u/CheddarDeity

I have an FW:Purple in Router mode.

Hosts on my Main LAN resolve DNS queries for internet hosts like www.reddit.com just fine. However, they can't seem to reliably resolve DNS names for their peers on the same network.

My home network's DNS domain and search domain are set to blood (long story).

For example, the Windows box I'm on:

Ethernet adapter Ethernet:

   Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . : blood
   Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : <REDACTED>
   IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.109.156
   Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
   Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.109.1

Another machine on my network shows this in the Device Details:

Device Name	N40
Local Domain	n40.blood
IP Address	192.168.109.89

...but for some reason none of my windows machines can resolve n40 or n40.blood (or other such boxes). Windows swears it's talking to the same nameserver:

A name not found error was returned for the name n40.blood. Check to ensure that the name is correct. The response was sent by the server at 192.168.109.1:53. Client PID 25996. Send Blob 0x1fc568b8f00. Context 0x7ffa545312e0

...but an ubuntu machine gives a different result:

> n40
Server:         192.168.109.1
Address:        192.168.109.1#53

Name:   n40.blood
Address: 192.168.109.93
Name:   n40.blood
Address: 192.168.109.89
Name:   n40.blood
Address: ::

I thought this was a Windows problem, but one of my other Ubuntu machines has it too:

> n40.blood
Server:         192.168.109.1
Address:        192.168.109.1#53

** server can't find n40.blood: NXDOMAIN

It's just DNS AFAICT. All the machines can reach each other by IP.

Is there a way to turn on debugging or verbosity on the firewalla nameserver?

Thanks!

Has anyone found a good approach to using automation to change the behavior of resident humans?

For example, I was having trouble with the family watching TV after bedtime, so: if the TV is on at bedtime, automation warns the room twice, then remotely turns off the TV. People can just turn the TV back on and resume watching, but mostly they don't. Mission accomplished: family goes to bed on time.

But other hand, changing default brightnesses on dimmer switches caused my children to develop a habit of double-tapping them to max the brightness on any switch. Not because they needed it brighter, but because the dimness was otherwise "wrong" and they hated that.

I've also learned that anything people can ignore they will. During power conservation events, I detect powerhogs and announce "thing ___ is using too much power. Please turn it off". But people tune them out quickly.

What's worked for you?

There are a ton of Mason Bees all around my house. It's great.

But I keep discovering little mud nests after I've inadvertently destroyed them in my garage. Shelf pin holes, tire pump holes, peg boards, irrigation tubing, etc.

Is there a humane way of warding them away from my garage? There are just too many little holes, and they seem drawn to them.

I have a Velux Active skylight that I recently connected to Home Assistance via its Homekit integration. This is something I've wanted for a while, because even though the Velux Active automations work pretty well for venting, their integration with NetAtmo doesn't provide some of the fine-grained controls that have become important to me, like air quality vs merely air temperature.

Anyway, it rocks, but with one minor annoyance: when the Velux's rain sensor triggers (prompting the skylight to emergency-close), HomeAssistant still thinks the skylight is open. Ideally I'd like HA to know the skylight has become closed as I have automations that check that.

Has anyone else experienced this? I'm trying to determine if this is a quirk of the Velux's homekit implementation, a protocol limitation in homekit, a failure specific to my device, or something else so I can figure out what to do next.