My Experience with ESPHome on Home Assistant Using and ESP32 Camera/Motion Module
So as someone that has a blog that mainly has posts that either relate to the ESP8266 or Home Assistant, I feel like I should have been using ESPHome a long time ago
Tag: Home Automation
Using the Xiaomi Aqara buttons with Home Assistant via Zigbee2MQTT
I had recently put Sengled Zigbee bulbs in my nightstand lamps to pair with Zigbee2MQTT on Home Assistant. I was using them to automatically turn the lights off/on when playing/pausing a movie on the TV. However, we found ourselves cutting power to the night stand to turn them off since pulling out our phone to turn them off was too much of a hassle. So when they had no power, the automation for those bulbs wouldn't work unless I manually turned them back on. Not an ideal situation.
Toggle Lights and Switches with an Amazon Echo Button
Use an Echo Button to Toggle Devices On and Off via Home Assistant.
First Experience with Hubitat and Bridging it with Home Assistant via MQTT
Setup Hubitat and link it with Home Assistant via MQTT. Along with a mini Hubitat review.
Using a Z-Wave USB Stick with Home Assistant
In my Last Post I talked about doing a physical installation of some Z-Wave thermostats. In this post, I’m going to talk about what I had to go through to get an Aeotec Z-Stick Gen5 working with Home Assistant running on Lubuntu. I was actually surprised how easy everything was; I had no idea that Home Assistant’s Z-Wave integration was so well done.
Installing a Smart/Connected Thermostat
NOTE: If you are replacing a thermostat, be sure to cut power to the board on your furnace that powers the thermostat. I made the mistake of just turning off the breaker labeled ‘AC’. The board still had power. As I was replacing the first thermostat, I must have shorted wires, which is likely to happen to most people. Lucky for me, this simply burned the fuse
Installing the Nelly Security WiFi Video Doorbell
Ever since Ring released their video doorbell a few years ago, I've been waiting for a WiFi video doorbell that didn't rely on the cloud (and a monthly fee), was powered by hard wire, and still looked decent. I've only had it for a few days, but I think that the Nelly Security doorbell accomplishes this. Unfortunately, it looks like the Nelly version is out of stock at the time of writing, but this doorbell has been rebranded by a bunch of other companies, one of which is Nelly.
Using the Home Assistant Alert Component with Telegram Acknowledge
This is an update to my post about the Garage Door Notification which was based on my Wifi Garage Door Controller .About a week after my post about sending a repeating notification through Home Assistant, the developers created a new 'Alert' component that basically made my post obsolete. So I decided to switch over to the Alert component and add some extra features.
Wifi Fireplace Using a Wemos D1 Mini/ESP8266
After installing my Garage Door Controller, I wanted my next project to be something cooler. Of course, there’s nothing cooler than a smart gas fireplace.
Here is a list of things you will need to get started:
Wifi Garage Door Controller using a Wemos D1 Mini
I decided I wanted to be able to control my garage door using my phone. After some research, I decided to use an ESP8266 based Wemos D1 Mini and Home Assistant.
Here are the parts that will be needed: