Self Hosted Home - Home Automation, Home Labbing, Home Improvement

New OpenZWave (beta) for Home Assistant

June 29, 2020

If you’re a Z-Wave user and been following the latest Home Assistant news, you might have noticed a new “OpenZWave (beta)” integration that keeps getting mentioned. This Home Assistant integration aims to improve the Z-Wave experience within Home Assistant by controlling your Z-Wave network over MQTT. In today’s article I’m going to be discussing how … [Read more…]

Integrating NVIDIA Shield with Home Assistant

June 15, 2020

The NVIDIA Shield is a powerful media player device that provides the best Android TV experience in the market today. If you’re a Home Assistant user you might be asking how can I integrate the NVIDIA Shield with Home Assistant and what can it do? In today’s article I walk through a quick tutorial on … [Read more…]

Automating our Nursery with Home Assistant

June 15, 2020June 8, 2020

In today’s article, I wanted to walk through our nursery and give an overview of projects that have helped us automate bedtime and monitor our kiddo. I’ve mentioned a few on the blog before but wanted to bring them all together and show some newer automations I’ve created. I use Home Assistant to combine different … [Read more…]

Combining Different Sized Drives with mergerfs and SnapRAID

February 14, 2020

When building storage for your home server, there are lots of different routes you can take. You could buy a bunch of drives and build a FreeNAS server. Or maybe you want a hardware solution and RAID looks appealing? Or maybe you’ve heard really cool things about ZFS on Linux and want to try it … [Read more…]

Chamberlain B970 WiFi Garage Door Opener Review and Set Up

February 5, 2020February 5, 2020

There’s nothing worse than when an appliance you depend on every day suddenly breaks down. That’s what happened to me at the beginning of the year when my garage door opener stopped working. After reading reviews I bought myself the Chamberlain B970 to get my garage door functioning again. In this post, I’ll be going … [Read more…]

ESP8266 MP3 Sound Machine v2

January 27, 2020

Last summer, I made an ESP8266 MP3 Sound Machine using ESPHome to play calming sounds when my son goes to sleep. I used ESPHome to develop the firmware so it could communicate with my Home Automation platform, Home Assistant. Well, requirements change and projects need updating. So over the holidays, I created a v2.0 of … [Read more…]

Use Tuya-Convert to Free Devices From the Cloud

December 20, 2019

Have you seen cheap smart plugs on Amazon like these and wondering if you can use them with Home Assistant? Don’t want to rely on some cloud service to toggle your outlets? Well if the answer is yes to these questions you’re in luck, Tuya-Convert to the rescue! In today’s article, I’m walking through a … [Read more…]

Christmas Tree LED Lights using WLED

December 18, 2019December 5, 2019

It’s holiday season again! Which makes it the perfect time to do another LED project. I wanted to add LED lights for my Christmas tree this year that could be automated using Home Assistant. My basic requirements were: Full local control, no cloud service needed Some subtle effects to accent the tree It can’t look … [Read more…]

Automated Bathroom Exhaust Fan using Humidity Sensor

November 25, 2019

The bathroom is a really great place to get started with Home Automation. You can automate your lights to dim when you have a late-night bathroom trip, make sure your curling iron is off when you leave the house, or what I’m doing today: turning on the bathroom exhaust fan when someone is showering. I … [Read more…]

Cloud Free Smart Vacuum – Valetudo for Roborock S5

October 11, 2019

Looking to free your robot vacuum from the cloud? Want to control your vacuum over MQTT and have full access to the map it generates of your house? Today’s article will walk you through installing Valetudo. Valetudo is a binary that runs on rooted Roborock S5 vacuums that enable users to fully control the vacuum without any cloud connection whatsoever. I’ll also walk through getting the generated map displaying in your Home Assistant instance so you can monitor your vacuum as it cleans your house!

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