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 like the home assistant start… Continue reading Home Assistant Webhook Primer
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. There are other ways to do… Continue reading Randomized Lighting in Home Assistant
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: https://youtu.be/k1x24FGYutw
https://youtu.be/g48pwCIAQEk 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 sometimes glass over the… Continue reading Is Home Assistant the Platform for you?
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 I have migrated off the… Continue reading Migrating from a Raspberry Pi4 to 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 users to get started. Home… Continue reading My Review of Home Assistant Blue
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 the developers tools panel while trying… Continue reading Improve Home Assistant User Experience With Helpers
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 that support most if not… Continue reading Try Home Assistant While Running SmartThings
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 in the last year or two. … Continue reading Add Acurite Weather Sensors to Home Assistant
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 .113, the Home Assistant team… Continue reading Smarter Automations in Home Assistant Using Choose
