I used to use SmartThings up until the announcement killing off WebCORE. I well fully into Home Assistant using Zigbee and ZWave both. HIGHLY recommend it, though there is work to set it up.

I use quite a bit of NodeRed as well for some of my more complex automations, and use the native HA automations for things like button mappings or simple scripts.

It’s easier for me to control my Sonos devices through Home Assistant and dashboards I’ve created, rather than using the Sonos app itself. It’s like they hired some McKinsey consultants to make the app as useless as it can be.

3D printing is half the fun! Although I have no skills in design so I usually look for STLs that other have created. The NFC tag reader was such a fun project because I got to: 3D print the enclosure, solder the wiring for the ESP and NFC hardware, write the login within Node Red to work as a juke box, and then I wrote an excel file that I use to track my playlists (allows me to copy/paste the Spotify share link and have it translate it into an NFC tag payload).

Do you use Plex at all? One fun integration is to turn the lights off automatically when something starts to play, then turn them back on when paused/stopped. It’s fun to see the lights auto-dim as media starts to play.

Oh sorry, I meant that with an nfc tag reader you don’t need the smart phone. Apologies that I wasn’t clear.

I started to play around with WLED and integrated a whole mess of LED lights to HA. I’d also recommend ESPHome so you can build your own devices. Voice control, water flow rate sensors, etc.

Not if you build an NFC tag reader! Then anyone can scan tags! Great for music jukeboxes!

Also a huge reason the GOP is so against student debt forgiveness. Can’t give poor people an option beyond joining the military if they want to go to college.

Reason number %large_number% + 1 why support for Ukraine cannot falter. Russia cannot win its offensive there and continue to spread its poison across the world.

This is me as well. I haven’t downloaded music since I got Spotify. I just wish the movie industry had similar options. No I will not sign up for 15 different streaming platforms. There are much easier ways to solve that problem.

Or follow the one good thing the music industry does… allow music across different platforms. I can listen to the same songs on YouTube Music, Spotify, Apple, etc. none of this “get the XYZ app to listen to a band, and another app to listen to others”.

Yeah, Altman is a complete ass and very full of himself. Not at all surprising.

To each their own. For me, I really like the Discover Weekly/Daily features to discover new music and I can’t see how I would ever “already have MP3s of all the good music” since that’s an ever changing set. Heck, I still have a ton of old mp3s I used to rip and/or download, but I haven’t listened to them in a while.

I would gladly pay for a similar AYCE movie subscription, but I refuse to sign up for a ton of different services and play the “which service is that movie on again?” game. Instead it’s a very different approach for me.

I have the family premium plan and honestly love it. I haven’t downloaded an mp3 in years because Spotify is so convenient. As far as subscription services go, this one is top tier for me.

Now when we look at movie streaming… well that’s what the music streaming could have been like. What an absolute mess.

It’s called Amazon Sidewalk and it’s still a thing. When you set up any Amazon device, it defaults to on unless you click it off.

EU please do what California utterly failed to do!

Thanks for the info. I always get nervous when I update versions and see warnings. Still need to deal with the configuration.YAML changes that will be breaking come December.