Ulanzi TC001 Smart Pixel clock
Update 2024-03-11: Well, I bought another one and the LaMetric is now in the drawer. The only thing missing was a native weather app, so I wrote an automatio...
Posts by Year
2024
2023
Cloudflare tunnels with authentication
I mentioned before that I was using Traefik, what I didn’t say is that I was also using Authentik for authentication. Sometimes as forward auth (providing au...
Limited remote access for Home Assistant
I mentioned on the Home Assistant forum about allowing access to only the bits you need, and that I do this for the mobile app. I didn’t mention what that me...
WiFi sensor into device tracker
Something that makes for a great home/away tracker is the Android app’s connected WiFi sensor, or at least it would if it was a device tracker.
YAML sections
NB: I’ve added this here as the knowledge has been removed from the official documentation.
2022
Zigbee tips
There’s a number of things that come up regularly that folks new to Zigbee may not know, so here’s a handy set of notes and links.
Smart home or home automation
We often talk about the smart home and home automation as if those terms are interchangeable, but they’re (mostly) not.
Presence detection - here we go again?
The music won’t be as good, but here we go again. I’ve made a number of updates to this logic since I last wrote about it.
Blog migration (2022)
If you’re reading this you’re looking at the new home of my blog. I’m moving off of Blogger and over to Jekyll, possibly on GitHub pages possibly on Cloudfla...
Traefik and a remote Home Assistant
I’ve been playing with Traefik lately, for remote access for various things in my Docker stack, and I decided to see if it was possible to also use it for Ho...
Frigate > MotionEye+Doods
As you may remember, I use MotionEye and Doods, along withsome crazy scripting, to do motion and object detection at the front of the house.
2021
How should I install Home Assistant?
I see a lot of people confused by the four install options for Home Assistant.
Running an automation every time a sensor updates
What follows is no longer needed since HA now has a new feature of the state trigger:
Why didn’t my automation run?
It’s a common post on the HA Discord where people are confused as to why their automation isn’t running, they’ve got a trigger, and a few conditions, and … n...
Zigbee2MQTT - Native to Docker migration
A long time ago I started using Zigbee2MQTT - somewhere around 1.2 or 1.3. Back then I thought that it was easiest to run Zigbee2MQTT with a manual install,...
Presence Detection Resurrection
Yes, another update. Until I start using Blueprints I think this’ll be the last one for a while. Probably. Oh, you may want to grab a cuppa before you dive ...
2020
HA venv to Docker
Another year, another Python deprecation, another flood of posts asking how to upgrade a Python venv.
Home Assistant, Docker, and using SSH
A common problem that comes up with people using one of the Supervisor based install methods, or Docker, is that when they try to use ssh it fails, yet when ...
YAML in automations and scripts
I see many people struggle with the formatting for automations (and scripts) because the official docs are structured in a manner that assumes you’re going t...
Cameras, motion detection, and (interesting) object detection (part two)
Well, it didn’t take long for me to tweak my setup, so before we get to the template, and other things, I’ll explain what I’ve changed.
Moving from Wink to Home Assistant?
I suspect a number of people are looking at leaving Wink right now, in light of the recent announcement. Some of you will be looking at Home Assistant and wo...
Cameras, motion detection, and (interesting) object detection (part one)
For some time now I’ve had a camera (a 4K HikVision turret camera) at the front of the house, watching our garden, path, and parking area. I started with the...
Presence detection, one last time?
Well, it’s been a while, but I think that, finally, I’ve stopped changing things. It’s been a while since I needed to account for another edge case, so here ...
2019
Zigbee (and Home Assistant)
So, you’re using Home Assistant and want to use Zigbee, but Home Assistant’s own documentation doesn’t really explain Zigbee, so you’re a bit confused. What ...
Presence detection, the final countdown?
The last time I said that I didn’t think there was more I could do. I was wrong. My use of monitor hasn’t changed, and I’ll leave the config for that below.
Messing with meshing
Back when I started with home automation, Z-Wave was the obvious choice for sensors, smart sockets. You could mix and match any brand of device, and controll...
The great migration - part two
Well, that was less exciting than I’d feared. The first stage is done. Z-Wave is running on the Pi, and everything else runs on the VM, communicating over M...
My great migration - part one
I’ve been running Home Assistant on my Pi3 since I started with HA, back in January 2017. I’d chosen a Z-Wave GPIO hat over a USB stick (amongst other things...
Breaking up automations/Room activity detection
I’m sure we’ve all been there, where we’ve written automations that have grown longer and more complicated as we’ve tried to make things more flexible. Then ...
Presence detection - are we nearly there yet?
Yes, yet another update. This is what comes from trying to refine things.
2018
Product comparison - smart displays
I bought a Google Home Hub recently, and then followed that up with a 10” Lenovo Smart Display for the living room. Having lived with both, and bought a thir...
