I use Pocket-ID for my OIDC and it was easy to set up with Tailscale, you just have a custom domain which I do and I just login with my OIDC Account which is 100% self hosted on my local server.

The thing about Tuya devices is they are a white label provider which allows manufacturers to brand the Tuya Device as their own. This is causing a massive saturation in markets such as Amazon where the lower price is king. I had some Costco 'Feit" branded bulbs which turned out to set up on Tuya so it’s not just Amazon or Costco, other companies do it as well. I have a WiFi dehumidifier I bought before I got into the home automation scene which is Tuya based. They often masquerade behind apps such as SmartLife, Uhome or Feit and others with their GUI using nothing more than API Calls to the Tuya servers in China.

You can still obtain the local product keys on Tuya Developer portal which allows you to locally control your devices without the cloud, but they are making that harder to find. i was able to track some down about a month ago on a device I was evaluating. You can use other plugins too which decouple it from the cloud with your local key such as Xtended-Tuya, Tuya-Local and the like in Home Assistant so you can technically ignore the comms to China and I’ve found that some of those in tandem with each other have unlocked some extra features that the Tuya app never reveals for the device.

Ultimately, they are a very cost effective device to install in your home and often times you don’t know it’s Tuya Based until you poke around. I’m not defending them in any way, rather I am stating my observations and thoughts as to why it’s so pervasive. I wouldn’t be surprised if some Ovens or refrigerators were linked in some way to them as well.

I have mine connected to Logitech Z553 speakers which my PC uses. The speakers have great sound and very impressive bass response rivaling high end speakers. The volume control knob has an aux input on it so I can feed an external source to the speakers. I then used a 3.5mm male to male audio cable to connect the Voice PE to the input on the speakers. This has created rich sounding voice responses. :) I use the Nabu Casa cloud voices and the Candadian Voice “Liam” which sounds good with these speakers. The speaker is in my living room which our main area and where the voice PE is so it makes sense to be there.

For me personally, I’d rather pull from a GHCR image than build from the source, I think too, this would garner more users who don’t want to or cant build it for one reason or another.

I can’t pull the image:

docker run -d \
  --name pocket-tts-wyoming \
  -p 10201:10201 \
  -e DEFAULT_VOICE=alba \
  -v pocket-tts-hf-cache:/root/.cache/huggingface \
  -v pocket-tts-cache:/root/.cache/pocket_tts \
  pocket-tts-wyoming
Unable to find image 'pocket-tts-wyoming:latest' locally
docker: Error response from daemon: pull access denied for pocket-tts-wyoming, repository does not exist or may require 'docker login': denied: requested access to the resource is denied

I am logged into Docker as well via docker login.
edit I cloned the repo via Git and was able to get it to build and run.

I switched from Stirling to this a few months ago and it’s one of those tools you use once in a while, but not all the time. It’s a good tool to have when you need it and I gladly keep it on my server for those just in case times!

I use a Nuki Smart Lock Pro for mine (US Version), With this one, it still allows you to unlock your door with your usual house key which is perfect for renters and those who share access. Before this, I used an August Lock. Both of which can interface easily with Home Assistant for example making them cloud free if you should decide to. The Nuki lock for me is better and much nicer than the August (I had the Model 2). It offers local control and also cloud if you want to be able to unlock your door from the office for example.

You have to be careful with Tuya. Tuya allows makers to build products and resell them under a white label system, this can often result in copy cat products. Some companies more secure than others. With the Tuya cloud cutter, this will work and permanently decouple your device from Tuya, but only if it’s supported. I use the above Tuya controllers for some of my items and each supplements the other. I have a Tuya Dehumidifier, a CO2 detector, camera, light bulbs, panic alarm and a home alarm all of which I can control locally without the Tuya Cloud using thie local keys you can get from Tuya’s site.

I keep the tuya plugin so I can log in and control some of those devices which don’t have a local key (there are a few), the Xtend Tuya can often provide more functions and then of course the local Tuya plugins for what I can control locally.

I moved my setups to Pangolin and placed it on a VPS and then just have been using it since and is about the same as I could run it with a CDN such as Cloudflare. I know Cloudflare has better security with things but I also use Crowdsec which has been nice for keeping most things away. I host my email through Mxroute so it’s never an issue. While Cloudflare has been very stable for years, this last outage didn’t affect me like it would have, although I’m just use the stuff or my purposes.

I left Cloudflare because I was ready to move away from there and found that Pangolin offered what I was looking for. No hard feelings either way toward Cloudflare at all.

I have the Ecowitt WS90 with a gw2000 hub which has been solid since I installed it Mid July of this year:

This is from Home Assistant and (Yes it says the rain state is WET It’s either that or dry, a very binary state on the sensor) I live in the PNW where it mostly rains this time of year so the totals are pretty accurate. It uses a Rain Piezo which works by converting the mechanical vibrations caused by raindrops hitting its surface into electrical signals. This process allows the sensor to detect rainfall. I’ve been toying with the idea of getting a manual rain gauge to confirm the totals, but I’m happy with it so far though!

Already there. :)

Thank you for allowing Flathub to publish this! I’m on an immutable OS and this works great! Color me impressed with the auto SSH key import! :)

As other’s have said Brother. I can honestly say they are one of the few companies which still make Linux drivers for their printers. I’ve been using their monochrome lasers.

