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#smart-home
16 posts
← all postsMorning Routines in Home Assistant: Back to School and Work Without the Chaos
Wake-up light, an event-driven morning sequence, per-person routines and a single leaving automation - taking the chaos out of school-year mornings.
A Home Ready for Autumn: Heating Schedules in Home Assistant Before It Gets Cold
Heating schedules in Home Assistant: an inventory of what you control, zones with TRVs, presence-based setbacks, sensor calibration and a September dry run before the season.
Smart Home Without the Cloud: Free Your Tuya and Xiaomi Devices From Vendor Servers
How to cut Tuya and Xiaomi devices off vendor clouds: local control in Home Assistant, your own Zigbee coordinator, miio tokens and a phased migration plan.
Backup Power for Your Smart Home: UPS, Power and Internet Outages - What Survives
What fails in a smart home when the power goes out, sizing a UPS for the real load, NUT integration with Home Assistant, LTE failover and a resilience test - with yaml.
Heatwave Automations: Blinds, Air Conditioning and Sensors Before the House Heats Up
Heat mode in Home Assistant: forecast as the trigger, blinds driven by sun position per facade, night ventilation and air conditioning without automation wars - with yaml.
Vacation Mode in Home Assistant: Presence Simulation and a House That Watches Itself
One input_boolean master switch, randomized presence simulation, layered alerts, a connectivity watchdog and trusted-person access - with yaml examples and a checklist.
Notifications That Don't Fatigue: a Notification Strategy for Home Assistant
A layered notification model (alarm, info, journal), actionable notifications with buttons, escalation for critical events, plus quiet hours and grouping - with yaml examples.
Presence Sensors 2026: PIR, mmWave or Bluetooth Tracking - What to Pick for Which Room
A comparison of three human-detection technologies: price, sensitivity, false alarms, privacy and power consumption, plus concrete room-by-room recommendations and mmWave tuning.
Energy Monitoring in Home Assistant: What Really Eats Your Electricity and Whether a Smart Home Pays for Itself
Energy measurement from a single plug to the main meter, the energy dashboard with electricity prices, alert thresholds, night-tariff automations and an honest return-on-investment calculation for a realistic home.
IoT on a Separate Network: VLANs and a Firewall for Your Smart Home Without a Networking PhD
Network segmentation is the biggest free security lever for a smart home: a three-network model, firewall rules in plain language, the mDNS trap and a rollout plan for UniFi, Mikrotik and OpenWrt.
Back Up Home Assistant Before It's Too Late - a Step-by-Step Recovery Strategy
A complete Home Assistant backup strategy: automatic backups, off-device storage, encryption key handling and the restore test that tells you the truth about whether you have a backup at all.
Holak Scale v2.1p - private. Maturity of everyday AI use
12 maturity levels of everyday AI use - home, learning, finance, smart home, life organization. The private version of the Holak Scale, parallel to the enterprise track.
Zigbee in Home Assistant 2026: ZHA, Z2M Add-on, or Z2M on a Separate Server?
Three real-world Zigbee deployments in HA: built-in ZHA, Zigbee2MQTT as an add-on, and Z2M+MQTT on a separate host. Failure isolation, MQTT attack surface, multi-coordinator, PoE coordinators.
HACS in Home Assistant OS - why, when it's worth it, and how to install it step by step
Why HACS belongs in Home Assistant OS, what to watch out for, how to install it step by step, and what to enable first - an honest walkthrough.
Wi-Fi, Zigbee, Z-Wave or Thread with Matter? A practical 2026 pick
Four protocols, one decision. When Wi-Fi is enough, when Zigbee still wins, who actually needs Z-Wave, and what Matter-over-Thread really changes.
Getting Started with Home Assistant in 2026
A complete beginner's guide - from choosing hardware to your first automation.