tech – SMLP:

Step-by-Step Guide: How to Install Home Assistant Supervised on Windows

So I guess you have got here in one of three ways:

You have been scanning the home assistant forms, trying to find out how you can run home assistant supervised on Windows and have been presented with, is some very unhelpful and abrupt “NO” responses without actually giving you some helpful information.
You just can’t get your hands on a Raspberry Pi 4 to run your Home Assistant supervised installation, but you’ve got some old PC hardware that is gathering dust and now you want to utilise it to run Home Assistant Supervised and are looking for some support.
You have found my YouTube Video.

AI, talking about AI.

So I have done a couple of YouTube videos lately where I have had to do voiceovers and despite spending the last 20+ years talking to people for a living I’m not sure I like the sound of my own voice.

Well with all the new crazy AI stuff kicking about I thought that I would have a look at the one area that I have not looked into yet. AI text-to-speech (AI-TTS) and see if it can do my voice-over for me.

If you don’t already know most modern operating systems already have TTS built into the OS and considering they process on the fly they are not too bad.

I often use the iPhone accessibility “two finger swipe down” on my phone to read the current web page I am on when I’m busy. When you use it at often as I do the quality of the voice generation feels more than sufficient to get through a two-thousand-word News article without any issues.

So how has AI and machine learning, large language models improved TTS?

Well here is a voice-over created in almost real-time speed of my last blog post about Bing AI search:

Bing… “How much crap can i fit in my shed?”

This was made using eleven labs’ Prime Voice AI.

It’s fair to say there are quite a lot of usecases where a voice of this high-quality could be used.

Bing… “How much crap can I fit in my shed?“

I’ve been digesting the announcement from Microsoft on the launch of its AI-powered Bing search. Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI, the creators of the ground braking ChatGPT AI chatbot is now paying off in ways so big that I don’t think anybody truly understands how impactful this is yet.

Bing’s new AI search is so good, it hurts my head and yes it will take some time for people to get used to it, but when they do…. Internet search will be changed forever.

Anyone that has tried ChatGPT will have had that moment of amazement. The way that it will not only answer your questions in detail ,but will also let you step it up to “write me an example essay about it” and down to “can you explain it to me like I’m five”.

These amazing responses have been done while still running a old version of the AI and with no recent information or access to the internet.

Well now OpenAI and Microsoft have opened the Flood gates and given it access to the whole internet. They have also customised how it works to be focused on supporting internet searches.

You could ask how many cans of beer will fit in the boot of your Vauxhall. It will search the internet for the owners manual, find the dimensions of your boot, then calculate the answer using the average size of a can of beer.

It will give you the right answer, but it won’t JUST give you the right answer; it will give you detailed context on why it’s given you that answer. It will let you know that the capacity of the boot and shape of it will not allow you to perfectly fill it as not all the sides are straight, instead it will give you its best guess… and it will give you the links to all the places it searched to get that answer.

You could search for a new dress and once you have found one you can ask it to see if it can find you a bag that would match that dress. It will search fashion sites to find out what colours work best together, check that against your dress then search for bag’s that match.

It’s hard to fully get your head around how unreal this new AI search is.

Linus Sebastian of Linus Tech Tips did a live demo on “The WAN Show” recently where he put it through it’s paces and at some points he was totally gob-smacked and speechless on how good it performed.

Watch the clip HERE

If you have the time I would recommend you check out the full demo on the show they did (from around 43mins in)

Linus Tech Tips: WAN Show February 10th

To use the service you need to join a waiting list or you can “jump the queue” by going all in on Microsoft Edge Browser, Default search to Bing and downloading the Bing search App.

Google have some work to do to play catch up and for Microsoft they have nothing to loose. Microsoft are the underdog of search when (not if) this works out for them they are going to sky rocket, search was worth $257 Billion in 2021. Something tells me google are not going to be leader for much longer.

Anyone else wish they had stock in Microsoft right now.

Phil GB

Microsoft announcing the new AI powered Bing: https://blogs.microsoft.com/

Google’s new AI: $120bn wiped off Google after Bard AI chatbot gives wrong answer

Mastodon: Its a big Ocean but I will sink this ship if you keep Fu%$ing about!

Mastodon has grown into a beautiful community of 7,519,214 users across 18,458 instances. Every one of them instances is a floating boat in a worldwide ocean that’s interconnecting people in the best way.

It’s a breeding ground for great ideas, conversations, learning, information and Dogs on skateboards. The best thing, it is not controlled by one individual or company with views and opinions of how everyone should behave. Every boat has a captain, and that captain can set down the law for the people on their boat… not rules, but more guidance and a moral code, what they consider right or wrong and what they consider cool. The captain can also invite like-minded people to get on board and share a viewpoint around a common goal.

