WLED is a really powerful free software solution to control your LEDs in a smart way. It used to be complicated to set up bit that has changed. Here is how to get your LED setup ready in just five minutes. What is WLED? If you are looking to build Read more
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. PS I have since switched to a more powerful Pi 4. If 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