Internet Things

Simplenote

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Screenshot of the web version of Simplenote

Last year, I decided to switch my go-to note-taking app to Simplenote. For years, I’ve used Evernote, which is a very powerful app that lets you capture web pages, scan documents, save voice notes and link notes to events on a calendar. Which, is great if you need those features.

I don’t. I just needed somewhere to keep track of ideas, lists and important notes. And so really Evernote was overkill for what I used – its apps are huge and it can be slow to open, especially on the web. The same applies to Microsoft’s OneNote – both it and Evernote are big, powerful apps that incorporate way more features than I need.

Simplenote, meanwhile, is just what it says it is – a simple app for taking notes. There are apps for all common platforms, and its web interface offers the same features. Furthermore, the official apps are open source, and there’s an open API, so you can use third-party apps as well. ResophNotes is a very lightweight app for Windows, for example.

You can use Markdown, so when you enable a preview mode, any headers, list items etc will show up with formatting. You can also add tick-boxes next to any list items, so that you can tick off items on a shopping list, for example.

Your notes are kept in sync across your devices, and the service is free to use.

I’ve found that I’m much happier using Simplenote, and make more notes as a result. When you’re easily distracted like I am (squirrel!), being able to keep track of important information is really useful.

Broadband speeds

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Speedtest.net results from our Vodafone broadband

So last month, we switched our broadband to Vodafone, which also meant that our internet speeds increased from about 30-40 Mbps to around 70-80 Mbps (as per the above Speedtest.net result).

80 Mbps is sadly the fastest speed that we can probably get here. I live in Sowerby Bridge, a small town in the Calder Valley and our options for internet access are limited. In some respects, we’re lucky to have access to Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC). This means that the cables providing fixed line broadband internet are fibre optic as far as a metal box a couple of streets away. But the cables from that box to our house are a series of thin, copper cables, and current VDSL2 technology means that much higher speeds are unlikely to be possible.

Over Christmas, we stayed with my parents in York. Being a bigger and more affluent city, there are more options available for broadband internet. In addition to the FTTC service provided by BT Openreach, there’s also:

  • Cable broadband from Virgin Media. These cables were laid in the 1990s by Bell CableMedia, which became Cable & Wireless, then NTL, and finally Virgin Media. Whilst they’re also an FTTC solution, the cables from the cabinet to the home include a much larger coaxial cable.
  • Full fibre broadband from Sky and TalkTalk. York’s streets and pavements were dug up again in the late 2010s to install a FTTH (Fibre to the Home) network, which takes fibre optic cables all the way into people’s homes.

My parents have had cable broadband since this became available in the early 2000s. Initially this was just 512 Kbps, but speeds have increased over the years, and this was the test result whilst I was there at Christmas:

Virgin Media broadband test result

So my parents get broadband speeds that are six times faster for downloads, and nearly three times faster for uploads. And if they wanted to, they could switch to a FTTC broadband solution that could easily double those speeds.

Here in Sowerby Bridge, our best hope for faster broadband is that CityFibre bring their FTTC network in a few years time. So far they’ve installed fibre optic cables in Pye Nest, which is the community between Halifax and Sowerby Bridge, but their web site says there are currently no plans to reach us. Virgin Media did install some cables nearby a few years ago, but they seemed to bypass our street unfortunately.

There is wireless broadband to consider, but we get a weak 4G signal as we’re in a steep valley. 5G is available up the hill in Halifax and may make it down here in future. But, for now, I think 80 Mbps on a fixed line is the best that I can expect.

Avatars

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Photo of Neil Turner wearing a Steampunk inspired outfit.

Recently, I’ve started using the above image as my ‘avatar’ – the photo of me that I use online when prompted to upload a profile photo. It’s a photo of me from a recent Sci Fi Weekender, wearing a Steampunk-style top hat with goggles.

Over the years, I’ve used a variety of different avatars to represent myself, and I’ve generally kept these in one Dropbox folder. So it offers an opportunity to look back at the different images I have used, going all the way back to the days of MSN Messenger.

2003

The oldest one I can find is this one, taken in my first year of university (2003) and before I had sideburns. I probably think I looked really cool wearing sunglasses indoors. Teenagers, eh.

If you’re so inclined, you can view the full-size version on Flickr.

WeeMee

In the early 2000s, there was a site called WeeWorld that let you create a ‘WeeMee’ using a Flash applet, and this was mine. I used this as my avatar quite a lot, especially on MSN Messenger. I’ve brought the rather brief blog post I wrote at the time back from the web archive.

