Home Assistant dashboard are great, but Grafana is even more powerful. So why not combine them and embed your Grafana graphs directly into your Home Assistant dashboard? It is actually pretty simple. If you are looking for an even better shortcut in your smart home journey check out my new Read more…
Network wide DNS ad blocker like Adguard Home and PiHoleAds can be a great solution to a big problem. Ads can be really annoying and even a huge security risk, but many modern devices like smart TVs are out of your direct control. Network wide ad blocker can get around Read more…
Home Assistant is awesome but it lacks advanced support for showing data, especially over time. There is a much better software for this: Grafana. And it can easily be integrated with Home Assistant. I set up InfluxDB and Grafana with my Home Assistant installation and will show you how to Read more…
I built my ultimate automatic smart light system and this is how you can do the same. You want lights that turn on and off automatically and always dimm to the right level? Lights that even change color (adaptive lighting/true tone/flux…) all on their own? It is possible with some Read more…
A modern smart home often relies on a lot of battery powered devices. That means you need a low battery warning to keep track of all of them and change batteries in time to avoid devices dropping from your network. Fortunately I found a nice and simple solution for this Read more…
Finding a great integrated blind control solution for a DIY smart home is hard. The IKEA Fyrtur and Kadrijl blinds are cheap compared to established producers and work better than most full DIY solutions. I bought one and tested it with my Home Assistant setup. The Fyrtur smart blinds The Read more…
Blueprints are an awesome new feature in Home Assistant that allow you to build & share generic automations for similar situations. You build a smart home to be able to automate common tasks but sometimes you do not have the time or knowledge to create them. That is where you Read more…
When I moved into my current apartment I wanted to built a custom ceiling lamp for my living room. The ingredients were clear: wood and filament LEDs hanging from the ceiling. With only a couple of hours of work I built this DIY lamp in a unique design. This is 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…
Home Assistant is an awesome free home automation system. To properly utilize it you need to add smart home devices though. This is how to add Zigbee and (Tasmota) Wifi devices to Home Assistant. I recently started working on my new smart home server and build up the hardware as Read more…