It has been half a month since I left Shanghai, and I have been staying at home during this time. Many things have happened.
Tinkering and complaining about HomeKit
During the beginning of the month, I was tinkering with smart home automation. Since I installed all Xiaomi products, it was very convenient to integrate them into HomeKit. I originally thought that with the support of Apple's ecosystem, it would work well. However, in practice, it was not very useful. Apart from the nice-looking user interface, it didn't have much functionality.
Most people who buy Xiaomi products do so to integrate them into Apple's ecosystem, and I thought the same. I thought using HomeKit automation would solve everything, but it turned out that the automation feature was not very useful. Many devices lacked conditions, and some device statuses and conditions could only be obtained through Xiaomi's own app. The HomeKit dashboard only shows device status, and many functions are missing when you click into it. It can only control basic functions like switches and brightness. Xiaomi's products are really expensive. In the smart home community, Xiaomi and XiaoYan products are much cheaper, and XiaoYan can also be integrated into HomeKit. I haven't used XiaoYan, but it seems to be less popular and has fewer features, and it can only rely on Apple. I didn't install Xiaomi products initially because Xiaomi didn't support localization at that time, but now they not only have a geek mode but also support localization, which is a betrayal.
In the end, I didn't use HomeKit for automation. As mentioned above, the main reason is that everyone in the family needs to use an iPhone for it to work well. The second reason is more important. For example, in HomeKit, the smart lock only has the status of being opened or unlocked, and it doesn't differentiate between entering or leaving the house. Therefore, I couldn't create scenes for coming home or leaving. However, Xiaomi's own app has this feature. There are many other limitations as well. For example, in HomeKit, there is no automation for "what to do when no one is detected for a period of time" for motion sensors. The human presence sensor is even more cumbersome, as it can only recognize it as a motion sensor.
So in the end, I used Xiaomi's own app for automation and only used HomeKit as a dashboard. HomeKit's response is very fast and more stable than Xiaomi's own app, which often has synchronization issues.
Xiaomi's sensor detection is not reliable. It often turns on the lights in the middle of the night without detecting anyone. I don't recommend buying the FP2. It really consumes a lot of power, suddenly turning on the lights in the middle of the night. If there is another chance, I won't consider integrating it for HomeKit. Xiaomi's products are also good and cheap.
I connected some Xiaomi devices to HomeKit through Home Assistant. The display in HomeKit is very strange and messy. I don't recommend connecting Xiaomi devices to Home Assistant. Just use the Xiaomi app, it's good enough.
Tinkering with the network
The day before leaving Shanghai, I switched to a software router called All in Boom. I didn't have a backup of the virtual machine or the configuration files, so I had to start from scratch. (Actually, I did have a backup, but the backup disk also failed.)
Originally, I had a main router and a secondary router, but now I switched to a single router because I was afraid that after using All in Boom, the switches in my house would be useless. Now most of the switches are wireless and automated through the gateway. I'm not sure if they will still work without an IP address for the gateway. To avoid this situation, I decided not to use the main router and just use OpenWrt as a secondary router. I bought a TPLink XDR6088 as the main router and AP, but I don't recommend it. TP-Link routers have a terrible backend. If you have the money, go for Asus without hesitation, or Xiaomi (AX9000 is popular among tech enthusiasts).
I put the software router in the study. Since it's not the main router anymore, I'll just make do with it for now. If I want to set up multicast in the future, I'll probably need to buy another software router as the main router. All in One is not possible anymore.
I haven't bought a NAS yet, but I added a 1TB SSD to the software router. I have plenty of space, so I installed TrueNAS for now. Currently, my PVE hosts NAS, OpenWrt, and Arch Linux.
Backup! Backup! Backup!
Open source related
Recently, I was involved in the open-source community and contributed to the development of xLog. Through this opportunity, I also got to know many experts.
After the Next.js Conf, there was a wave of migration to App Router. After helping xLog complete the migration, I also wanted to take this opportunity to reorganize the code of kami and address some technical debt. The result was a failure, and the reason is mentioned in the link.
After that, there was no further progress. It was a waste of a week's time, as I was just running into problems, and the Next community was not very friendly. I completely turned to the dark side and will blindly choose Nuxt in the future.
Gaming
Kingdom of Tears is so much fun! It cured my gaming impotence, and I've been playing it every day since its release!
WLB (Work-Life Balance)
I joined Zowan in the middle of the month. This is my second full-time remote job. I hope everything goes well.
I just started a week ago, and everyone is so talented. There is a strong engineering atmosphere, and we can discuss a problem or suggestion for a long time, as everyone has their own ideas. It's completely different from my previous company, where I had to work overtime every day and attend endless meetings.
Now that I have escaped from the endless overtime and meetings, I need to plan and work hard to live a good life.
(This article is also synchronized to xLog by Mix Space. The original link is https://innei.ren/notes/146)