A South Park avatar

South Park

There was also a Flash applet on the South Park web site which allowed you to create your likeness, as if you appeared in the TV show. Again, I used this quite a bit at the time. Sadly, the image generator seems to have disappeared, and no-one uses Adobe Flash nowadays anyway.

2009

The next oldest one I can find that is actually a photo of me (and not, for example, a jar of Chicken Tonight or a hamster) was taken in May 2009, around the time of my 25th birthday. I was on a trip to Wales with the university hiking club, and this was taken outside the camping barn that we were staying in. I was also newly single.

2010

I used this photo, taken by my then-girlfriend, now-wife Christine on the beach at Morecambe, as my ‘work’ profile picture, and on LinkedIn, right up until 2010. I still wear the shirt and jacket regularly, even though Christine informs me that the jacket doesn’t really fit me any-more. I’ve had it since 1998 as it has my year 10 form number on the label.

2013

This one was taken at Leeds Central Library, which had a small Steampunk exhibition, and a dressing up box from their archives for people to try on. This was also about the time when fezzes were cool, so of course I had to have a photo.

2014

The next image that I used a lot was this one of me holding a barn owl, taken in the summer of 2014. Christine and I were visiting Blackpool Zoo, and we paid a little extra to have an owl experience. We got to fly the owls for a little bit, and, of course, pose for photos.

2020

Finally, a new work profile photo, taken in early 2020 and before the pandemic meant that we spent most of the rest of the year working at home. This was taken by a colleague at work, and we all had similar photos taken to use on our web site. Before you start searching for it, I’m afraid the page has been taken down. This is still the profile picture I use at work and on LinkedIn.

2021

And finally to the image I used most recently, before the one at the top of the page, taken in summer 2021 a few days after I started wearing glasses. This was taken in our front garden using a selfie stick. The shirt and glasses are the same in my newest ‘Steampunk’ avatar; Christine and I have a whole thing about pineapples which will make sense if you’re familiar with John Robertson‘s show The Dark Room.

2023, quantified

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An AI generated image of a business woman standing in front of a series of charts with '2023' at the top

Okay, so we’re in 2024 now, but I’m taking inspiration from Diamond Geezer‘s Summing Up 2023 blog post to post some statistics on things that I’ve done during 2023.

Countries and counties visited

In 2023, I’ve visited two countries: England, obviously, and France.

Over the course of the year, I have spent at least some time in the following English counties:

  • West Yorkshire
  • North Yorkshire
  • South Yorkshire
  • Lincolnshire
  • Greater Manchester
  • Lancashire
  • Cheshire
  • Leicestershire
  • Northamptonshire
  • Norfolk
  • Hertfordshire
  • Surrey
  • Hampshire

This doesn’t include any counties that I have passed through without stopping.

Most distant points

The furthest compass points I have been to are:

  • Furthest North: RHS Harlow Carr, near Harrogate, North Yorkshire
  • Furthest South: Futuroscope, near Poitiers, France
  • Furthest East: Great Yarmouth, Norfolk
  • Furthest West: Chester Zoo, Cheshire

I think it’s fair to say that I didn’t go very far north in 2023. We will be going further north this year, but are unlikely to go as far south as we don’t have an international holiday planned.

Methods of transport used

I have driven quite a bit this year. As my car’s MOT is due each autumn, I can only estimate the mileage, but I reckon it’s around 10,000 miles over the course of the year. Quite a bit of that was in France.

Train travel has been almost exclusively to and from work – indeed, I’ve only visited four railway stations this year, and every train has been a diesel-powered train. This includes the one heritage railway that I’ve been on, which was the short remaining section of the Derwent Valley Light Railway at Murton Park, near York.

I’ve been on two trams in Manchester, and a few buses, both locally and in Leeds and York. Plus, ferries for getting to and from France. I have not been on an aeroplane since 2015.

Music listened to

My full 2023 last.fm stats are not yet available, but over the year I have scrobbled 13,194 tracks – just 254 less than in 2022. That’s an average of 36 songs per day. Assuming each song is an average of 3 minutes, that’s 39,582 minutes over the year, or 659.7 hours or around 27.5 days. In other words, I spent almost a month listening to music last year.

