About 113 kWh (155w) for me. I have 2 Intel NUC type devices, with two drive enclosures. Plus my networking equipment which include POE cameras.

First thought is VPN port issue. I recall changing from Mullvad to ProtonVPN because Mullvad wasn’t’ doing the port forwarding correctly… or so says the robot.

Gosh look at that skinny noodle.

I have and use pass for system secrets but for service where I’m logging in via the browser, I prefer KeePass.

I built myself a ‘new masked email’ workflow. I copy and paste the site url into the form and click create. It generates my random masked email, generates a strong password, prompts me for my keepass password then saves all the things and copies the generated password to the clipboard. Here are some screenshots. I did a test entry to demonstrate for you.

New form.

I type in my KeePass password and I get this screen while the entry is automatically saved to KeePass.

This all runs on an Intel NUC in my office and is accessible over my local network.

Uptime Kuma

I use 11ty to host my static site. I’ve used it for years. It’s well documented and learning resources.

It’s a system76 Launch Heavy. It’s expensive but it’s the best keyboard I’ve ever owned.

I have one of the nabu casa voice devices. When I first got it, I experimented with it and I found it wasn’t as nice as an Apple HomePod Mini. Which is fine but I was mostly irritated that I couldn’t set my own wake word. It has like 3 you can choose from but I want a custom one. I want to be able to say ‘hey robot’ to wake it up.

But to your point, it acts just like the other voice assistant devices. The speaker isn’t for music but it’s fine. I’d probably want to plug it into some sort of powered speaker if I was using it full time. I need to come back to it and run try to use it.

Really all we do with our HomePods is set timers and to control basic things liek turning the lights off and on or closing/opening the curtains.

The moment I can say ‘hey robot, set a timer for 5 minutes’ or ‘hey robot, open the curtains’ is the moment i buy enough to replace all the Apple HomePods.

Is there some cheap and simple way to watch water values with home-assistant? Specially nitrate, nitrite pH and so on. Not that I’ve been able to find. I use the API master test kit instead of strips, but I still struggle with the colors sometimes. Especially the nitrates 40 to 80 range.

She was labeled as a female koi alien betta.

I’m not exactly sure. I’m pretty new to scuds and got this bag of bugs thing from Phillip Fish Works. I’m fine with Tina picking them off but I hope the colony survives and Tina has some enrichment from hunting the little critters.

No. I do not use Google devices to call HA scripts/scenes. I play TTS announcements over my local network to the nest minis. The devices have physical switches on them to disable the mics and I have turned them all off.

Google nest minis.

Happy to! I’ll do Lily, since it’s the same block copy pasted five times, once per goblin.

Fair warning: I’m not a developer and there’s almost certainly a tidier way to do all of this. It works though, and good enough is good enough.

The helpers

All of this is built on helpers, the ones under Settings > Devices & services > Helpers. Birthday and gotcha date are each a date/time helper set to date only, no time. I keep mine in input_datetime.yaml, but making them in the UI gets you the exact same thing:

lily_birthday:
  name: Lily Birthday
  icon: mdi:cake-variant
  has_date: true
  has_time: false
lily_gotcha_date:
  name: Lily Gotcha Date
  icon: mdi:home-heart
  has_date: true
  has_time: false

The collar needs three more: one date/time helper for the expiration date, plus two toggle helpers that my alert automation flips on and off. I made these ones in the UI so they live in .storage instead of a file, but here’s the shape:

# input_datetime
lily_flea_collar_expiration:
  name: Lily Flea Collar Expiration
  has_date: true
  has_time: false

# input_boolean
lily_flea_collar_expired:
  name: Lily Flea Collar Expired
dismiss_lily_flea_collar_alert:
  name: Dismiss Lily Flea Collar Alert

I left initial: off all of them on purpose. If you set it, the next restart resets the helper back to that default and throws away whatever date you actually put in. Took me a restart or two to work that one out.

Age and With Us

These two are Mushroom template cards on the dashboard (Mushroom is a HACS install if you don’t already have it). Add a manual card, hit “Show code editor” and paste. It’s the same card twice, just pointed at the other helper:

type: custom:mushroom-template-card
primary: Age
entity: input_datetime.lily_birthday
icon: mdi:cake-variant
icon_color: blue
secondary: >-
  {% set b = state_attr('input_datetime.lily_birthday','timestamp') %}
  {% set by = b | timestamp_custom('%Y', true) | int %}
  {% set bm = b | timestamp_custom('%m', true) | int %}
  {% set bd = b | timestamp_custom('%d', true) | int %}
  {% set months = (now().year - by) * 12 + (now().month - bm)
     - (1 if now().day < bd else 0) %}
  {% set y = (months // 12) | int %}
  {% set mo = (months % 12) | int %}
  {%- if y > 0 %}{{ y }} yr{{ 's' if y != 1 }}{% endif %}
  {%- if mo > 0 %}{{ ' ' if y > 0 }}{{ mo }} mo{% endif %}
  {%- if y == 0 and mo == 0 %}new{% endif %}
  · {{ b | timestamp_custom('%b %-d, %Y', true) }}
tap_action:
  action: more-info

Mine reads 7 yrs 3 mo · Apr 2, 2023.

