Smart home tech

[Herdfan]

Any thoughts on how often to replace it? Not worried about cost. Just want it to have enough capacity should I ever need to rely on it in the future.

It is a standard alarm system battery, so 3-5 years. Since it is the one that came with the unit, I would err on the side of 3 years. Get a good Duracell when you replace it and you should be good for 5.

 

[Citysnaps]

Just by looking at it it seems to me to be lead acid, so it’ll probably last quite awhile, much like a car battery. I’ll probably start testing it after 3 years to see how quickly it runs down at that point.

Think I'll test mine tomorrow. Looking at the size of the battery's physical dimensions and capacity, for some reason I'm not feeling optimistic. Gut feeling tells me it might not have enough grunt (energy storage) - say, on a non-new (1-2 year old) battery for our heavy garage door.

When the major rains and flooding started in the Bay Area a few weeks ago I started scoping out an emergency power box with a couple of 100 Ah LiFePO4 batteries and an inverter (Victron - I love their products) all housed in a DeWalt rolling tool box. Mostly for the gas furnace blower and the electrical needs of the gas tankless water heater, and some computer/phone charging and a bit of TV watching - in case there was a major power outage. Luckily that didn't happen in our city, but did in others.

I put the project on hold for now. But didn't previously think about the garage door opener. Maybe I'll revisit that project.

 

[Eric]

Just had my 1980’s garage door opener replaced with a top of the line Chamberlain with MyQ.

I bought a cheap compatible wall push button, took it apart, soldered wires to each button contact, then stuck it up on the ceiling plugged into the garage door opener. Then i took those two wires and spliced them to my old meross homekit garage door adapater and to my old home link adapter.

Worked perfectly. No need to set up myq, no need to use their (no longer sold) homebridge or use a plug in for the software homebridge running on my synology. No need to reprogram my cars to use the new opener.

The garage door guy was flabbergasted that my hack worked.

Glad that worked out, not sure if your car is compatible with Tesla's Homelink but there's no way I'll pay for that when I can just use a simple button. They then implemented MyQ, who also requires an annual subscription (just to open your freaking door, really?) and neither option is reasonable IMO.

 

[Cmaier]

Glad that worked out, not sure if your car is compatible with Tesla's Homelink but there's no way I'll pay for that when I can just use a simple button. They then implemented MyQ, who also requires an annual subscription (just to open your freaking door, really?) and neither option is reasonable IMO.

My car came with homelink. I think the model s still does? I dunno.

The MyQ thing you are talking about is a complete ripoff, and yet another example of why tesla should just implement CarPlay. Then you could use homekit to open the garage.

 

[Eric]

My car came with homelink. I think the model s still does? I dunno.

The MyQ thing you are talking about is a complete ripoff, and yet another example of why tesla should just implement CarPlay. Then you could use homekit to open the garage.

Damn man, you still get free charging for life, too, right? Those Ss are decked.

I'm waiting for a reasonable 3rd party solution for CarPlay, even if it's through a different screen/console. There's nothing I miss more than that right now.

 

[Cmaier]

Damn man, you still get free charging for life, too, right? Those Ss are decked.

I'm waiting for a reasonable 3rd party solution for CarPlay, even if it's through a different screen/console. There's nothing I miss more than that right now.

Yep, and as I told the service guy a month ago, I’m going to make extra use of my free charging from now until I’ve cost them enough to make up for the way they dicked me around.

There are various ways to add carplay bought I don’t know how “reasonable” they are. For example https://pimpmyev.com/products/apple-carplay-android-auto-multimedia-box-for-tesla-model-3-and-y. Even Porsche sells a replacement screen with CarPlay for my old Boxster for around $1200, which is like half of what Tesla charges for its non-CarPlay screen.