I highly recommend a Navidrome/Slskd/beets[lyrics]/Symfonium setup!

I have a Proxmox container running: Navidrome, that serves music in a Library Folder (B); Slskd, that serves a SoulseekQT web UI and downloads to a Download Folder (A); and beetbox beets program with the lyrics plugin installed via pipx that has config parameters set so that I can manually run it, it’ll detect and allow me to identify songs downloaded to Folder A, inject synced lyrics, and move them to an organised folder structure in Folder B.

• Navidrome doesn’t need organisation, I just do it to be neat.
• beets uses MusicBrainz and another I believe for song/album ID, and lrclib for synced lyrics
• I also have Lidarr set up to download from Soulseek with the Tubifarry plugin, get lyrics via lrclib and move to Folder B with the same structure as beets, but its metadata is heavily lacking and many images and artist song data is just nonexistent after about two months of “populating” (see below), so I recommend keeping the manual Soulseek/beets approach
• Again I recommend ignoring Lidarr or maybe using it for a visual library without downloading, but there is a pro, now I’ve configured it - Lidarr doesn’t often automatically request and then organise music, but when it does, the music is exactly the quality I requested. So at least Tubifarry is solid.
• You can use any Subsonic client but I find Symfonium to be incredible. Paying these devs is worth it!
• slskd can be configured to run beets after download I believe, but I haven’t figured that out and don’t plan to, for want of less complexity.

Code here :)

I used to use Has Agent, now I have LNXlink, which had quick buttons for lock, log out, ctrl-F4 and alt-F4, and power controls. I also have media player functions for watching stuff and controlling from the couch. I tried to share yaml but I think it bypassed a comment limit

But sorry, did you mean the whole controls/sensors section?

Sorry, that would help wouldn’t it aha
In templatesensors.yaml:

  - switch:
      unique_id: pc_admin_controls
      name: Admin Controls
      icon: mdi:shield-crown-outline
      turn_on: []
      turn_off: []

I made it a while ago. I believe it could also be made in helpers UI now, in Settings > Devices and Services > Helpers > Create Helper > Toggle, and setting a name and icon, and saving. It’ll be input_boolean.switch_name and is functionally the same, as my conditional cards do the actions

For me I’ve experimented with restricted cards. For example, I have essentially a collapsed menu of controls for my PC, accessible only when a switch is toggled on, and the card with the switch is only visible to me.

    - type: conditional
      conditions:
        - condition: user
          users:
            - 9ecc550a1dc14e0a98071750a1673abc
      card:
        type: entities
        entities:
          - entity: switch.pc_admin_controls
            toggle: true
    - type: conditional
      conditions:
        - entity: switch.pc_admin_controls
          state_not: "off"
      card:
        type: grid
        columns: 4

(Ignore that I haven’t fixed the yellow warning entities yet lol)

Ty ty. I was thinking more of having dashboards restricted for other users, like child users, by the admin rather than the child. That’s a good idea, I see a few awesome all-in-one dashboards online

To conclude my other comment: I’ve decided to backup and downgrade to v2025.8.3 by entering the console and using:

core stop
login
rm /mnt/data/supervisor/homeassistant/home-assistant_v2.db
core update --version 2025.8.3

Having to delete the database meant losing sensor history but so many broken UI elements have been restored, and the dashboards and automation menus are back to being less cluttered.

I’m on 2025.12 and am considering rolling back to remove some features, mainly the added pointless dashboards. And I might be weird but I preferred when the automation page didn’t spoonfeed you and give a popup with every tap. And my gauge cards are broken. Basically I agree, don’t upgrade -_-

I think the restricted user dashboard thing was always screwed though, as some were specialised and didn’t have support for user visibility. “Here’s a wonderful home control system where we take away your control every few months”

deleted by creator

I would instead remove the lights from the button script’s condition. If it checks for the “All Lights” group, you can remove those lamps from the group.

I know Jellyfin/Emby is compatible with music, but I’m advising you now to not try and cram all your media in one software. I recommend Navidrome as a music hoster. The con is that I haven’t written a guide for it, as I run Proxmox it was almost too easy to need one.

As you’re just starting out I’d recommend picking any Linux distro, putting the ISO on a USB drive and booting the server machine from it to install. Well, you know how to install an OS. Next, install Navidrome (guide) via the Linux or Docker guides, modify the config file to point to your music folder and change any setting you like, for example the port, and run it via systemctl or docker.

After that, login via browser with the given admin creds, make a user account for you and anyone else, install slskd for downloading and beets for correctly organising into the music directory, set up a reverse proxy to point to the Navidrome UI or connect via IP from any Subsonic client or web browser.

If you want you can install Proxmox from the start - I found it incredibly handy to make different containers and VMs to handle different projects, and in terms of Navidrome I got the install script from tteck, ran it, and once done I modified the toml variables to what I wanted and restarted the service. Plug & play.

Philips Hue are still the best, but I’ve heard IKEA Tradfri are great too. The reasons for Hue bulbs being great are that they are extremely reliable, and their colour frequency range is said to be highest (and if you use a third party controller with their lightstrips the saturation/range isn’t as wide). The cost is worth it. When my router fucks up it’s really nice to have all my motion sensors (Also Hue), quick buttons (SNZB-01P) and lights work together.

A reason for not choosing Hue is they may not be as bright as you hope. As you seem to want white temperatures only and not the full colour spectrum, know that the regular bulbs are 800W and they’ve fairly recently got 1.6KW bulbs. So look for those if you want.

As for a dongle, I bought mine years ago but the Sonoff range is brilliant - their ZigBee USB dongles are very popular and very reliable. Tge one I own is the ‘Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus (CC2652P Coordinator)’, also known as ‘ZBDongle-P’. Many folk warn against the ZBDongle-E.

it can still function by connecting to nearby open networks, or perhaps even someone just walking by with a phone that it can piggyback off of.

I was worried some corporation would create a product that does this. The best option then would be to trash it.

Best thing to do is vote with your wallet - don’t buy Amazon e-commerce if you don’t support them. It’s worth noting that the vast majority of their value comes from AWS, but there’s little we can do about that.

It can’t phone home if it isn’t powered, that’s for sure.

You can always set up a PiHole or AdGuard Home instance and route traffic from the doorbell to keep an eye on it, and block any domains it tries to access that you don’t need. Or disable its WAN access entirely. Custom DNS settings in the router would be ideal, just set it to the IP of the instance, but as I’ve discovered some ISPs like to remove that setting as part of their enshittification.

But browsers have a marker for dangerous sites - surely Cloudflare, Amazon or Google should have a report system and deliver warnings at the base

Ah yeah, phone is a frequent sync with FolderSync, including deletions, and USB is a manual backup. A rental VPS is a good idea…

What do you use for 3-2-1? I try, so far I have my phone, backed up to a server HDD via SMB (Too poor for RAID-1 atm), and the very important stuff sent to a USB drive and returned to a drawer. Am I doing it right haha

Right? My one has developed a nasty case of defective WiFi/Bluetooth chip. I’m convinced it’s a superficial, intentional break. Flashing it could well revert what Google’s doing to it

Aside from being hella slow, I just don’t like that it can’t use the same directories as my network shares and requires uploading. This script might help but honestly I just stick to the basic shares because of this