Whilst I don’t exclusively listen to music on Spotify, on there, pop was my top genre, following by trance, rock, pop dance and Europop this year, according to my Spotify Wrapped. My most-listened to song was ‘Shut Up and Dance’ by Walk The Moon, which I listened to 12 times. To be fair, it is a good song.

Unsurprisingly, Within Temptation was my top artist – I own six of their albums and I’ve seen them live twice.

Books read and listened to

As mentioned in my favourite things of 2023, I read 93 books this year, which adds up to over 20,000 pages according to My Goodreads Year In Books. The shortest book I read was ‘How I Proposed to my Wife: An Alien Sex Story’ by John Scalzi (sponsored link), which was 26 pages long, and the longest was ‘What Just Happened?!’ by Marina Hyde (sponsored link). The printed edition is 472 pages, although I listened to the audiobook instead which is 17 hours long. Not the longest audiobook I’ve ever listened to (that was ‘American Gods’ by Neil Gaiman – sponsored link), but certainly one of the longer ones. Overall, the average length of the books I read was 220 pages.

Beers and ciders consumed

I log the beers and ciders that I drink using Untappd, and this year I consumed 35 such drinks (a decrease from 58 in 2022). Of those, 13 were from Brewdog, which may have something to do with what I got for Christmas in 2021. Several of these were non-alcoholic beers and ciders.

Steps taken

I’ve had my Fitbit Versa 3 on my wrist almost all of the time this year, and have taken a total of 3,695,427 steps – an average of just over 10,000 per day. It also estimates that I have climbed 11347 floors, walked 2,717.1 km and burned 1,079,223 calories through exercise.

Time spent learning French

I started Duolingo’s French course on the 1st January 2022 (so I have a two year streak now), and in 2023, I spent 4,947 minutes learning – that’s 82 hours or an average of 13.5 minutes per day. I also learned 4657 new words in French last year. I’m aiming to complete the French course, which will probably see me well into 2025.

So that’s 2023 quantified. I’m sure I could offer more stats, like photos taken, podcasts listened to etc. if I tracked these throughout the year. As it is, I’m relying on various web services that track data for me that I can refer back to. I wonder how 2024 will compare?

Switching to a new ISP

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Last month, we switched to Vodafone as our new Internet Service Provider (ISP) at home.

We’ve been with Now Broadband (Sky’s budget brand) since autumn 2018, who, at the time, could offer us faster speeds for less money. And they’ve been pretty good; when I was working at home full-time during lockdown, I rarely had any issues. Our bandwidth was sufficient for me to participate in online meetings whilst our (then) four-year-old watched Netflix in another room. Our typical download speeds were in the 35-40 Mbps:

Speedtest.neet results from the 5th November 2023, showing 36.88 Mbps download and 9.35 Mbps upload on our old ISP, Now Broadband

But then Now raised their prices by £9 per month. They probably told us that they would do this, but I have no recollection of being informed in advance.

Finding a new ISP

Meanwhile, Vodafone could offer faster speeds and a new router, for £2 less than Now before the price rise. So, we would be getting a better service, and paying £11 less per month for it than if we stayed with Now.

We used the MoneySavingExpert broadband comparison tool, which showed that Vodafone was the cheapest big name that didn’t have a poor customer service rating. Shell Energy were cheaper, but their customer service isn’t great and they’ve just been taken over by Octopus Energy who don’t currently offer broadband.

I signed up using Quidco (referral link) and should get £82.50 cashback in late spring, so factoring that in, what a savings.

The switchover took a couple of hours, and seemed to happen early in the morning, so by 7am we were already online with Vodafone. And the speeds are much better – around 75 Mbps download and 19 Mbps upload, so almost twice as fast. Considering that this is over DSL, I’m impressed with how fast it is.

Speedtest.neet results from the 21st December 2023, showing 74.11 Mbps download and 18.87 Mbps upload on our new ISP, Vodafone Broadband

The new Vodafone broadband hub is also better than the basic Now broadband router that we had previously. It has four 1 Gbps Ethernet sockets for a start, compared to just two on the Now router; this means I no longer need a separate Ethernet switch. It also looks nicer; it’s free-standing but has mounting holes on the back for screws.

Digital Voice Line

The hub also supports Digital Voice Line, where your phone calls are made over the internet, rather than PSTN. Openreach intend to switch off the analogue phone network in two years time, so switching now is timely. This means that our landline phone plugs into the hub, rather than the micro-filter attached to the master phone socket. That being said, since the switchover, our phone hasn’t actually worked. The fact that it took me several days to realise shows how much we use our landline, but I’ll need to get on to Vodafone to have them look into it.

