Try HomeSeer. I ran it for years before switching to HA.

I assume by “Raspberry Z-Wave module” you mean the RaZberry z-wave addon board, and I couldn’t agree more. I tried to get that thing going with another home automation package and gave up after a few hours of fucking with it.

That said, these days I’m using Home Assistant on a RPi with a Nortek z-wave/zigbee combo radio USB interface and I couldn’t be happier. If you’ve never used HA it’s worth trying out; used to require a lot of scripting but now it’s a beautiful and polished system that has all the tweakability a nerd wants with a nice high-WAF GUI. They have a plugin that does exactly what you’re doing and makes a virtual alarm system out of existing sensors.

I also agree block connections and use a VPN to access it, I do the same thing.

Very interesting. So you basically have an alarm system in software then? What do you use for software? Do you have an arm/disarm function?

security? For surveillance or something more?

Try dd-wrt firmware. Lets you dip your toe into the water so to speak, with a lot less of the complication of openwrt. At least it used to when I last used it several years ago.

If you have a spare old PC, pfSense is a great way to screw around. Even if it only has one NIC there is (or at least used to be) basic hostap support so you could use the builtin wifi card as a base station. Otherwise spend $20 on a supported USB-Ethernet adapter and you’ve got yourself a router to play with.

So would a router running pfsense then also become my primary WiFi routers too? Or is it best to keep pfsense strictly as a firewall and have a separate router strictly for WiFi?

pfSense doesn’t really do WiFi. So you’d use it as a router/firewall, then have something else do your WiFi. I generally recommend Ubiquiti.

It’s worth noting that a ‘WiFi router’ is usually 3 separate things in one box- a router/firewall, a WiFi access point, and a small switch of usually 4-6 ports. In a home you usually want these things in the same place so they’re in one box. In an enterprise, the router/firewall is usually in the basement where there’s no WiFi, network switches may be in many places and a tiny one in the router won’t help you, and WiFi is up by where the workers are. So it’s that sort of setup that pfSense is designed for.

The way I have my place set up- a pfSense machine is the router/firewall. I then use Netgear managed switches (there’s a few, mainly GS110TP’s), and Ubiquiti WiFi. The Ubiquiti controller runs inside Docker on a small Synology box. Highly recommend this setup.

But I’d just as highly recommend going Ubiquiti all the way. Dream Machine Pro SE is a great base router/firewall, and it has a built in PoE switch so you can hang a few U6 Pro access points off it. You get a bit more flexibility with pfSense but in most home environments it’s not needed.

It’s sort of both.

Netgate is the company that develops pfSense. They make pfSense available as a download that you can run on your own hardware or your own VM. They also sell pfSense routers that have official support and a free upgrade to their slightly nicer ‘pfSense Plus’ version. I generally recommend the official hardware (support the project and all that, and it’s good quality if a bit more expensive). However if you want to save a few bucks you can get a cheap NUC-type PC with a few Intel Ethernet ports from Protectli or similar brands on Amazon.

Routers - Netgate / pfSense. Best router GUI I’ve found. If you understand what you want to make happen, chances are you can figure out how to make it happen without touching a CLI. And generally free of Cisco for license bullshit.

Routing and WiFi- Ubiquiti. Not as flexible as pfSense but even easier to use and if you do both routing and WiFi with them you get a bunch of cool analytics. Their surveillance package is great too as long as you use their cameras, pretty much the best mobile surveillance app I’ve found. Door access system also gets a mention.

Synology for almost everything they do, but particularly storage, backup, surveillance (they support almost every camera, albeit with a license requirement) and hosting of self hosted apps using a nice docker GUI. Not as much bang for buck vs. an old PC in terms of CPU power, but very easy to use.

For home automation- Home Assistant or HomeSeer. Both are open platforms that support almost everything. Home Assistant pulls lightly ahead for me because it’s free and has more 3rd party integrations, even if it has a steeper hearing curve in some areas and some rough edges that require tweaking for basic usability (specifically, Z-Wave requires the ‘z-wave js ui’ plugin to take real control over a Z-Wave mesh, and Z-Wave door locks need the Keymaster plugin to get any sort of user code management, neither are straightforward to install). That said- pair Home Assistant with a Z-Wave dongle and some Inovelli light switches and you have a really beautiful setup with insane flexibility.

Yes exactly. And that’s why I don’t jump to the assumption that Zelenskyy himself is corrupt or he is covering for the corruption of others.
A dude that would tolerate corruption doesn’t say ‘I need ammunition not a ride’. He could have bailed at any point, still could. But he shows no signs of losing resolve.
If Zelenskyy is trying to keep inner circle corruption private to avoid public spectacle, I suspect that whoever is found guilty will probably end up wishing they were arrested publicly rather than dealing with the security service.

Most welcome :)

Absolutely!

