Robbie

joined 1 year ago
6
Willow on ESP-32-S3-Box (self.homeassistant)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Robbie to c/homeassistant
 

Hello! I recently bought an ESP-32-S3-BOX, but haven't had time to do anything with it yet. Has anyone tried flashing this with Willow? If so, what has your experience been so far? The Github instructions seem very detailed, but once flashed...what can it do? Is it only able to control things within Homeassistant, or does it also act like a Google Home and do things like set timers and search the internet?

[–] Robbie 1 points 1 year ago

Also to add on, I didn't like that tutanota requires their app and that was another reason I wanted to switch. Their app is also really slow for me, where I know I received emails but they take way too long to "load" and "appear" once I open the app.

[–] Robbie 1 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Yes I haven't had any real issues with Tutanota, but it seems like the common trend is that they, and everyone else, is raising prices for things I dont really need. But at the same time, the things I do need, I.e. accounts with enough storage for my family, will start costing more than the price of renting a VPS alone. So for me, its partially privacy, but also ownership of my data and cost benefit analysis where I am now trying to make CERTAIN that my self hosted email is worth the cost savings.

[–] Robbie 3 points 1 year ago (5 children)

E-mail was the first "thing" that got me off of Google (to Proton & then currently Tutanota) but is really the last remaining service I not have self hosted.

I have always read about how difficult and time consuimg it was to run your own mail server, but I felt like I needed to experience it myself. So I purchased another domain and followed the instructions on https://mailinabox.email/.

I am using a small VPS on Hetzner and I have to say the experience has been almost flawless so far. I did need to have my new domain taken off the Domain Block List, but Hetzner gave me a clean IP and defaults to blocking port 25 outbound to prevent spam (simple ticket to open, once account is 30 days old and paid).

I know I'm still early into this journey so far, but it has been really simple and I plan to test this secondary domain for a few months before moving onto it full time.

As an avid self hosted of literally everything else, I can say it has been a lot of fun learning so far!