As stated the outlet should be protected by GFCI so the moisture causing a short circuit or a personal electrical hazard shouldn’t be an issue.

However from a humidity standpoint with the electronic components, most company’s will say something to the effect of no more that a certain humidity operating environment. Using the plug in the bathroom could theoretically shorten the life of the plug or cause undesirable operation.

If you own your home you may be able to get one of the in the wiring box controllers like the Sonoff ZBMINIR2’s and use that to switch the outlet. This will absolutely depend on a couple factors and I am not an electrician. I also haven’t worked with the GFCI outlets much but regular outlets can have the plugs separated with one of them being always on and the other being switched. I have split an outlet and will probably do something similar in some others and plan to have one in my bathroom for charging my toothbrush and shaver. With the cover in place there should be little to no change in humidity in the box.

I am using AFCI/GFCI breakers on all bedroom and wet location circuits so it’s not an issue for me. That is also an option since you would still keep the required protection and be able to use an old school outlet. I’ve seen and replaced the GFCI outlets that begin to catch fire when they are heavily loaded, I also wonder if they die seemingly for no reason due to bathroom humidity getting inside through the prong openings. Either way using the breakers let’s me use the heavy duty outlets in the bathroom since ladies and their hair tools have no issues with the outlets being loose all the time and they are rated for a full 20 amps for the flame throwing hair dryer.

I don’t know. Just remember reading some headlines somewhere. Was playing the other day and people arguing back and forth in the chat ending up dead almost instantly the whole match and watching the wallhackers do their thing. I uninstalled the game not long after, if I want to play with a bunch of hacks being used I’d rather go onto counter strike source where there are people actively banning the hackers than to be at the mercy of the other team kicking them which never seems to happen.

There was a huge deal maybe a month ago where valve announced a huge fix for VAC that removed a ton of cheats.

Hopefully it will last longer than the fixes they made for CS2…

I highly suggest setting up a usb flash drive with Ubuntu and booting it up to know the exact specs. Without that it could just be a paperweight.

1. To “fix your life” you need to decide what is broken, make a plan, and stick to it.

2. If you have mental health issues you need to address them. However an issue doesn’t just mean you can just blame that and do nothing, basically that means go to #1.

3. Saying you are just bad at something and then not following through is a copout. You forget calendars and lists? You forget your cell phone in random places and then have to replace it too then right? No. Well any modern smart phone has a calendar and a to do list. Again return to #1.

4. The next big one most people state is they don’t have the time. Again it’s a copout unless you are working 80 hours a week or have a multi hour daily commute. The truth is you don’t make the time, see statement #1.

I’m dealing with the same stuff with my adult stepson. He works about 20 hours per week and complains about his job but won’t take the steps to learn new skills or get a driver’s license. There are 168 hours a week, in those 168 hours an average person sleeps 56 hours. That means there are 112 hours per week you are awake, subtract the number of hours you work and then figure out how many you are currently wasting to play games and watch TV or just goof off. Divide that time in half and dedicate that time to doing the crap you don’t like doing and get it done, then go learn a skill that will put you in a better job or make your life better.

You have a lot of choices in life, but through action or inaction you make a decision. You can either make better decisions or accept the results of the decisions you make.

It might sound harsh but the world isn’t going to hold your hand like a toddler, it is however going to kick you square in the face a few times. And believe me I know exactly how it feels.

Them sacrificing to have you is a copout. THEY made a decision and the result was your birth. After that they had a responsibility and I’m guessing they despised it. Then they took it out on you.

I’m assuming that your sibling was treated better/differently from you and given me opportunities.

Get some counseling and prepare to tell them that either the BS stops or you are moving on without them. This is especially important if you are already out on your own. All healthy relationships are give and take but the biggest key is healthy boundaries, if you set a boundary that abusive communication will to be tolerated and that you are prepared to move on without them they will be shocked and begin trying to argue with you and insult you. At that point walk away without saying a word. Break contact initially for at least a month and after that if they have contacted and seem apologetic make contact again with reinforce your boundary and the consequences.

If they truly care they will make an effort to be decent. If they continue being abusive the odds they are ever going to change is low and you then need to make a decision on whether or not their being in your life is something you want to continue with.

And go out and make some friends. Build a support system that will be there when you need it and understand that you also need to be willing to support them. I broke contact around 2002 and never got help or really made friends. I’m also very bad at dealing with people because of it.

Instead of dwelling on it find something to make your life better. When my wife passed away I learned to SCUBA dive and bought some gear so I didn’t need to worry about renting. Being under water for me is one of the best feelings I’ve ever felt, the world slows down and I can just live in the moment.

I honestly wish I could be in the water at least one a week but right now I can’t manage it.

I dreamed and wished I was and that some loving family would find out and come take me away.

Found out when I was 20 that my mother hated my existence. She told me how she “had her whole life planned out” and then she had me. Probably explains all the crap I went through a a child. My father was never really in the picture but she had multiple abusive boyfriends around over the years.

