• 27 Posts
  • 3 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 18th, 2023

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  • Just sign out and remove all the youtube cookies and the adblockers still work just fine. Sign in when you want to comment or use another browser that is signed in and never watch the video on that browser. Simple solution. Another option is watch the video by right clicking and opening in a “new private window” instead of watching while signed in. That works really well until you want to comment.


  • One of my favorites is setup with a large (1242 LED’s) WLED strip on my front porch. I have a motion sensor that is setup to trigger a switch to a bright white when the strip is on or if we get home and the presence detection picks us up and sets the strip to stay that way for a certain amount of time. The strip has a few different random settings that it can use when turning on as well so one night it may be a rainbow and another night it may be a solid color that walk around the strip changing one LED at a time. Comes on automatically at sunset and turns off at 11pm but until 6 am the strip can still come on with motion or presence detection.

    The other one controls my electric water heater. I have 3 temp sensors, one near the top heating element location, one near the bottom element heating location, and a third on the water output line. The original temp controllers are still in place and set the maximum temp so the tank can never go over acceptable levels even if the ESP8266 fails in an on mode. Then I let the temp ramp down at a certain time of the evening and ramp back up in the morning for use throughout the day. But lets say you come home late and need a shower, when the output temp goes over a certain point after the system has started to ramp down it will kick the heater back into it’s regular mode until the temp drops below a certain threshold. It also uses the HA app to track where we are located and I have two zones that keep the water heater going, those are home which just barely covers the property and near home which is within about 30 miles of home. Once everyone who is tracked goes outside of those zones the temp ramps back down to the overnight setting and ramps back up when we get into the near home zone.

    I have a ton of other things I want to implement like lights that turn on red automatically after a certain time of day so you can walk around at night and not kill your night vision. Right now I am working on the house as the electrical, plumbing, and a ton of other stuff needed work. But when I am done my cheap old $18K house will be a fully integrated smart home.








  • Nextcruise does have some discounts available and other things that make it worthwhile as well but it’s not always the case. But for a lot of people the ability to put a 200 deposit down and make small payments is better than throwing 900 on a credit card. By all means if you have $$$ in the bank do whatever works for you but if you are like me and I am sure a lot of other people the lower the deposit the better. Also most deposits are nonrefundable, so using NextCruise I still only have a 200 deposit that is nonrefundable vs the 900 I would normally have on a 10 night cruise.

    But if you have thought about it and want to see the world on a budget I would highly suggest trying one. I mean where can you stay in a 4 star hotel with meals and entertainment included for around 60 per night and get the chance to visit a country you have never seen before? I regularly look for rooms in that price range and while every single one will not be in that area you can still beat the cost of flying and staying at a resort when you don’t even know that the area is like other than pictures and stories from other people.