ AppleTV), Lights (including Switches, and more but this will all not be purchased at once.

This is the way - see what prices are like and if you want to do anything fancy. If it’s all catered for within a HomeKit environment and you don’t feel the price is too high then go for it.

One advantage of HomeKit-compatible devices is that, if you wanted to add Home Assistant into the mix, it does make adding devices very easy. I’m not an apple aficionado but some bits of smart kit happened to work with Homekit and I had zero issues. It feels like the kind of thing Matter/Thread promise but they aren’t there yet.

From my external perspective, going purely for HomeKit would mean you have less choice in your devices and you’ll likely pay more for them. However, I’m sure more knowledgeable people will be along soon.

Ah yes, numbers are hard, apparently, especially for tech journalists. I presume they’d have a form of words to explain it, like “it’s a rise of 100%, meaning it has risen 200%” but it wouldn’t be convincing. Amusingly, saying the price is up by 200% would have made a more attention-grabbing headline.

They’ve raised the prices in line with the earlier US price hikes.