- must not add insane amounts of cost to my power bill
- Has to be upgradable if I need to add upgrades to the hardware in the future
- Has a speaker
- may want to possibly also set up node red but it depends on if I need it or not because I may just be fine with home assistants automation
- has to have wireless connectivity
- mainly setting this up to add automation around my reolink cameras linked through the reolink home hub for example getting a second camera in the same area to start recording when one detects motion or link other smart home security products like sirens or floodlights
Since a long press on any key doesn’t bring any of those up, my method involved going to the text replacement section of the system settings, and doing a replacement entry. I copy the glyph from wherever I find it on the Internet and assign a unique string (the “shortcut”) to have iOS insert it. I’ve used a reliable pattern, such as (degc) (yes, including the brackets) for ℃. You need to choose a string that you will never otherwise use, otherwise you’ll be fighting against the text replacement.
Using this method I’ve added all sorts of special characters like fractions ¼ ⅙ ⅛ mathematical symbols ± « ≈ ≠ and even text emoji ಠ_ಠ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and other random symbols № ® ™.
Fun fact: if you have an AppleID-linked Mac, this will all sync over, letting you use these shortcuts on the Mac as well.