It’s hard to not make them sound trivial, but you’ll see some of them in the memes that pass through here. Off the top of my head though:

• the importance of routine/consistency. He got up at the same time almost every day for 50 years. He went to the gym before anything got in the way, that sort of thing.
• he pushes conscious decision making, of following through on things and being definite. Do not let yourself be guided by what you want in the moment, be guided by what you plan and intend.
• put things in the same place. Put things back where you got them from. Don’t rely on your memory, rely on your habits.

When I write these they seem silly and trivial, but they help me a lot.

It’s hard though. A key criteria (at least in the UK) how much it affects you day-to-day. My father probably has it and passed along a lot of guidance that I now recognise as coping mechanisms/symptom management strategies. Day to day I’ve got it in hand, it’s only when the big storms come that I struggle, and that doesn’t fit with the diagnostic approach.

I don’t know how tech savvy you are, but I’m assuming since your on lemmy it’s pretty good :)

The way we’ve solved this sort of problem in the office is by using the LLM’s JSON response, and a prompt that essentially keeps a set of JSON objects alongside the actual chat response.

In the DND example, this would be a set character sheets that get returned every response but only changed when the narrative changes them. More expensive, and needing a larger context window, but reasonably effective.

It’s got a nice component to go with it, so setting up is easier. I particularly use it for scheduling thermostats, and find it much more user friendly. Sure I could do it with automations, but I’d either have one, massively unwieldy one with lots of states and triggers, or lots of individual ones.

This custom component is what I use and love - https://github.com/nielsfaber/scheduler-component

Better than that, if you are after more than one (and with GU10s, who isn’t?)

https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/p/tradfri-remote-control-kit-smart-wireless-dimmable-white-spectrum-50517642/

This gives you 3 bulbs and a handy remote that also works with HA.

I like to take it a step further - make the act of getting ready for the task a separate task. Other folks might see a single job, but when I have some repair work needing done around the house, I need a job to check if I have what I need to fix it, another to work out what I need to do, another to move it all to right place etc.

Great answer, thank you!

Got any project details for that? A BOM, or even a link to an enclosure on things or printables?

Without going to whole hog and hosting my own infrastructure, what are some good alternatives?

It does! They added it a while ago, you need to tick the restore check box when you create it and it will survive reboots. It’s very clever.

Nice tutorial! You used a date time helper. I did something similar using a timer helper instead.

You set the timer for your duration, then every time you turn on/off the boiler you ‘reset’ the timer. You can then have a trigger in your automation for when the timer reaches zero. Same solution but without the need to work with templates and other ‘codish’ things.

Timer Helper

You need Alexa Media Player

This integration will allow you to call a service that does TTS for whatever text you send it. I use it to announce when my wife gets home if I’m in the study at the back of the house. I mean, I say ‘announce’ but the message is “she’s home. Panic and tidy!”

Is this your site? If it is, thanks! It’s usually my go to for figuring out what is supported, links to what the pairing process is etc.

I’ve been using HA for a long time. I love that it is capable of aggregating all the data sources and orchestrating all the different sensors that are on the market. I haven’t used everything below, but I have used a lot of it and can give some pointers.

Instead of a Conbee II I would suggest the Sonoff Dongle. I reached a point when I had a lot of devices that the conbee couldn’t quite keep up.

I have smart bulbs from ikea, innr, linkind, Aldi. They all paired to the zigbee mesh pretty well. I also had some Osram ones that didn’t behave as relays so I took them out.

The BT sensors look nice, and I believe they integrate with HA well, but your HA needs to be in BT range for them to be able to communicate. You could also look at the Sonoff environment sensors. I use these tucked away in different rooms and they are great.

Cameras, the general advice is to make sure they support RTSP and ONVIF, with brands being Hikvision, Dahua or Amcrest. Everyone will say you should feed your cameras into a Network recorder first, with options often recommended being BlueIris, Frigate. I use Frigate.

Feel free to ask any follow up questions, I’ll do my best to guide.