Considering, but on the ‘tail end’ of automations.

In part, the cost individually, as well as the reliability, or so far, mediocrity of Home/HomeKit. May reconsider once I get HA running, but the current place has a LOT of glass in it, so it would be piecemeal and strategically once I believe reliability is actually there.

Good catch - I meant Carbon Monoxide/CO.

Thanks - that’s what I’ve been leaning towards. I need to go check if the current ones are interconnected or not, but they are all hard-wired (and have been getting removed as it’s time, so really time to replace all around).

At this point I’d be ok if the ‘best’ were simply old school hard-wired and setting the HomePods to detect the alarms, but someone linked a zwave connector down below.

Any recommendations RE: brands?

I did a bit more digging as well as was able to find receipt for the original works-with-smart-plugs-but-wrong-color lights.

The ones that might work call out they have ’memory’ in the light controller, which is sort of funny as the various 8 mode lights don’t need more than well, 4 bits to cover last mode.

But my ‘problem short set’ claims to have ‘memory’ but with zero instructions and in this case I bet it’s still lost on a power cycle via smart plug, and in this case if it even works at all, it’s in the remote, thus still needing the remote to power on, so useless for me.

Some guessing happening here, but digging through reviews, questions etc., seems like the cheap lights with a USB-A for power generally don’t save state as I’d like, while the lights able to extend strings ending in a rectangular kinda blocky plug - are more likely to have a bit more (or at least 4 bits/few bytes anyways ;) ) to their controllers, and more likely to actually work with a smart plug.

I have a few ‘should work’ sets inbound - Amazon is going to love my returns of no-way-to-cleanly-repackage non-memory lights…

Still no luck on the short ~8x4.5-5’ set. The ones I got claim the retain state but don’t. I picked up a set of warm white icicle lights instead as a backup. Will see how it works out this weekend.

Oh, there are a very few sets of lights IF you can find them that don’t have a remote, but do have a normal plug and a controller with a dial. These ‘probably’ will work, unless they also have a momentary on switch on the controller. They probably made it for cost savings but might work out as an advantage.

I went through this debate recently coming off of an aging Neato.

I saved a few $ and went with the Revo - I’m told the active avoidance isn’t quite as good as the S Ultras, but it’s pretty impressive dancing around fully chair-populated-table legs etc with no issues, and has the spinning mop heads, which I am expecting to see Roborock probably move to over the vibrating pads.

YMMV; just throwing another option out there.

Not thrilled about any of the ‘walled gardens’ honestly, but it’s all about finding the tradeoffs that work for each of us. I may well wind up back at Alexa, but want to at least give it a shot (preferably without huge $ investment before finalizing a path ;) ).

And yeah, the difference between ‘might as well pick up a few more dots b/c Black Friday sales’ (how I wound up with the Ring cam actually, Ring Pro + another Dot were ~ 50% of normal Ring pricing, etc.) vs the $100 a pop minis.

Realistically speaking, I suppose it’s all a ‘drop in the bucket’ when Matter/Thread sockets let alone home locks and the other sensors are close to those price ranges for 1-2 devices and higher.

Have to love some of the hyped ‘rivalries’ that burn the users.

Sony/netflix/apple/amazon for movies AND music, etc.

We’re still on Prime (although I wear starting price used to be like half, $60 or $69/yr, getting nuts across all subscriptions now) so have whatever variant of Prime Music included, plus our music collection, so Spotify isn’t a huge concern here but can see it as another loss for users in general.

’Siri sucks’ in this case being due to Spotify annd the others or at general voice to speech?

Will do, thanks.

Some of the comments had me digging up homebridge and home automation s/w info , and found some of the updated HK scripting/automation info.

Going to play with the inbound minis and a few other bits, then work out the bigger plan and possibly see if I can get containerized HA and HB running on my Pi with a few devices as a ‘proof of concept’ in my home office while the rest of the house gets HomeKit/Siri added while keeping Alexa, hopefully temporarily for a few.

Need to mostly ensure:

1. How Siri voice responds to both my wife and I
2. Lights never ever go on in bedroom or baby’s room at night ‘accidentally’ (shouldn’t be an issue but that would be a BAD way to curb future HA expansion… ;)
3. Work out the bigger plan and sort next steps.