Automatic lights are magical. You walk into a room and the lights just turn on… to add this magic to your smart home you need motion sensors. Many motion sensors. Here is everything you need to know about them and my experience on how to find and install cheap and Read more…
You built your own smart lighting system? But it really is not smart yet. Lets add some smartness to the system. You don’t want to be pressing buttons all the time anymore, right? Here are some ways to make you light setup smart(er). Rules in Openhab I am controlling my Read more…
To efficiently store and display headphones a wall-mounted headphone holder is perfect. When I recently upgraded to a nice pair of headphones I realized I need one too. I liked none that I could find online so I decided to build a DIY version myself. While we are at it Read more…
A simple DIY smart wardrobe with lights that turn on and off automatically is awesome. Using the digital LEDs to their full potential and adding WLED custom animations is even better. This is how I upgraded my wardrobe lights. The smart wardrobe lights In an earlier article I described how Read more…
A simple way to add some awesomeness to your wardrobe is to add lighting. Smart wardrobe lights look great and help find things more quickly. I build a cheap do-it-yourself solution which has some great effects not found in off the shelf solutions. All of this is done for around Read more…
One of the main problems with smart homes is how to improve usability by allowing control via “legacy” switches instead of relying on Apps and voice assistants. One great way of doing this is by adding smart relays to your existing wall switches and keep using them. For any case Read more…
If you have read part 1 (otherwise you really should!) you now have nicely lit rooms, but this is about smart lights, right? What we are still missing are actual hardware controllers for the lights. The next step is to add some hardware to be able to actually control those Read more…
Zigbee smart home devices are everywhere today. Zigbee2MQTT is a software that allows you to control them all. Many different brands are producing Zigbee devices today so you might very easily end up with a bunch of different gateways and Apps to control them. And nothing working without an Internet Read more…
Are you looking to make the lights in your apartment a little smarter? You like the idea of having a smart light system but have no knowledge and/or time to deal with a complicated setup process? Here is how you can build a super simple automatic lighting setup for cheap Read more…
Are you looking for a cheap solution to control any wall powered device in your (smart) home? Or an LED strip? Or a lamp? Oh and you want total control over the device and all of that for cheap? That is actually quite possible and I will show you how Read more…