And even more annoying, JavaScript is not correctly uppercased for common styles

When I first encountered it, it was by hearing it. It took longer than it probably should have to recognize that when people talked about “engine x”, they meant “in-jinks”

If this were my decision, I’d put batteries as the top decision factor.

If your devices are battery powered, Zigbee/z-wave will last several times WiFi devices before you need to replace the battery. I would get frustrated with this very quickly.

If your devices are plugged in to a reliable source of power, then obviously this is not a factor. Or maybe phrase that the other way: if your devices are WiFi, future you will thank present you if you can find a way to plug them in

I read it’s something like typical $5 price difference and z-wave have to pass compatibility tests

I initially went with z-wave because

• 900MHz frequency has better range in my house
• compatibility is good
• my local home center had a few z-wave devices but no Zigbee

But I ended up with both, no problem, and will soon add Thread.

I strongly prefer local networks instead of WiFi so I know they’re not calling home, it’s cleaner separation, and allows battery devices

I also haven’t seen any problems with either my z-wave mesh or my Zigbee mesh, but it’s an interesting tell that several network troubleshooting features have been added to Home Assistant over the last year or two

While I don’t have a good real life answer since I haven’t done that, the newest z-wave devices have a long range mode for exactly this type of thing and at least on paper have well over this range. You might do so research on those and look for those devices specifically

But if your phone doesn’t have great signal across the entire house a lightswitch inside of a metal box in the wall is going to be worse.

I hesitated expecting exactly this, but so far it’s worked flawlessly.

My house is older construction with very dense walls, and yes all the switch boxes are metal. When I enter my house, cell coverage drops to one bar and might goto zero as I walk around the house (thank goodness for WiFi assist). WiFi disappears as I go through certain doorways so I need a mesh and mesh routers about 10-15’ apart can’t communicate with each other. Back when cordless phones were a thing, they would only cover a room, although interestingly 900MHz was the best cordless phone frequency and higher frequencies had worse range. My house is horrible for radio signals.

But both Zigbee and zWave have worked really well. It probably helps that my first priority was smart switches, which are one or more repeaters in every room and more likelihood of straight lines through doorways, but it just works. Much better than WiFi.

And with home assistant, it’s easy to have both

I’ve been wondering about thermal storage for heat pumps but we don’t have time of use metering yet. I see a few options online but contractors aren’t familiar and it’s not even clear whether they are really available

My parents house when I was a kid had resistive heat, but they added thermal storage when our utility started doing time of use and it made a huge difference in the bills. However I don’t know the overall payback period

Same here. My primary use case is making it work naturally for a voice assistant, so it’s a bit inconsistent because it needs to reflect what we actually call things

Welll, you’re way ahead of me. In addition to not getting one yet, I’ve got the flu for over two weeks now. Actually my ex caught it before Christmas and it slow-walked through the family ever since

It’s there and configured. Ready to go. You can do it

I also have excellent results with Siri. While I have it require a click before listening, I’m always wearing my watch so it’s still pretty convenient.

But I have to admit the always listening part is kind of nice. It started off innocently enough : hey my thermostat can do Alexa. Then we discovered the intercom feature and ended up with one in every room

That will an important metric to determine. I know the doc said raspberry pi or similar are too slow but what local control is sufficient. Even among Pi’s there’s a large range of capability- I wonder how a Pi5 does or if it’s demanding of memory or something

Looks great!

Bummer. That’s one of my primary uses for Alexa, that I’d like to fix.

• if I ask Alexa, it reacts right away, faster than walking over to the switch, especially when I specify a dimmer setting
• if I ask Alexa on my thermostat, it’s damn slow to respond and sometimes misses, but the trick is leaving enough time after calling her name

They’re cheaper at Inovelli’s store, plus you can buy multipacks to save more: https://inovelli.com/collections/inovelli-blue-series

Maybe. While I do sometime choose the plant-based meat, thinking of it as a substitute was my initial reluctance to try vegetarian food. Back then, I ridiculed the idea of a “veggie burger”, but really liked grilling a “black bean patty”. Did you realize Mac and Cheese can be vegetarian? “Greek veggie dip” is horrible, but I love hummus. I always loved various potatoes, but it was quite a revelation that you could spice them up and use them as a meal. My latest infatuation is Halloumi or Paneer - don’t ever call a nice grilling cheese a substitute for anything.

At least for me, it is easier to choose foods for their own value, rather than suffer with a substitute, r a variation “without”. I’m not a vegetarian and have no interest in it, but I will choose what looks good to me at any given time, on its own merits