I find in life it’s generally useful to not take things at face value, rather, ask what set of situations and motivations would make people say and do the things they are saying and doing? Asking that question a lot about a person and looking at a lot of their words and actions tells you an awful lot about a person, taking people you know at least something about and asking that about how they are acting tells you a lot more about that situation than you’d get at first glance.

So here we have Zelenskyy, a person elected on a platform of fighting corruption, and an anti-corruption unit whose official assigned mission is to find corruption and root it out and punish the corrupt. That SHOULD make them allies if not friends. And yet, Zelenskyy has just transferred the bulk of their mission away from them, to the security service. He’s also elevated the level of crime that corruption is classified as, and thus also the level of investigation and punishment it would carry.

So I ask, why would he do such a thing? Why would an anti-corruption President transfer anti-corruption activities away from the anti-corruption unit and to the security service? What is the motivation for this action?
And why does the anti-corruption unit respond with such a serious accusation (that the motivation is to cover up corruption of the inner circle)?

So let’s start with the first question- why did this change happen?
The most obvious answer to me is that Zelenskyy feels the anti-corruption unit is not doing their job well enough. Specifically, if corruption has infiltrated many levels of UA government, that he may feel the anti-corruption unit is itself corrupt, or that they are otherwise ineffective and are not finding enough corruption fast enough. So he gives the job to an agency that 1. has no history of dealing with corruption and thus potentially is less likely to itself be corrupt, and 2. has very sharp teeth as it is used to dealing with much worse things than domestic corruption. And he gives them the order to bite hard- by framing corrupt government officials as traitors and ordering them charged accordingly, the security service has a real mission that they will take seriously and assign good agents to.

And then, why does the anti-corruption unit speak out in this way?
Well they obviously don’t like losing stature, and perhaps they are just pissed off at potentially losing their jobs. So it could be plain old revenge- throw some accusations at the President who spat in their faces. But this feels a bit sharper than that. They didn’t just say this was a bad idea (‘why are you benching the most talented anti-corruption agents in such a critical time?’), they are throwing a specific accusation (‘this is only happening so corruption of the inner circle can avoid being publicized’). That’s a pretty strong accusation.

So I look at these questions, and ask what situation would cause both Zelenskyy’s action and the anti-corruption unit’s accusation in response? I come up with two possible answers.

1. The most likely one to me seems that the anti-corruption unit is either itself corrupt or is generally ineffective, and thus Zelenskyy is unhappy with them and that’s why they are losing the assignment. And so they fight back hard, probably because (if they are corrupt) they know the security service will find that out, so they want to at least muddy the water first and make the whole process seem politically-motivated and itself corrupt. That way when they are themselves accused of corruption, they can claim it’s for political reasons, not because they are actually corrupt.

2. The other possibility is that their accusation is valid- that this change IS intended to cover up inner circle corruption or deal with it more quietly. And that possibility has three sub-possibilities.
   2a. Choice A is that Zelenskyy is only acting on the advice of corrupt advisors, who are feeling heat from the anti-corruption unit and have persuaded Zelenskyy to transfer anti-corruption activities away from a unit that is hot on their tails. They feel they can better control the security service and direct them away from their own corruption, so they advise Zelenskyy to do this and he does it because he is focused on the war with Russia and mistakenly trusts those advisors who are themselves corrupt.
   2b. Choice B is that Zelenskyy has identified corruption within his inner circle and needs it dealt with strongly, quickly, and quietly- without creating a public situation that can be exploited by Russia or his political opponents (who may themselves have Russian influence). So he DOES want the security service to deal with Cabinet-level corruption quietly as is being accused, but that won’t result in the guilty being punished any less harshly.
   2c. Choice C is the least likely IMHO- that Zelenskyy himself is corrupt, or has decided to allow or tolerate a certain amount of corruption within his cabinet, perhaps from corrupt people who have proven themselves useful in some other way.

So of those 4 choice, choice 1 and choice 2b seem the most likely to me. And given that this anti-corruption unit has been working at their mission for years and there’s still tons of corruption in UA, that says to me they are probably not very good at their jobs. Thus, I advance Choice 1 as the most likely option.

Interesting.

Ukraine is known for thorough corruption at many levels of government. Zelenskyy first got elected for that reason- he was originally an actor who starred in a movie about a politician who decided to end corruption. He then ran for office on that platform and won. But when the system is thoroughly corrupt through and through, fixing it is not an overnight process.

My initial thought is perhaps this anti-corruption unit is itself corrupt, so it’s making up an excuse to justify its own existence.

As for high profile corruption being swept under the rug- what I know of Zelenskyy suggests he would be less likely to turn a blind eye to that. I could of course be wrong though. And I suspect if he brings a high profile treason corruption case against a few well known people and has them jailed or shot for treason, that will send a very strong message to the rest that this isn’t tolerated anymore.
That will of course put a target on Zelenskyy’s back, but that’s always been the case (especially since Russia invaded).