As with all changes to a new ISP, over the first few weeks there was a little instability with the connection. But it’s settled down now and works well. The other issue I had early on was with connecting to my Raspberry Pi externally, as port forwarding didn’t seem to work properly. This was a bit of a gut punch, considering how much effort it took me to get Home Assistant working with HTTPS, but it seems to be sorted now.

If it’s been a while since you switched your ISP, I would recommend that you do a quick check to see if you can get a better deal elsewhere. Broadband providers make a lot of money from people who just let their contracts auto-renew. Even if you’re happy with your current ISP, you could try haggling with them to see if they can offer you a cheaper package.

Home Assistant with HTTPS and HomeKit

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A screenshot of Home Assistant running in a web browser with HTTPS enabled and no certificate errors

Welcome to the latest chapter of getting Home Assistant working on a Raspberry Pi using Docker. Last time, I’d managed to get it working in Docker, but only over a regular HTTP connection and without HomeKit. The good news is that I’ve solved both of these problems.

Using SWAG to enable HTTPS

Firstly, I recommend reading this paragraph whilst listening to ‘Swagger Jagger’ by Cher Lloyd.

I’ve tried lots of different ways to get Home Assistant working over SSL/TLS. There’s a good reason why this is one of the key selling points of Home Assistant Cloud, as it can be difficult. Thankfully, there’s a Docker image called SWAG (Secure Web Application Gateway) that handles much of the legwork. Once you’ve installed SWAG, follow this guide, and you should find that you can access your Home Assistant setup at https://homeassistant.[yourusername].duckdns.org/ . No need to specify a port, or accept any certificate warnings.

Inside SWAG, there’s a DNS client, which will automatically renew the SSL certificates every 90 days for you, using ZeroSSL or Let’s Encrypt. There’s also nginx, which is used to set up a reverse proxy, and support for dynamic DNS services like DuckDNS.

SWAG has sample configurations for lots of different services, including calibre-web, so I have SSL access to my calibre-web image too. My only issues with it so far were last week when DuckDNS went down on Sunday morning. Most services, like Home Assistant, need to be mounted as subdomains (as above), but others (like calibre-web) can be mounted as subfolders, e.g. https://[yourusername].duckdns.org/calibre-web. This reduces the number of subdomains that you need SSL certificates for; ZeroSSL only offers 3 subdomains for a free account so it’s worth considering subfolders if you want to add more services.

If you have your own domain, then you can also add a CNAME to it to point it at your DuckDNS account, should you wish to use that rather than a [something].duckdns.org address.

Getting Apple HomeKit working

Carrying on the musical theme, here’s ‘Carry Me Home’ by Gloworm, a 90s dance classic which has only recently become available on digital platforms again.

After getting my swagger jagger on and getting HTTPS working, the final issue I’ve been having with Home Assistant is the HomeKit bridge. Adding Home Assistant devices to Apple’s Home app is something that normally works out of the box if you install Home Assistant OS, but takes more work if you use Docker.

The instructions which helped me where these on the Home Assistant forums. You’re going to need to install another Docker image containing avahi; there are several but this one worked for me. It’s bang up to date, unlike the most common Docker image which is, um, 8 years out of date and also only works on x86 machines. Which isn’t much help for my arm64-based Raspberry Pi 4.

Once you’ve installed avahi, added the relevant lines to configuration.yaml in Home Assistant and restarted it, HomeKit should work. To get started, add the HomeKit integration to Home Assistant – you may want to specify which devices will show if you don’t want all of them. Then, use your iPhone or iPad to scan the QR code in your Home Assistant notification panel, and add the bridge. If all goes well, it should immediately tell you that it’s an unsigned device, but will then let you set up each device in turn.

If it just sits there for several minutes and then gives up, you’ll need to do some more digging. Don’t worry, this happened to me too. I suggest downloading the Discovery app, which shows all of the mDNS devices broadcasting on your network. If you can’t see ‘_hap._tcp’ in the list, then there’s a problem. In my case, this turned out to be because my Raspberry Pi wasn’t connected to the same wifi network. It’s plugged in to my ADSL router with a network cable, but we use Google Wifi which results in a ‘double NAT’ situation. Connecting the Raspberry Pi to both wired and wireless connections seemed to fix the issue.