Presence detection - update 3
Last time I said that I was probably going to go with the Bayesian sensor for presence detection, but I’ve changed my mind. Why, because of an occasional ed...
Upgrading from 0.75 to 0.80
Today I finally upgraded from 0.75.3 to one of the versions with the new auth, 0.80.0 in this case. I’d delayed the upgrade because I expected some challenge...
Accessing the inaccessible
Updated January 2022 to include details on Cloudflare’s tunnel service, and Oracle’s free VM offering.
Home Assistant cloud goes paid
The Home Assistant developers have just announced that the cloud services will shortly require payment. If you’re currently using the cloud services during ...
Presence detection updated
A while back I covered how I was doing presence detection, and thought that since I’ve changed a few things I should update.
Turbulence ahead - fasten your seatbelt
With 0.77 it looks like the new Home Assistant authentication platform will be mandatory. For almost everybody it’ll be a meh moment - ensure the legacy auth...
Sensative strips (guard) review
I’ve had one Sensative strips guard installed since January 2017, and two more since October 2017, and thought it’s long past time I wrote a little about wha...
Lovelace - the next generation of stock UI
NB: In 2022 Lovelace was renamed to simply Dashboards
Triggers and conditions and actions! Oh My!
Automations in Home Assistant can seem a little daunting at first. You look at the documents, and it can seem overwhelming.
The XY Problem
I talked about the people who try (and usually fail) to make things work by banging the rocks together, but there’s another, more common, group. These are th...
It’s not about the brand
A question that comes up regularly with people new to HA seems to be what brand of kit should I buy to use with Home Assistant. That’s the wrong question to ...
Home Assistant - the Hass.io menu is missing
NB: Since writing this a lot has changed, I’m leaving this for historical reasons, but the information here is terribly outdated.
Home Assistant, avoiding insecurity
So, you’re running Home Assistant, you’ve opened it up to the Internet, and you’re worried about security? You’re not alone, so read on and see what you can...
Home Assistant and (basic) Presence Detection
Reliable presence detection is a challenge for many people. In part this is because modern smartphones put WiFi (and apps) to sleep when they’re idle.
The secret is (not) to bang the rocks together
1 The title comes from one of the many funny lines in this book ↩
How not to break manual control of devices with automations
A common problem that comes up all the time is when people want a light or switch (or anything else Home Assistant can control) to turn off automatically, bu...
Remote access via PiVPN
I’ve already talked about setting up remote access, and configuring SSL certificates for Home Assistant. What though if you’re not using cloud services, and ...
Why Home Assistant?
I said a while back that I use Home Assistant, but I didn’t really say why.
Remote access for Home Assistant (and other things)
A (quick) primer on how to access a your Home Assistant server, or other device, from outside your network, with a dynamic DNS service. You’ll use a dynamic ...
RFC1918
RFC 1918 defines a set of 3 IP ranges that are not routed across the Internet and can only be used on local networks. You will sometimes see these used on IS...
NGINX and Home Assistant
I’m going to assume that you’ve already got Let’s Encrypt or your chosen SSL provider configured, and that you’ve forwarded the port your using.
2017
Installing Home Assistant in a virtual environment (in Linux)
Note: This is based off the original Home Assistant virtual environment instructions - before they were reduced to a handful of steps.
Home Assistant Cloud
Today something rather interesting was announced - the new cloud component for Home Assistant.
Upgrading the Python Virtual Environment
Unless you’re running local other software directly from the venv, consider switching to Docker. It’ll save you from ever needing to upgrade Python and rebui...
Which Home Assistant install is right for me?
There are many, many ways of installing Home Assistant, and the choice can be confusing. Here’s my very short take on what you’d want to use, and why:
LetsEncrypt with Home Assistant
Many people want to have remote access to their Home Assistant system, whether for an API (eg Google Assistant), or simply to be able to check on their home ...
Backing up Hass.io
Note: When originally written there was no native backup for Home Assistant OS (Hass.io as it was then). Things have come a long way since and there are b...
Choosing a platform
I’ll open with noting that I use Home Assistant, but that doesn’t mean you should. Here are some of the things you should be considering when choosing the he...
Backing up Home Assistant
It was suggested on the Home Assistant Discord channel that I write a simple step by step for backing up your Home Assistant configuration.
Home Assistant - moving logs and database off the SD card
One problem with running Home Assistant on a Pi is that SD cards aren’t great for high write situations, and the database and logs can be very chatty. The an...
What’s the point?
So many people I come across who’re exploring home automation seem to be wanting to build big complex dashboards that they can use to control things from. Cl...
Putting the cart before the horse
You’re thinking of getting into home automation, so you’ve gone and bought a bunch of smart devices. Now you’re looking for help in doing something with it a...
Back it up
I was going to write something else for the introductory article here, but in light of a few posts on forums lately, I thought I’d start with something more ...