A big advantage of home automation / #homeassistant is that you can remotely mess up and accidentally defrost your fridge because somehow the smart plug it is connected to is turned off while applying a software update.

[hacksilon@infosec.exchange]

A big advantage of home automation / #homeassistant is that you can remotely mess up and accidentally defrost your fridge because somehow the smart plug it is connected to is turned off while applying a software update. Bonus points for doing so while away for multiple weeks. Ask me how I know.

I’ll have to write an automation that sends me a notification when the plug is turned off, for a sanity check, I guess.

Also, I should stop applying updates while away from home.

[timwardcam@c.im]

@hacksilon I had to add something to my central heating controls to synchronise the state of a relay to what it should be when the power came back on. Which I think would also work if a software updated interrupted an automation or something. But you can, indeed, only do this if you realise that you need to.

#HomeAssistant

[codechimp@mastodon.online]

@hacksilon You can get smart plugs that monitor power only on Ali Express or wire in a Shelly PM Mini that again only monitors. I went with the shelly for fear of this exact scenario.

Also shameless plug for my HACS helper for easy automation when you have several critical things.

https://github.com/andrew-codechimp/HA-Label-State

[nocalla@mastodon.ie]

@hacksilon many smart plugs come with a default setting for what happens when it resets/loses power, so perhaps setting this to On by default would have prevented this.

[jtig@infosec.exchange]

@hacksilon non-critical remote maintenance is a hobby of mine too. The more remote and consequences when failing, the better.