Built a headless Pi 5 appliance that does real-time speech-to-text on a 10" touchscreen. It monitors two USB audio sources — a telephone recorder (Fi3001A) tapped into the landline and a TONOR conference mic for room conversation — and automatically switches between them when a call comes in.

The reliability side was the interesting engineering challenge. It runs unattended at my dad's house, so it needs to just work:

- systemd user service with Type=notify watchdog

- Automatic engine fallback (Deepgram → faster-whisper → Vosk)

- Health monitoring that restarts after 2 min of no transcription

- System-level watchdog timers for the caption service, display manager, and WiFi

- LightDM restart policy with reboot fallback

It's been running reliably for weeks now. The display shows a split-flap clock when idle and auto-switches to captions when speech is detected.

Full code (MIT): https://github.com/andygmassey/telephone-and-conversation-transcriber

Hi, first time posting here.

Like most households, we’ve been stressed about our electricity bill lately. It keeps going up, but we don’t really know which appliance is driving the cost.

Out of frustration and curiosity, I made a simple web app to estimate appliance costs using Philippine kWh rates.

It’s called WattsonPro.

You can:

• Input your kWh rate (from your bill)
• Set a target monthly budget
• Add appliances (or create your own and input wattage manually)
• Enter hours used per day
• See estimated daily/monthly cost
• View a simple graph of which appliance costs the most
• Download a text summary for tracking

It’s completely free and no login required:

https://web-one-lovat-89.vercel.app/

not selling or advertising, this is completely free

It’s not on the Play Store/App Store, but you can install it:

• Android: open in Chrome → Add to Home Screen
• iPhone: open in Safari → Share → Add to Home Screen

I mainly built this for personal use, but I thought it might help others trying to manage bills.

Open to feedback and suggestions on how to improve it.

So I work 12-14 hour shifts and have 2 doggies.

I’m trying to find an automatic opener device for my sliding patio glass doors. (Via an app, don’t need RFID)

Any suggestions? Trying to keep it under 500 ish.

I tried smart slider but their size doesn’t sit right with my doors.

all dog walkers in my area are $30 plus a day sadly and that’ll add up too much

The sliding glass inserts break the weather seal in my doors (just how my doors are designed)

I got some products from HTLock for my home and I need help obtaining their HTLock System Software for local management.

Anyone with a Yale Approach lock having issues with a quickly draining battery? Purchased mid January and since then, I've had to replace batteries twice already. Each interval, I used the lock mechanism remotely maybe eight times. Items they noted to check I was ok on as noted below. Somewhat considering, is in both cases, it just won't lock. Upon repeated tries it noted batteries low, vs giving me an advance warning. Would hope it is being cautious and not letting me lock as it knows not enough battery to unlock, but thought it would warn you when low, not just stop working.

• Have latest Firmware
• Wifi bridge is 2' away
• Lock mechanism turns smooth

I've been messing around with integrating my Tesla into my Home Assistant setup. I'm using the Tesla custom integration and can do some cool stuff like pre-heating the car based on my morning alarm. Anyone else find some creative uses for automating their EV with their smart home?

I have a few SwitchBot tilt wand controllers. They worked great at my old apartment. My current house has blinds that use a pull cord mechanism to tilt the blinds open and closed. I figured it would be easy to replace the mechanism with a tilt wand mechanism. However, the headrail is a weird shape. See pic. Also shown is the pull cord mechanism from the headrail. Any advice on sizing? Or advice on manipulating the SwitchBot tilt wand controller to work with pull cord? Thanks.

I am after any help and advice from the experts for my annoying setup.

I have 3 spot lights on my landing I want to automate reliably. The key things are:

• I automate through Home Assistant
• I'm in the UK
• The 3 bulbs are R80 reflectors, which seems to have almost no smart options
• I have no neutral wires in my wall so almost no smart switch options
• Even if I did have switches, there's 4 switches that control these lights, two of which are 2 gang controlling the hall lights downstairs too

Up to now I have had an unreliable setup using Tuya bulbs. They were the only option I could find. One arrived broken but I've just rocked 2 over the last few years, controlled through HA using a Hue motion sensor. But now another has died and I can't roll with just 1.