Indeed, as a side effect Home Assistant managed to autodiscover some additional devices on my network, which was nice.

Home Assistant Core in Docker? Done it, mate

All in all, I’ve successfully managed to get Home Assistant to where I want it to be – self-updating in Docker, secure remote access, and a HomeKit bridge so that I can ask Siri to manage my devices. I’m looking forward to being able to turn my heating on whilst driving, for example.

It’s been a challenge, requiring a lot of skimming through the Home Assistant forums and various StackExchange discussions. Ideally, I would have a spare computer to run Home Assistant OS, which would have taken some of the leg work out of this, but I’m happy with the setup. Finding SWAG and getting it to work was a moment of joy, after all the setbacks I’d had before.

Running Home Assistant in Docker and Snap

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A screenshot of the Home Assistant installation instructions for Docker

So, as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I’ve set up Home Assistant (HA) to control the various smart devices that we have around the home. At the time, I just used a snap package, but now I’ve migrated to using Docker, and here’s why.

Firstly, there are some disadvantages of installing Home Assistant using a snap package. Namely:

  1. The snap package isn’t an official release by the Home Assistant project, and is instead built by a third party.
  2. This means that, at time of writing, it’s a couple of releases behind the latest official release.
  3. It also means that it’s not a formally supported way of running Home Assistant, and there are fewer resources out there to help you if you’re stuck.
  4. I had issues updating previously installed custom components from HACS

Meanwhile, there’s an official Home Assistant Docker image that is updated at the same time as new releases, and it’s mentioned in the installation guide.

So, on the whole, Docker is better for running HA than Snap. But I wanted to run HA on my Raspberry Pi 4 which has Ubuntu Core on it, and that only offers Snap. But wait… you can install Docker on Snap, and the Docker Snap package is one maintained by Canonical so it’s regularly updated.

You can see where this is going. What if I install Docker using Snap, and then install Home Assistant into Docker? Well, that’s what I did, and I’m pleased to inform you that it works.

Docker on Snap, step-by-step

If you want to try this yourself, here’s the steps that I followed. However, please be aware that you can’t migrate a Home Assistant setup from Snap to Docker. Whilst HA does offer a backup tool, the option to restore a backup is only available on Home Assistant Operating System, and it seems that manually copying the files across won’t work either. So, if you currently use Snap, you’ll have to set up HA again from scratch afterwards. You’ll also, at the very least, need to run snap stop home-assistant-snap before you start.

  1. Install Docker. You can do this by logging into your machine using SSH and typing in snap install docker.
  2. Enable networking. There’s probably a better way of doing this, but for me, just running chmod 777 /var/run/docker.sock worked.
  3. Install Home Assistant. You’ll need to enter quite a long shell command, which is:
    docker run -d \
    --name homeassistant \
    --privileged \
    --restart=unless-stopped \
    -e TZ=MY_TIME_ZONE \
    -v /PATH_TO_YOUR_CONFIG:/config \
    --network=host \
    ghcr.io/home-assistant/home-assistant:stable
    The two variables in bold will need changing. For ‘MY_TIME_ZONE‘ you’ll need to type in your time zone, which in my case is ‘Europe/London‘, and for ‘PATH_TO_YOUR_CONFIG‘ is a folder where you want your configuration files. I suggest /home/[username]/homeassistant .
  4. Grab a drink, as the installation will take a few minutes, and then open http://[your IP address]:8123 in a web browser. If it’s worked, then you’ll be presented with HA’s onboarding screen.

Again, if you had the HA snap package installed, then if everything’s working with Docker, you’ll need to uninstall any related HA packages (like HACS, toolbox and configurator) and then the home-assistant-snap itself. And then you’ll need to set up all of your devices again. The good news is that, if you decide to move your HA installation to a new machine, you can just migrate the Docker image in future.

Wouldn’t it be better just running Docker?

Okay, so you may be wondering why I’ve set up HA this way. After all, it would probably be easier just to install Raspberry Pi OS Lite and put Docker on that, without using Snap. Well, there’s a method to my madness:

  • I like running Ubuntu Core because it’s so minimalist. It comes with the bare minimum of software installed, which means that there’s less risk of your system being compromised if a software vulnerability is found and exploited.
  • I already have Plex running quite happily in Snap, and didn’t want to have to migrate that as well.

In other words, this was the easiest way of running HA in Docker with my current setup. And I’m happy with it – I’m running the latest version of HA and it seems to work better.

