CIRCLE WITH A DOT

@smallsolar I’m not sure about plug in solar around here. If I were prepared to invest the time (and probably some money on interconnects), moving the 5kWh of LiFePO4 batteries, 3kVA inverter and charge controller out of our RV would be the best route. Just don’t know if the savings would justify the cost / hassle.

@smallsolar right, but it doesn’t need to fully charge the EV, just absorb what the solar panels have produced that day so it doesn’t go to waste.

The challenge is that $0.80/day over the course of the summer is only going to be around $150 so I need to avoid spending too much to make this happen else I lose my savings.

For context, we’re mid-build on a custom all-electric Passive House in Vermont and plan to add solar / batteries to it in future so this would only be short term

@smallsolar mounting is relatively easy. Half of them are already mounted to a pair of 2x4s that we can use as a stand - we have plenty of space to lay them out.

The obvious place to put the energy is our EV but that’s out during the day when it’s sunny. I think the solution (for us) would be to use the RV as a buffer (it has 5kWh of lithium batteries) during the day, then “empty” that into the EV each evening.

My math says that’s about $0.80 worth per day on average in summer.

@smallsolar we have 8x 100W solar panels that used to be on the roof of our RV. I’d love to be able to use them for the house, just not yet figured out how to best leverage the energy they generate without some complex tie-in / battery setup.

@happyborg it’s a little more comprehensive than what you asked for, but it does cover the needs: Outline Wiki. We use it for everything relating to the house, construction, garden, etc. It’s not the best on mobile, but it’s perfectly usable.

@brouhaha or more worryingly, they decided that the technique worked (she allowed hers to connect eventually!) so they rolled it out more broadly.

I really feel like a nag message like that should be grounds for a warranty claim or return.

@MichDdev I feel like "it shouldn't be this hard" is a sentiment I've run into often during this house build. We want high quality appliances, and as much as possible we want them integrated into Home Assistant. But local access only - no cloud access.

My only "failure" so far is my F-150 Lightning which uses its own cellular connection for the app. Although I did manage to get a spare key fob and hack it into an ESP32 to give me local-only lock, unlock and remote starting.

@me_valentijn woah, that's insane! When you say it was scanning, what was it doing exactly? I should double check that my IoT network has device isolation on to stop it scanning even its own VLAN, although it's not going to find much (or be able to do anything with that information) if it does scan!

@jrconlin @JCBlubaugh I do hope it won't do that. If it does, I'll have a look to see if I can do anything to stop it (e.g. spoofing some of its endpoints, or maybe giving it very restricted access), or perhaps even return the TV.

@brouhaha I'm really hoping that won't be the case. From the research I did, it shouldn't happen, but if it does I'll strongly consider returning the TV. Although I'm not sure I have many other options....

@mcr314 at the moment just see the status of the TV (on / off), turn it on / off, adjust the volume. Once I plug in some HDMI sources, it might be able to switch between them, not sure.

Honestly, on / off status and switching is all I really need - I mean, it's about all the TV can actually do!

@JCBlubaugh I did quite a lot of research to find a TV that wouldn’t mind being dumb but that I could control via Home Assistant. It’s surprisingly hard!

@leffe that’s essentially what I’ve done. I use OPNsense as my router / firewall so the TV is configured on a VLAN that has no internet access.

@trib my plan exactly! My Apple TV is plugged in elsewhere right now but I’ll be moving it over soon so wanted to get the TV ready.

@trib turning it on and off, and changing the volume are the only features right now. Not sure if more will appear once I plug in an HDMI source. But I don’t really need much more.

@KZ4LN it’s actually not making any NTP attempts. It’s trying its time server on port 443. I think it’s using it for a health check more so than anything else. Or maybe it would try NTP if it got a successful response.

Oh, and in case anyone is interested in a TV that can be isolated from the internet yet integrated with Home Assistant, it's a Samsung QN32Q8FAAFXZA 32" TV.

It's hitting my DNS server once every 2 seconds for a CDN domain, and every 12 seconds for a time domain. Before I blocked those DNS queries, it was attempting (and failing) to reach them on port 443.

I wonder if this still works: https://syntaxslinger.com/posts/tricking-samsung-tvs-into-thinking-they-have-internet/ or if it will fail due to an invalid HTTPS certificate.... I've not seen it fall back to port 80.

It's not really hurting anything the way it is though, so no big deal.

#dns #mitm

Oh no! /s

What a joyous sight! Our new Samsung TV will never see the outside world. It's connected to our network via ethernet, locked on a VLAN so Home Assistant can connect to it, but it can see nothing except my local DNS server (for now).

I've preemptively blocked its WiFi MAC address in case anyone ever accidentally tries to "help" by connecting it to the WiFi.

Fully working with Home Assistant. Dumb screen otherwise. Perfect.

#homeassistant #samsung #tv #opnsense #firewall #privacy

@ai6yr @TeeCeeGee @vfrmedia @OrdRadical @intrepidhero we had to change our well pump last week (our plans changed and we needed a pump with more head). Since we installed the last one, it was an easy job. Took a few hours from start to finish. We had all the tools to pull the old one, remove it, wire and plumb in the new one, drop it down, and shock the well. No contractors. No scheduling. No hassle.