Updated our Ecodan FTC6 firmware from 18.01 to 20.01, using these instructions https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/18RT9mcwQj4Ro-d09x-T1mGcMWAl2tR2e Can’t notice significant difference so far.
Ecodan FTC6 firmware from 18.01 to 20.01


Updated our Ecodan FTC6 firmware from 18.01 to 20.01, using these instructions https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/18RT9mcwQj4Ro-d09x-T1mGcMWAl2tR2e Can’t notice significant difference so far.

Quite interesting: Dream 7B, the most powerful open diffusion large language model https://hkunlp.github.io/blog/2025/dream/
Sell the dip time? 🙂

A visit to the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart – sitting in front of the legendary 300 SL Gullwing.

No sun, no left battery charge for emergency power? No problem! Generator AC -> 400V DC -> String 1 plus some diodes to prevent power to PV and problem solved Why not use the generator, you may ask? Because it only pumps 1.6kW, using the PV system and battery provides a buffer for peak loads.…
Nice https://x.com/Raspberry_Pi/status/1877263940851290177
I need excuses for an imminent budget dent https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/project-digits/
I’ve been running a local instance of AdGuard on my home network for over a year now. It’s been a satisfying, ad-free browsing experience. On the flip side, it does impact those who rely on advertising revenue to provide their services..

Wanted to discuss something with our dog, but he is not convinced

IKEA’s INSPELNING is finally available here, grabbed three to test. Integrated in home assistant, and now monitoring a dishwasher, dryer and a washing machine. Great product
Adding this to my “want, but never will have” list, to be used as PV storage using Dala’s battery emulator https://vivnevs.com/products/62kwh-nissan-leaf-battery-pack-180ah-catl-lithium-battery-for-leaf-battery-upgrade
@stefanraschbach My Node-RED Modbus comms flows: https://gist.github.com/mharizanov/a7370cb778cc1f185776da8d3180610c

Created a Home-assistant automation to pause the solar battery charging at ~80% and only charge it to 100% at the last possible moment. This is to minimize time spent at full charge, which apparently is bad for the battery. It considers the estimated remaining PV production.
So I understand rooting Tesla cars is now a thing, and tampering with mileage is possible and done on the second hand market 🙁 . Enabling free supercharging possible too. Explanation and details here, in Bulgarian: https://youtu.be/2Hxg5jsR2Ns?si=bS9ywSc_Xw3Jqu6C

Data collected over nearly two years shows our BYD 7.68kWh LiFePO4 solar battery operates at an average of 94% efficiency (charged vs discharged). Capacity degradation is at 2%

TIL that Frigate can analyze the audio stream of RTSP cameras for certain sound types and expose these as Home Assistant sensors. Configured mine to detect barking, yelling, alarms, etc and will create automations based on these https://docs.frigate.video/configuration/audio_detectors/

Created a pie-chart to visualize my remaining pizza, here at 75%

Created an automatic VPN connection on router level between home and another property I own. ASUS routers allow this over OpenVPN. Planning on using this for easier IoT devices access with home-assistant

Oops.. IKEA VARMFRONT power bank recall

This guy (daughter says its Patrick) had come too close to the beach, moved him to a safer depth

Drove from Sofia to Greece today in a BMW 320d. Car computes 4.6l/100 km (51 mpg), and with tank capacity range of 1200km I can technically drive to my vacation destination, drive around another 350km and return back home on one fuel tank. Wishing such EV range was possible

Bought the new IKEA TRETAKT zigbee smart plug to test. Design is better than their previous smart plugs, integrates well in Zigbee2MQTT. I only wish it had power monitoring capability

I was about to complain about the heat, then decided to check global temperatures. Forecast for 52*C in the Middle East for tomorrow make me wonder how is it possible for people to function in such conditions

Heat pump annual maintenance done, “before” and “after” pump flow rate pictured below. I assume this affected performance significantly. Lesson learned 🙂

Energy flow

Upgraded my Home Assistant to RPI 5 hardware recently mainly, so it better handles cameras in Frigate + Google Coral TPU. I am now monitoring 5 security cams at 10 FPS with ~25%-ish CPU load, the RPI 4 wasn't able to handle half of that without overheating, and 75%-ish CPU load
Finally Raspberry Pi 5 support in Home Assistant 12. Mine was starting to collect dust waiting for this.. https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2024/02/26/home-assistant-os-12-support-for-raspberry-pi-5/

Signs of becoming lazy – load the appliance's user manual to privateGPT and query it:

IKEA’s new zigbee motion sensor, the VALLHORN, finally arrives here. Grabbed couple pcs to test with Zigbee2MQTT in home assistant. No ETA about the PARASOLL and BADRING yet. These seem to expose illuminance as well, interesting
Another day, another chance to say: “Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine”. Because, obviously, my schedule revolves around your chaos.

Adding (finally) a logic level converter between our Ecodan ASHP UART port and the ESP32 interface to Home Assistant. Don’t ask why I don’t have it in place to begin with…

My DEV.BG tech talk on making the heat pump, the PV system and Home Assistant work together – slides and video, in Bulgarian.