Smart lightbulbs are great but they get quite dumb really quickly when you toggle the light switch. The Aqara H1 switch can fix this issue. It works with Zigbee in Home Assistant, either with ZHA or Zigbee2MQTT and has a special decoupled mode for usage with smart lights. The Aqara 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…
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…
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…
With smart light bulbs pretty much any existing ceiling lamp can become a smart ceiling lamp in minutes. Here is how to make a ceiling lamp smart – standalone or as part of a bigger smart light system with Home Assistant and Hue bulbs. Smart light system A single smart Read more…
I had wood left over, I built a waveform lamp. Some projects are meticulously planned, for others it is just intuition and a good idea. I had some wooden pieces left over from my bookshelf built and decided to experiment a bit. The result is a very unique lamp in 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…
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…
You want speakers, you want Ethernet, you want nice lighting! Good options for hiding cables are very limited. Especially when you are moving into a rented apartment and are unable to open the walls. Here are some good ways of hiding your cables for a cleaner look. A lot of Read more…