Living wall, green wall, vertical garden: there are many names for it. Putting some plants onto your walls is a recent trend that can result in beautiful rooms with better air quality. Ready made solutions are really expensive and do not necessarily match the look I was going for. So Read more…
Setting up your own smarthome server with HomeAssistant and more is easy with Docker(-compose). Upgrading Home Assistant to keep everything up to date afterwards can be a challenge though. Here I will show a couple of ways to quickly update your containers. A smarthome server based on Docker My personal Read more…
Usually any smarthome or IoT device you put on your own network has full access to everything else. Fortunately VLANs are a great way of mitigating this potential security and privacy risk. Creating separate networks for your different devices is a great idea and surprisingly easy using professional network equipment Read more…
I recently connected my smart Xiaomi fan to my Home Assistant installation but found the default card in the user interface lacking in design and functionality. So I used this as an excuse to finally create my first own card. Here is how it works and how you can use Read more…
Summer is here! A fan can help you fight the temperatures, a smart fan can do it even better. Here is how you can integrate Home Assistant with the affordable Xiaomi Mi smart standing fan 1C. The Xiaomi smart fan I bought this fan last year and already described how Read more…
Big discount campaigns like the upcoming Amazon Prime Days can be a good time to update your smart home. But how to select smart home gear? Don’t blindly buy whatever is offered – instead find the devices best suited for you. This is how I select my smart home devices. Read more…
To make your smart home network more reliable and secure you can build a network based on prosumer components like the Ubiquiti Unifi line. Everything in your smart home relies on a robust network, so I decided to built a new & better network including several Wifi networks, VLANs, a Read more…
Books on a shelf are great – books falling of a shelf less so. Here is how to 3D print some simple bookends to secure your books. The open bookshelf I recently built a set of new bookshelves from oak and black pipe. While I love the open design I Read more…
Home Assistant dashboard are great, but Grafana is even more powerful. So why not combine them and embed your Grafana graphs directly into your Home Assistant dashboard? It is actually pretty simple. How to push your Home Assistant data into Grafana To get your data from Home Assistant to Grafana Read more…
Network wide DNS ad blocker like Adguard Home and PiHoleAds can be a great solution to a big problem. Ads can be really annoying and even a huge security risk, but many modern devices like smart TVs are out of your direct control. Network wide ad blocker can get around Read more…