Love Dogs on skateboards? Captain Daryl is your man. Passionate about Badgers? Not as much as Captain Angie, get on her boat! Like living in a cold place… Captain Pingu, we are on the way.

All these boats can listen to, and broadcast to, every boat in this wonderful Ocean.

But What about Captain Dennis… His boat smells a bit funny and he likes to pull the wings off flys!

Well here is the genius of Mastodon. Captain Barbara’s bug boat doesn’t want to hear about that kind of messing about so her boat can just cut ties, so nobody on her boat has to put up with Dennis’s horrible behaviour. Daryl however likes Dennis’s jokes so no drama as long as his boat doesn’t start to smell even worse.

Caption Bruno’s Boat? We don’t talk about Bruno’s boat, no no no, he doesn’t broadcast to us and we don’t listen. I think that’s best for everybody.

Some of these boats only have a Captain and some are big superliners with multiple Captain’s and Catering staff, they have swimming pools, tennis courts, helicopter pads and a shit load of passengers, the biggest, Mastodon.social 929,480 Passengers.

The boat I am on Mastodonapp.uk currently has 69,738 people. Actual not all are people some are random computerised weather Station that blast out interesting information from a place I have never been but I still look at the info every time I see it – check it out: newquayweather

Our boat’s common connection is simply the little island we all live on and I think that’s kind of cool because I’m awake when they are awake.

So, Ocean, Boats, Captains, Passengers and Bruno. Beautiful, Beautiful Ocean

What do you do when the Passengers are dicks? Kick them off the Boat, simple. What if you get rats on your boat? What if your passengers start kicking off with the Captain? If it was somebody else’s boat you could just stop listening but this is happening in the dining room, around the pool and the Captain is starting to get pissed off with it. Have you ever seen one of those videos of a retail worker finally deciding they have put up with enough of Karen’s shit!!

In the Twitter Ocean, there was only one big boat, and they spent a long time kicking the rats off the boat, after a while, you get too many rats and you just don’t have the time to get them off the ship… you end up with rat shit… everywhere. The Captain’s paid good money for his boat and is too busy trying to charge people entry into the pool to spend any more time dealing with the rats. When the whole place starts to smell like that toilet from Trainspotting the passengers just swim off to the next Ocean.

Now in the Ocean of Mastodon, the Ships and Boats are free, yes you have to pay to keep the lights on and the shifts are long but the Captain’s focus is on that cool connection to their like-minded passengers, that common connection. That makes it all worth the effort, right?

Well… one of the biggist ships mastodon.lol with 76,281 passengers just got rats and as far as I’m aware this is the first big ship in our Ocean to get rats, some have been kicked overboard by the Captain, passengers are starting to rebel and now there is shit… everywhere! The passengers have been blaming the Captain, but they don’t want to leave the ship; they have asked to speak to the MANAGER! but we only have Captains here.

I’m my opinion the Captain has done the only thing a Captain can do, and should do, in this situation.

Sink the fucking boat and teach them horrible rats a valuable lesson. Don’t shit where you eat!

I feel bad for the passengers that were just chilling by the pool sharing the love with other like-minded passengers, I really do, I would be more than happy for you to hang out with me on my boat. But I also hope that the rats realise that in this new world, people won’t put up with your shit and are more than happy to let the air out of your dinghy of yours if you don’t play nice.

Just play nice people.

Phil GB

(Source of Mastodon Stats: https://observablehq.com/@simonw/mastodon-users-and-statuses-over-time

Step-by-Step Guide: How to Install Home Assistant Supervised on TrueNAS Scale with ConBee II or SONOFF passthrough.

I often see posts on forums and groups of people asking for help on how to get something working, the responses that are given can be very “elitist”. Only generally pointing somebody in the right direction without actually giving the time to walk somebody through the process of actually doing the thing they have asked. I understand that not everyone has the time to do this but with me being reasonably new to this kind of thing myself I thought I would create my only step-by-step while working it out myself and just hope that others asking the question will find it.

So firstly thank you for being here.

I have made a list of places I got the info from at the end of the post. They all were able to help me figure this out and have a wealth of Knowledge so please after you have completed the guide check them out.

Before we get started this guide is for anybody already running a computer that has installed TrueNas Scale running a standard 64bit Intel or AMD processor. This could be an old tower PC, Mini PC or basically just about any hardware that would generally run Windows.

If you haven’t already installed TrueNas Scale Raid Owl has a great friendly video on how to set up, and basic use of TrueNAS Scale on his Youtube channel. The only thing he doesn’t cover is how to create a USB installer. You can find how to do that here: https://manjaro.site.

Once you have a computer that boots up into TrueNas Scale with Storage setup you can follow this step-by-step guide.

