How are we all doing today? Are you working on anything interesting at work or outside of work?

Wrapped up another issue/feature on Paul's CommunityQuiz which was fun! For today it'll be an Umbraco 7 to 10 migration project at work 🙂

I've been doing a ton of home automation with Home Assistant this weekend.. all the lights everywhere and automating them turning on near sunset. Now I want to try to see if we can turn everything off when nobody is home. So far so good, but I have 3 different brands of plugs and 3 different brands of bulbs at the moment and they don't always seem to be super stable in turning on/off.. so plenty of debugging to do the next few weeks.

@Sebastiaan yep I think that's the most common problem with SmartHome stuff. Different brands and different specs etc

Trying to make a content app for the Community Quiz but it's slow going - hope to get it finished by the end of Hacktoberfest 😄

Yeah, well, it all plays together pretty well on Home Assistant.. and I'm cheap so I mix and match.. So far, so good.. Just a few surprises along the way causing me to have to buy even more hardware 😂

For me I just end up using Google Home app once its connected to that & end up shouting loudly at Google displays to turn stuff on or off 😂

Got to say my absolute favorite is Switchbot, to flip on and off existing switches when I can't put smart bulbs in! It's mechanical and just a brilliant implementation! https://eu.switch-bot.com/collections/switchbot-hot-sales/products/switchbot-bot?variant=41666183102629

oh! I like that - could use that in my office! 😄

haha little robot to push a button

Oh man, google home is annoying me so so much, it's super inconsistent and it doesn't let me do simple things, it forces you to use voice commands. I know people have bought an Alexa to stand next to their Google device to speak into it with a consistent volume.. I mean ... 😂

I'm looking at the switch bot thinking, love the idea but really. Do I need it for a switch that is only just out of reach 😄

Yes, it's brilliant! It comes with a little loop and sticker that you put on the switch so that it can also pull on the switch to turn it back off

Haha that's just brilliant 😂

Yeh I was wondering how it would go back the other way. Thought OK its gonna push it once then what...

> Do I need it Yes, YES you do! 😂

Is it rechargable or battery?

Does it pass the wife/partner test though? I imagine mine being why the hell is these little boxes all over the light switches. I just wanna turn on the bloody light !

That's why I would only do it on my office switch

Let me know if you find a way to make that test pass 😛 😂

home automation is down the line.. thing i have been wanting to do is use these calex led strips around my flat..

I could spend way too much money on things like that 😄

Passing the wife test is usually fine, it's the longer term mother-in-law test that's the tricky one.

I want to get presence senses so the light turns on and stays on 😄

I have some of the Hue ones in the obvious rooms.

Luckily my girlfriend is pretty much on board, I gave her specific buttons in the app and she enjoys them for now. I'm also getting physical buttons to activate scenes so we can just turn the living room on, activate night mode, etc.

sounds like a great blog @Sebastiaan 🙂 might make me get round to it XD

But it HAS to be 1 app, which makes sense.. I have about 12 apps for all the different branded stuff by now lol

There's always a google assistant within ear's reach at home so wife tends to just shout what she wants at Google.

I'm going to brush aside my feelings about Facebook / Meta the company, and solely focus this message about immersive tech. We are getting a few Meta Quest Pros today and the team is really excited to unbox them and start playing around with the updated SDKs.

Sounds interesting but I'm still not sold on the hype of AR/VR but maybe its because I am a grumpy old man now...

Motion sickness everytime I have tried VR.

Matt, you may have an easier time sitting down and remaining stationary. The higher resolution headsets (DPI actually) results in a lot clearer visuals too. If you decide to give it another go try there first!

> For the past 6 years, I've chosen a charitable organization to work with pro-bono for two weeks. The entire team comes together, which is rare, and we help mature their digital strategy. I love this! Thought I'd be scared for them that they then need to implement / continue which might be difficult if they can't get continued help?

Warren, until I came across the Quest 2 device, I really wasn’t either. My first real VR project was transforming boring e-learning material from PowerPoint to a more immersive format. We built an entire library of training and deployed it into headsets and shipped them to people who couldn’t otherwise attend classes in person.

i think there are ways to mitigate that.. but its about setting goals .. what do you want , and then saying how long to implement i want to be number 1 in my sector in five years year one sort out tech debt

@Ravi yes! Many of the organizations we work with either (a) have no digital strategy at all or (b) are just scratching the surface. There are a lot of potentially huge wins for a small amount of effort. As Umbraco chases the "composable DXP" thing, which I think of as microservices, these tasks become simpler over time! @Sebastiaan that is a real concern, but you have to start somewhere and we hope that we give them enough value that they come back for paid work. Not all of them have, but we have good relationships with them and when they are ready for a paid engagement we hope they contact us first. You may be surprised at how many small retainers (2-8 hours per month) we have because of our nonprofit work. Enough to sustain one of our employee's salaries. Big win for a small agency like mine.

Oh I think freebies when you can afford it are a super business practice. Better if it scales to more than just one client of course, but it creates a ton of goodwill.

I'm working on a few nice things: For work I'm looking to make our websites CSP compliant by improving inline scripts and styles so I can apply nonces to all of them, while also keeping the experience frontend-developer-friendly. In the private hours I'm working on a major overhaul on the URL Tracker package. I already made a new design for it, but the biggest improvements I want to make are the introduction of heuristics to drastically improve the suggestions, a more straightforward redirect model with a well thought-through UI and separating its features into separate packages so that you won't have to install anything that you don't want to have. I'm also looking at ways to make the URL Tracker thoroughly extendable as to turn it into more of a smart customizable URL management framework. ... And I'm preparing to build a little podium for my electric drums with tennis balls to help reduce the noise

Can I suggest to help with noise insulation.. gets lord of squash balls and cut them in half and put them under the platform as cheap and very effective noise insulation.. I have that on my sub woofer and I’ve never really had complaint..form my downstairs neighbours

Ooooh, nice suggestion, I'll look into that for sure. You mean to use squash balls as little feet on the underside of the platform, in addition to tennis balls in the middle?

squash balls as little feet ( no need for the tennis ball) and they are relatively cheap

@User May I suggest “folks” instead of "guys"? We use gender inclusive language in this Discord 😀

@User May I suggest “Umbracians” instead of "guys"? We use gender inclusive language in this Discord. 😀

what i will say at the lower sound levels you may not hear or notice anything, but at higher and bassier volumes you will notice the slight damping of the vibrations which it what i used it for

Hmm the stage isn't quite meant for dampening the sound, but rather for dampening the impact of the kick drum pedal on the floor. I've found that the noise of electric drums themselves is quite manageable, especially since I'm using a headset.