Winter is coming – Local Control for Smart Panel Heater
Two winters ago in 2019 I bought an Arlec smart panel heater from Bunnings and finally took some time to integrate it into Home Assistant. Luckily it was old enough so that tuya convert worked without any problems. Initially I thought the heater would have the usual ESP-MCU combination built in, so I tried going […]
Sparkling Lights – WS2812B fairy light with WLED
With many of my neighbours putting up their decorative light shows for Christmas I was wondering if there would be something new on the market to replace the old solar powered fairy lights on our terrace which were cheap but kept dying every other year or so. So, I found a WS2812B based fairy string […]
Fire Danger Rating component now on HACS
If you have been using my Fire Danger Rating custom component, thanks for your interest. As summer is approaching quickly and with it another bushfire season, I decided to publish a new version of this custom component and also make it available for the Home Assistant Community Store (HACS).
Working from Home – Teams Availability
In this post I am going to explain how I make my status in Microsoft Teams running on my work laptop available in Home Assistant.
RF Bridge the Gap to make another Ceiling Fan smart
When we bought a new Brilliant Bahama ceiling fan for the living room recently, style was deemed more important than an easy home automation integration. The fan came with an RF remote control , so I thought to give the RF route a go to integrate this ceiling fan into Home Assistant for local control.
ESPHome’s fan-tastic rescue
After successfully retrofitting a smart fan controller onto an older ceiling fan, it was time to install and upgrade more ceiling fans around the house. In this post I am describing how I integrated a Brilliant Bahama smart ceiling fan into Home Assistant, and in the next post I am going to show how I […]
Taking the old ceiling fan for a smart spin
I have recently bought a Brilliant Smart WiFi Ceiling Fan Controller for a bedroom ceiling fan in our house. This is a Tuya device but I wanted to avoid signing up to the Tuya cloud service to operate my ceiling fan under all circumstances. In this article I just wanted to share a few learnings […]
Illuminated Stairs
This project is a simple IKEA hack that I wanted to share because it just looks great. The lights are integrated into Home Assistant and are fully automated – no light switch necessary.
Home Network – Home Server
I have had a server at home for more than 20 years. This all started as a simple router back when my flatmate and I got a copper leased line back to the ISP’s office we were working for and used 56kbit/s US Robotics modems on both ends for a permanent Internet connection. A bit […]