There are a couple of additional steps that I still need to complete, which are:

  • Enabling SSL/TLS for remote access
  • Enabling mDNS broadcasts for Apple HomeKit integration

I’m working on these. Home Assistant Cloud is the easiest way of setting up secure access and I’m considering it. It’s a paid-for service, but it does financially support HA’s development, and seems to much easier than the alternatives. As for mDNS, I’m still working on this, and I imagine there’ll be things I need to tweak in both Docker and Snap to get it to work.

Ghost Signs

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You know those old painted adverts you sometimes see on the side of buildings? York, where I grew up, has a famous one for Bile Beans, due to its prominent location, but there’s also one in Halifax too.

Historic England is building a list of these, with photos and GPS locations, and you can contribute. I’ve added one near where I live in Sowerby Bridge – it’s seen better days, but perhaps in Historic England have a list, then there may be money and resources to restore some of these.

Ianvisits mentioned this last week, and it’s encouraging to have seen the list grow in the days since. It’s not just painted adverts like this that are welcome – signs for old and defunct shops can be added too.

Getting started with Home Assistant

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A screenshot of Home Assistant

A recent project of mine has been to set up Home Assistant, as a way of controlling the various smart devices in our home.

From bridge to assistant

You may remember, back in February, that I had dabbled with Homebridge, a more basic tool which was designed to bridge devices into Apple’s HomeKit universe which aren’t otherwise supported.

I’ve ditched Homebridge, as it didn’t really do what I wanted it to do. If you want to primarily use Apple’s Home ecosystem, but have a few devices which don’t support it, then it’s great. But that doesn’t really apply to our home – although I’m an iPhone and iPad user, I no longer have a working Mac and so I use a Windows desktop, and my wife uses Android devices. Consequently, the only device that we own which natively supports HomeKit is our LG smart TV.

Home Assistant is essentially a replacement for Apple Home, Google Home, Samsung SmartThings and whatever Amazon’s Alexa provides. That means that it provides its own dashboard, and lots of possibilities for automations. But instead of your dashboard being hosted on a cloud server somewhere, it’s on a device in your own home.

Setting it up

Like with Homebridge and HOOBS, you can buy a Home Assistant hub with the software pre-installed. If you already have a device, such as a spare Raspberry Pi, then you can either install HAOS (a complete operating system based around Home Assistant) or just install Home Assistant on an existing system. I chose the latter, and now I have Home Assistant sat on the same device as my Plex Server, using Ubuntu Core and the relevant Snap package.

Once set up, Home Assistant will auto-discover some devices; it immediately found both my ADSL router and my Google Wifi hub using UPnP. You can then add devices yourself. Home Assistant supports way, way more devices than its competitors, due to its hobbyist nature. For example, there’s an IPP integration which means that you can view your printer’s status, including how much ink is left. Despite it being a ‘smart device’ of sorts, Google Home won’t show this in its app. You can also bring in web services like Google Calendar and last.fm.

Some integrations are easier to set up than others though. In most cases, one of the first instructions for setting up an integration is ‘sign up for a developer account with your device manufacturer’. Whilst the instructions are usually quite clear, you’ll find yourself spending lots of time copying and pasting OAuth keys and client secrets to be able to connect your devices. In the case of my Nest Thermostat, this included paying a non-refundable $5 USD charge to access the relevant APIs.

It should also be noted that, whilst Home Assistant does offer integration with Apple HomeKit, I’ve yet to get this to work. Which is ironic as this was the reason why I previously used HomeBridge.

Remote access

Another thing which took some trial and error to get right was enabling remote access. If you want to be able to view and control your devices when you’re out of the home, then there’s a few additional steps you’ll need to complete. These include:

  • Configuring port forwarding on your router
  • Setting up a DNS server

Home Assistant recommends DuckDNS, which is pretty simple and seems to work okay, but again it’s something that requires some technical know-how.

One limitation of using Home Assistant as a Snap on Ubuntu Core is that you can’t use addons, so setting up DuckDNS meant manually editing Home Assistant’s configuration.yaml file. Indeed, some integrations require this, and so it’s worth backing up this file regularly. You can, however, install a separate snap which enables the Home Assistant Community Store (HACS), and this allows you to install additional (but less-well tested) integrations. I initially couldn’t get this to work, but managed to install it literally whilst writing this paragraph.