One thing worth calling out: counting whole months first and then dividing by 12 avoids the leap year drift you get from dividing days by 365.

The collar card

Another template card, this one reading the expiration helper. It’s what goes green, orange, red as the days run down:

type: custom:mushroom-template-card
primary: Flea Collar
entity: input_datetime.lily_flea_collar_expiration
icon: >-
  {% set ts = state_attr(entity,'timestamp') %}
  {% set days = ((ts - as_timestamp(today_at('00:00'))) / 86400) | round(0) | int %}
  {% if days < 0 %}mdi:alert{% elif days <= 30 %}mdi:alert-outline
  {% else %}mdi:shield-check{% endif %}
icon_color: >-
  {% set ts = state_attr(entity,'timestamp') %}
  {% set days = ((ts - as_timestamp(today_at('00:00'))) / 86400) | round(0) | int %}
  {% if days < 0 %}red{% elif days <= 30 %}orange{% else %}green{% endif %}
secondary: >-
  {% set ts = state_attr(entity,'timestamp') %}
  {% set days = ((ts - as_timestamp(today_at('00:00'))) / 86400) | round(0) | int %}
  {% if days < 0 %}Expired {{ days * -1 }}d ago{% else %}{{ days }}d left{% endif %}
  · {{ ts | timestamp_custom('%b %-d, %Y', true) }}
tap_action:
  action: more-info

I compare against today_at('00:00') instead of now(). With now() the count flips over at whatever time of day I happened to put the collar on, so it’d read a day short all afternoon. Little thing, but it bugged me.

The reset script

This part isn’t a card, it’s a script. Settings > Automations & scenes > Scripts, create one, then use the three dot menu to edit it in YAML. Mine lives in scripts.yaml:

reset_lily_flea_collar:
  alias: Reset Lily Flea Collar
  description: Sets Lily's flea collar expiration to today + 7 months and clears alerts
  icon: mdi:cat
  sequence:
    - action: input_datetime.set_datetime
      target:
        entity_id: input_datetime.lily_flea_collar_expiration
      data:
        date: "{{ (now() + timedelta(days=213)).strftime('%Y-%m-%d') }}"
    - action: input_boolean.turn_off
      target:
        entity_id: input_boolean.lily_flea_collar_expired
    - action: input_boolean.turn_off
      target:
        entity_id: input_boolean.dismiss_lily_flea_collar_alert

And the button that fires it, which is one more template card back on the dashboard:

type: custom:mushroom-template-card
primary: Reset Collar
secondary: Expiry 7 months out
entity: script.reset_lily_flea_collar
icon: mdi:restart
tap_action:
  action: perform-action
  perform_action: script.reset_lily_flea_collar
  confirmation:
    text: Reset Lily's flea collar expiration to 7 months from today?

The confirmation is in there because I tap this on my phone and I have fat fingers.

Those two input_booleans are for my alert automation. _expired flips on when the date passes so it gets read out in our good morning announcement, and dismiss_ shuts it up once I’ve actually heard it (otherwise it just keeps announcing it, every single morning, forever). If you’re not doing alerts you can drop those steps and the helpers along with them.

Hope that helps! Let me know if something doesn’t work, I probably typed something wrong. Are you tracking vaccines too? That’s the one I still need to build.

Thanks! Both are the same trick: an input_datetime per cat, and a Mushroom template card doing the math inline in Jinja. No custom integration.

The collar card colors off days remaining, and the reset button runs a script that pushes the date out and clears the alert flags.

Want the YAML?

I’m not sure. When I was searching around I never discovered it but that doesn’t mean much.

My favorite thing to self host is my RSS feed reader. I’m a huge fan of feedbin but I wanted to self host. I tried the usual self hosted RSS feed readers but I just prefer the way feedbin is laid out and how it works. So, I used Claude to create a self hosted clone of feedbin but with my personal modification to fit my workflow.

• Customized keyboard shortcuts for next and previous.
• I added webmention support which allows me:
  • Determine if a site supports webmentions
  • Allows me to send a webmention like
  • Allows me to send a webmention comment
• I can share and sydicate a link from my feed reader to my website
• I can save a link as a blog idea, like if I want to respond or write about a topic for example.
• Custom filters so I can basically mute certain keywords from me feed.

Short version, and Deebster’s got the shape right: use a DNS-01 challenge. You prove domain control with a TXT record instead of serving a file over HTTP, so the hostname never has to be reachable from the internet. That’s what gets you a real Let’s Encrypt cert for a LAN-only name.

Mine’s acme.sh issuing a wildcard for *.lan.michaelharley.net via my registrar’s DNS API (Porkbun), with a deploy hook dropping it where Caddy reads it. Caddy’s own Cloudflare plugin is simpler, I just already had acme.sh. Local DNS is a wildcard rewrite on my router.

Yes, he definitely comes out and goes for the wafers. Thanks for the feedback!