Moving Docker data to an external SSD fixes a major flaw with my smart home system. Many people out there, including me, are running a small home server on a Raspberry Pi – usually running on a SD card with very limited space and a potentially very limited lifetime. Fortunately Read more…
Home Assistant has a neat UI but many often needed pages are only accessible via a nested menu. Fortunately the Home Assistant sidebar is customizable with some tricks. I found a solution that allows adding new items for much used pages like integrations and automations. How to re-arrange existing entries Read more…
You built your perfect smart home over the years and now you are wondering how to move it to a new place? Moving a smart home can be tricky. I have been in this situation only a couple of weeks ago. Here are a couple of tips for moving your Read more…
Adding voice control to your Tasmota device can be super simple. Tasmota Hue emulation allows you to add voice control for any Tasmota device with just a couple of clicks. Here is how to do it. Hue emulation The easiest way of adding voice control via Alexa for generic smart Read more…
Tasmota is an awesome firmware for full local control over smart home devices. While it works great without any intervention here is how to update Tasmota devices if you want the latest and greatest features or you are experiencing issues. Should you update your Tasmota devices? I have been running Read more…
This is a very quick guide on what a “Binding” is in and how to install a new Binding in OpenHab 2. All the information you will need to get started in as few sentences as possible. If you are new to OpenHab: welcome! It is an awesome open source Read more…
This is a very quick guide on what an “Item” is in and how to add a new Item to OpenHab 2. All the information you will need to get started in as few sentences as possible. If you are new to OpenHab: welcome! It is an awesome open source Read more…
This is a very quick guide on what a “Thing” is in and how to add a new Thing to OpenHab 2. All the information you will need to get started in as few sentences as possible. If you are new to OpenHab: welcome! It is an awesome open source Read more…
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…
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…