If you are into smart home technology or just generally like to build things yourself you won’t get around collecting a couple of lab devices. But devices like a lab bench power supply can be very costly and take up too much space to justify for a beginner, right? No! Read more
The IKEA Lack coffe table is super cheap and looks ok. If that is not enough for you here is the perfect DIY project for enthusiasts: I built a beautiful coffee table out of epoxy & white oak wood to replace the Lack table. The epoxy table idea I have Read more
Automatic lights are magical. You walk into a room and the lights just turn on… to add this magic to your smart home you need motion sensors. Many motion sensors. Here is everything you need to know about them and my experience on how to find and install cheap and Read more
Do you want to wake up with sunlight on your face? Automated smart blinds are a great addition to your smart home and can make this possible! Unfortunately most solutions are really expensive and often not very usable. For the past years I have been on a quest to find Read more
You built your own smart lighting system? But it really is not smart yet. Lets add some smartness to the system. You don’t want to be pressing buttons all the time anymore, right? Here are some ways to make you light setup smart(er). Rules in Openhab I am controlling my Read more
To efficiently store and display headphones a wall-mounted headphone holder is perfect. When I recently upgraded to a nice pair of headphones I realized I need one too. I liked none that I could find online so I decided to build a DIY version myself. While we are at it Read more
Recently it has been super hot in Germany – more than 30°C for weeks and it is not looking to get much cooler. Technology to the rescue! I bought a smart fan that I promptly integrated with my smart home system. Here is how to do it. Finding a fan Read more
I have already written about how you can add Alexa support for OpenHab. If for some reason this is not possible (I had problems with this setup in a Docker container) or you are using another smart home system: here is another way I found to add Alexa support. And Read more
Zigbee2MQTT is an awesome software to add support for all kinds of devices to your smart home controller. Setting up Zigbee2MQTT is pretty easy as I described in my earlier post but there are still a lot of questions I see about Zigbee2MQTT. In this article I will try to Read more
A simple DIY smart wardrobe with lights that turn on and off automatically is awesome. Using the digital LEDs to their full potential and adding WLED custom animations is even better. This is how I upgraded my wardrobe lights. The smart wardrobe lights In an earlier article I described how Read more