World's Better Half

 We've been familiar with the idea ease and convenience of voice activated timer either on Alexa, Google Assistant or Apple Home/Siri. However, to get it working on Home Assistant (HA), isnt achieved without a bit of nerd-ish satisfaction to exercise and see the designing and realization of the design come to life. A bit of a background The Talking to Assist feature in home assist, "set a timer for 5 minutes" does start a timer, however you need some device connected to HA to let you know that the timer has completed. That was not what i was not very excited about, one more device to make it work, hmmm , not my stuff. To set the scope, the requirement needs to be defined clearly, hence the designing process was triggered. Requirement(s):  1, Start a timer with voice command for specified time ( hours, minutes and seconds ) 2. Play a ringing sound once the timer is done. 3. Stop the ringing sound on stop voice command. The Design : Part Starting Timer (Automation 1) The de...

Mandatory Intro A quick update, moving the automation to home assistant has been a challenging, and rewarding journey.  Take for instance a simple task of setting volume on voice command.   Make a clear Plan Lets just discuss the time it took to figure out how to set it up right, the thing is, when you already have some ready made automation up and running from an Echo device for example. Its difficult to focus on one item and close it. So make a plan first, what automation is your priority, fix one then move to next, try not to get distracted :) Think modular, build some re-usable "services" that you can leverage in automation, such as an announcement service using TTS with predefined settings. Or play an alarm or notification when something is done, or upon an event. Home assistant allows you to play with persistent "variables" such as input_boolean that can store a value to be used in automation, lets say you dont want to clean room twice using the robo vacuum, u...

   The Tale of Mr. X_KM: A Journey in Multi-Label Classification Once upon a time in the bustling city of DataVille , there lived a Knowledge Management SME known as Mr. X_KM, . He was renowned for his unparalleled ability to handle vast amounts of information, both structured and unstructured. However, Mr. X_KM faced a formidable challenge: he needed to classify his knowledge base swiftly and accurately, to make real-time decisions based on these classifications. Considering DataVille Inc , where Mr X_KM was working, had scaled up their operations to be across regions, and indeed planets. The stakes were high, and the pressure was on. Two options he considered were on the seasoned wisdom of Logistic Regression, or venture into the mystical realms of BERT? Encounter with Logistic Regression One sunny morning, Mr. X_KM decided to first consult with the wise old Logistic Regression, a method known for its simplicity and speed. Pros of Logistic Regression: 1. Simplicity : Logis...