Buelldozer

I ordered some sidewalk heating mats from HeatTrak and I want to automate them with HA so that they come on when it makes sense to do so based on the data from my Tempest Weather Station.

According to HeatTrack my mats will have a combined resistive load of 5A which is well within the spec of the Zooz ZEN05 or ZEN14, both rated for 15A resistive loads, but when I asked them about it they did not recommend using either of them with heated mats. They couldn't, or wouldn't, explain why and it doesn't make sense to me why this wouldn't work.

My next thought was to simply swap the outlet to something smart but this is an outdoor outlet so it needs to be GFCI and there's essentially no Z-Wave GFCI outlets made.

Do I really need to use something like an Enbrighten Z-Wave Plus 40-Amp contactor for this or am I missing something here?

I have an automation that turns my driveway lights on when motion is detected. It normally works fairly well but it was windy last night and that caused the automation to trip endlessly as my trees and bushes were whipping around. Lights would come on, shut off 10 minutes later, then turn right back on again. It basically did this all night until I disabled the automation.

I'll do some fine tuning of the motion sensors which will help and I'm considering adding a condition to the automation where it won't trip if the wind speed is above a certain level but how can I add some kind of cool down timer to the automation to prevent it from endlessly engaging?

First the layout. My garage is setup similar to this one, although mine is attached, has three light fixtures, and my driveway is 4 cars wide.

The wife wants me to replace the three basic on / off fixtures that we have (they're getting rusty) and keep them all matching. If I'm going to do this I want to add a camera to the setup.

Functionally I'd like the lights to have or work like they have dual bright capability where they come on full bright at sunset then after a couple of hours they dim down unless they detect motion. If they detect motion then they come back to full bright for a period of time then dim back down again. They do this for a set period of hours, say 4, then they turn off completely unless they detect motion.

My current lights are already automated for on / off (but not dimming or motion) through the use of HA and a z-wave switch.

Where I'm getting stuck is that I can see at least three ways to do this but none of them are perfect.

1. Replace my dumb carriage fixtures with new dumb fixtures then change the switch to a dimming version plus add a motion sensor and camera out front. Then setup HA for the functionality I want. The upside of doing it this way is that it's very easy to get matching fixtures. The downside is that the motion sensor and camera will not be well integrated visually.

2. Replace my dumb fixtures with ones that have dual bright built in. It's easy to do, and I could even keep the HA Automation I have setup now, but again the camera setup is not going to integrate well visually. I'm also concerned that three motion sensors controlling three lights will cause trouble for the camera (or each other) because they will react to different things and turn themselves on and off independently.

3. Replace my dumb fixtures with smarter ones. In the center position I'd use one that has an integrated motion sensor and camera. This Reolink seems like it would work pretty well. However RL doesn't make any fixtures that match it, which means my center fixture would look different than the other two.

I may just have to deal with mismatched fixtures but does anyone have any suggestions? Am I missing an option?

The U.S. House of Representatives has one voting member for every 747,000 or so Americans. That’s by far the highest population-to-representative ratio among a peer group of industrialized democracies, and the highest it’s been in U.S. history.

Radically expanding the House of Representatives would help solve some of the biggest problems facing Congress and, by extension, the country.

The next step in my HA journey is adding cameras; indoor, outdoor, and doorbell so I've been exploring my options. I had originally intended to do a Frigate setup, I even have a Coral module and PC to do it with, but then I discovered Reolink.

Without having any experience with them they look nearly ideal. They seem to have tight integration with HA 2023.3 or later and their pricing and functionality look good.

They seem like a no brainer but I've noticed that they're often NOT the first recommendation in the HA Community. Why is that and why shouldn't I use them?

UDMP is running UniFi OS 3.1.16 and I need a specific VPN configuration that StrongSwan supports but isn't possible to do in the GUI. Three years ago the files I need were located in /run/strongswan/ipsec.d/tunnels/ but they are no longer there. Does anyone know where they live now -or- how to edit a VPN config outside of the GUI?

The state’s top energy office has recommended two energy projects for a combined $19 million in support from a Wyoming taxpayer-funded program established to provide matching dollars for federal energy and carbon capture grants.

Some $9.1 million would go to the Sweetwater Carbon Storage Hub in southwest Wyoming, and $10 million would support a “nuclear microreactor” effort to assess the manufacture and deployment of small-scale nuclear reactors in the state and beyond, according to the Wyoming Energy Authority, which manages the Energy Matching Funds program on behalf of the governor.

The awards, pending Gov. Mark Gordon’s final approval, would be the first appropriations from the state program. The Legislature created the fund last year with a $100 million allotment and added another $50 million to it earlier this year. The idea is to give Wyoming-based clean- and low-carbon energy projects a competitive edge by providing matching funds needed to land federal dollars available via the Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure, Investment and Jobs Act.