They are workhorses as well, I’ve seen several out in the field printing well over 100K pages and still going strong. The best part about Brother I think is they also allow free access to their service manuals which will tell you more than you may ever want to know about your Brother Printer. :) I had an older HL-L2240 (USB Only) I bought about 9 years ago in a thrift shop and it ran faithfully on a network print server at my home until it stopped feeding paper. It probably needed a new pick up roller set, but it was a bit slow and I felt it was time to upgrade, so I now have a Hl_L2420_DW wireless which out of the box on my Fedora linux system installed and runs flawlessly. They are generally under $200 (around $130 at Wal-Mart for example).

They also do not limit you on your laser cartridge if you go that route, in that you can usually buy after market toner and drums without it ever complaining or locking you out.

I have a bird identifier which listens to the mic when you run it and it easily identifies the birds and it gave me that tonight when I opened it. I’m thinking that F-Droid (where it came from ) may be injecting that in the installs for those devs which have yet agreed to Google’s changes or otherwise flat out said they wouldn’t. I’m not sure if that would be the case with this app, but since you got the same one I did, it makes me wonder if that is the case.

I keep landing back to Proxmox, My primary use is to run the Home Assistant OS VM which is quite fantastic there. And also, I have NFS sharing setup on the Proxmox server so I can share it between my machines and my home Linux boxes. I’m on Proxmox 8 though and not 9. Debian 13 with Proxmox 9 it turns out at least when I tried it, is really locked down now for running Docker via the host. (Proxmox machine) With Proxmox 8, I can still install Docker and run my containers there, then use Portainer to manage them sometimes, but rarely now days. You can also probably do it the “Correct way” as some may believe by setting up a VM or LXC in Promox to host docker containers. I do that with one subset of containers but not all.

Another option you may want to consider is XCP-NG, which is another hypervisor and IMHO ran Home Assistant a tad bit faster for me, but it will not allow you to mount existing drives without erasing them (I can’t do that with my disks). Additionally,  it seems to be on an out of date CentOS build which is no longer updated. (My notes from this are from a year ago when I tried it and I think some of it has changed, but for storage: https://docs.xcp-ng.org/storage/) You can see what’s going on there.

Most people will say to host Truenas or something like that in a VM via Proxmox but honestly, it isn’t too difficult to set up with a tool like Cockpit to manage the shares. I’ve played with most of the setups recently and recently tried going with a Debian 12 install on bare metal with the Home Assistant VM running which I could, but I had more crashes with the server and it never started the VM in spite of being told to do so. I honestly didn’t stick around though, so YMMV if you go that route.

I made a switch to Smart Launcher which has been quite fantastic. They don’t rely on a subscription model like most other launchers which is a huge plus in my book. They offer quite a bit of options for customizing your screen. Not as much as Nova, but it’s still good. I used Nova for a long time as well, but this has made it easier to transition to. Aside from that, Hyperion Launcher has plenty of options as well.

I have been using Proxmox VE with Docker running on the host not managed by Proxmox, and then Cockpit to manage NFS Shares with Home Assistant OS running in a VM. It’s been pretty rock solid. That was until I updated to Version 9 last night, it’s been a nightmare getting the docker socket to be available. I think Debian Trixie may have some sort of extra layers of protection, I haven’t investigated it too much, but my plan tomorrow and this week is to migrate everything to Debian 12 as that’s the tried and true OS for me and I know it’s quite stable with Cockpit, docker and so forth with KVM for my Home Assistant installation.

One other OS for consideration if you are wanting to check it out is XCP-NG which I played with and Home Assistant with that was blazing fast, but they don’t allow NFS shares to be created and using existing data on my drives was not possible, so I would’ve had to format them .

Cloudflare tunnels support higher port numbers. I’ve done it in the past with Portainer. Also Proxmox which listens on 8006. Portainer on 9443.

As a 16 yr old I started running my own BBS on a 1200bps external modem on an Older Atari 800xl computer (1990) It was a completely new world for me. :) I later upgraded to a 14400 buad external modem for the max and that was when modems peaked at 38400 baud. I was an Atari geek so naturally when I had the 14400, I ran it on an Atari 520ST computer.

I still remember the days of being a SYSOP and the exhilaration in talking with other people from across the country who would dial in and have a nice one-on-one convo. It didnt’ last too long though, I got married shortly after high school and out went the BBS. But it wasn’t so bad, because at that time, the Net was starting to take off and out went the BBS’s around the world. There are many out there via telnet if you can find a directory, they are a fun trip back in time. :)

Are there any plans to make a Flatpak version of this? I’ve moved to an immutable OS and none of the options you have will install. Flatpaks are their preferred method. I know I could self host my own version which may be what I may end up doing anyway, but I’d prefer to have it more local yet another docker container. :)

Edit: I just went with the Appimage which works.

This is what I use and it’s quite impressive.
https://community.home-assistant.io/t/simple-scheduler-addon/174326

I’ve had it for a few years and it never has failed to run on time every time. Can automate more than lights with it and it’s really just a point/click set and forget type of thing. My setup for my lights. :)