A MagicMirror is a mirror with a screen behind it “magically” showing information on the mirror. Here is how I built an elegant and powerful MagicMirror with an oak frame. The screen The “Magic” mirror works by using a semi transparent mirror with a screen behind it. If the screen Read more…
Dimmable lights are the heart of many smart homes. I tested a small Zigbee smart knob from Moes that can be used to easily control lights, curtains, temperature and much more via your existing Zigbee network. How well does it work? Here is my test with ZHA and Home Assistant. Read more…
There are a lot of smart relays on the market. The In-Wall Relay Switch Lite from Evvr tries something new: it does not only have a small form factor and very good built quality but also a small “Sub-Assembly” that makes it work with any plain old light switch. I Read more…
I am currently building a smart mirror and want to use a small Raspberry Pi Zero W for that. Unfortunately MagicMirror² does not support it out of the box. Here is how I got it to run anyways. The magic mirror For those who do not know what a magic Read more…
If you are looking for a simple solution to make your dimmable lights smart the Tuya smart dimmer switch might be the right solution. I tested this Zigbee switch with Home Assistant, ZHA and Zigbee2MQTT. The Tuya smart light switch The Tuya smart light switch (sometimes sold under the Moes Read more…
Smart lightbulbs are great but they get quite dumb really quickly when you toggle the light switch. The Aqara H1 switch can fix this issue. It works with Zigbee in Home Assistant, either with ZHA or Zigbee2MQTT and has a special decoupled mode for usage with smart lights. The Aqara Read more…
How do you add an existing doorbell to your smart home? I did it by connecting it to a modified Aqara door sensor. Now a ring will flash lights, send a message to my phone or do anything else I want it to – with all the power of Home Read more…
Prometheus works great for collecting server stats on a Raspberry Pi but was missing some information on a Raspberry Pi in docker stats and the cadvisor used more CPU than the containers it was monitoring. Here is how fixed those issues. Cleaning up & fixing the downloaded dashboards When I Read more…
To analyze errors or just to watch what is happening: your smart home gets so much better with some proper monitoring. Prometheus + Grafana is one of THE solutions for monitoring pretty much anything. Getting it to run on a Raspberry Pi does not need much time but still can Read more…
Open source software like Zigbee2MQTT and Home Assistant are a great alternative to (more or less) closed systems like Philips Hue. It can be tricky to get started though. Here is a quick start guide allowing you to use all the advantages like full offline control and the possibility to Read more…