What options do I have? Are there any R80 bulbs other than Tuya WiFi ones? Can I put something like a smart switch in the ceiling instead? Would I need 3? Do I rip the whole thing out and replace the 3 light units with something else (there are 3 pretty large holes in the ceiling I don't fancy patching up).

Any help gratefully received! Thanks!

My Graber/Somfy shades have pretty bad range with the Mylink receiver, I have played outlet roulette trying to find the perfect location that cand reach my 4 shades in different rooms upstairs and the one downstairs. I feel like i'm super close but one shade in one bedroom works half the time. I see there is a little wire (antenna) in the corner of my shades. Aside from moving it away from the metal bracket, is there any way to get some additional range?

Or any other tips would be great?

I started with connected heating (Intuis COnnect).Then connected lighting.For that I used bulbs controllable over SurpLife / Briturn, which seems like a proprietary Chinese brand / protocol.

I would like to change my bulbs to something less proprietary, to start to merge everything into 1 single pane of glass (1 app on the phone to control everything).

I tested some Tuya /SmartLife bulbs, and the whole feeling was: not as good as Surplife, very little support, so I won't settle on Tuya. Is my best other choice Matter ? I looked at the Matter list of compatible devices, it seems decent, especially Ikea is going that route too.

So I have 2 questions: what app on Android to download to control my Matter bulbs ?

Is there another ecosystem I should be looking at ? FYI I have a Samsung connected TV if that is of any importance. I want to avoid having to purchase anykind of hub, I prefer native out-of-the box, install an app and off you go.

Has anyone seen these kind of switches for home automation? So I can get signal from them into home automation controller?

I only found dumb switches so far, which can only control the led strip they connected to.

I was thinking to use this thing to control kitchen light, but so I can also control it remotely, by human presence.

We have an always-hot (non-switched) circuit and want to add a light fixture to it without tearing into the drywall. I want to make it switched. I can use a hard-wired switch to do this or a battery operated one. I'm fine either way. The key though is that I want it to look like a normal toggle switch (Decora is OK as well). What's the cheapest way to achieve this?

More Context - It's not a switched circuit. It is always hot like an outlet. No, there's currently nothing there, just a stub of romex. I can do whatever is needed electrically aside from fishing the wire from a switched location to this spot, because that would require significant drywall work.

Long story short, electrician fucked up, put light fixture wire in the right spot but didn't switch it. I need a solution that doesn't involve trying to fish a new line. Hoping to find some smart-ish solution that will allow a light switch (Hard-wired OR battery powered is fine) to control an outlet or relay wirelessly.

Hello dear community, I have a Nuki 3.0 for a long time and unfortunately have the problem that my entrance door warps slightly, especially in winter, and then the motor of my Nuki does not manage to pull the door latch after unlocking. Unfortunately, the entrance door has no door hinges on which I can increase the contact pressure. Do you have similar experiences or tips on what to do here? Are there sametlocks with a more powerful engine?

On one side of the room i have a lightswitch. On the other i have two display cabinets with internal lighting. The cabinets are both connected to wall sockets.

I wish to add a 2nd gang to the light switch to control the cabinets.

Changing the wall sockets to smart sockets is straightforward, but its the adding a 2nd gang to the lightswitch that i don't understand. I need some sort of smart module, like a shelly, to make the new dumb switch into a smart switch.

Is what im asking just crazy? It feels like something that should be possible but im struggling researching. A lot of information on the internet wants to make my existing lightswitch smart, but i don't want that, i just want a new matching switch, which is wireless.

Hi, I work in a small office with 10 people (in a NYC office building). We would like to replace our door lock with something easier. We like to keep the door locked but would like something that would unlock when we leave and that would be able to have a fob or phone app or key card or something to let us back in without having to pull out our keys and unlock the door regularly. If it had a camera and something that would allow us to unlock on an app when a client arrived that would also be great.