Having an unreliable Internet connection is annoying. Constantly getting asked for speedtest measurements over a couple of days by your Internet provider instead of actual help is even worse. Bad enough to implement a system that regularly measures your Internet connection. This is how it can be done with OpenHab. Read more…
Even the best smart home system does not do you much good if the controller becomes unresponsive. Mine runs on a Raspberry Pi and recently died due to a software issue. To avoid something like happening again I updated my monitoring of the Pi itself. Here is a simple way Read more…
Battery powered smart home devices are great. Usually small and unobtrusive and usable everywhere without the need for wires. Unfortunately batteries run out of power at one point and quietly loosing an important sensor is not so great. Here is how to build a battery level warning system to avoid Read more…
Do you have water pipes, a washing machine or a dishwasher? Awesome perks of modern technology but also a risk. Flooding your house or apartment is neither cheap nor enjoyable. While there is no 100% way to avoid this possibility an early warning system with a water leak sensor will Read more…
No one likes cleaning, yet we have to do it all the time. Smart robot vacuums are a great way out of this misery. They works tirelessly, efficient and even while you are sleeping. Pretty much one of the best smart home buys you could go for. But before you Read more…
Cleaning robots are one of the best categories of smart home devices. I was looking for a model with a great price to performance ratio and ended up buying the Roborock S50. It works great but it means one more App on my phone and a device not controlled by Read more…
Do you like those films as much as I do where can just talk to their computer and it will do what they want it to? Think of Jarvis from the Iron Man movies. While we are not quite there yet simple voice control with devices like the Amazon Echo Read more…
If you have read part 1 (otherwise you really should!) you now have nicely lit rooms, but this is about smart lights, right? What we are still missing are actual hardware controllers for the lights. The next step is to add some hardware to be able to actually control those Read more…
Zigbee smart home devices are everywhere today. Zigbee2MQTT is a software that allows you to control them all. Many different brands are producing Zigbee devices today so you might very easily end up with a bunch of different gateways and Apps to control them. And nothing working without an Internet Read more…
One of the easiest ways to use OpenHab is to install OpenHabian on a Raspberry Pi. Cheap, effective and quickly done. Now some time has passed and you want to update OpenHab(ian) to the newest version in a reliable way? Or enable some experimental features by switching to an experimental Read more…