I have not used Windows as my primary Operating System for many years (since around 2003). Sure, I've had to run Windows on a work laptop here and there, but for anything personal, I've been non-Windows. I used a Mac for a while and as a Unix-based OS, MacOS is pretty nice. Not exactly what I like, but I much prefer it to Windows.

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I went a few years without a computer at my desk at home. I lived off a laptop and never sat at my desk with a proper keyboard, mouse, and monitor setup. But as I started working from home more, I felt like I wanted a nice, comfortable setup in our office, so I started looking for a computer for my desk.

I settled on a huge, powerful gaming laptop: an MSI GT76 Titan DT

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Background

I have really been wanting to get bed occupancy working with Home Assistant for a while. I have some lights around the house that are triggered by motion detectors. Especially for the one in the bedroom, I thought it would be nice if I could disable the motion-activated light whenever someone is in bed.

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To quote DigiBlur, "Get your shit out of the cloud!"

The Issues

Many Smart Home devices use "The Cloud" and a Smart App on your phone to manage them. However, what happens when the cloud provider decides to shut down their service, breaking all of your devices like Lowes did with its Iris product in 2019.

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Background

So, my Home Automation journey starts like may others: I bought one smart plug.

Some of the wiring decisions made while building my house make no sense. In my family room, the light switch controlled an outlet in the very back of the room. But that wasn't a good place for the lamp for the room. The lamp needed to be way across the room where there is no switch-controlled-outlet.

I bought a Wemo Mini Smart Plug 3-pack. I removed the long-ass extension cable I had running along the wall (and across a doorway) from the lamp to the switched-outlet. Then we could turn on the lamp with, "Hey Google, turn on the lamp." And it was glorious!

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