I have also done a video to walk you through the guide:

Let’s get this done >STEP ONE

Contents:

http://192.168.1.42/blog/2023/03/step-by-step-guide-how-to-install-home-assistant-supervised-on-windows/

Samsung Release Galaxy Book3 Ultra

So Samsung has just released a bunch of new stuff and the stand-out thing for me so far has been the MacBook Air… oh, sorry Galaxy Book3 Ultra.

Galaxy Book3 Ultra

Don’t get me wrong this thing has a 16” screen and the specs look very good but:

To me, it looks like they are taking the “Great Artist Steal” mindset to the extreme. I think the Book3 Ultra looks like they have copied the midpoint of the M1 and M2 MacBook Air with a bigger screen.

I guess we’ll have to wait for the full review see to what the consensus is and why it costs €2,799 ($3,056).

Announcement details over at: notebookcheck.net

Office site: Samsung.com

I built my first Smart Home device with lollipop sticks, electricians, tape and time.

So I just built and installed my first useful and working (well seems to be) Internet of things (IoT) connected bit of electronics.

1. What does it do?

It give me the live electricity use of my whole home. It’s able to show how much I am using now, how much so far for the day/week/month/year. It can give me the exact cost of my electricity broken down into 30 minute segment (or down to 5 minutes if I really need to).

2. How much did it cost?

1 ESP32 microcontroller £8.49
1 x Photosensitive Diode Sensor (for 5) £6.99
1 x Long USB cable that will reach you electric meter (for 2) £3.50
3 DuPont – Female to Female jumper cables (for loads) £8.49
A always on computer running Home Assistant. (More on this another time)
A few lolly stick’s and a bit of electricians tape.
Time (lots of it).

On this point I paid a lot less than this but all the links above are for easy purchase from Amazon with super quick delivery. I had to wait almost 3 weeks for the stuff to arrive from some far away land along with some other stuff I was already getting. I also already had the USB cable and the DuPont cable kicking about.

Total (quick build cost): £27.47

(It cost me around £14 using stuff I had kicking about. I basically just needed a ESP32 and the sensor – if case you were wondering)

3. But why you mad bastard?

Picture the scene.

Your standing in the kitchen and one of your Alternative/Goth children come in to make a cup of hot Buckwheat Tea (it’s a thing) or whatever their hot beverage of choice is. Despite telling them for years to turn them lights off or not waste electricity by filling the kettle to the top; she’s at it again. This time however you can point to the live gauge on your mobile dashboard showing the needle jump from 400w in use to 3,500w in use.

As Lincoln said “Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember”

Having a better understanding of what power you are consuming helps you and the people around you have a better understanding of what you can do to make it better by reducing what you use.

Having the details and also the cost of what energy you are using is helpful for planning on reducing use and readying yourself better for your big fat energy crisis bill.

You could basically gain the knowledge need to put the bills on a diet and try and save some pennies.

It’s also pretty cool. If you have an interest in smart home geekery stuff it’s a great little project to get stuck into.

Let me know if you have built your own and how you did.

Home Assistant Glow Project:

https://github.com/klaasnicolaas/home-assistant-glow

Video review of the project:

Link to buy your own ESP32:

https://amzn.to/3kMYbcT

OpenAI – Guest Post

OpenAI is a leading artificial intelligence research laboratory that is dedicated to developing and promoting friendly AI. One of the ways that OpenAI could potentially change the way people write blog posts is by making it easier and faster to generate high-quality content.

Currently, writing a blog post can be a time-consuming and labor-intensive process. In order to create a well-written and engaging post, a writer must spend time researching, brainstorming, organizing their thoughts, and crafting their words. This can be especially challenging for bloggers who are under tight deadlines or who have a lot of content to produce.

However, with OpenAI, it may be possible to automate much of this process. For example, OpenAI’s GPT-3 language model, which is one of the most advanced AI models ever created, is capable of generating human-like text on a wide range of topics. This means that, in theory, a writer could input some basic information about their blog post and have GPT-3 generate the bulk of the content for them. This could save writers a significant amount of time and effort, and could allow them to produce more content in less time.

In addition to making it easier and faster to generate content, OpenAI could also improve the quality of blog posts. GPT-3 and other AI models are not just capable of generating text that is coherent and grammatically correct; they can also produce text that is engaging, informative, and even humorous. This could help bloggers to create posts that are more interesting and enjoyable to read, and could potentially lead to more engagement and success for their blogs.

Of course, it’s important to note that there are also potential drawbacks to using AI to write blog posts. Some people may be concerned about the potential loss of jobs for human writers, and there may also be concerns about the ethics of using AI to produce content. However, it’s likely that the use of AI in writing will evolve over time, and that any potential negative impacts can be mitigated through responsible use and regulation.

Overall, OpenAI has the potential to change the way people write blog posts by making it easier and faster to generate high-quality content. While there may be some challenges and concerns to address, the use of AI in writing could ultimately benefit bloggers and readers alike.

Written with OpenAI