Avid Amoeba

I second the smart switch strategy, especially when using a fixture with several bulbs.

As for ZigBee however, I’ve been using Home Assistant Yellow with its built-in ZigBee radio and ZHA, and it’s been flawless. Any issues I’ve have been a matter of reinforcing the network by adding a few smart plugs. I got over 60 devices hooked to it at the moment. Z-Wave has been just as problem-free. The really nice thing about having a Z-something network is the ability to use low power devices like battery powered sensors and switches/controls. Want a smart doorbell that plays a chime on all speakers and sends you a phone notification? Stick any ZigBee button to the outside of your door and program the automation. Its battery lasts two years.

The high CRI Philips Ultra Definition bulbs with a smart dimmer. I use them with a Z-Wave Leviton but there’s ZigBee options too if you don’t have a Z-Wave radio. Those bulbs make the most beautiful light… I use the warm ones 2700K or so because they’re the best for the eyes. It seems Cree and Feit also have high CRI bulbs but I haven’t tried them.

I think the really useful idea here is solving the scaling issue by limiting the source sites to a known good set. 95% of the time I am not looking for results from unknown sites. In fact I actively work to get information from the sites I trust.

Sir, every professional developer knows there’s never time and people to maintain the testing environment so testing is done in production! That testing environment you’re dreaming of is missed shareholder value.

USB 3 should be plenty fast. Even 4-disks per port do 600MB/s. Get some USB-SATA adapters, or a multibay box, or some enclosures, and a USB hub. I was running 2 4-bay boxes on 2 USB 3 5Gb ports with 8-disk RAIDz2. Peaks at 1.3GB/s.

I used to use R7800s. Then switched to UAP AC Pro / U6 Pro. Today just tested the OpenWrt One.

• The R7800 (on OpenWrt) is superb, fast, reliable. Can’t say anything bad about it. One of the most successful wireless platforms I’ve used. Probably the best implementation of this chipset too.
• The UAP AC Pro / U6 Pro perform better than the R7800. They have significantly better radio performance. The range is longer, coverage is uniform, performance is more consistent within the covered area. Adding a local Unifi controller (can be done in Docker) adds some nice wireless and management features like band steering. They don’t work well for bridging / mesh though. I had to run a bridge at some point and a set of Unifi had significant latency spikes, making it bad for gaming and other low-latency applications. A R7800-to-R7800 wireless bridge in the same application was superb with consistently low latency. Unifi can be had for cheaper second hand. Lots of corpos have them and old units get dumped upon upgrades.
• The OpenWrt One, through my very limited testing shows great performance in good radio conditions. Once you put some obstacles for the signal, performance degrades much quicker than Unifi U6 Pro. In a particular test where the Unifi achieved 50Mbps, the OpenWrt One did 1.5Mbps. I haven’t compared it to an R7800. I don’t know if it would perform any better with different antennas.

Before that I’ve used R7000, WZR-300HP, WL-500g, WRT54G/L, among others, but none of these are relevant today. :D

This like most plugs in this format is not for inductive loads so it can only handle 300W with such:

It might be OK if the AC units are small enough.

New leak sensors that don’t take magic incantations to connect when?