nikodunk

Time to get serious about contributing to and using projects like https://postmarketos.org! We can continue to fork Android every release, but that's just re-arranging deck chairs on the titanic without upstream driver support.

My side project is Daily Optimist - a super-simple app that asks you a single question every day to train positive thinking and boost your mood. Mainly for personal use.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/daily-optimist-think-positive/...

2 similar apps already on app store:

- Reflectly vs Daily Optimist - I love Reflectly's Gratitude, but am not sure about the weekly rhythm. Costs $19.99. Great app! https://apps.apple.com/us/app/reflectly-journal-ai-diary/id1...

- Daylio vs Daily Optimist - Daylio is beautifully built too. I understand the charting of the mood less, but for more data-driven users this is a great option. Rating your mood with emoji is a good way to lower the bar for daily entries. Also $17.00/year. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/daylio-journal-daily-diary/id1...

This. I still live here and you can really feel it. I like your solution - much cleaner while we're trying to reform permitting.

Berkeley just nearly got it done but got stuck in committees https://darrellowens.substack.com/p/the-big-zoning-battle-of... - we need a faster solution.

Edit: reading the article, Lurie is proposing this:

- https://www.sf.gov/mayor-lurie-launches-permit-reform-effort...

- https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/lurie-housing-rezonin...

Note to self: Read the article before diving into the comments.

Wonderful video, thank you! The one on the linked Nebula page is also great.

It’s funny - I subscribe to Nebula (a “boutique” video platform) and subconsciously have felt these things that are talked about in both videos, but I needed someone to point them out to me for me to consciously notice.

Same here! Been self hosting on hetzner for about a year now, and support the OSS project for $10/month. Love how it can auto-deploy new git commits, deploy Postgres or any database to the same or separate servers, and you can cram as many apps or docker containers onto a single VPS or move them to a separate server when you need to.

Finally, little utilities like snapdrop or mosquitto are a button click away. Strongly recommended - it’s liberating! I don’t need to re-learn every PaaS vendor’s system - my PaaS comes with me. And a junior can be onboarded to this UI way easier than dokku or kamal IMO.

Hot take: At its best, CoreOS provides a lot of the low-maintenance benefits of PaaS, with all of the affordability and vendor neutrality of a VPS.

What an amazingly well-written piece of old-school journalism. Well done!

And well done to the amazing cool of the astronauts - reminds you that space is still a frontier.

This is one of the coolest articles I’ve come across on HN ever. Also - it’s true steam punk (sorry).

I love DIY solar and have built a few of my own systems too, long before Pila. I posted something called $200 solar self sufficiency to HN many years ago in 2017 and it got me onto this train. Will Prouse is the best, agreed!

Thanks so much for taking the time to write such an in-depth, thoughtful set of questions and feedback!

Thanks for sharing your experience re: the Feb 2021 freeze, and cool that you got your kid a big battery for their apartment!

Which color would you like to see next? Sorry none of our current 4 match your palette! Unfortunately, as a capital constrained startup going super broad on colorways/SKUs is not very financially prudent for us, but still curious :)

If you want to hack your way around Shopify's UI for color selection, you can technically hit "checkout" with 1 color, hit back and it'll still be in your cart, then repeat with as many color options as you like until you have all colors/options you're interested in. Sorry for the trouble - we're launching with an off-the-shelf e-commerce solution so as to spend our time on the product itself.

Our temperature, dust and water ratings need to be finalized once we're closer to final shipping product, but we're definitely planning for constrained indoor use, even in a hot summer garage for example. Sorry to not be more specific!

As to the powerstrip, pre-orders are only to signal intent to purchase, and we'll be reaching out to all pre-orders to see who wants solar, expansion and powerstrip before we actually ship! Great question - thank you!

There will be Pila sensors and third party sensors - we integrate directly with them. So more than illustrative! Once the data is in your Home Assistant for example, you can do as you please, of course. Hope that answers your question?

Great point on more app-specific details. We'll showcase more soon!

Thank you for your inputs on showing more of the product angles and the spacial situation - great feedback.

Thanks again, and let me know if I missed anything.

It definitely does load shifting and utility rate arbitrage (and solar power charging) as a side benefit, but it’s not built to be an arbitrage machine. Its primary use case is backup, for now.

Great point, thank you!

TLDR it's so that we can seamlessly synchronize settings and events between them. When to charge from solar, cheap utility rates, or when a storm is incoming.

