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zha

HomeAssistant

Migrating ZHA to the Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle plus without annoying data loss

Migrating ZHA to a new coordinator can be easy once you figure out how. I have been running my smart home Zigbee network with Home Assistant, ZHA and a Sonoff Zigbee wifi bridge flashed with Tasmota for a couple of years now. With the release of the new cheap and Read more…

By Oliver, 3 weeks25.04.2022 ago
HomeAssistant

Using a target selector in a condition with Home Assistant blueprints

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…

By Oliver, 3 months20.02.2022 ago
smart light

A hassle free Zigbee LED controller for Home Assistant that just works

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…

By Oliver, 3 months13.02.2022 ago
smart light

How to make a ceiling lamp smart – adding to your Home Assistant smart light system

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…

By Oliver, 6 months ago
Automation

Home Assistant helpers & state machines – take your automations to the next level

Home Assistant helpers can greatly improve automations and make more complex ones possible. Normal automations can be very powerful but they miss one feature that is sometimes needed for more complex interactions: variable storage. Fortunately there is another feature – called helpers – that can be used to fix this Read more…

By Oliver, 7 months09.10.2021 ago
Automation

Push the button – cheap wireless Aqara mini switch

Some actions in a smarthome still need a manual trigger. This is where cheap wireless buttons like the Aqara mini switch come in very handy. Just put a couple of those in the right spots to start a scene or control a light. This is how you can use them Read more…

By Oliver, 8 months19.09.2021 ago
Automation

My 5 favorite useful smart home automations for Home Assistant

You can use the full power of your smart devices by making them all work together and add automations to get rid of reoccurring tasks. I use open source software (currently Home Assistant) to automate all my devices and built a lot of automations for them overtime. These are my Read more…

By Oliver, 9 months30.08.2021 ago
HomeAssistant

IKEA Fyrtur – a great DIY solution for smart blinds?

Finding a great integrated blind control solution for a DIY smart home is hard. The IKEA Fyrtur and Kadrijl blinds are cheap compared to established producers and work better than most full DIY solutions. I bought one and tested it with my Home Assistant setup. The Fyrtur smart blinds The Read more…

By Oliver, 1 year22.03.2021 ago
Furniture

Building a unique custom ceiling lamp from wood -with smart filament LEDs

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…

By Oliver, 1 year10.03.2021 ago
HomeAssistant

Setting up a new smart home with Home Assistant – Part Two: Adding Zigbee and Tasmota devices

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…

By Oliver, 1 year01.02.2021 ago

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This is my personal slice of the Internet, a place to show my projects and share ideas about all things smarthome, IoT and design

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