The ideal case for me is that I don’t need HACS at all. My experience has been the same - I’ve happily been able to switch to core HA components and stop using HACS ones. It’s great to see HA is not idle with success, they are continuing to make new features even when backwards compatibility may break.

I love this feature too - never having to worry about filament running out and using up the last bit of every spool is so handy.

It’s not as much as you might think, plus you have to purge to switch filaments with a single nozzle design. I would argue my Bambu saves filament on the balance because print failure is so low.

Simple - I don’t worry about it at all, I just load up a second spool of compatible material and let the printer switch when the first spool runs out (X1C with AMS).

Interesting! I haven’t had issues with ABS at stock temps in my X1C - 90C for the build plate - and I print a lot of large flat ish designs. I have had more trouble with PETG warping, and for HIPS I have to crank up the first layer to 110, then 100 for subsequent layers of it won’t stick to the Engineering Plate with glue stick at all.

My chamber temps do tend to be a bit lower, since I have an exhaust fan hooked up the carbon filter fan output to vent outside since ABS and HIPS fumes are nasty.

But yes, I’ve found 10C or so can make a huge difference when things do go south, it just hasn’t been an issue on my X1C for ABS, fortunately. Interesting to see how much a towel improves your chamber temps though!

Overall I love my X1C, one of the best decisions I made, don’t miss my old kludgy FlashForge Creator Pro and all its quirks one bit.

Heh, typing YAML anywhere is squinty business. :⁠-⁠)

ESPHome is amazing - there’s so much you can do without writing a single line of code.

I have built a few projects around the platform - a boiler monitor that tells me temperatures and state of zone valves, an energy monitoring system tracking electricity usage and solar export, and a hot tub mod that inhibits the heater to reduce grid import and maximize self consumption of solar. They have all been rock-solid stable.

ZHA here. I picked it since it’s a bit easier to set up with less bits. It works for me, so I didn’t see a reason to change it. I have done channel changes a couple of times with no issue - maybe I just got lucky!

I have not encountered this with my Sonoff Zigbee plugs, for whatever that is worth (US split phase). I also haven’t put large appliance loads on them.

I just put it in my dryer at 40C for a few hours with little regard to a target humidity. I also live in a dry climate where the ambient humidity is low, so maybe it’s not enough in wetter climates, but this works for me.

I 3D print up a custom one, sized for each project.

Yep, it’s because of that proprietary and “every device must be licensed” nature of Z-wave that I use Zigbee devices - I’ll pick an open platform everyday over a closed one, even if it has limitations.

I’ve found the same thing with regard to workflow - I find it really weird when people say it’s nothing like any other CAD programs, because it really is. You start with sketches and build up from there. Yes, the spreadsheet feature is amazing! I couldn’t believe SolidWorks forces you to buy Excel to do the same thing, which is crazy. The spreadsheet integration in FreeCAD is great - with the macro that handles the reference labels.

There’s not a single thing you can’t do in FreeCAD that you can do in other CAD programs - but you do have to understand how it works and it’s limitations.

I finally realised how freecad wants me to use it and found it much nicer to work with after that

Exactly this - once people invest the time to understand the FreeCAD flow, and get over it, they’ll find it’s an amazing and extremely productive tool.

I tried out SolidWorks and it’s a complete mess. You can’t just download and install it, it runs a bunch of weird background programs on the computer, and interacting with the multiple web sites is a nightmare. I’ve been waiting well over a month for them to refund under the promised 30 day guarantee. I’d never, ever do anything with that awful company again.

I’m really looking forward to see how Ondsel does. I’ve been using it for the last week or two, as it’s integrated 0.22 features, and I think it could be a really good thing for the FreeCAD community.

Strongly disagree. There’s nothing I can do in any of the commercial CAD programs that I can’t do in FreeCAD. Most people just don’t want to invest the time to learn it - and instead blame the tool. Yes, there’s a learning curve and it requires understanding the tool’s limitations, but if it wasn’t for FreeCAD we’d have nothing in the free, open source space for CAD.

I’m glad it was helpful. They are great little controllers and ESPHome makes them so accessible for people like me who don’t really want to write code manually.

I don’t have an exact answer to your problem, but I do have a few ideas to think about. I’ve got a few ESP32 WROOM boards running in various applications, so I’m a bit familiar. So here’s my thoughts:

• I only plug the module into data USB (computer) for the initial firmware provisioning. After that, it’s 100% wifi and USB is only for power using a power supply, not the computer. And I do the initial provisioning with just the bare ESP32 - no breakout board, nothing plugged into GPIO. Get the device up on wifi with NO other configuration in the firmware.
• I use the “arduino” framework. I don’t know if that’s correct or really matters, I’ve heard it’s the same as “esp32dev” but I don’t really know. I use “arduino” because that’s what the examples used when I setup my first board.
• Is it possible that the sensor module/board is using the same GPIO that the USB UART uses? There is a lot of shared usage of the GPIO that you’ve got to be careful to work around. The dev tools will often catch this when you compile your firmware, but not always. Again, using wifi after the initial provisioning might be enough if it is sharing GPIO with the serial port.
• If you repower the ESP32 too many times rapidly it’ll boot into safe mode. You can change the settings on that, but you can also just work slowly - make sure the device is powered on for a few minutes to record a good boot in the flash. It outputs a message in the logs, so it’s handy to always be running the log command in a terminal while developing.

Hope that helps! They are a lot of fun to integrate with HA.

Same here. Useful breakdown on tools, several of which I’ve used. I’ve invested a lot of time in FreeCAD thus far, and as I’ve learned how to do things with the right workflow to prevent errors it’s really quite nice and very powerful - and it will continue to only get better with each release. Fortunately, there are great videos and posts when I do get stuck. I can’t say enough good things about MangoJellys YouTube videos in learning how to do things the FreeCAD way - probably half of FreeCAD I’d never learn to use by just clicking around. I intend to continue down this road too, and have donated to the FreeCAD project and supported creators versus paying for commercial software. No regrets!

Sounds like it’s not actually running. Restart the hass server and check the logs, which is the only place you’ll see if a dependency is preventing it from starting.