Iot

Some of my posts assume that the user already has ESPHome installed, so I’m documenting how to install it here so I don’t have to repeat it everywhere. ...

We’re doing a kitchen & bathrooms renovation, and the construction is generating a lot of dust, to the point that I was changing the HVAC filter twice a week. I wanted to see just how much garbage is in the air, so I started looking around for air quality sensors. Naturally I wanted one that I could integrate into my Home Assistant so I could generate notifications if the air was extra filthy. ...

Some tips about setting up Zigbee or Z-wave mesh networks. I’ve had a few people new to Home Assistant ask about how to best set up their mesh networks. Here’s my take on what works best. ...

Securifi Peanut plugs have issues with zigbee2mqtt. I have several Securifi Peanut Zigbee switches. Overall, they’re nice little smart plugs and make good Zigbee routers to strengthen your Zigbee mesh, but they have one annoying issue - zigbee2mqtt doesn’t recognize them perfectly, though there’s a simple fix that I’m going to document here. ...

I wanted to set up a security camera outside, but I didn’t want to be dependent on an outside cloud service - if my internet goes out, I don’t want to lose my ability to record video. Wyze cameras are nice and cheap, and you can reflash them to support RTSP in addition to streaming to the Wyze cloud. ...