He started out doing challenge videos like “counting to x” and it was literally like a multi-hour long video where he counted to 10,000 I believe. It’s insanely boring but it showed his “dedication to the bit”. Another is saying " pewdiepie like 10,000 times. I may have exaggerated, I’m not at a computer to look up the numbers. Eventually, after tormenting himself and gaining some followers and he got paid some money from youtube. With his first paycheck he made a video of him taking that check and giving it to a homeless person (IIRC). His philosophy was always to take any money he makes and dump it right into the next video. This has allowed him to slowly make bigger and bigger videos. He still regularly does challenge videos (buried himself alive for multiple days, not eating for several days, etc.) But, him dumping all of the money he makes, into the next video has grown from giving his first, probably couple hundred dollar check, to a homeless man, into giving literally millions away per video.

He also kind of pioneered the thumbnails you are talking about. And yelling at the beginning of the video to grab your attention by showing enthusiasm was also really his thing too. I mean some people had probably used it before. But, he used it regularly and had the type of content that really was that exciting.

Whether you care for challenge content, giving away money, some combination of both, or neither he also has Beast Philanthropy. That’s his channel where he does good “because he can”. He puts a bunch of money and gets sponsors to give money for causes like, building wells, building houses, paying for surgeries, building hospitals, etc. I thought it was a bit gross to make videos out of charity work at first. But, it helps a lot of people in under served countries, and raises awareness to them and the charities that try to help them. Also, all the money they make on that channel goes to the charity of each episode.

That was more than I thought I would type for sure…

I don’t have experience with them. I have been using linode for a few years now and love it!

A bunch of people recommend dozzle in this thread… I’ve been using Dockge. I wonder how they compare. I’ll have to check that out later.

SMLIGHT SLZB-06/M/P7

I’ve tried a few other ZigBee Coordinators and this is the only one I can really suggest. Home Assistant even has their own that used to be called Sky Connect. I was having things randomly drop off my network with Sky Connect.

Get the one that has experimental Matter-over-thread support for future-proofing. You can even get it with POE support if that’s helpful for you.

Don’t forget to donate! 😊

I use obsidian for my notes/wiki. I use the git plugin to backup/sync my notes. I self-host forgejo as my gut server. Works great!

Caddy is my favorite reverse-proxy. The setup is just a config file.

I apologize for the confusion.

It makes it so that the direction of the switch doesn’t matter. Flipping the switch toggles to the off or on state that it’s not currently in. I like to think of it as a three-way switch that you may already have in your house where up doesn’t necessarily mean ‘on’ because there are two switches involved. The relay in the wall is the other switch. So if you have the light on in home assistant but you flip the switch, it’ll turn the light off whether it was up or down. I hope I made more sense.

If my wifi goes out my switches function as normal too.

I love my Shelly relays. I don’t use the stock firmware though. I have them overwritten with ESPhome.

I have heard that you can have full local control with them now and that it’s not really necessary to do a custom firmware. I just like having a configuration file that tells me exactly everything that it can do. That and I have a script running that updates all my ESPhome devices automatically.

Agree!

I wish, thread just isn’t there yet. I currently use Wi-Fi for most of my smart home stuff. I have a really good Wi-Fi setup though and it could support a lot of devices. I have been slowly moving to zigbee though.

I do in-wall relays so that I can use regular, off the shelf switches and it looks like nothing special is there. I like the idea of people not knowing it’s smart until I do something from my phone.

A script to make it easy.

The best ones for this are the ones from Best Buy. Easystore.

I just want an app to backup all the photos from my phone automatically. I use NextCloud for that currently and it works well. But, it’s kinda heavy for what I want/need.

Torx screws 4 lyfe

Iirc signal has something you can host for the communications of strangers.

Niagara is the goat!!

Have a suggestion?

Amen. I appreciate my UPS for sure!

I can’t wait for mine to come in!