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
I love my Grafana dashboard to see everything important in my smart home on glance. Using rows and the modern time series panel makes it even better. Let me show you how I updated my dashboard. Grafana dashboards Grafana is this awesome open tool to create dashboards. I have set Read more
InfluxDB (1.8) is a great database but it logs every web access as an error by default. This creates a lot of error entries in a log aggregation tool like Loki. There is a simple fix though. Loki & log aggregation Loki is a great tool to aggregate logs from Read more
The Grafana Loki logging aggregator is a great tool to collect logs from lots of places (Docker containers) in one place. Loki log size can unfortunately grow quite big though with the default settings. When my Raspberry Pis SD card was nearly full I looked for some ways to combat Read more
I wanted a giant map of the world on my wall so built one. Around 2,5m by 2m in size and with smart background LED lights. Here is how its done. The idea It all started with one of those ideas again: how about some nice combination of “art” and Read more
I collect T-shirts as a souvenir from most countries/cities I travel to. After some time the old T-shirts get worn down but still have some sentimental value. To keep them around I made picture frames from those old shirts. T-shirts as souvenirs There are lots of ways you can remember Read more
How can you print two colors with a single extruder? I need some with customizable plant labels and faced this issue. In the end the color change was astonishingly easy with Prusa slicer. Here is how to print such stylish plant labels. Some plants need labeling I was looking for Read more
The new Sonoff Dongle plus is a great Zigbee coordinator. I designed and 3D printed a wallmount for the dongle to run it without interference from the Raspberry Pi it is connected to. The Sonoff Dongle plus The new dongle is a Zigbee to USB adapter that is great for Read more
Migrating ZHA to a new coordinator can be easy once you figure out how. I have been running my smart home Zigbee network with Home Assistant, ZHA and a Sonoff Zigbee wifi bridge flashed with Tasmota for a couple of years now. With the release of the new cheap and Read more
Need a nightstand matching your bed? Build one! I built a matching bedside table for my oak bed customized to match the space and including LED lights (of course) Designing the bedside table Some time ago I bought a new bed made from nice oak wood matching a lot of Read more