To analyze errors or just to watch what is happening: your smart home gets so much better with some proper monitoring. Prometheus + Grafana is one of THE solutions for monitoring pretty much anything. Getting it to run on a Raspberry Pi does not need much time but still can 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…
How can you print two colors with a single extruder? I need some with customizable plant labels and faced this issue. In the end the color change was astonishingly easy with Prusa slicer. Here is how to print such stylish plant labels. Some plants need labeling I was looking for Read more…
The digital, paperless future is coming closer and closer. When I was looking to go digital I ran into one major problem: automatic upload to Nextcloud. The automatic upload from your scanner makes digital copies of your documents available everywhere – but only to you! It turns out that his Read more…
A smart home server is the heart of your setup. It needs to be running well to power everything else. Monitoring Raspberry Pis, my favorite low power server, is easy to set up and helps you to detect errors early on. This is how you can easily set up monitoring Read more…
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 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…
It is time! I am building a new smart home server for 2021. Home Assistant, Docker, Pi-hole & more, everything on one Raspberry Pi. Lets get ready by assembling the hardware and setting everything up. I have been running Openhabian on a Raspberry Pi 3 for years and it has Read more…
Even the best smart home system does not do you much good if the controller becomes unresponsive. Mine runs on a Raspberry Pi and recently died due to a software issue. To avoid something like happening again I updated my monitoring of the Pi itself. Here is a simple way Read more…