While I love data and crave the dashboards, for everyone else:

• things work normally, and the “smart” functionality is added
• my automation is timers
• everything is voice control

I’ve given up persuading anyone to use any of the smart functionality, although I’m likely to get the Apple home hub when it comes out.

I’ve looked into various e-ink projects for dashboards but never had the time to follow through

I see that was added to the conversation: so weird to have opposite terminology. I’ve always heard “tags” refer to the plates, never the registration sticker

My speculation is based on who hands them out.

• states I’m familiar with do not show county. Plates are handed out by a DMV/RMV, which is a state agency
• for those states that show county, are the plates handed out by a county level agency?

Cars should have both, so they can be uniquely identified both coming and going.

For example when you run over a road pedestrian by not stopping for a red light, as he sees you coming and jumps out of the way he might see your plate, whereas once you’ve run over him, cracked his hips and given him a concussion he may not be able to read your rear plate

I need this so much

Ideally, yes, Matter/Thread has a lot of potential to be that common framework that makes everything work together. I want to recommend it for everything new …… but products have been really really slow to come out, so your choices may be limited.

My understanding of Philips Hue is limited but I believe they do use Zigbee as a standard network, but functionality is extremely limited unless you use their hub. That’s been more than enough for me to stay away

Clarifying the terminology for the new standard:

• Matter is Ethernet/WiFi, based on IPv6. Great for powered devices, especially those that do need to connect to the internet. Many powered Matter devices will route Thread traffic
• Thread is a local wireless mesh network, similar to Zigbee or z-wave. The range should cover a home, but it is low power, low latency, suitable for all sorts of devices that do not need internet access, or where low power is important
• Device Profiles are a feature that the standards committee has spent huge amounts of time on as a way to make everything’s work together. These define what a device can do, so all such devices work the same way. For example, it defines a light that has statuses and operations for on-off, brightness, color, and maybe more. Instead of a company like Philips having proprietary definitions, now all lightbulbs can be controlled the same way

There’s an important consideration to use local mesh radio networks or not - for responsiveness, privacy, not being dependent on a vendor to continue supplying cloud services. I always prefer one of these, but as I continue to grow, there’s always a reasons to support more networks, and HA excels at that. HA also excels at the number of devices it supports: I suppose it’s a good idea to check compatibility but the only ones that won’t work are devices too tied to a specific vendor, and you should probably avoid those anyway

In theory I prioritize z-wave devices, but I also have Zigbee, WiFi, Ethernet, and Matter devices working together flawlessly. I have a z-wave IR blaster to integrate an air conditioner by acting as its remote control. I’ve considered Bluetooth and Thread devices, which I expect to be just as convenient

While it’s prudent to check compatibility, I guess I’m recommending to not over-think it. Concerns like vendor lock-in, responsiveness, reliability, no ads, are more important to think about

I’m one of those who “do nothing”, if you’re measuring by commits and lines of code.

• as an architect, I spend way too much time doing diagrams and presentation
• as a point of engineering escalation, I spend a lot of time researching things no one can figure out
• as a stickler for code quality, I like nothing more than those days where my lines of code are negative

On the other hand, if you go by the amount of code I indirectly effect with best practices, code quality, appsec, and assisting developers, I affect all of engineering (hundreds)