If you use github pages, you can create, deploy, and host static websites for free. Only cost, if you want your own URL, is for a custom DNS name.

You can use their default Jekyll static rendering engine, and create the content using Markdown. And with github actions, all you need to update the content is create markdown, then push the change to the same repo. After a few minutes, the new content shows up.

https://pages.github.com/

Hugo can also be used, but it takes a few extra steps: https://gohugo.io/hosting-and-deployment/hosting-on-github/

You can also find ‘themes’ to customize the look and feel of the site, specific to the site generation tool.

If you want a lot of extra features, Docusaurus is pretty much as good as it gets, and you can set it up to push out to GH pages: https://docusaurus.io/docs/deployment

https://www.espressif.com/en/news/ESP32-S3-BOX-3

There’s a model with a more expensive dock, or one without. The one without worked fine. But it had to be the Box 3 not Box 2. It worked pretty well and you could create custom images to indicate whether it was listening, thinking, etc.

Instructions here: https://www.home-assistant.io/voice_control/s3_box_voice_assistant/

The box isn’t powerful enough to run an LLM itself. It’s just good enough as an audio conduit. You can either use their cloud integration with ChatGPT, or now, Anthropic Claude. But if you had a powerful Home Assistant server, say an Nvidia Jetson or a PC with a beefy Nvidia GPU, you could run local models like Llama and have better privacy.

This is from earlier this year. I imagine they’ve advanced more since then.

Their LLM integration is super cool. I messed with it for a previous job. Way better than Alexa or Google Home.

Thanks. After your note I went back and re-checked with my friend. I mixed up his comments with those from another friend with a different setup. Updated my original comment.

I have a closet full of old routers (including Linksys), extenders, and switches to be able to handle dead spots. They all sucked. Then I heard about mesh routers when they first came out. Tried two, saw that they worked well, and got a third one. A few months later, a new ISP showed up in our neighborhood with unmetered Gig fiber and I happily drop-kicked Comcast to the curb. It was gratifying that the fiber connection came with a single mesh device of the same brand I already had. Since then, I’ve upgraded to the next-gen routers, and gotten a few smaller ‘wall-wart’ units for extending the range outdoors.

I don’t really have to fuss with configurations like I had to before. It’s amazing how much of a time drain it was to go screw around with settings when a new device came in that didn’t work, or to replace a router when one died. I haven’t had to do anything in years. Every once in a while, I go set up a DHCP reservation but that’s it. The firmware updates auto-install while everyone’s asleep and I get pretty decent bandwidth in places I had constant dropoffs. When I switched out the actual routers to the new gen, the whole thing took 10m and the whole network was down for maybe 2m while the new ones booted up. No end devices had to be modified or restarted.

Where the fiber comes in, there’s a single router node, with two Ethernet ports. One goes to the fiber ONT, the other to a 10-port gig switch where it feeds the rest of wired setups. Elsewhere, the farthest mesh unit has no incoming physical connection, but a small wired switch connected to other wired devices near there. I didn’t have to make any router configuration settings to make this work. Just plugged it all in. Common devices go on the main network, and janky IOT devices (and visitors) go on the guest network.

For external access for self-hosting, you can take a domain name and set up a free Cloudflare tunnel to access your in-home services remotely. Pay Cloudflare a fee and you get extra rules-based access control. The router also has a premium service where it comes with a family bundle of security software. One other thing I like is that the mobile app sends a notification whenever a new device joins the network, so if I see one I don’t recognize, I can block them. Hasn’t happened yet, but if it does, I’ll know to go rotate the wifi passwords.

Anyway, highly recommend mesh routers. I happened to get Eeros (before they were acquired) but there are a few other brands around. Some people don’t like that Amazon bought eero, but they appear to be left to run as an independent outfit. It has been pretty solid so far.

P.S. A friend with a more complicated setup than mine got Ubiquitis. It’s anecdotal, but he recently asked about switching away and I told him pretty much what I’ve written here. YMMV.

Edit: checked back with friend. He said he was very happy with his Ubiquiti gear. I mixed up his review from years ago with another friend’s networking setup.

You’ve been using cheap cables.

Next step up is a JCAT: https://audiobacon.net/2019/11/02/the-jcat-signature-lan-a-1000-ethernet-cable/amp/

/s if not obvious.

ESP-32 based voice controller, with LLM support: https://www.home-assistant.io/voice_control/s3_box_voice_assistant/

Good to see proliferation of presence detectors. Good for turning things off when nobody is around.

In my last job I got to play a bit with the SeeedStudio mmWave presence box. What was interesting (and a little confusing) was that it took multiple add-on boards for things like on-device fall detection (for elderly). For the time I had with it, it worked fine with HA: https://wiki.seeedstudio.com/mmwave_radar_Intro/

Definitely set a CloudWatch alert to notify you if the cost goes above a certain limit. And make sure you check that email regularly. It takes a small misconfiguration to rack up a hefty bill. Best to catch it early.

Other suggestion is to stay away from the console or command line. Learn how to use CloudFormation or, much better, the CDK. You can set up a full serverless application stack, run it for a while, then delete the whole thing so it won’t accidentally incur extra charges. It’s also a good practice so you can include the stack setup code with the rest of your code.

Can always build to your own spec: https://www.espressif.com/en/products/devkits/esp-audio-devkits

Have started experimenting with OpenTelemetry (https://opentelemetry.io/docs/what-is-opentelemetry/) to add observability to different parts of the stack running inside a Docker container.

Not gotten far enough to recommend anything specific, but there is big ecosystem of open source collectors and analytics tools out there.