Roei's Tips Stream - Roei's stream of ideas, tips & creativity

Should you force user to rotate password?

Feb 17, 2025Roei TabakQuick Tip

If you’ve spent any time in a corporate setting, you’re likely familiar with the dreaded
“Your password will expire in 7 days” prompt. For years, forced password rotations
—requiring users to change their passwords on a set schedule—were considered a gold standard for security.
However, modern research and guidelines paint a different picture, suggesting that
frequently forcing password changes can actually do more harm than good.

In this blog post, we’ll explore why the tide has turned on mandatory password rotations, what the
latest recommendations are, and how you can implement best practices to keep accounts and data safe.

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ZHA vs. Zigbee2MQTT: Which One Should You Choose for Home Assistant?

Feb 4, 2025Roei TabakHome Assistant, Home Automation

When integrating Zigbee devices with Home Assistant, you have two main options: Zigbee Home Automation (ZHA) and Zigbee2MQTT (Z2M). Both solutions are powerful but cater to different user needs. In this post, we’ll compare them across several key categories to help you determine which one best fits your setup.

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Sending messages to large groups is slow on whatsapp-web.js

Oct 11, 2024Roei TabakHome Automation, Linux, Node.Js, Ubuntu

I manage a service that utilizes whatsapp-web.js to send messages to large (more than 400 participants) groups. This service operates on an Ubuntu Linux server and is implemented using a Node.js script.

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Gracefully shut down Home Assistant with CLI

May 30, 2023Roei TabakHome Assistant, Home Automation, Quick Tip

If you are using Home Assistant, either via a virtual machine or directly on a desktop computer, the best way to shut down Home Assistant without causing inconsistencies is to gracefully shut down the host.

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Time Pattern Trigger Examples for Home Assistant

Feb 4, 2022Roei TabakUncategorized

I wanted to give a few examples of how to use the time pattern trigger for automation in Home Assistant. This trigger is very powerful and can achieve precise timings of repetitive tasks.

You can read about this trigger here https://www.home-assistant.io/docs/automation/trigger/#time-pattern-trigger

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Reload Tuya Integration Every One Hour on Home Assistant

Jan 31, 2022Roei TabakHome Assistant, Home Automation, Quick Tip

Are you having issues with Tuya integration on Home-Assistant? Well, unfortunately, some versions of HA cause it to stop receiving updates to sensors/devices (lights, air condition, etc.).

Most of the time, reloading the integration via the HA interface solves the problem, but what if it’s needed a few times a day?

Until it’s fixed, I recommend to you add a reload automation to this integration (or any other for that matter, that misbehaves as such).

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Xiaomi Mi Air Purifier 3H with Home Assistant Review

Jan 2, 2022Roei TabakHome Assistant, Home Automation, Reviews

Not much is commonly known about the importance of the quality of the air we breathe. Unfortunately, probably most of our time is spent in places that do not have clean air. This can be our home (yes! a lot of pollutants are found in-door), office, car or even our back yard.

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Eaton 5E1500iUSB UPS Review (After two years)

Nov 19, 2021Roei TabakReviews

I found the hard way that having a UPS (Uninterrupted Power Supply) can be very important, especially if your house hosts multiple devices that run on mains that are critical to you. For me, I have multiple servers, Home-Assistant, and of course my Wifi Router.

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Change Shelly device to detached mode on a schedule

Nov 14, 2021Roei TabakHome Assistant, Home Automation, Node Red

One of the features of Shelly smart relays and devices is the ability to sever the connection from the physical switch from the actual relay. This opens the possibility to control the switch itself without starting the relay. For instance, you can use the physical switch to turn on another device or service.

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Create a sensor that sums up number of people in the house

Nov 7, 2021Roei TabakHome Assistant, Home Automation

One of the most powerful abilities of Home Assistant is the ability to easily create automation based on the current location of our home users.

For instance, start the vacuum cleaner and 9:00 am, only if you’re not home.

This of course can be done with the built-in automation editor, but the condition for the scenario can be rather long, particularly if there is more than one person in the house.

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