Home Assistant

Node-RED vs Home Assistant Automations

It's time to move from Node-RED to native Home Assistant automations. I show you step-by-step how to move one of my more complex automations.

backup home assistant

Better Home Assistant Backups Using Auto Backup

Making backups is SUPER important. I show you the EASY way to back up Home Assistant with Auto Backup.

Apollo Automation

Monitor Your Air Quality with the Apollo Automation AIR-1

Check the air quality in your home or environment using this amazing AIR-1 sensor.

ZEN55

Get Smart Alerts from Dumb Smoke/CO Detectors

My new house (circa 2023) was built with wired, interconnected smoke/CO detectors. These devices do not tie into any alerting other than sound. Unless I am in the house at the time of an alert, I won't know anything is going on. 💡Watch the video for this

SMLIGHT

SMLIGHT Zigbee Coordinators. So Many Options!

I review some of the SMLIGHT Zigbee coordinators that you should use in your smart home with Home Assistant, Zigbee2MQTT, and ZHA.

ApolloAutomation

Apollo Automation MSR-1 Presence and More Sensor

This all-in-one very compact sensor is a great addition to your home automation and Home Assistant Setup. It is ESPHome based so can be used in all types of systems.

Home Assistant

Top HACS Integrations and custom cards for Home Assistant

💡Watch the related video HERE! I recently did a video on the top (critical) Home Assistant add-ons that power my smart home. Based on your feedback in the video, I am also going to cover my top HACS integrations and frontend components. If you are not familiar with HACS, it

Zooz

Zooz ZEN37 Wireless Remote

💡Watch the video on this topic here! I have always wanted to try a wireless Z-Wave button device. I recently came across the ZEN37 from Zooz. There are probably many options is this arena but I have the Zooz ZEN32 wired scene controller and the ZEN37 fits right in with

Home Assistant 2024

Top Home Assistant Add-ons 2024 Edition

I've done a top Home Assistant add-ons video for the past couple of years. This year I thought I would change it up a bit and show those add-ons that are needed, dare say critical, to make my smart home run. Without them, there would be no smart home.

assist pipeline

Custom Voice Control Sentences in Home Assistant

Create your OWN sentences for LOCAL VOICE CONTROL in Home Assistant with Node-RED or basic YAML configurations.

Frigate

Frigate NVR Updates

It's been a while since I did any videos or blog posts on the Frigate NVR. Someone mentioned to me some new functionality that might be in version 13 (which is in beta as of this writing) so I thought I would check it out.

Linptech

Human Here? My First Presence Sensor

Trying out the Linptech 24g MmWave human presence detector and Home Assistant.

Home Assistant Voice

Hands-Free Control with Wake Words

Home Assistant continues to make great strides in local voice control for their platform. That latest installment "Year of the Voice Chapter 4" has some nice surprises, the most exciting of which is the ability to use a wake word. 💡The video for this blog can be found

Automation

My Top 5 Automations in Home Assistant

Smart homes run on automations. Here are my TOP 5 in Home Assistant and Node-RED

smart home

Ultrasonic Distance Measuring (Alerting)

Have you ever seen the tennis ball hanging in the garage so that when pulling in, you know you are parked in the correct spot? What if your significant other hates the idea of a tennis ball hanging from the ceiling? Technology to the rescue! 💡The accompanying video for this

Home Assistant Voice

More Voice More Voice More Voice (Local Control)

I recently made a video and blog post about controlling Home Assistant entities via a VOIP phone that I have on my desk. This was in answer to being able to use a standard analog telephone with an analog telephone adapter. I wanted to see if the VOIP phone would

2023.7

Conversations and Service Call Data in Home Assistant

Make your IoT work for you. Conversations and Sentence Triggers with Automations in Home Assistant.

Home Assistant

Using Your VOIP Phone to Control Your House

Home Assistant has been working on local voice control and adding functionality to extend that to more than just the typical smart speakers. They do this through integrations and what they call "assist pipelines". 💡Watch my related video here. Assist pipelines include speech-to-text and text-to-speech. For those, they

Home Assistant

Finally! Adding Fan Speed Controls

I recently moved to a new house and one of the things about the old house that drove me crazy was having ceiling fans that ran all the time, even when no one was home. I vowed (with the proper approvals) to add fan controls to my Home Assistant setup.

Ecowitt Integration Home Assistant

Home Assistant 2023.5 Broke Ecowitt

I'm a long-time weather enthusiast and I like having the awareness and insight that a hyper-local weather station brings. In this case, directly from my backyard. The recent update to Home Assistant 2023.5 broke the HACS Ecowitt integration that I had been using for years. It turns

Frigate NVR

Frigate NVR Version 0.12. Now with go2rtc.

I have been using Frigate for a year or more (I forget how long) and it has been fantastic. I integrate it with Home Assistant so I can get all the smartness of both platforms. The latest version of Frigate NVR is out with new features, including the switch to

home assistant operating system

Home Assistant OS Version 10 Update

There are lots of release videos on new versions of HA and rightly so. Those releases have all the shiny new parts and the "fun" stuff. However, the OS doesn't seem to get much love, so I thought I would cover the latest release which supports

Home Assistant

Caddy 2 Reverse Proxy for Local Network Device Access

I've talked a lot about different ways to access devices in your local network. Cloudflare, Tailscale, Nginx Reverse Proxy, DuckDNS to name a few. In this short article, I am going to take a look at Caddy "The Ultimate Server". Caddy claims to be "a

Home Assistant Add-On

Top Home Assistant Add-ons 2023 Edition

We are a couple of months (ok three) into 2023 and I think it's finally time to do my annual top add-ons video and blog post. I like to highlight what is most important to my home automation setup and what I think are invaluable. NOTE: I am

Matter Standard

Trying to Use Matter

I tried to use Matter with Home Assistant. It didn't work.