Audrey & I ~ We met at Ophelia's Electric Soapbox to hear a fav songwriter, Margret Glaspy in this intimate & funky venue. Audrey walked to the show! We enjoyed reserved seating in row 1 above the mosh pit so basically arrived just in time for the opener. I don't quite know why the marquis selfie is oddly colored but whatever.
While I skied and partied with Steve a bit while in Summit, my ulterior motive was to convert the Nest's extensive IoT network to be Home Assistant based as done @ Blodgett recently. I bought a similar rig for HAOS and added the same ZWave and Zigbee antennas/coordinators. I used a wired Cat5e line in the study to get my Nest HOAS system up in the upper study (the MBR is already full of wireless stuff for WiFi, Arlo, Acurite, and SmartThings). Soon ST will be mothballed; it's fate was sealed with Samsung's cavalier handling of my data.
Home Assistant Operating System (HAOS)... Once again I needed to add a number of integrations and applications to the core Home Assistant system in order to enable visibility and control over the sensors and switches I've added to the IoT network here. As @ Blodgett, Zigbee & Zwave are used for sensor/switch access, and Tailscale was added for secure network access anywhere. The bigger task was eliminating the ~40 sensors and switches from ST and authorizing them into HAOS. Especially with Zwave and a desire to use S2/3 security, one needs physical access to the sensors and switches but they are often hidden or stored away or require ladder access. Here's just the map for the Zwave stuff. Yeah, one node died in the process and I ordered a new one.
HAOS Automation... I won't repeat the level of details offered on the Blodgett conversion but the Nest was a bigger task in sensor recognition as well as automation "programming." Lights are going on/off everywhere based on motion; alerts are being sent to Kala & me on doors opening, smoke detected, spa temps falling, H2O boiler temps falling, etc. The "programming" is pretty simple if trigger-and-condition-then-action; the issue is really remembering to cover all the cases I had prior, plus some I added since in build-mode. It did go faster than last time, as I had built one of these things already @ Blodgett.
Tailscale Networking... I had built a Wireguard split-tunnel gateway for use in Summit so I could get Plex running on Roku and accessing the DVR content or even live feeds (like football games) from Blodgett securely. An enabler too was conversion to XFi for higher bandwidth services at both Blodgett and the Nest. It allowed me to cut $60/mo from my Hulu bill as I don't need cloud-based DVR OR "Live TV" local broadcast feeds anymore ~ I just get access to the Blodgett-based servers and receivers at the Nest now. Claude Code helped considerably with that finicky configuration (routes, certifications, eeech). But today I converted the whole notion to Tailscale and our secure tailnet. I dedicated an ArchLinux box to the effort and even removed Wireguard-based infrastructure from it. This conversion was also accelerated considerably by using Claude Code, and sometimes it's scary, but it is effective. I highly recommend both of these: Claude and Tailscale, the latter especially if you have multiple LANs to which you want secure access from each other and anywhere (phone/pad) really. Performance initially was poor and buffered on streams opened on Plex on Roku (~6Mbps) but determining the issue was CPU wait states and changing the CPU idle deep state settings on the gateway repaired that to 100Mbps!
JRiver MC Access... I now also access a TB of music via the private tailnet on my phone/pad or on my Nest-side other clients ~ my client choice is JRiver MC but Matt prefers Plex. I used to synchronize a flash drive and bring my music library to Summit physically as the remote access scheme inherent with JRiver MC was too latent. Now track-to-track latency is acceptable and I don't need to think about when I last synchronize and with what.
Samsung Fired... The conversions are complete; access is all local (no cloud services); ST hubs are removed; I am in control. Well, I still have to eliminate Arlo & Acurite but those conversions are underway.
Nov 1 ~ F1 With Audrey... Audrey came down to COS for our Mexican F1 watch party. She couldn't stay long but did arrive in style by riding down with Matt in the 911. It was great to visit with such and accomplished and lovely person. It was a nice day with keen taco nosh (grilled mahi mahi with mango-cabbage-heat and Mex dry-rubbed pan-fried-chix with pico de gallo) and Coffin's cowboy caviar. I pulled out all the stops in F1 Fantasy and went unlimited and prophetically with MaxV on 3X accelerator ('cause he won). I chose wisely and at least briefly lead the Alpine Rippers league.
Nov 4 ~ Skiing The Key... Bro Brown and I scored a number of runs at the Key during opening week there. Sure it's just miles of Schoolmarm but the snow-making was fine for the runs. Snow was solid put moldable in nice daytime temps. Cooler overnights led to more being put down and enough that the cats could roll up for corduroy. Steve and I hit ORB & Bird afterward and enjoyed a pint and our pickups for Nov26. We even got a bit o' snow at the Nest, and raccoons visited. Later in the week we dialed up some tunes on the NMT like old times.
Amazing as all that was y'all... I removed all Google "link-back" targeting/tracking from the URLs I offered. Viewership and connectivity is down, but that's not why I do this ~ it's documentation for me when I no longer "get it." Enjoy with security and comfort.
Mid-Day F1 Watch... Kala & I headed to DEN for an F1 watch party with the fam at Letha's. She made a nice chili and we enjoyed a somewhat boring race where Kimi went start to finish in Austin. We were pleased the Broncos dominated the Cardinals but Kala was sad at the Chiefs outcome. In the evening I headed across town to Swallow Hill Music to hear Maya de Vitry in the Taft Theater there.
Taft Theater... the venue is intimate but the sound guy had it dialed in well. I parked free within just 200ft of the theater. I arrived at doors and got the front row center spot. I own all of Maya's published work and have seen lots a radio studio work live but this was a treat.
Maya & Joel... 36 yr old Maya de Vitry is a PA-raised Nashville resident known for stellar songwriting and a solid voice to deliver the work. She's independent and prolific; her 4th and most recent album is "All My Faith" and much in the show was delivered from there. She worked strong melodies on her guitar and brought her oft-collaborator on the stage, Joel Timmons, to work searing lead licks, and backup vocals. Joel's also a Nashville guy and a mainstay with a number of bands, including his wife's (bassist/vocalist Shelby Means - once Molly's bassist and backup but now rockin' solo), and his own. Maya introduced him to lead sign a song from his band's debut album... a fun surf rockin' tune about a black lab & weed.
Maya Was Excellent... Of course the songs were great and she delivered with plenty of full voice rips to the sometimes familiar crowd's delight. I could mouth much of the material. I couldn't get the signed setlist as she wrote it in a notebook she kept... NP. I see she's not a full planner as the notes were abbreviated and kindof random, not a list but what she'll play in some order. I was able to meet and introduce myself at break as she manned her own merch table. "I am the AI guy;" "great to meet, that was fun." I also spoke to the sound guy during intermission. He adjusts with no feedback mic, just his ears, and he sits in back. So, for much of the 2nd half of the show I moved to the back row and the sound was better there. It was a great show in a fun tiny venue.
SmartThings' Rumbles & Rambles ~ I am sufficiently concerned with Samsung's/SmartThings' (ST) cavalier treatment of my data and their pending pricing for access to my own systems that it prompted a complete migration. "Cavalier" is code for data broker sales and advertising "sharing." I am migrating off of ST to Home Assistant OS (HA or HAOS) for my longstanding IoT network @ Blodgett. HAOS is a solid open systems project doing all that I do with ST, and more, and it is backed by a strong community of contributors. The migration is not simple but necessary to get all my shit under my own control and out of the cloud. The first steps were to get an HAOS system up which supports Zigbee and ZWave and then to "migrate" my sensor array from ST to HA. Here's the kit today with keen ZWave Plus and Zigbee 3 antennas (coordinators) and dedicated future-proofed hardware for HA.
ST > HAOS "Migration" ~ I wish there were a migrate button but the fact is that making this shift requires a careful build up of drivers and applications on HAOS and a methodical deinstallation of sensors, switches, alerting, and automations from ST and a rebuild of same on HAOS. Frankly days of work for the HA neophyte... fortunately it is a pretty decent and secure system & community. Plus, Claude helped plenty guiding with stepwise moves; I did a lot of groping as well though. I began installing the core Zigbee and ZWave support infrastructure and then moved on to removing sensors and lights/switches from ST and adding same back into HA. Here's the Zigbee subsystem with Mosquito, MQTT, my antenna, and some initial sensors and lights migrated. I like automatic lighting on stairs, 'cause I'm old. Ultimately simple automation was used: "if present at top or bottom of stairs and it's not daylight, light it up." But, that took some work.
ZWave Is More Secure ~ A lot of my IoT install is ZWave and ZWave Plus (800 class chips), which is more secure. But, it comes with some management issues, like disassociating from existing ZWave nets before joining a new one (network info persists). I went sensor by sensor, removing stuff from ST and then adding same back to HA... brutal as it required decent access to each sensor and switch to "exclude" on the old and then "discover" on the new. It's good the new system has the dials I want to assure security. Here's the ZWave subsystem adding new S2/S3 secure devices. I've added the needed "automations" for these too ~ "if there's a water leak, notify me" or "if there's door opening while I'm away alert me." Work but I understand what I want and am methodically building it.
