Ah apologies, I wasn’t aware of Motion in that context so didn’t twig that was the NVR!

Cameras are one part of the puzzle, but what are you planning on doing with what they output? If you want anything more than just instantaneously viewing what they can see, and you want to avoid their software then you’ll need an NVR or similar - I can heartily recommend the open source Frigate, which plugs nicely into Home Assistant (which if you’re not using yet, you may want to investigate further)

I currently have Frigate and an NTP server running connected to my main network and a camera VLAN which means the cameras can only talk to Frigate or my NTP server to keep the time in sync (or each other if they were desperate!) and currently a mixture of Annke & Reolink POE cameras, along with a couple of temporary Cinnado PTZ WiFi cameras for internal use whilst we’re away overnight to keep an eye on the cats, reflashed with Thingino as mentioned by another poster - I chose them as a gateway as they were dirt cheap and one of the easier ones to get Thingino onto, some require more extensive surgery. The WiFi for them connects onto a dedicated SSID on my camera VLAN.

When you start looking into it, there are lots of rebadging at different price points, like a variety of consumer electronics - the Annke ones I have are rebadged Hikvision at a lower price point, Loryta and Empiretech are Dahua rebadged etc.

https://cani.rootmy.tv/ - I just recently bought an LG for the first time, with eyes wide open, and used this site to get root on it, as well as VLANing it with a strict block list, but also an allow list only based policy, and strict no external DNS requests policies.

Also worth knowing that when accepting their policies many of them are optional and are just data slurping consent , think it was the top 2 compulsory in my region out of about 5.

There’s the forum at https://community.home-assistant.io/ or as the other poster says Discord, joinable via https://www.home-assistant.io/join-chat - personally I find forums to be more accessible

Thanks so much for the rootmy.tv recommendation, exactly what I need but didn’t know to look for!

Wow, this is the first I’ve seen the reduction of Oracle free tier - will dig into that before I get an unexpected bill!

I’ve been meaning to put something like this in my setup for a while, but definitely not this now! List of alternatives in the Custom Communication section at awesome selfhosted

I migrated from another ZwaveMe product to the ZWA-2 (which was a firmware related headache to get my network out of the ZwaveMe one onto it but fortunately finally got it resolved) on a QEMU machine under Incus with no problems but I understand the desire, and the ZWA-2 has been rock solid.

Have you seen this (experimental) project

https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2025/10/13/portable-z-wave-with-wifi-and-poe/

I’ve not dug into it much other than being aware of it, but conceptually don’t see why it, or potentially one also leveraging a ZBT-1 or -2 couldn’t also be possible, if you’re prepared to tinker.

No experience of this specific model, but during the pandemic I bought a similar budget spin bike. Within the first few weeks, one of the crank arms (where the pedals attach) fell off so they replaced that part and a week or so later it happened again so they let me return it for a refund and I bought a Peloton that I’ve used multiple times every week since then.

The driver collecting it said they had lots of similar returns.

Looking on the Amazon reviews for your model, 509 reviews rated pedal strength as a negative with some reviewers talking about how they fell off.

If you plan to use it mainly as a coat hanger then it’s probably BIFL, but if you plan to ride it I’d say most likely not.

Peloton is a big commitment as it requires a subscription as well as the expensive hardware (although you may find a used one locally) but if you like it, the content can motivate and drive you.

Another poster mentioned Concept 2 and rowing - all the rowers in every commercial gym I’ve ever been in have been Concept 2, if you maintain them, in a home environment they can most definitely be BIFL.

Good workaround, thanks!

Yes that is correct I have a VPN connection available to my house on my UK internet connection for selfhosted services and a separate commercial VPN available from a major provider which I can use to route via a different country but I don’t believe I can easily have them both connected at the same time nor do I really want to always route all of my traffic overseas to work around a minor part my online experience

If you expect it to be flaky you could get one of those old school mechanical time switches with the clicky pegs (or a more modern digital equivalent) and just have it set to power down for 1 click, normally 15 mins, at 4am or whenever suits you - minimally technically complicated and guaranteed stability through planned instability!

Thanks for the recommendation, will give that a further look.

I have played with Pinchflat as mentioned by another poster. I’ve found that some of the ones that aren’t on YouTube, you can use AudioBookShelf or similar in conjunction with a vpn set to a non core country for the podcast, you can either remove or at least greatly reduce the ad inserts.

Have an experiment with that, I use a gluetun docker and link my ABS docker to that.

Here’s mine from Accubattery, running Graphene on Pixel 8 Pro

You could look at doing a VPN only connection to your home server - some people use tailscale / headscale to achieve this but I’ve been happily using PiVPN on my home PiHole to provide full home server connectivity from anywhere for years.

This is not the time to be considering Calyx - Calyx website

Not heard of Jusant but will give it a go based on enthusiasm here. My Plus is up shortly and not planning on renewing but looks to be a short game according to the web.

Its certainly doable, you just need to decide on where you want to start as a minimum viable product and tinker along as you go but ideally think far enough ahead about ideal situation so you don’t paint yourself into a corner and have to restart from scratch to get a certain outcome, although the Pi is pretty flexible for the power you’ll need.

I did this around 20 years ago (obviously not with a Pi back then) but as things changed I came round to the less hassle option of a phone and Bluetooth, particularly as I was often driving cars I couldn’t tinker with too much.

I had an implementation with a fold out 1 DIN touch screen which replaced the stereo and handled audio amplification etc and one with a stand alone hot plug 7" touchscreen. I had a reserve battery so that it stayed powered up for a short period of time after parking at home to do playlist and podcast synchronisation to my server in the house.

As other people have mentioned I was using Kodi and running audio from it as well as satnav etc. Mp3car was a good resource at the time.

Yeah I may be tempted back to essential depending on what gets released there

I got a few £5 credits out of it, mainly by earning points for downloading and launching specific Plus titles most of which I probably wouldn’t have downloaded - mainly downloading them and launching them from the app and then just deleting them.

I was planning on letting my Plus lapse when it us up in a few months anyway as I have never had interest in multiplayer and the “free” catalogue cycling out things has got to the point of annoying me too much.