Ok. Here you go... https://www.dbrand666.com/home-assistant-media-player-with-voice-input/
I have a couple of Pi Zeros around the house I use as media players. They were running piCorePlayer. I replaced just the software with a vanilla Pi OS and installed Squeezelite and then Wyoming Satellite. I added a microphone and an automation to silence the media player as soon as a wake word is detected.
Voice recognition is adequate but I wish it was smarter.
(I should finish that blog post...)
I used to have a Ring and became concerned about privacy once Amazon took over. Worse, all it used to capture was delivery people's backs - by the time it would see motion the action was almost over. That's when it captured anything at all - it used to miss a lot.
Reolink doesn't require any Internet access - even for initial setup. People detection works great with Frigate and you can tell it to start recording before motion is detected so you don't miss anything.
Full disclosure, it does take some fiddling to get it working reliably. I still don't have 2 way audio working.
The Pixel 3 and the Pixel 3a both support eSIM.
(The Pixel 2 sort of did but only for Google Fi.)
The Pixel 3 briefly supported DSDS (pSIM+ eSIM) in a beta but it was removed before general release.
Pixel 3a was the first Pixel to officially support DSDS.
Since you're already running Hass why not set up Media Assistant. Connect your speakers to a Raspberry Pi running piCorePlayer.
I have a few around the house and they work great.
Media Assistant is still a work in progress. If that's a problem for you you can use Logitech Media Server instead, which is what I was using until recently.
The new shared plans look just like the old pooled plans 🤷♂️.
But they did decide to enable some Cloudflare stuff early this morning that broke the script.
A new version has been released.
Yup. Me too. They say it's coming soon but I wouldn't hold my breath.
One feature they did add that gives me hope. Top up data now rolls into the next month. I discovered this by accident after this script bought data the day before my plan renewed.
Edit: Which reminds me. I should check that this script still works on the new shared plan.
Major update to the lifeguard today. Authentication is by username/password now. Setup is easier, no more foraging around for tokens. No more worry about tokens expiring - it knows how to log back in when required.
They started requiring at least "Contributor" access to manage pools a few weeks ago.
When I was still playing with it and it was sitting on my desk I did notice that it ran a bit warm. Not hot enough to be a concern but now you have me thinking it might be an advantage in cooler climates. The lack of a battery makes me less concerned about cold as well. I've only had it a few months but it seems far more reliable than the Ring doorbell I'd been using previously. I do have it rebooting nightly but I haven't had to touch it in months. Winters here don't often go below 0F anymore. I guess I'll see how it goes.
Homebridge might be worth a shot. I know its Nest integration is better in some ways than HA's native integration.
"The open source part of iVentoy" is on GitHub. Perhaps it's not completely open?
USMobile recently added a way to add additional users with limited privileges. Turns out that even "Viewers" can top up a pool (they don't even have to have a line of their own!).
I'd recommend adding a user with view-only privileges and using that limited user to get tokens for scripting. Should be somewhat safer than using a token for the account admin.
Go into settings and enable "Long press for symbols".
While you're in there, look around. There are lots of fun options.
Look at Restic too. Similar feature set. Really simple to set up (I think Borg is too but I haven't tried it).
Tar has to scan the whole archive to find the file you want to extract. That's why it's slow. Compression doesn't really change that.
As for what tar is made for, that would be archiving directly to tape.
We're talking about Verizon. The company that still refuses to unlock the bootloaders of the phones they sell.
My guess:
Band selection - 5g uses bandwidth more efficiently. They don't want us using 4g anymore.
Backup calling - they want to sell you expensive roaming packages or hit you with insane roaming fees.
Enable backup calling without root
Now that I know that Verizon blocks backup calling (among other things) for its own customers too, I figured someone must have other workarounds. I was expecting to find a Magisk module but maybe this is even better.
Disclaimer: I haven't tried it myself but it claims to enable backup calling without root.
Just to close this out...
Verizon blocks this feature for all their postpaid customers - there is no separate carrier config for USMobile. I doubt we're going to see this restriction removed.
Visible, on the other hand, does have a separate carrier config and it does allow backup calling. Will Verizon remove it? Stay tuned.
I've finally done the research into where these settings come from. They're part of the factory image (or OTA, presumably). USMobile doesn't even have its own dedicated settings - it looks like we're just getting the default Verizon settings. The ability to select network type was removed for all Verizon customers in the June update. I checked both the generic and the Verizon carrier versions (I hoped it was a mistake and was fixed in the carrier version).
This is a very bad finding. It's just Verizon being Verizon. I'd be pretty surprised to see USMobile get preferential treatment.
