I'm struggling to find the easiest solution to connect a set of active speakers that have BT/Optical (Toslink)/Coax. I currently use a tablet to stream Deezer via BT, but I want to be able to use them in Music Assistant. I tried Bubblepnp on the tablet, but it's too slow for that, it wasn't reliable.

I don't want to spend 100s of dollars on e.g. Sonos stuff. I see Squeezelite as a good option, but I'm unsure how to connect an SPDIF speaker. The docs say you can connect to one of the pins. Do I just cut the plug of an SPDIF cable and then connect to it?

I don't have a 3D printer, ideally I want a box around it.

Ideally there's an out-of-the-box solution. Any tips or help appreciated.

In our two bathrooms we have a switch panel with 4 switches: one for a light, 2 for heat lamps, and 1 for a fan extractor. As we tend to forget the fan extractor I want to make this smart. Something like !this

It has to work well with Home Assistant. WiFi is fine, Zigbee would probably be better. Should not have a cloud dependency, I can't sell this stuff to my SO saying that she can't turn on the lights if the internet is down. I've flashed Tuya based switches and RF emitters with ESPHome using LibreTiny.

As it's obviously 220v I'd like to avoid Aliexpress stuff. Probably also needs a good IP rating as it's in the bathroom.

Any tips?

I've got a couple of Zigbee plugs, all work well, except one I use for the washing machine. It randomly turns off. When I check the history in HA, it just says that it turns off, no source. My guess is that it trips, ie temporarily exceeds 10A. The plugs are rated 10A from Aliexpress.

Edit2: Thanks all for your responses! I have checked the logs, https://lemmy.nz/comment/6192604, and based on that removed tracker-miner-fs as it's a search/index tool which I don't need. No idea why it took over all memory. I'll also get a WiFi Smartplug as a kill switch. Hopefully that solves it. Thanks again heaps!

---- I've got a HP ProDesk G3 which I'm using as home server, I've installed Ubuntu on it. Earlier this week the services I host on it stopped (Immich & Frigate). I tried to SSH, but it just hung after asking for a password. I could ping it, but it was just unresponsive.

I had to force reboot it manually. This is fine, but I'm not always at home.

The chip has Intel vPro as far as I know, which could be an option, but I have no idea how this works. The documentation on the Intel site seems focused on enterprises. I tried to connect with RealVNC which does not work, so I think I've got to install/configure something on the server first.

I also asked Bing Chat but it came up with non existing packages & commands. Welcome your thoughts!

/edit: I just found this, which seems to be exactly what I need: https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/focal/en/man7/amt-howto.7.html

I've got a QNAP NAS and two Linux servers. Whenever the power goes down, the UPS kicks in and shut downs the NAS and the Linux servers, all good. The servers + NAS are automatically started when the power comes back on line using WOL. All good.

The problem is that I have apps running using Docker which heavily rely on connections to the NAS. As the Linux servers boot quicker than the NAS, the mount points are not mounted, and thus everything falls apart. Even when I manually re-mount, it's not propagated to the Docker instances. All mount points use NFS.

Currently, I just reboot the Linux servers manually, and then all works well.

Probably easiest would be to run a cron job to check the mounts every x minutes, and if they are not mounted, then just reboot. The only issue is that this may cause an infinite loop of reboots if e.g. the NAS has been turned off.

I could also install a monitoring solution, but I've seen so many options that I'm not sure which one to do. If it's easier with a monitoring solution, I'd like the simplest one.

See this comment

I found this site, but it's US based, so unsure if it will help.

About 7 years ago I installed a bunch of Mitre10 / Bunnings smoke detectors which seem to work well, hardly false alarms, 9v batteries last ~2-3 years I've now found out they are ionization alarms and they are no longer recommended. Also, Fire NZ recommends fire alarms with 10 years batteries built in. I checked both Bunnings & Mitre10 and most of them get crappy reviews.

On Reddit I saw that Cavius is recommended a lot, but they also get bad reviews on Noel Leeming that they stop working after <5 years. However, they have a 10 year warranty, so I guess in such cases I would get a new one? They cost ~$50 at NL, and I know not to always trust their pricing, is there a better/cheaper shop to buy them?

Or should I buy a different brand? I also see good reviews about Nest Protect. A lot more expensive, but I like that I can connect them to Home Assistant. However, I can't seem to find them available in NZ. Some other post suggested these from Aliexpress A bit reluctant to get smoke detectors from Ali though.

