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…
If you are looking for a simple solution to make your dimmable lights smart the Tuya smart dimmer switch might be the right solution. I tested this Zigbee switch with Home Assistant, ZHA and Zigbee2MQTT. The Tuya smart light switch The Tuya smart light switch (sometimes sold under the Moes Read more…
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…
How do you add an existing doorbell to your smart home? I did it by connecting it to a modified Aqara door sensor. Now a ring will flash lights, send a message to my phone or do anything else I want it to – with all the power of Home 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…
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…