Not that I expect there's a lot of people reading this blog, but I apologize for the long time in between posts. It's been crazy busy in other aspects of my life, and this blog always gets pushed to the back of the line.

Fish tank update. Nothing much. I think the fish population is declining, which is desired. There were just too many fish before. I've cut back food to much more reasonable level, and I've noticed fewer new fish appearing. As a result, water changes are much more measured now, getting closer to the mythical occasional 15% water changes. I'm still changing water, usually about 30-40% every 1-2 weeks, but that's better than the 50-60% I was needing to do weekly. So, we're getting closer to a better balance. Algae hasn't been much of a problem, but it still requires scrubbing/scraping regularly. But otherwise, no big changes are best.

Smart home update. So here we go back and forth between stuff. I tried HomeKit again. Third time's a charm, right? Nope. I've pretty much given up on HomeKit. It's just unreliable, things fall off all the time, and it's just way more hassle than any benefits it theoretically could provide. I appreciate the local nature, but when it's less reliable than literally everything else in the house, that's pathetic.

I upgraded to the Hubitat C-8. It's fine I guess. I wiped and reloaded my previous C-7 and use it just for LAN integrations that might be problematic so it doesn't take down the main hub. I share the devices using the built in hub mesh mechanism. It seems to be working quite well. Most of my automations are in Hubitat, but I am setting scenes using Home Assistant as it's easier to set up and make any changes. I am using the Lutron pico buttons in Home Assistant instead of Hubitat. They seem to work faster there. I also have removed the kasa power strips from Hubitat as it just didn't work that well. So all that is controlled via Home Assistant where I have had exactly one problem, due to an update, which was resolved in less than 24 hours and has been rock solid so far.

I replaced the wifi system for what I hope is the last time in a while. The eeros I had were ok, except they would occasionally wig out and reboot themselves. Sometimes it was just a 5 minute downtime which is inconvenient enough when it happens during the day on con calls, but sometimes it required extraordinary measures such as completely unplugging everything for a few minutes, and then trying to bring them on in the proper order, and then inevitably a lot of wifi devices needed to be rebooted to get them working again. So, it could be quite a production. The new system has been running for a few months, and so far it's been fine. I'm not really enamored with the new system's app or web page. It's slow, and seems to not work fully. The page that shows connected devices is blank, for example. But I have a lot of devices connected, and so far it's held up with good speed and pretty good coverage. Knock on wood.