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When we last left the amalgamation of code, sensors, and things, we'd greatly improved the ability of the voice assistant system to set timers of arbitrary length and out effort into distinguishing them from each other. Since then, a hub attached to a component of the systems has regularly been failing to connect to and through the wifi, and there's a switch that has been having trouble with that as well. There's now a radio for the lights that has let them connect to local control instead of a failing hub. Many of the previous light controls have worked perfectly once the lights were renamed to their proper entity identifications. Some features have been lost for the moment, but there's a distinct possibility that they can be put back together with the use of the correct API calls. The switch, we'll have to see if it can be locally controlled or if we have to get a different type of switch and locally control that, instead. Or see whether the hub disappearing allows for greater and better control of that switch.
Right now, however, we get to enjoy a saga of doing things the wrong way repeatedly until something gets done correctly and it works. I have an old television that my ex had me buy for myself so that the older, heavier model didn't have to make a trip with me (or so that I wouldn't feel like I was only spending money on things for her, or both) that still works excellently for display reasons, except for one tiny thing: the Infrared (IR) sensor on it is busted. I have no idea when this happened, but that's the reality of it. With a working IR sensor, controlling this television from Home Assistant would be much easier, as there's already a trainable IR remote in the same room as the TV.
( Thus, the saga begins. )
Once again, dirty hacks done dirt cheap and successfully, based on looking at code and then trying things until understanding appeared. It took hours to get everything in place for what seems to be a tiny amount of actual work done (some code lines changed, others added, less than two dozen lines total, I think, to the actual programs, and then another dozen of the service template I borrowed from someone else to make it happen on startup and modified to run the program I wanted.) It doesn't feel like a great and powerful accomplishment to have succeeded this time around, either, perhaps because of all the typo correction and the having modified someone else's heavy lifting instead of generating something myself in the language of my choosing. Except, of course, that I would almost certainly be importing modules that someone else has created even if I were creating my own script, so I could go as far down as I like in that turtle pile until we get to "well, if you're not manipulating the inodes by hand with magnets, then you're not really coding." Someone put their code out there, I took it and made it work for me. That, theoretically, is software and/or systems engineering. But much like creating art doodles or sketches or the craft projects or the baking and cooking that I've been doing, I can always find some reason somewhere to say that I didn't do it the Right and Proper Way, which almost always seems to be stuck in my mind as "from scratch, with no help or recipes from anyone else, and with no already-prepared ingredients," since that's apparently the mark of True Artistry with the thing. Even though I think that it's not very intelligent to test student memorization of things when in the real world applications of what they will be doing, they'll have computers or reference works or colleagues to help them out with the correct measurements and procedures. I think it might be echoes of Giftedness equating the True Artness with already knowing or lack of effort and time put in to produce flawless work. Even though the important things often take effort much more than they need brilliance or knowing it all before beginning.
And, having finished with this project, there's another one or two of them coming around the corner, to try and replicate, as best as possible, some of the functionality with the lights that got lost when we stopped using the manufacturer's API and its links into other web-based services and instead brought them under local control so they would be reliable, instead. It's entirely possible that many of the things that were in use can be replicated, based on sensors already in place, and other ones, well, now might be the time where we start pulling in specific data from someone else's published APIs and manipulating it for our purposes.
Right now, however, we get to enjoy a saga of doing things the wrong way repeatedly until something gets done correctly and it works. I have an old television that my ex had me buy for myself so that the older, heavier model didn't have to make a trip with me (or so that I wouldn't feel like I was only spending money on things for her, or both) that still works excellently for display reasons, except for one tiny thing: the Infrared (IR) sensor on it is busted. I have no idea when this happened, but that's the reality of it. With a working IR sensor, controlling this television from Home Assistant would be much easier, as there's already a trainable IR remote in the same room as the TV.
( Thus, the saga begins. )
Once again, dirty hacks done dirt cheap and successfully, based on looking at code and then trying things until understanding appeared. It took hours to get everything in place for what seems to be a tiny amount of actual work done (some code lines changed, others added, less than two dozen lines total, I think, to the actual programs, and then another dozen of the service template I borrowed from someone else to make it happen on startup and modified to run the program I wanted.) It doesn't feel like a great and powerful accomplishment to have succeeded this time around, either, perhaps because of all the typo correction and the having modified someone else's heavy lifting instead of generating something myself in the language of my choosing. Except, of course, that I would almost certainly be importing modules that someone else has created even if I were creating my own script, so I could go as far down as I like in that turtle pile until we get to "well, if you're not manipulating the inodes by hand with magnets, then you're not really coding." Someone put their code out there, I took it and made it work for me. That, theoretically, is software and/or systems engineering. But much like creating art doodles or sketches or the craft projects or the baking and cooking that I've been doing, I can always find some reason somewhere to say that I didn't do it the Right and Proper Way, which almost always seems to be stuck in my mind as "from scratch, with no help or recipes from anyone else, and with no already-prepared ingredients," since that's apparently the mark of True Artistry with the thing. Even though I think that it's not very intelligent to test student memorization of things when in the real world applications of what they will be doing, they'll have computers or reference works or colleagues to help them out with the correct measurements and procedures. I think it might be echoes of Giftedness equating the True Artness with already knowing or lack of effort and time put in to produce flawless work. Even though the important things often take effort much more than they need brilliance or knowing it all before beginning.
And, having finished with this project, there's another one or two of them coming around the corner, to try and replicate, as best as possible, some of the functionality with the lights that got lost when we stopped using the manufacturer's API and its links into other web-based services and instead brought them under local control so they would be reliable, instead. It's entirely possible that many of the things that were in use can be replicated, based on sensors already in place, and other ones, well, now might be the time where we start pulling in specific data from someone else's published APIs and manipulating it for our purposes.