Consumers (incl me) will not update their 2nd Pila to their new Wifi password when they change it, or not even pare it properly with their first to start with. Also, in an offline situation like a power outage where the internet goes down, you won't be able to communicate over the cloud and synchronize them there. If our servers ever go down (they won't) then you want to be able to rely on local communication.

The local mesh is going to set up new follower devices over an open MQTT api and talk to each other over it - but yes it's more of an enable than a feature in and of itself.

I hear you - while I'm privately a static-site afficionado, this is squarespace so that the whole founder, business _and_ engineering team can edit it easily :P

This is a great thought, and I just surfaced it again for our founder. There has already been some thought into this. Thank you!

Yes, great question! As the software person, this is very close to my heart.

All of our software and hardware is local-first, and will work without our servers/cloud, without any connection to the outside world. We are a backup company after all :)

How this works is that we broadcast and listen to (pubsub) MQTT topics. You can pare it with Home Assistant in 10 years, we also support Alexa, Home Assistant, Google Assistant, whatever.

My goal is to make our apps and software so good you'll want to use them. But we don't have an ecosystem to lock you into, so we won't. Your hardware belongs to you!

I hear you, and I'm also sorry to hear that! Here at SXSW we've heard from a bunch of Aussies, plus Brazil and Puerto Rico (where we actually ship) are some of the most requested beyond mainland US.

We'll be there ASAP!

Probably only passing power through when it's still on-grid, because it's more efficient is our current plan for now. Surge protection we will cover though, just voltage drops are not planned to be covered for above reasons.

As soon as the power's going through our inverter, it'll be the clean sine wave you are talking about.

It does have power cleaning functionality when it's off-grid, let me check in with hardware if it does that in pass-through mode. Voltage drops it should detect and cover though.

Automatic load shedding will be configured by appliance priority we were thinking, but open to feedback. The fridge should go out last, the wifi first.

We're using a 1.6kWh LiFePo! Replacement is something we're working hard on, I unfortunately can't speak to that until we're closer to shipping (Q3/Q4).

There are 4 outlets btw - 2 on the front, 2 on the back. Plus 4 USB-C outlets that output 100W DC. 100% we are planning something more substantial (240V is also requested a lot), but we're only launching with 1 SKU that fits a lot of use cases for now.

It's 2.4kW continuous, 7.8kW surge (ie to start up a sump pump, etc).

Thanks for considering!

Thank you! This is super important to me (one of the software guys) personally. We want to make the software as open as possible, and will publish our MQTT topics and spec publicly so you can hook Home Assistant, whatever into it.

My personal goal is that the software outlives the hardware (and the batteries, inverter should last around 10 years with normal use).

We have no ecosystem or cloud to lock you into yet, because we're new :D

Thanks so much! We'll address as much feedback as we can of course, but I hear you :D

Great question! Unfortunately no, it'll only power devices that're plugged into it. It's basically like a very large, connected UPS.

It's unfortunately illegal to push energy back into the circuit without a permit in all states except Utah in the US :D

Definitely! It’s primarily backup, and secondarily an arbitrage device :)

The average fridge loss is estimated at $300 per outage, and the average fridge outage insurance claim is $600 I just learned today from an insurance agent at SXSW at our booth (apparently a lot of lobster is bought the day of the outage :P).

TLDR depends on the efficiency of the fridge. You’re right of course though - I edited linked comment to be more conservative at 2-3 days also. I can get my personal lab fridge to last 5 days though (110W power draw, once every hour for 5 minutes). :P

If your outage is longer than expected, the battery will recharge in a little over an hour and be ready to go again (if the grid comes on for a bit, or from your generator, a neighbor's etc).

The point IMO is not to backup your whole home though. That already exists with Generac (20-50K if you need to dig a new gas line) or Powerwall (10-20K depending on electrician and needs). All need permits.

This is meant as a more precise, room-by-room backup solution!

Maybe I’m wrong though, just wanted to position.

We can start a Sump Pump with the 7,800W startup power (2,400W running).

I’d recommend DIY if you don’t want/need/can’t afford an integrated solution. I built my own with parts off Amazon but it doesn’t take a bit of knowledge and research. Fun project though.

This is definitely aimed at the other 99% that’s not gonna wire this up themselves though, of course :)

This can start up a Sump Pump with a 7.8kW surge (2.4kw running output)

100%! This is a great solution, many people also freeze a glass of ice and put a coin on top so if there is an outage when they’re out, the coin will be frozen at the bottom when they get back (and they know their meat won’t be any good).

Pila is meant more as a set-and-forget solution if you want something seamless and connected.