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…
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…
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…
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…
If you run the supervisor version of Home Assistant (or Home Assistant OS) a backup solution is built-in. If you prefer the more flexible installation via Docker there is no such solution. Here is how to keep regular backups of your Home Assistant configuration when running it in Docker. Running Read more…
OctoPrint and your 3D printer can be controlled and monitored by Home Assistant either via an integration or via MQTT. This article will describe the more generic MQTT solution. Connecting OctoPrint to MQTT In another article I have already described how to connect Home Assistant to Octoprint via an integration. Read more…
Blueprints are a powerful feature of Home Assistant that makes sharing and using automations simpler. Unfortunately using the target selector in a condition is not supported by default. I needed this for an automation of mine and found a way. Blueprints and the target selector Blueprints are one of the Read more…
I have used a couple of Wifi based hardware controllers for LED of any kind in the past. Now I am looking for a Zigbee LED controller that just works with my ZHA Home Assistant setup – and I found a great solution. The different types of LEDs and LED Read more…
Waiting times, prices or dates – any information that is freely available on the web can be collected by you with a process called scraping. With Home Assistant and Grafana I built a simple system to find out at what times of the week my gym has the fewest visitors Read more…
Here is how I integrated my Prusa Mini with Octoprint and Home Assistant. While 3D printers are a really great tool for makers in general they get even better when combining them with a smart home setup. With the free Octoprint software it is easy to make your 3D printer Read more…