Do you happen to use android auto? Does that work OK? I could go without, but that’s one integration that’s just got it’s hooks on me hard.

The thing that pisses me off most is that cars have these vulnerabilities, and automakers do a shit job of protecting them, but do just a good enough job to keep me, the owner, from playing with them.

Not really “pink”, and lacks romance, but very pleasant: Dave the Diver. Cozy-ish game with nifty characters. Only thing would be I don’t know if you meant “no/minimal combat” because you don’t want the mechanics or the vibes. Dave has not particularly challenging combat mechanics, and paw patrol levels of violence levels (although you are catching and eating fish).

If you like park builders, Zoo Tycoon is cozy as hell. Beware the DLC trap though. You can get the base game with a lot of meat pretty cheap, but the DLCs are like $10+ each and not really a good value IMO. But the game has a great vibe with some really neat mechanics that try and imitate real conservation efforts.

What would check the boxes through a “Hot Topic” lens is Promise Mascot Agency. Surprisingly wholesome, completely off the wall, combat is all card/deck builder based… I… it’s a hard one to describe.

Doughnut county checks all the boxes but is rather short. Katamari if you haven’t done it.

I hear good things about, but have not played: Naiad, Tempopo.

Lmfao, that’s what I mean, it makes way more sense to plan for the scenarios where you won’t be forced to, you know, resort to canibalism.

I’m a big fan of just augmenting your floating stock at home. I make a point of buying a few extra cans every-time I grocery shop, a few extra boxes of pasta etc. I focus on things I may actually cook with so I’m rotating stock. Diced tomatoes, canned beans, those tomatoes with green chilies in them. I’ve got some canned meat that I almost never cook with (a just in-case thing), it gets rotated through making dip during football season, but it’s there if I need it. I’ve also got textured vegetable protein (which is more for camping/a vegetarian I dated and tried to learn to cook for). Again, it’s a luxury for some folks (both for budget and space reasons).

But that was my point. This may not be you but it was surprising to me in early covid how many people just didn’t keep food around. Also spices, like it’s great to have rice and beans, but you’ll be a lot happier if you make sure you’ve got chili powder, hot sauce, soy sauce, etc.

Sure there are “grab and go” scenarios, but it is far more likley someone might need to put together some meals in a less than ideal situation. Being able to do, say, mac and cheese with some shredded canned chicken and hot sauce with a side of green beans goes a long way to keeping spirits up.

I didn’t grow up super rural, but it’s just the way my house was. One reason was the weather, the other was my mom was amazing at stretching a dollar. She’d buy when there was a great sale, and we’d have 4-5x of whatever the item was downstairs. So you’d wind up eating Christmas themed breakfast cereal until like May, but it also meant there was just a bunch of reserves.

As someone who is generally on the more prepared side, the use case for most stuff falls far short of “doomsday”. There is a ton to be said about things that are just generally useful in adverse situations. I’ve lived through a dozen or so storms that took out power for a few days (longest I think was 2 weeks). It’s usually not a complete blackout everywhere.

Point being: I can see it being useful to have a bunch of info in something easily portable to say, double check breaker wiring helping your friend fix some stuff after the storm. Look up the emergency AM/CB/NOAA radio freqs. I have a lot of the resources on this thing on a server, but that’s not mobile and would eat a lot of power just booting up. To package it nicely in a form factor like this would probably run me just about $189.

But the overall point is I think this falls on the extreme end of practical preparedness but I can absolutely see the use. Honestly the most practical thing on there are the books. Again, usually if a community gets hit bad you wind up with people that have power having a bunch of people stay over. Being able to allow multiple people stuff to read would help kill time.

All of that being said, its a distant second to the critical items that, again, have a huge range of uses: A solid first aide kit, 2 weeks of food (even if it’s not awesome). I realize that’s a luxury for a lot of people, but money is much better spent there first.

Strayed off topic a bit, but it’s because while I don’t think it makes a lot of sense to plan for SHTF scenarios, I do think we’re going to see a general decay (but not elimination) of public services/utilities and an increasingly pissy climate. I think it’s important for people to not fall into the bunker-prepper fantasy OR write off being more prepared than they’re accustomed to.

I can only hope, meet me at the corner of hollis and morris.

edit: seriously, from someone from a border town, we stand on guard for thee.

I can’t stop laughing, it’s like every inhibition has died.

THANK YOU. I know I can scroll through it, but I get tired of waiting.

Similar. I got a vehicle that had android auto, but not wireless. Plugging and unplugging all the time I’d go through a cable every few months. Power would work, but the shielding would break and it would screw with cell/GPS until I replaced the cable.

Got a wireless android auto adapter to stop buying cables. That’s great but I knew I wouldn’t plug in my phone every time like normal, so I use the wireless charging.

isn’t that a lot like the film industry though? Maybe thats the model that makes sense.

you are correct. On holiday with a few beers I’m surprised I got that close lol

For anyone in that spot of being savvy-ish but having fellow users that finally got used to plex:

A work around is Xteve and owncast. I was successfully able to make an owncast broadcast into a “DVR channel”.

Its cluegy but it does work. My tech level in this stuff is spotty. I’m used to stacks of tech but more for physical control systems (NOT consumer facing). But I was able to get that to work.

Edit: little bit of clarification: Xteve will let you add DVR to your plex server. It’s possible to tie owncast into Xteve. That allows users to cue into a “DVR” channel which is kind of “simulcasting” whatever you’re pointing owncast to. In my case it was a screen share of sportsball, but it could be whatever.

I thought I was the only one…

oh this seems like the worst thing ever. I used to have a lot spaghetti stuff reporting. I did not need to be spending this kind of money on ESPs…

thanks, the fact that there’s this level of insight in the community makes me comfortable of going down this road. I’ll keep an eye on integrations.

And it’s explicitly “not all data”? I’m really impressed by the community, I’d assume if a Philips lightbulb was getting access to geolocation data via HA someone would have noticed.

Clear answer, thank you so much. Glad to hear there’s a community. Worst case scenario I can always make it so a self-hosted voice to text triggers a script on a local device through a spotify API.

Glad to hear it, it’s not so much suspicious as the principle. It’s weird, I just hate the notion that if I bump up my thermostat a degree or two someone who I pay to give me music is keeping track.

this is fantastic, I’m really excited. I do have a follow up on non-hardware integrations though. I know when I download anything on my phone, it’s sharing all sorts of crap. Does HA allow integrations to do that? Going back to spotify example, I understand spotify can obviously track things on their end (what song they’re giving me etc), but integrations don’t let them see humidity in my basement right?

ESPhome is exactly the kind of platform I was looking to use. My hope was to standardize a design or two so I could have some I deployed where needed (garage, basement, etc). That’s fantastic, thank you!