Blog
Real-world Home Assistant guides, hardware reviews, and automation blueprints. No fluff, just what works.
#dashboard#energy
Our washing machine died, so I bought a Miele for its native Home Assistant integration, then found it has no delayed-start register like the dishwasher.
#camera#security
The logbook card shows both Detected and Cleared for camera sensors. The fix: an input_text rolling log, an automation with trigger IDs, and a markdown card.
#weather#notifications
The built-in MeteoAlarm integration shows one alert at a time. cap_alerts creates one entity per DMI alert: storm, cloudburst, snow and heat, independently.
#esp32#sensors
Setting up a XIAO ESP32-C3 as a Home Assistant Bluetooth proxy, adding Fresh Intellivent Sky fans over BLE, and a crash that looked like bad range but wasn't.
#security#dashboard
Add Google Find My Device trackers to Home Assistant with googlefindmy-ha. Fix the unavailable state and dark-theme the Leaflet map on your dashboard.
#shopping#automation
How I connected eTilbudsavis to Home Assistant, sorted the list by store with price in the description, and added proximity push notifications for each store.
#voice#calendar
A daily 06:00 spoken briefing in Home Assistant: Google AI TTS, three family calendars, EV charge status, Waze traffic, power price and waste day.
#maintenance
My HA SQLite database hit 963 MB in six days. The exact recorder config that cut daily growth by over 70%: full YAML and the reasoning.
#heating#sensors
The radiator turns off when the window opens and back on when it closes, built as a reusable Blueprint so the next room takes 30 seconds.
#maintenance#infrastructure
A nightly CI pipeline runs 22 tests against my live Home Assistant setup and opens a GitHub issue when something breaks, before I notice.
#ev#dashboard
From MyŠkoda to VW Group Connect in Home Assistant: what the integration gives you, what is missing, and an EV dashboard with battery status and pre-heating.
#sensors#notifications
A PricelessToolkit MailBoxGuard wired to an AliExpress LoRa gateway: instant push when mail arrives, no battery change in over a year.
#media#automation
Unifying a Sonos speaker with four Google Nest Audio speakers via Home Assistant scripts. No third-party bridges, no subscription.
#lighting#automation
Circadian lighting with WiZ bulbs and the HA sun entity: no third-party integration, one automation maps solar elevation to colour temperature.
#lighting#automation
No more adjusting the outdoor light timer twice a year. One HA automation turns Govee and LEDVANCE string lights on at sunset, off at midnight.
#lighting#media
The living room lights dim when a movie starts, brighten on pause and restore when the TV turns off. No scene button, no voice command.
#media#notifications
One automation pauses the TV the moment either phone rings. Regular calls resume automatically, Messenger video calls get a notification button.
#camera#security
How I got a Reolink CX810 4K PoE camera to read license plates with AI and push a snapshot straight to the TV when someone pulls into the driveway.
#energy#dashboard
Bosch dishwasher via Home Connect: a dashboard with programme selection and finish-time control, plus a button that finds the cheapest hour to run.
#calendar#dashboard
How I combined four Google Calendars plus waste collection into a single colour-coded HA view that replaced the wall calendar we'd had for years.
#dashboard#automation
An HA home screen where every card earns its place: conditional cards, a priority alert ticker, and a Škoda section that follows the charger state.
#energy#ev
Energi Data Service in Home Assistant: track hourly spot prices, find the cheapest charging window, and automate Škoda Elroq charging hands-free.
#vacuum#dashboard
Roborock S5 Max in Home Assistant: set up the interactive map card from HACS, clean single rooms by segment and track brush and filter wear.
#heating#dashboard
5 Tado zones in Home Assistant with mushroom climate cards, a CSS breathing animation for active heating, and presence setback that works.
#camera#security
How I got the Sentinel camera to send useful, actionable alerts instead of 40 motion pings a day: one automation, a mute toggle, and action buttons.
#lawn-mower#automation
Mammotion Flora (Luba Mini 2) in Home Assistant: GPS boundary mowing, weather-aware scheduling, and the satellite count quirk nobody warns you about.
#dashboard
The six CSS constants I use on every card across three HA dashboards, plus patterns for progress bars, map cards and the ::before overlay.
#infrastructure
Moving Home Assistant from Raspberry Pi 4 to a Dell OptiPlex 7060 on Proxmox VE: VM sizing, USB passthrough, and why snapshots changed how I handle updates.