Setup a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W as a Wyoming Satellite

This guide is my version of wyoming-satellite/docs/tutorial_2mic.md at master · rhasspy/wyoming-satellite · GitHub So if you want the original you can check it out there. This guide is meant to be used in conjunction with my video: https://youtu.be/Bd9qlR0mPB0 But it can be used as

The Future of Slacker Labs

Whelp, we made it to a new year. I've been doing a lot of thinking about the future of Slacker Labs and the content I want to make. Some of it has been comments on my videos, some of it was Brian's eye-opening video about the

Alerts

Home Assistant Alerts

This is a written walk through of my recent Alerts video, so if you haven’t checked that out, you can find it over on Youtube at  https://youtu.be/gluji2_uYws Alerts in Home Assistant are simply prebuilt automations that can deliver notifications. And they allow you to quickly

Home Assistant

Building a Daily Briefing

If you saw my recent video on building a Daily Briefing in Home Assistant and you are here for some code, thanks for checking out my videos. If you haven’t seen the video you might wan to check it out first: Building a Daily Briefing has the potential to

Automation

5 Ways to Automate the Boring Stuff

I recently did a video on Youtube where I talked about 5 of my favorite automations I use to Automate the Boring Stuff. I currently have more than 200 running in Home Assistant and while these are some of my favorite they are not my only favorite ones. In any

Automations

Home Assistant Webhook Primer

I recently did a video talking through using web hooks in home Assistant to create some automations to monitor another home assistant instance. And while its not a universal use case, it did allow me to create a video showing how to create a web hook, and leverage automation triggers

Setting Up Arlo Cameras in Home Assistant

If you are using Arlo Cameras and running Home Assistant you need the Arlo Camera Integration from the Home Assistant Community Store.  Setting it up is easy, and it really improves the Home Assistant integration. This guide is really meant to be a companion to the video I posted over

Advance Automation

Randomized Lighting in Home Assistant

I recently did a video on how to setup randomized lighting to simulate human presence over on my YouTube channel. If you haven’t checked that out, you should watch it first. In this post I walk you through how I set up this randomized lighting effect in more detail.

Amazon Echo

I'm Ditching Amazon Echo for Google Home.

Until now I have had both Amazon Echos and Google Homes scattered through the house. But it is time to chose one. Here are are the reason why I’m ditching the amazon Echo:

Automations

Monitor the Crypto Market with Home Assistant

I am not financial expert, and as I see it getting into Cryptocurrency carries a lot of risk, but for those willing to throw caution into the wind, Home Assistant can help you on your flight to the moon. Recently the Home Assistant contributors updated the Coinbase integration to use

Configuration

Access Home Assistant YAML Files

Accessing YAML files is still one of the biggest issues people have with Home Assistant. After all, while we can do so much more in the UI these days there are times that we just have to open up the config and sling some YAML. Strangely enough, Home Assistant doesn’

Home Assistant

Is Home Assistant the Platform for you?

When I sat down to write this I was planning on doing a video on the reasons you should pick Home Assistant. Because if you are building a smart home Home Assistant is the platform you need. But no solution will ever be perfect for everyone. And I think we

How-To

Add the Home Assistant Community Store to Home Assistant

The Home Assistant Community Store or HACS as it is known as is an awesome custom component that opens a whole another level of Home Assistant add-ons. If you are using Home Assistant at some point you are going to want something that can be installed via HACS! Getting HACS

getting started

Migrating from a Raspberry Pi4 to Home Assistant Blue

In my last post I told you about my first impressions of Home Assistant Blue. It really is a pretty nice little device, and it has everything to get started with Home Assistant. Heck, I think it has everything most people running home assistant need. And that includes me. So

Home Assistant

My Review of Home Assistant Blue

Back at the 2020 Home Assistant Conference, the Home Assistant team announced Home Assistant Blue. The perfect platform to run Home Assistant on. And while the question of perfection is based on your specific used case, I do think Blue has some magic that will make it easier for new

Automations

Improve Home Assistant User Experience With Helpers

My smart home journey has not always been smooth. In fact there have been times my great ideas didn’t quite work out. And by not quite work out, I mean the automation or script I built had a mind of its own and turning it off required fumbling through

Home Assistant

Try Home Assistant While Running SmartThings

Getting started in Home Automation can be risky. First, there is all the smart home protocols like Zwave, Zigbee, Wifi, RF, X10, and no clear winner. Second, everyone these days seems to be building a hub or platform to control your Smart Home Tech. Thankfully there are lots of platforms

Add-on

Add Acurite Weather Sensors to Home Assistant

Home Assistant has lots of options for getting weather data, but a lot of them are cloud based. And while that isn’t bad, it does introduce some risk. Weather Underground, World Wide Lightning Network, and Darksky have all announced they were closing their apis or moving behind a paywall

Automation

Smarter Automations in Home Assistant Using Choose

In a previous post I talked about how you could use scripts with your Home Assistant automations to add some simple decision logic. But in keeping with the Choose-Your-Own adventure take on building a smart home, Home Assistant gives you another way to accomplish the same thing. Back in version

Apple iCloud

Installing Presence Detection in Home Assistant

If you want Home Assistant to know whether you are home, you are going to need at least one presence detection integration. Which integration you use is going to be based on your use case. Do you need to know which room people are in, or do you need to

Automation

How To Use Modes in Home Assistant Automations

Back in version .115 Home Assistant added some mode options for automations, and gave us more control over the flow. And if you are like me you may not have paid much attention to them at first. These new modes add the ability to define how an automation handles getting

Configuration-Walkthrough

How I Set Up Presence Detection in Home Assistant

Presence detection is critical to a smart home. In fact it might be the most important piece on data your smart home needs, and there is no single way to do this. But if I am being honest this is one of those areas I have struggled with the most.

Home Assistant

Build Smarter Automations in Home Assistant Using Scripts

Automations may be the one thing that brings all of smart home enthusiasts to the yard. After all, its is the in the name Home Automation. However, the problem is unless you are willing to invest time writing code, the automation you can build out of the box with most

Advance Configuration

Using Home Assistant Automations to Create a Haunted House

One of the cool things you can do in Home Assistant is randomize the actions of your automations. While this could be used for some super practical like creating a vacation protocol that randomizes which lights turn on or off thats not what I did. I created a haunted house

Hardware

Migrating Home Assistant from Raspberry Pi3 to a Raspberry Pi4

My Home Assistant instance has been on a Raspberry Pi 3B+ for the last three years. In that time, it has been a reliable platform. I have read lots of horror stories on the various forums about failing SD Cards, but I have been using the same 64 gig card