I tried all of the standard sensors and I wanted more. If temperature and humidity is not the enough the AirGradient One will give you more data about your air than you ever need. This is how to use this sensor local first with full Home Assistant integration. Installation & Read more
Your smartphone keeps hiding in from you? Every time you want to leave it is missing? Fear not, my Home Assistant smarthome helped me solve that problem and here is how I did it. Losing your smartphone Today (nearly) everyone carries a smartphone most of the time, me and my Read more
In a quest to make my desk as smart and useful as possible I recently made a couple upgrades. Here are a couple of neat additions to any smart desk for a smart home, DIY and programmer enthusiast out there. Smart home control, cable management and paperless workflows… Controlling your Read more
Sit down = lights on? I built a very simple DIY presence sensor for your bed or chair that is used to trigger automations in Home Assistant. It is a cheap and simple build that opens up a lot of options for your smart home. The sensor – FSR In Read more
I have run the awesome MagicMirror² software on a Pi Zero W in the past. While this works ok the small Pi is not powerful enough for more complex widgets. Here is how the Pi 4 compares and how I set it up to run my magic mirror. Setting up Read more
Home Assistant is an awesome system but when you get started the terminology can be confusing. Here is a quick explanation what automations, blueprints, scenes and scripts are in Home Assistant. Home Assistant basics – terminology around automations In part I of this series I described the Home Assistant terminology Read more
Everybody forgets things. With Home Assistant you can use the power of your smart home to stop that. I build a well working reminder system via Home Assistant for different tasks. Its fully features with a text reminder, virtual or physical button to confirm it and a log. Here is Read more
Octoprint is a powerful software to make your 3D printer even better. To reach its full potential you have to add a camera – for awesome timelapses and even better integration with your smart home. Here is how to add a camera to Octoprint (using a Prusa Mini). Setting up Read more
Smart plugs allow you to measure power usage and turn pretty much every electricity powered device smart(er). Which is the best one? The Aqara smart plug makes a pretty good case for joining your Home Assistant and ZHA DIY smart home with its small and sleek design and the included Read more
A magic mirror is a stunning piece of furniture and tech but running it constantly draws a lot of power. I am switching mine on and off based on a motion sensor using Home Assistant. Here is how to do that. The Magic Mirror I have described how I built Read more