For me to not be my mother’s child I would had to have been taken pretty early on or switched at birth. I have memories to about 18 months old. Doesn’t matter now. Learned later on in life that blood doesn’t mean family.

I’m still here and kicking.

Reminds me of my buddy. He had cancer but loved me so much. He kept me going when my wife died.

Maybe that’s a thing where you area at then. I’ve worked with heating units that have a simple temp probe and a manual dial that I converted to be “smart” by taking the outdoor temperature into account and then ramp the supply temperature up as the outdoor temp went down. This was a system that supplied hot water to radiators in an apartment building that was converted from a hotel. We replaced a pair of steam engine sized steam boilers to a direct fire hot water system by replacing the steam to water heat exchanger.

EVERY system I’ve worked on was the same, short the wires and it turns on. Anything beyond that is controlled by the heating unit. A simple thermostat just puts in the call by allowing the power to flow. When a system had multiple wires i.e. Heat and Cool plus fan you have 4 or more wires depending on the system capabilities. One supplies power or ground the others control fan, heat, or cool by being shorted to the power or ground wire. Sometimes there are multiple stages that are controlled by the thermostat sometimes they are controlled by the HVAC units built in controller. But MILLIONS of homes and businesses in the US work in a similar fashion and even without a thermostat installed a tech can short the needed wires and make them work.

https://home.howstuffworks.com/home-thermostat.htm

The power being provided to the unit is just a side effect. More than likely 24vdc and a set of contacts. If you were to wire a simple toggle switch in and flip it on the heat would turn on.

I’ve dealt with hundreds of thermostats they all work in a similar fashion the new ones just use multiple relays with a single power wire. The old school thermostats just used bimetal contacts or clock springs with a mercury relay. Modern ones use electromechanical or solid state relays. This includes things like the nest thermostats.

An ESP8266 running ESPHome and a relay would work here. It’s basically on or off. Then you could pull temperature information in from multiple temp sensors around your home.

I do something similar for some solar air heaters I built.

HomeAssistant will run on a Raspberry pi just fine but don’t expect to run a bunch of add-ons that way and things like Frigate with a few cameras will not work very well. So if you are not sure what you will be running in the future a mini pc is a good idea then you can install most any add-ons you like. The only thing you will need to pickup is a USB adapter for zigbee, z-wave, matter, or Bluetooth and if you decide to run cameras a Google Coral for object detection. You can run HomeAssistant using Docker however you will need to manage this much more than using HAOS. Unless you really want to deal with nitty gritty stuff you will lyrically want to use the HAOS version, https://community.home-assistant.io/t/home-assistant-installation-methods/207703

While HomeAssistant has features for automatically doing things you will probably want to install NodeRed for more complex automations. It’s well worth it especially if you want something randomized. I use it to select my porch RGB LED strip sequences randomly as well as my RGB LED address light sequence. They come on automatically at sundown and change or turn off at specific times throughout the evening. The porch strip changes to a bright white when a motion sensor is triggered or when a tracked device comes into the home zone.

I started of using 100% wifi based this and built all of my sensors based on ESP8266’s and ESP32’S using ESPHome. I’ve recently started adding zigbee since flashing stuff over is getting more difficult/nearly impossible outside of a few wifi based devices. I actually started using Sonoff ZBMINIR2’s for switches and plugs, the “switch” legs on the ZBMINIR2 can accept high voltage but when wired through a switch alone they are only 5v dc so I’ve used a couple to make in line cord switches with some simple push buttons in a hobby box for some lights I have. I’ve also installed them in receptacle boxes and turned a single outlet into a zigbee switched one. I’m using a sonoff zigbee dongle-e with ZHA as my coordinator and so far is been working perfectly.

Adding a zigbee device using ZHA is as simple as opening up HomeAssistant going to the settings/devices/zigbee and clicking on add device. Set the name and location and you are done unless you need to change a setting in the device. The ZBMINIR2’s by default are setup to work with toggle switches but can be used with intermittent pulse buttons as well by just changing a setting for the particular device.

My RGB LED strips are controlled using ESP32’s and WLED. My front porch strip is u hay under 1500 individual pixels and my address numbers are about 100.

I currently track my power usage with ESPHome on an ESP32 with CircuitSetup’s split phase energy meter kit. But hopefully in the next couple months I will have an Enphase system in place that will handle the majority of that along with solar production. I also have a simple water meter with a pulse output connected to an ESP8266 that feeds data into HomeAssistant as well.

If you are looking for premade sensors you can find a ton of different ones that are available for zigbee or z-wave but if there is something special you want search what ESPHome supports and add them in. I actually track vehicle battery voltage at home using an ESP8266 and ESPHome.

