Restoring Home Assistant from Google Drive backup

Normally you restore home assistant to a previous backup using the backups stored locally that are listed under Settings -> System -> Backups. Just click on the backup you want to restore and a window pops up. Simple.

But if you want to restore to a version saved to Google drive you first have to copy the backup file from Google Drive to your local PC and then upload it to Home Assistant. Then the feature to upload a backup file is hidden under the “three dot” menu at the upper right of the backup page.

Open the menu, select “Upload backup”, and find the backup file you copied from Google Drive.

Using Aqara Vibrarion Sensor as Garage Door sensor

I was looking for a tilt sensor to tell me if my garage door was open or closed. The sensor had to work with Home Assistant and the only one I could find that looked simple and cheap was the Aqara Vibration sensor that had a tilt/orientation feature.

Unfortunately the feature was not one of the attributes that Home Assistant showed with the device which sent me down the rabbit hole of googling. Eventually I got it figured out and this article is to share my experiences.

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Magic with your phone

I have been intrigued with some of the smart phone apps for magic. But I have been off put by their prices, or that they only run on Apple IOS. So I decided to write my own, although it is not an app per say, but rather a web page that you can use for a mental magic effect.

The effect

There are two basic effects. The first is that you place a prediction down on the table. The prediction is a card that they spectator is about to select, using a phone (theirs or yours). You use the phones internet browser to go to a web site that shows a deck of cards that are face up in new deck order. There are two buttons above the cards: Shuffle and Toggle Backs.

Start of app with deck in new deck order.

You demonstrate the shuffle button, pressing it several times to demonstrate how the cards are shuffled each time the button is pressed.

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Short Cards

When I was performing regularly in restaurants the scalloped or concave short card was my favorite tool in my card magic arsenal. For those who don’t know what a concave short card is, it is like a normal short card, but instead of the end of the card being trimmed off with a straight cut, and then the corners reshaped, it is cut so that the corners remain, the cut starting past the corner and cutting on a slight curve.

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Oil and Water

There are many techniques used to show the mixing of cards and magical separation. Since I tend to forget them, and where I saw them, here is a collection of techniques. None are mine originally, probably. These are all just using four red and four black cards. There are a lot of versions of Oil and Water using extra hidden cards, but I like the purist handling of just using eight cards.

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