To get the best performance out of Home Assistant I always like to make use of MySQL as a data store hosted on another computer / device (connected via LAN). Previously I was running my entire Home...

This is a quick post on how to update Home Assistant running on DietPi or any other Debian build of Linux (e.g. Raspbian). Stop Home Assistant systemctl stop home-assistant@homeassistant.service ...

At the end of December last year my family and I immigrated to Canada (from South Africa) for a fresh start and to allow my wife to be closer to her family. We decided to only bring the essentials ...

Today I would like to look into an awesome project called ESPEasy and how one may use it to publish temperature data collected via a DHT11 or similar module. As the name suggests ESPEasy aims to b...

This is the first (in the hopes of many) Arduino Basics posts that I am planning to do. My goal today is to read the value from a LDR and display its current value on the Arduino Serial Monitor. T...

Today I would like to cover setting up alerts through Home Assistant when my kitchen door is opened. In the future this will be used with the built in presence detection offered by Home Assistant t...

A while back I got brave and changed the firmware on the Sonoff switch connected to my lounge light to use it in my home automation. I followed these instructions when uploading the firmware and wa...

Today I will be looking at collecting and presenting temperature and humidity published by a couple of DHT11 & ESP8266 microcontrollers around the house. The code used to generate the messages ...

Today I would like to cover some simple security related monitoring in Home Assistant using the below components for under $5.00: Reed switch ESP8266 module needs to be a D1 Mini if you are p...

Following on from a previous post I would like to extend the functionality of Home Assistant using the OwnTracks plugin to get an idea of how full my phone battery is. This information could be use...