The lesson as usual is: you don't own your phone if you don't root it.
(Technically speaking, unlocking the bootloader is enough.)
And now Verizon took away band selection
I see that the preferred network type selection is missing now in the Verizon network preferences. I haven't used it as much lately but sometimes I use it to disable 5G when it's acting up.
It's still accessible in the service menu.
It can also be added back by editing the carrier config (here we go again). Set hide_preferred_network_type_bool to false.
This one doesn't sound like an oversight.
Local only doorbells
To expand on a previous poster asking about local only devices in general...
Has anyone found a reliable local only doorbell? I've been meaning to replace my Ring doorbell ever since Amazon bought them. I finally bought a Reolink WiFi doorbell and it looks great and was really easy to set up without Internet or their app, BUT...
It doesn't work. Capture to FTP gives me nice clear images but the videos are corrupt, maybe truncated. I can't even open them with VLC.
I tried installing an SD card and then moving the SD card to my laptop. The videos on there play for a few seconds and then freeze.
Reolink support hasn't responded to any of my questions, which is another minus for them.
I did notice that the unit seems to run very hot. Did I just get a dud?
So are there any alternatives? Should I just try buying another of these? At least returns (Amazon, Walmart) are easy.
Backup calling on Android (WiFi calling over a data SIM)
This doesn't work anymore on Android 14. For whatever reason, it sounds like Google really wants you to buy an iPhone is you need backup calling. This issue "probably" is only for "Warp 5G" (Verizon) but I haven't tried "GSM" (T-Mobile) yet.
~~This post is about using a secondary data-only (e)SIM to make voice over WiFi (VoWiFi) calls on Android.
I have a Pixel 7 phone. It supports dual active SIMs (either SIM+eSIM or eSIM+eSIM). I assumed if I had VoWiFi enabled on USMobile and an eSIM with international data, I'd be able to make calls internationally. I discovered it was not that simple.
To test before my trip, I simulated being out of coverage by telling my primary SIM to use only 3g data, which is no longer available in my area. I enabled the data only eSIM and disabled WiFi. To my surprise, I was not able to make calls or text.
I found some posts that mentioned "backup calling" but I did not see that option in my network settings. I went to look at the carrier config settings in /data/user_de/0/com.android.phone/files and noticed that carrier_cross_sim_ims_available_bool was set to false. Since my phone is rooted, I was able to edit the file and set it to true.
I rebooted. I still couldn't make calls or text.
I then went back into network settings and noticed that a new option appeared. Just below "WiFi Calling" there was now a new option called "Backup Calling". I enabled that, waited a bit and noticed that the signal icons had changed. I was able to make calls and texts. It worked just like WiFi calling!
A few additional observations:
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You will only see the backup calling option if you have 2 SIM cards enabled. It will disappear if you disable the second SIM. Interestingly, the value is retained so you don't have to keep setting it if you have reason to disable and reenable the data SIM.
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The edit to the carrier config seems to get reset sometimes. It happened to me twice so far. It may be the monthly firmware updates or it might just be something the carrier pushes out occasionally. This is over the course of several months so it's only a minor inconvenience.
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I don't know how to fix this for unrooted phones. (Edit: but you might try this.
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This is for Android users. IPhones seem to support it out of the box.
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Based on a recent trip with a Samsung S22, it appears that Samsung phones will also use a data eSIM as data for VoWiFi even though they have no backup calling option. I should caution that it wasn't very reliable for us but each phone is different. My Pixel, by contrast, worked well throughout the trip.~~
Automatic top-ups for shared pool subscriptions
I've put together a little python script to monitor pool data usage and top up automatically.
https://github.com/dbrand666/usmobile-lifeguard
It can be run standalone but I've set it up to run under docker compose for stability. I've been running it for a few months and it's working well for me. The authentication token does expire occasionally and when that happens the script will abort. You need to grab another one and restart the script.
It has a dryrun flag which runs everything but won't actually top up. Leave that set to true until you're happy with what the log is showing. Even once you set dryrun to false, it will give you 10 seconds warning before topping up so you have a chance to kill it if it's doing something unexpected.
It's only set up to do one pool, mostly because I only have one pool, but if anyone has more and is willing to test I'd be willing to add support for multiple pools.
Comments, bug reports, suggestions, etc are welcome.
Keeping track of pooled data usage on Android
Here's a trivial Tasker project I'm using to keep tabs on the data and days remaining for a pool. It displays as a "persistent" notification that updates every 15 minutes. It's here if anyone else is interested.