What are your favourite things under 50$ that make your life a bit easier or more pleasant?
I need some holiday gift ideas (that I will probably gift to myself as well)!
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Smart plugs! These outlet switches come in packs of four for about $25 dollars. Once installed and set up in the app, you can automate them with scheduled timers or turn them on or off remotely. They will also integrate with Home Assistant, Google Home, and Alexa.
We use these in conjunction with their smart bulbs all over the house.
Being able to turn on/off the lights without getting out of bed is addicting.
I almost went with the newer Matter version of those (for those unaware, "Matter" is the new open standard for this sort of thing), but decided I cared about open-source firmware more than open standards, so I bought some Sonoff S31s and flashed them with ESPHome instead.
(The 4-pack of Sonoff S31s is $28.50 right now, but cost $22.10 in August when I bought my most recent set, so it's basically the same price as the non-Matter Kasa switches. It's also basically the same functionality between them as stock, so IMO having the option to use third-party firmware lets the Sonoff edge out the win even if you don't actually avail yourself of it.)
(Edit to add: that's not to say I don't like TP-Link, by the way -- if anything, I was initially biased in favor of the Kasa switches because I'd already standardized on TP-Link networking gear.)
I have a bunch of Sonoff stuff in my house flashed with Tasmota. The flashing process isn't for casuals, but the end result is great.
This seems like a hackers wet dream 😅
That's why I picked some I could flash with open-source third-party firmware that I believe is inherently more trustworthy than any OEM stuff. It's also why I use them exclusively with Home Assistant self-hosted locally, allowing them to be entirely firewalled off from the Internet.
That's more like it 🙌