sylverstream

A couple of weeks ago I've posted here regarding humidity in our house as I noticed it went up to ~75% indoors. I've bought a dehumidifier, but noticed that the humidity went up again after dehumidifying a room to eg 60%. Then, I installed a temp/humidity sensor outdoor and also calculated the absolute humidity to be able to compare easily. And... then I noticed when it's moist, like now, the outdoor humidity would be close to 100%. Thus, it would almost be impossible to get it <60% indoors, unless you would heat it to 25c +

Right now, it's 99% humidity @ 11c outside, which comes to 9.9g / m3 absolute humidity:

In the bedrooms it's 16.4 @ 65% which is as expected. In the living room it's 21c @ 55% which is almost the same absolute humidity as outside:

Still, it's important to heat your rooms to ensure RH doesn't reach 100% as that may cause dampness/mould. I've installed temp sensors & panel heaters in all rooms and set the min temp to 16c.

I've got multiple sonoff zigbee temp sensors, all working well, except one I've put outside. Another one I've got inside is just 2m next to it, so don't think it's range. There are two zigbee plugs nearby to serve as ap.

It's winter here in NZ so perhaps it's too cold or humid? Or is it the double glazing / insolation?

I've got a Vero 4K to watch photos stored on my NAS. It is a couple of years old and it seems to be dying.

My requirements are:

• Watch videos stored on NAS via NFS/SMB
• Install Stremio
• 4K
• Available in NZ
• Sound doesn't matter too much as I have a simple sound bar.

The Google TV 4K is sold here for NZ$79 and gets raving reviews. It seems I can install Stremio and VLC or Kodi, so that should meet my requirements.

The alternative is a Xiami TV Stick 4K which is NZ$69

I know the NVidia Shield is the best, but they are above budget.

Probably my only concern with these dongles is that they are WiFi based, but I have a very solid WiFi network with an Ubiquiti access point, so that should be fine.

So I'm leaning towards the Google TV 4K, any concerns or considerations?

As money is tight for a lot of people, I thought it would be nice to share some money saving tips. They may not be applicable to you, but hopefully it's useful for some.

1. Get a bike / ebike for small distances. I'm originally from The Netherlands and we use a bike very often. NZ is so different, most people tend to take the car for every trip. I've seen people take the car for a trip of literally 25 meter... I've bought an ebike to do my daily commute to the train station and it's awesome. No traffic stress, saves money, and good for the environment. I've got a $1400 ebike, The Warehouse recently had one for less than $1000.

2. Get an electric car. We replaced our Corolla with a $15k Leaf with 130km range. The prices have gone down, and a similar model can now be found for $11k or so. It saves us about $3.5k / year on petrol & maintenance. We only use it in the Wellington region, and rarely run out of range. On longer trips we use quick chargers, within 15 minutes it's back to 80% charge. At least every 70km on state highways there's a quick charger. While I'm against borrowing money for a car, in this case it may be worth it. With BNZ you can get a 1% loan for 3 years.

3. Switch electrical provider. We switched to Octopus Energy. $0 daily charge and cheapest. Also good solar buy back, and cheaper nightly rates to charge an EV. /edit : apparently Octopus no longer has zero daily charge on new connections.

This tv show is showing as empty in my Vero (running OSMC / Kodi) https://thetvdb.com/series/race-across-the-world#seasons I have to go to Videos - >Files to see it. It's showing as empty under TV Shows.

I'm using my standard *arr setup so the naming is standard. It's working fine for all other shows.

The only thing I can think of is that the seasons have a unique name, like it contains Latin America?

I'm looking for a robo vacuum that integrates nicely with home assistant, and ideally no cloud dependency. I don't want to buy such an expensive device that doesn't work when the manufacturer goes out of business or the Internet is down.

Valetudo seems to be the only option. However, even the so called easy installation involves many steps. I'm technically pretty capable as I work in IT, but I'm reluctant to possible brick a device worth hundreds of dollars. FYI more info here https://valetudo.cloud/pages/general/getting-started.html

Would someone be able to assist? Or know a company that provides this service? I'm based in Wellington.

Family of 4, oldest kid going to intermediate soon. We moved to NZ about 10 years ago from Europe.

We've been pondering with the idea to move somewhere within NZ. We love the outdoors and the beach, right now we're not near a nice beach (Petone) For my work we have to be near a big city. Thought about CHC but there are much fewer IT contracts there. Auckland is an option but we think it's too big for us.

Schools are also important, we want to live close to good intermediate / secondary schools.

While I like IT as it's convenient and pays extremely well, it's not super exciting. Then, I thought, what about a career change? A job as park ranger at DOC looks cool, however it would mean a big drop in salary. Could be manageable if we can get a cheaper house.

Also thought about starting my own business, but don't have experience. I love making ice cream, not sure though I want to do that professionally.

Our latest idea is to move to Kapiti, as it's a change of scenery and it's close to nice beaches.

I still feel a bit stuck. Does anyone have tips?