smart home - mostlychris

Node-RED vs Home Assistant Automations

It's time to move from Node-RED to native Home Assistant automations. I show you step-by-step how to move one of my more complex automations.

ZEN55

Get Smart Alerts from Dumb Smoke/CO Detectors

My new house (circa 2023) was built with wired, interconnected smoke/CO detectors. These devices do not tie into any alerting other than sound. Unless I am in the house at the time of an alert, I won't know anything is going on. 💡Watch the video for this

SMLIGHT

SMLIGHT Zigbee Coordinators. So Many Options!

I review some of the SMLIGHT Zigbee coordinators that you should use in your smart home with Home Assistant, Zigbee2MQTT, and ZHA.

Zooz

Zooz ZEN37 Wireless Remote

💡Watch the video on this topic here! I have always wanted to try a wireless Z-Wave button device. I recently came across the ZEN37 from Zooz. There are probably many options is this arena but I have the Zooz ZEN32 wired scene controller and the ZEN37 fits right in with

Automation

My Top 5 Automations in Home Assistant

Smart homes run on automations. Here are my TOP 5 in Home Assistant and Node-RED

smart home

Ultrasonic Distance Measuring (Alerting)

Have you ever seen the tennis ball hanging in the garage so that when pulling in, you know you are parked in the correct spot? What if your significant other hates the idea of a tennis ball hanging from the ceiling? Technology to the rescue! 💡The accompanying video for this

Frigate NVR

Frigate NVR Version 0.12. Now with go2rtc.

I have been using Frigate for a year or more (I forget how long) and it has been fantastic. I integrate it with Home Assistant so I can get all the smartness of both platforms. The latest version of Frigate NVR is out with new features, including the switch to

Matter Standard

Trying to Use Matter

I tried to use Matter with Home Assistant. It didn't work.

mostlychris

Using Home Assistant Local Calendar to Schedule Stuff!

Home Assistant added a local calendar to their list of integrations in December of 2022. In January, they made some updates that make it even more useful. Calendars don't usually get much love since they are so utilitarian. However, this calendar allows you to automate things easily so

Home Assistant

Migrating from a Raspberry Pi to the Home Assistant Yellow

This is one of those videos/posts that almost doesn't need to exist because of how easy it is to do. But sometimes it is also nice to highlight the easy things. Many of my videos are about harder or more complicated topics. This one is much more

2022.9

Home Assistant 2022.9 Release Highlights

It's that time of the month again. The time when the hard-working Home Assistant developers release the latest update of Home Assistant. The team at Home Assistant/Nabu Casa do a good job of pointing out all the new, shiny things in their release party, which you can

Home Assistant

Keeping Tabs on your Network

If you run a home lab or run anything of importance in your home network, it is important to know when things are not working as expected. I've had many occasions in which something went down and I was either notified by the owner of the service I

Home Assistant

My TOP 5 Ways to Connect to Home Assistant

Quick shout out to Skillshare for supporting the channel and sponsoring the linked video. Get a one-month free trial for any of their thousands of courses with this link. One of the great things about Home Assistant is the ability to choose how and what you integrate, operate, build, experiment

unplug the internet

I'm Unplugging My Smart Home from the Internet

I think this is a test that everyone should who has a smart home should do at some point. It really isn't possible to know what does or does not work in your smart home until you actually unplug it from the outside world. We have seen too

smart home

The Inevitable SD Card Failure

At some point in your Home Assistant, or IT, existence, you are going to have an SD card failure. It's a fact of life that is unavoidable. What happens next depends on how well you have prepared for this terrible eventuality. When it comes to Home Assistant, you

smart home

Automatically Back Up Home Assistant

It is important to backup Home Assistant. I show you two VERY EASY ways to make backups, both locally and off-site.

dwains dashboard

Automatic Home Assistant Dashboards

One of the great things about Home Assistant is the many different ways to create dashboards and interfaces that are useful for your specific use cases. In addition to creating these dashboards manually, Dwain Scheeren has created an integration called Dwains Lovelace Dashboard. This is touted as a "fully

Home Assistant Featured

Home Assistant 2022.5

Home Assistant has released their monthly major update for May. The biggest change is in the settings (previously configuration) menus. This is a complete revamp of the original menu system. In addition, there are a lot of automation and script changes. Most notably, these are now available: * If-Then * Calendar Trigger