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Without unnecessary brand name dropping, what current technology blows you away? (self.casualconversation)

submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by FourPacketsOfPeanuts to c/[email protected]

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I was listening to the New Year's Day concert by the Vienna philharmonic and wondered who one of the composers was so used a popular song recognition app. (I expected it would make some fuzzy match on the piece and give me the name + composer). To my amazement it did give the name and composer but as played by the Vienna philharmonic in 2005 in the same location. The orchestra does not have the same members as 19 years ago, nor was it the same conductor, so it seemed the piece was matched on the acoustics of the Musikverein where they were playing, which I found astonishing.

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[–] LovableSidekick 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

Home automation technology and completely free development tools. Arduino and ESP controllers are amazing nowadays and unbelievably cheap. I just got a little $20 module that's a 3" square 480x480 touch display with an ESP32 on the back of it. I haven't even decided what to do with it yet, but it will probably end up as a wall-mounted indoor display/touch panel controller for the heater and vents in the greenhouse I just built in the backyard. I will add outdoor temperature as well, and maybe weather forecast icons. I was going to just use a phone app, but this thing was so cheap and will be readable from across the room at a glance without pulling out a phone. And totally DIY!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Home Assistant. It's just so good at what it does and makes things like what you are talking about more accessible to people like me.

[–] LovableSidekick 1 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I've been reluctant to embrace Home Assistant because the config files seem so arcane. I'm using NodeRED at the moment, which hides all that, You just create visual process flows on a drawing surface, and it generates a web UI. It reminds me of block programming languages like Lego Mindstorms lol.

[–] McBB 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I have a wife and kid and not a lot of free time. I used chatgpt to build like 90% of my home assistant dashboards and configs. Just a suggestion. I have IKEA lights, wiz connected lamps, govee strips, levoit air purifiers, switchbot humidity and temperature sensors, the dreamebot vacuum all integrated into home assistant. It's great. Give it a go

[–] LovableSidekick 2 points 3 days ago

Thanks for the encouragement!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

You don't need to touch a config file for much anymore. It's almost all done via the ui

[–] FourPacketsOfPeanuts 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Yes! My ten year old brain would have melted at what's available off the shelf now. A raspberry pi zero is, what, £20 or something? Picos I think are intended to compete directly with Arduino are even cheaper. That's completely nuts

[–] LovableSidekick 1 points 3 days ago

completely nuts... like a fox!!