If you’re willing to pay, then for £6.50 per month, you can get Home Assistant Cloud. As well as providing an income for Home Assistant’s developers, it offers an easier and secure remote access solution, and integrates Google Assistant and Alexa.

Privacy matters

It should also be noted that Home Assistant has a greater focus on privacy. By hosting an IoT hub yourself, you can limit how much data your devices send to cloud servers, which may be in places like China with markedly different attitudes to privacy. Indeed, the integration with my Solax inverter (for our solar panels) connects directly to the inverter, rather than the Solax Cloud service. It’s therefore not surprising that many of the Home Assistant developer team are based in Europe.

Looking to the future, I’m hoping more of my devices will support Matter – indeed, this week, Matter 1.2 was released, adding support for devices like dishwashers. Theoretically, our existing Google Home devices can all be Matter hubs, but none of my other devices yet support it, and may never will. Home Assistant can work with Matter devices, if you buy their SkyConnect dongle, and again, it will mean that more of your device communications can be done within in your home and not using the cloud. That should be faster, and better for privacy.

Overall, I’m quite happy Home Assistant, even though it’s taken a long time to get every device added and some trial and error. I appreciate being able to see (almost) all of my devices on one dashboard, and it feels like I have more oversight and control over the smart devices in our home. I hope that, with greater Matter support, it’ll become easier for less-experienced users to use in future.

My Podcast Diet – August 2018

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Matt Haughey, who has recently quit Twitter and returned to blogging more, has posted about which podcasts he listens to regularly and semi-regularly. It’s a good idea for a blog post, and so I’m going to steal it.

Podcasts that I listen to straightaway

These tend to be topical podcasts that would go stale very quickly.

  • BBC Radio 4 Friday Night Comedy Podcast – whichever show happens to occupying the 1830 Friday comedy slot on BBC Radio 4. Normally this alternates between The News Quiz and The Now Show, but Dead Ringers pops up in summer. Weekly, every Friday, somewhat obviously.
  • The Bugle – topical satirical comedy from Andy Zaltzman and rotating guest hosts filling the gap left by John Oliver (yes, that John Oliver). Weekly, every Friday.
  • The Guilty Feminist – this was the podcast that I saw live in March 2016, which mixes discussion of issues relating to feminism and stand-up comedy. Hosted by Deborah Frances-White with a rotating guest co-host. Weekly, every Monday.
  • Standard Issue Podcast – a magazine style-show covering women’s issues, as well as interviews, women’s sport, and regular features on TV shows and Disney films. Once a month, there’s a ‘gigcast’ with celebrity chats recorded live in front of an audience. Weekly, on Wednesdays, with occasional bonus content at weekends.
  • Reasons to be Cheerful – a new podcast co-hosted by Ed Milliband and Geoff Lloyd, which focuses on a political issue each week.

Podcasts I listen to regularly

  • The Comedian’s Comedian – stand-up comedian Stuart Goldsmith interviews a fellow comic (or comedy group) about how they work. Always enlightening. Weekly, on Mondays, but seemingly on a break at the moment – probably due to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
  • Made of Human – stand-up comedian Sofie Hagen (formally of The Guilty Feminist) interviews people about life and how they handle it. Warm and friendly. Weekly, on Wednesdays.
  • Felicitations – Felicia Day’s relatively new podcast, about what she’s been up to, and parenting. Weekly, on Thursdays, but seemingly on a break at the moment.

Podcasts that I listen to when there’s a new season

These podcasts run as seasons and so new episodes don’t come out all year round, but I listen to them regularly when they’re on.

  • Mrs Brightside – stand-up comedian Susan Calman interviews a fellow celebrity about depression and mental health. Weekly, on Mondays. Series one has just ended, but should be back later in the year.
  • The Infinite Monkey Cage – science podcast co-hosted by Professor Brian Cox and Robin Ince, with a different topic each week. Guests are a mixture of scientists and comedians. Weekly, on Mondays, with new episodes available now.
  • Global Pillage – comedy panel show about diversity, hosted by Deborah Frances-White. Weekly, on Mondays. No new episodes at present.
  • Richard Herring’s Leicester Square Theatre Podcast (RHLSTP) – stand-up comedian Richard Herring interviews a celebrity guest in front of a live audience in London’s Leicester Square Theatre. Weekly, on Wednesdays, back in the autumn.
  • Grownupland – a podcast for millennials about adulting.
  • Newsjack – weekly comedy sketches with an open-door writing policy, so anyone can submit.