from Hacker News

How Home Assistant is being used to protect from missile and drone attacks

by slovette on 5/26/24, 4:10 AM with 166 comments

  • by supriyo-biswas on 5/26/24, 8:38 AM

    The existence of this is fascinating and horrifying at the same time.

    I wonder how he tests it though; when writing tons of YAML for K8s or Ansible, you usually test it in a test environment before putting it in production. Unlike the other cases though, a bug in your YAML here can literally lead people to lose their lives.

  • by igammarays on 5/26/24, 9:25 AM

    To see some statistics about the number and duration of air alerts in all regions of Ukraine, including number of media-reported explosions by region and time period, check out https://alerts.in.ua/en, they have a statistical summary section there. Click the hourglass button on bottom of the screen, then filter by time period.

  • by H8crilA on 5/26/24, 9:44 AM

    The real question is why there isn't any official API that details the nature of the danger. You shouldn't have to scrape Telegram to figure out the type/speed of the air assault weapon, and the likely time on target.

    BTW, also check out Kropyva, it's like Uber for artillery strikes. Very helpful with deleting Russians.

  • by elric on 5/26/24, 7:54 AM

    > Home Assistant has a built-in Ukraine Alarm integration. It monitors the nation-wide system of air alarms and toggles safety sensors in HA.

    I don't know anything about the HA community, but I would be very wary of any new commits impacting this plugin...

  • by thefz on 5/26/24, 8:01 AM

    The fact that this exists is at he same time chilling and inspiring.

  • by dueyfinster on 5/26/24, 8:46 AM

    Fascinating use of HomeAssistant. He mentioned uptime monitor in the next section - I wonder what he uses to ensure it stays online? I would guess some sort of UPS or battery backup.

  • by mfiro on 5/26/24, 9:11 AM

    Using technology to improve lives is one thing, but using technology to survive missile attacks is just another level. Sometime I ask myself, will humans ever stop wars once and forever.

  • by kome on 5/26/24, 11:21 AM

    Telegram and its channels has been such a life saver for many, and a huge resource for the press as well. It is interesting how it is used here.

    I bet Russia state actors would pay a lot to controls or infiltrate those channels.

  • by xyst on 5/26/24, 9:16 AM

    That’s wild. The amount of stress dealing with these attacks at any time of the day/night would likely age me by a decade. Then still expect to grind at work in a few hours or the following day.

  • by hermitcrab on 5/26/24, 7:19 PM

    Inspiring and horrifying, in equal measure. When is the west going to understand that Putin respects only strength and grow a pair? We should be giving the Ukrainians everything they need. It is the right thing to do. But it is also the military bargain of the century - the Ukranians can continue to decimate the Russian Army and NATO doesn't have to lose a single soldier.

    Or we can let the Russians win and have to deal with millions of Ukranian refugees. Probably followed by Russia attacking another country.

  • by nirui on 5/26/24, 8:51 AM

    It's 2024, instead of riding our personal spaceships to habitat on Mars, we use Home Assistant software to alert us about incoming missile attacks.

    War is the single most unproductive activity humans can do. Sure, maybe Putin has his rationale, but spiting on a cake is never how one can secure the cake for themself, because guess what, others can also spit on it and then the cake is ruined. A greater leader knows that the only way to really solve a problem is to do something that adds (instead of removes) value, sadly some leaders never care to learn it.

    Rant aside, I want to ask a question: based on the article, it seemed that the system requires Telegram (thus Internet) and open source intel to work. Is it possible to make the system self-sustained? Is it physically possible to detect imminent attack based on soundwave/light signals? Because after the war started, Internet access maybe a difficult privilege.

  • by mirekrusin on 5/26/24, 7:54 AM

    What a humanity fail that stuff like this is happening.