Recently one of my old Sonoff power plugs started acting up so I was looking for a replacement and found a seemingly great one: small, cheap, power measurement and Zigbee 3.0 plus support in ZHA. Is this the best Zigbee power plug for Home Assistant? What makes a great smart Read more…
In a quest to make my desk as smart and useful as possible I recently made a couple upgrades. Here are a couple of neat additions to any smart desk for a smart home, DIY and programmer enthusiast out there. Smart home control, cable management and paperless workflows… Controlling your Read more…
I have used older Aqara switches before with Home Assistant and ZHA. Using the newer H1 I was surprised some things were not working out of the box. Here is how to fix possible issues. The Aqara H1 remote switch Aqara is selling a wide range of quite popular smart Read more…
Air quality is quite important for health reasons and just to make your home more enjoyable. When I found the new Starkvind air purifier from IKEA I decided to test it with ZHA and my Home Assistant instance. Air quiet, relatively cheap air purifier with build in Zigbee sounds great Read more…
The T1 (in wall) Switch Module is another well-made Zigbee device from Aqara that is part of the same product line as others that I have tested (thermostat, smart plug, switch, mini switch). The device works with both ZHA and Zigbee2mqtt although not all of the functionality from the official Read more…
Everybody forgets things. With Home Assistant you can use the power of your smart home to stop that. I build a well working reminder system via Home Assistant for different tasks. Its fully features with a text reminder, virtual or physical button to confirm it and a log. Here is Read more…
I automated my lights, my doorbell, my vacuum and more. Next are the thermostats. A smart thermostat can be very convenient and even save money. Here is how I used the Aqara smart thermostat with ZHA and Home Assistant. The hardware – Aqara E1 smart thermostat There are currently a Read more…
The stability of your Zigbee network is largely determined by the performance of your coordinator (or router). Switching Zigbee coordinators to a new and better one used to require you to repair all your devices though. With Home Assistant 2022.9 that is a thing of the past. In this post Read more…
Dimmable lights are the heart of many smart homes. I tested a small Zigbee smart knob from Moes that can be used to easily control lights, curtains, temperature and much more via your existing Zigbee network. How well does it work? Here is my test with ZHA and Home Assistant. Read more…
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…