Home Automation

Smart Home projects and automations

Trooli Fibre Internet and a new UniFi Dream Machine Pro Network Upgrade

We now have much faster internet thanks to a new fibre connection and internet using Trooli and upgrading from our PFSense firewall to a Ubiquiti Dream Machine Pro

03 May 2024 9 min read

Ikea Styrbar with Home Assistant as a Sonos Remote Control

Using the Ikea STYRBAR, four-button remote as a simple controller for Sonos Smart speakers with Home Assistant

04 March 2024 5 min read

Elgato Key Light remote control using an ESP32 Wi-Fi module

Building a simple remote controller for Elgato Key Lights using a low-cost ESP32 Wi-Fi module and a push switch

20 January 2024 16 min read

Home Server upgrade to an Intel N100 fanless ASRock N100DC-ITX

Upgrading our home Linux server again with a new low-power Intel N100 fanless system with 32Gb RAM and 1Tb NVMe storage.

20 December 2023 8 min read

Amazon Echo Pop Smart Speaker teardown

New teardown and looking inside the latest Amazon Echo Pop smart home speaker and Amazon Alexa smart home device

23 July 2023 13 min read

Air Quality in Your Home: Measuring using Home Assistant with Ikea Vindriktning and Netatmo

Using Home Assistant with Ikea Vindriktning & Netatmo to measure the air quality in your home or office.

15 January 2023 11 min read

Energy Savings and Solar PV Upgrade, Six Months of Data

After lots of small changes to our usage, device upgrades and replacing some old household appliances, our energy usage is around 45% lower

27 December 2022 13 min read

Amazon Echo Dot 5th Gen Smart Speaker Teardown

Taking a look inside the latest Amazon Echo Dot 5 smart home speaker and Amazon Alexa device, now with a new larger speaker and temperature sensor

28 November 2022 9 min read

ModBus to MQTT WiFi Bridge for a Solis 1.5kW Inverter

Using an ESP32 WiFi module to create a ModBus to MQTT WiFi Bridge for a Solis 1.5kW Solar PV Inverter to log data with Home Assistant

30 October 2022 7 min read

Nest Thermostat to Home Assistant via 1-Wire, Arduino and MQTT

Connecting our Nest Thermostat 3rd Gen to Home Assistant via 1-wire and an Arduino Uno to capture the 1-wire sensor data

22 September 2022 4 min read

myenergi eddi solar power diverter installation with WiFi

We got the new eddi V2.1 from myenergi with built-in WiFi and ethernet to add to our home solar system and Home Assistant.

28 August 2022 7 min read

Home Assistant remote ESP32 ePaper Display

Making a remote display using an ESP32 eInk ePaper module to show data from our Home Assistant system

08 June 2022 9 min read

Solar Upgrade Solis 1.5kW inverter and Raspberry Pi RS485 Logging

A new solar PV inverter installed with Raspberry Pi RS485 data logging

17 May 2022 26 min read

Failed TP-Link Kasa Smart KP115 WiFi Plug with energy monitoring relay replacement

Repairing a Failed TP-Link Kasa Smart KP115 WiFi Plug which has a dead relay

13 March 2022 5 min read

Home Assistant Setup in 2022

This post details our journey with Home Assistant since we first tried the software in 2016 and various upgrades with our hardware sensors and software to automate some of our home.

18 February 2022 9 min read