Tailscale/Wireguard VPN and Remote Access To HA, AI, And SMB ~ I've used Wireguard point-2-point but it is a challenge to configure and I had to build a split tunnel in Summit to simultaneously connect to Blodgett and the Internet. However, Matt taught me Tailscale today, which runs on top of Wireguard and handles so much of the dirty work. We now have a "tailnet" where I can get access to Matt's AI Appliance for relatively free locally-hosted LLM chats (my work processes can't be absorbed by OpenAI or Anthropic now). He gains access to my Plex server and TBs of media. He built a nice ChatGPT chat front end for me so I can use his locally hosted models. Here is me using qwen on our tailnet. And the tailnet is also active on iOS and therefor I can just run the Home Assistant Companion app without having to pay or enable "cloud access" or poking port forwards when I am remote from Blodgett as I added Tailnet to HA. And I can run queries on qwen anywhere. I've moved completely away from Google Drive as well and encrypted VPNs give me confident but unfettered access to all the files on my server ~ here I'm just showing access to manuals I store there (I store all User Guides and Manuals on my drive as I never know when I might need access to documentation) over 5Ge cellular... though now I have qwen I can ask in real time. Free, and open, and local is better.
Home Assistant Next Steps ~ With ZWave stuff migrated, automations updated, and Tailscale allowing Kala and me remote access to HA for notifications, etc I need to expand the use cases for HA and eliminate more cloud-based, service-pricing-based vendors. SmartThings and Google are toast, who's next? I also have significant networks of weather sensors in Summit and Blodgett, from Acurite, whose integrations are in the cloud. Those sensors feed panels in my homes but also are transferred through a gateway to "myAcurite" website and also to WUnderground for crowd-sourced weather offers. I bought the 433Mhz antenna and associated SDR dongle for HA and plan to dive on receiving stuff directly from my Acurite sensors and publishing my data directly to WUnderground. That's still in the cloud of course but in my control, and an open project. More coding required qwen & Claude. Could be certification issues but I'll let you know. The next big "cloud elimination" is Arlo. I've used this motion detecting camera system and cloud recording effectively for years in El Paso and Summit... it helps secure my remote sites. I need to migrate all that motion-cam-recording stuff away from Arlo (now $30/mo/site) to a self-hosted scheme on HA.
Update 28Oct26 ~ HA Solid; New UPS; New Overview... With everything on ST migrated to the new Home Assistant system I am very pleased with reliability, operability, and configurability. HA is just better, especially with Tailscale for remote access assurance. I've added some automations, new integrations and the like, and I have proper HA and iOS notifications sent to Kala & me on specific events like "Fire Detected @ Blodgett" or "Leak Detected @ Blodgett Kitchen." I worked a "new" dashboard (really modifying the Overview dashboard) to best meet our needs. It's the exact same on the web UI and in the iOS companion app.
Kala and I headed to NCarolina to visit Karla & Kevin. We arrived Wednesday night, visited briefly, and rested for the onslaught.
Thursday morning we headed to a local lake and hiked around it on a very nice day. We lunched at Wongs' Tacos, "so Wong it's right" ~ tasty. Afterward we went to Sylvan Waterfowl park. The bird sanctuary was an awesome several acre park with a number of large cages of keen birds from around the world. We returned to Raleigh in time to dine at Pickled Onion and watch the TNF thriller where Broncos bested the Seahawks. I found the tasty Surf Wax hazy from Burial ~ my favored brewer in NCarolina.
Friday we enjoyed a great tapas dinner at Mateo's in Durham's foodie area near the excellent Durham Performing Arts Center (DPAC). We then went to the fabulous musical Maybe Happy Ending. This show was very good ~ happy story/book, cute, very funny, well sung and acted by all the actors and it used a set that was the coolest thing I've ever seen. So fun ~ highly recommended, as is DPAC, sound was excellent.
Saturday featured rain all day so we chose to largely veg in front of TVs for college football games. We even ate in and enjoyed Karla's charcuterie plate with a nice Amarone wine K2 wanted us to try. Great wine and great games not always won by the "good guys."
Sunday was again a football day ~ it's "Holy Day" for these fantasy football fans. Before all that though we did go to a very cool craft art cooperative called Cedar Ck gallery. We met Kyle at the shop to visit and have him pick some birthday gifts for his new house in Durham. We even saw some glass blowing and making demos. It was great to see Kyle as it's been a minute, and we were fortunate to meet his partner Isaiah. Afterward we ate at the Carolina Ale House, with a hundred TVs blasting NFL games; I do mean blasting. Back at the nice new K2 home in Raleigh we completed our watch-fest and enjoyed good pizza.