One of the potential issues if you live in town with a lot of WiFi AP’s around you is that some of the zigbee channels can overlap with WiFi frequencies in the upper 2.4ghz range (channel 11 mainly) so that can cause some issues with stuff that is further from your coordinator, however many zigbee devices when hooked to mains power will also act as relays so it’s simple enough to add a ZBMINIR2 to a switch at an in between point. I’ve honestly never had an issue and I run multiple WiFi AP’s in my own home and have neighbors with a couple routers. Z-wave is not the same but I believe the devices run a bit more and z-wave is a part of the matter/thread ecosystem and has a much longer range (up to 800 meters) but runs slower as it’s in the 900mhz range. I highly suggest taking a look at the protocols and compare them for your particular needs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-Wave#Comparison_to_other_protocols

A small note about long range wireless signals. Having something that can operate 800 meters away since great, but remember there will be someone who also thinks it may be fun to try and hack stuff and the further your signal reaches the more chances it will be spotted. Years ago I used to encourage people to secure their ap’s by changing the SSID to something very colorful and change the passwords.

I’ve found that the trauma actually causes hyper awareness and it’s not uncommon. https://www.simplypsychology.org/hypervigilance.html

Also while it has its risks similar risk is associated with many activities, but diving is generally a group activity and stresses the buddy system to reduce those risks. A properly trained diver who has certified to depth over multiple dives is probably safer diving that getting on the highway in a vehicle with hundreds of random people of dubious skill and training.

My plan is also to overtrain. There are operations out there who pump out divers who do not have good training and later on need retraining. My class sizes will be no more than two, always. Because I’m not doing the training for profit I can spend as much time as needed to go over all of the little details and train them with the knowledge a rescue certified diver would have in their arsenal with them only being open water certified.

I’m also planning to mainly deal with people who have been referred to me by counseling services or other therapy programs. Funding for non-profits is difficult to begin with so training and equipping a random person who makes claims of abuse isn’t likely to happen.

https://www.doghousediving.org/the-doghouse-diving-vision/frequently-asked-questions-and-the-answers/

What you need to get started is training. Dive certification will run around 500. You can find some shops that charge a bit less and some that charge more. The biggest thing in the agency alphabet soup is to find a shop that truly teaches and then plan to do advanced certification as well. If you can travel to do the Advanced Open Water certification do it, a week somewhere warm with some diving is worth it.

Things you should really buy: mask, fins, and snorkel. Buy it before you start the class. You can go on Amazon and buy any cheap mask and snorkel set where the mask has a tempered glass lens/lenses. Skip the dry top snorkel, they don’t really do much other than cause issues (I have a design for one that would be amazing but need to prototype it first and don’t have the ability/funding right now.)

For fins you need a scuba fin, I prefer ones made for dive boots rather than barefoot ones. Then you can walk around in the dive boots and have more grip and a little protection vs being barefoot. The fins I use are Cressi Pro Light but if I was to buy a set today I would look at the SEAC Propulsion S. And buy yellow or orange fins, trust me.

After that a dive computer is a really smart buy. You have a couple choices there and they can get expensive. A good basic computer is the Cressi Leonardo series or the Mares Puck Pro + Series. I started started with the Mares Puck Pro and just updated to the Mares Quad CI but will use the Puck Pro as a backup. You can use the app that comes with the dive computer but if you use Android and want to keep all your logs in one place even if you change computers (and you probably will if you get started) DiveMate is worth it. It works with tons of dive computers and you can still have signatures in your logs. I haven’t used paper logs since my first certification. If money is no object the Garmin Descent Mk3i is one I (and many others) have drooled over.

Next is BCD and Regulator set. I’m looking at the Scubapro Hydros Pro with Air2 for my next BCD. Regulator I would suggest is the Scubapro MK25 with the G260. I use the MK20 with the G250, it’s a tank and works great. Grab a console with depth gauge and pressure gauge as well, if you can get one with a compass as well all the better.

Go learn to SCUBA dive. Being 100 feet under water is amazing.

My wife passed away February 28th 2019 and I was lost in life. I wandered into a shop and was certified to dive on June 16th after a few classes. By January 16th 2020 I was Advanced Open Water certified and on June 28th I was Rescue certified. I actually want to become certified to instruct and use my underwater videos to pay for teens and young adults who have survived sexual abuse to become certified to dive and hopefully be able to provide them a set of gear.

I personality am a survivor of mental, physical, and sexual abuse. Diving has been the best thing in my life and in less than 100 dives I have seen things that people with thousands of dives haven’t. It has also helped my mental health more than anything else I’ve ever tried. Now I just want to be in the water every chance I get.

Then it’s time to participate in the community. Find a project that does something similar. Get the hardware ID’s and configuration and submit it to the project as an added request. Stick a twenty dollar bounty on it. How much is your time worth and how much are you wasting trying to solve a problem that will continue to be more invasive? Windows isn’t free, it costs your time to fix a corporate decision.

If we would stick a few bucks in the coffer from time to time supporting our community through cash and submitting info and time helping it won’t take long before more things work even better. And we will no longer have to accept the wishes of the corporate masters. Microsoft and apple (account many others) are the IBM of the current generation and have been for a while. Look at the price of a computer before they created compatability in 3rd party computers. Microsoft isn’t losing money on home users either because they hover up all the information. Even installing software that breaks their access gives them info, that’s how they know how far to push it.

Ods are that a similar to is available. Just gotta search for it.