I know 220v connected ones are better, but as we'll be selling the place most likely within <10 years, not worth the extra $$.

As per title, focusing on Now feels very similar to mindful meditation where you focus on current sensations to stay in the now. Is there a difference I'm missing?

Currently I've got a RPi4 without Coral, running Frigate with 2 cams, HA, Paperless, Photoview and Qbittorrent. This works well but maxes out the RPi4. As I want to add Immich and more cams, I have to upgrade. Budget allows for either a USB Coral with the existing RPi4 or buy a secondhand HP Prodesk 600 g4 with Intel 8th gen. According to Frigate I can use Openvino for object detection. Otherwise, I could add a Coral mini pcie, with a mini pcie to pcie adapter. But that stretches the budget. Besides frigate the HP should be able to run the rest.

Any thoughts?

I'd like to buy an ex company PC to serve as home server, as an upgrade for my raspberry pi. It should run some selfhosted services like Frigate and Immich, and perhaps Jellyfin. I was thinking to buy an 9th gen Intel or later ex company PC. It should be energy efficient as well.

I tried looking at Trademe but you can't filter on CPU generation. I could search on the exact Intel cpu number but that seems too restrictive. Pbtech is too expensive what I saw. I haven't tried Marketplace but guess that's the same. Some reddit post suggested Dell Optiplex, but no idea how their type numbering works.

Any tips?

I never played the original, but as it's on Gamepass via EA play decided to give it a go. It got me hooked immediately and found it hard to put down. Never got boring. It was too difficult for me on normal, easy was better for me. Hopefully they will remake 2 and 3 as well. I enjoy good graphics so not sure I enjoy the originals.

Kia ora! My wife and I were born in The Netherlands. Ten years ago we decided to try living in New Zealand for two years. At that time we had a 1 yo, we now have two kids.

It felt really good so we decided to stay longer. Fast forward, here we are, ten years later. The pink clouds are definitely gone, but we've learned to appreciate NZ. Obviously it's a beautiful country and it's not densely populated. The Netherlands is 6 times smaller with 4 times more people.

People in NZ are generally friendly and keen to help. Also, people have respect for service people like police, firemen, train conductors, etc. In the NL it happens daily that they are spat on, verbally abused, or even injured. Kids in NL more and more bring knives to school. People randomly throw rocks, bombs, eg at fireman, police, and ambulance people.

NY eve in NL counted more than 200 arrests and counting. People were injured or killed because of fireworks. In every major city police was bombarded with illegal fireworks, multiple officers hurt with hearing damage. Buildings were set on fire, firemen came, were bombarded with fireworks as well.

Talking to other friends in Europe it's not getting better in other countries.

Writing this makes me emotional. Why can't we treat other people like we want to be treated?

NZ isn't perfect, there is crime here of course, but it definitely seems better than the rest of the world at the moment.

I love New Zealand. I've become a proud citizen 2 years ago and definitely now call this home. The Netherlands is now just a place where my family lives and where I can celebrate holidays.

Thanks for reading and I want to wish you all an awesome 2024. Stay strong.

Happy New Year everyone. Hope you all have a good 2024.

We've got contents insurance with AA and from next year we'll be paying 33% more. We have had 2 claims for a different policy this year, one at fault, one not, and they said it wouldn't impact our premiums. Is this common for everyone? I understand it goes up because of all the floods, but 33% is very significant.

Our car is insured comprehensive, but I'm wondering from what amount it would make sense to claim? AA no longer has a no claims bonus, but obviously premiums can go up if you claim. We have some cosmetic damage which we caused ourselves, so would mean we'd pay our excess. Would it be wise to discuss with our insurer AA? Advice welcome, thanks.

We're currently with AA, who decided to increase prices by almost 10% for our upcoming renewal. Cove is much cheaper and has got good reviews, mainly about their website and sign up process. However I can't find any reviews about their claims process. In the past AA has been very good for us whenever we had a claim. Anyone got experience claiming something with Cove?

My daughter has a low specced Android Go phone, just for Whatsapp, Signal and txting. She likes it as it's also quite small compared to most other smartphones.

I don't mind it's not fast, but I've noticed that notifications for Signal &amp; Whatsapp are not coming through after being idle for some time.

I've disabled battery saver for these apps, but after a couple of hours, notifications are not coming through again. What else could I change?