How to Gift A Smart Home For Under 100$

Updated on 24th Oct 2020 16:20 in Home Assistant, Smart, Tutorial

Smart home technology is undoubtedly really awesome, but it is also not the easiest thing to get into. It would be pretty great to give the gift of a smart home to someone, but how is that possible without breaking the bank? Usually, getting started with anything smart-related requires purchasing an expensive hub and buying multiple smart devices that will also not be cheap. In this guide, we will demonstrate a great way to give the gift of a smart home to someone you care about for only about 100$!

Read More

How to Make Normal Lamps Smart Effortlessly

Updated on 22nd Oct 2020 16:03 in General, IoT, Smart

Smart bulbs are a common way of bringing enhanced control to any area in the home without breaking the bank. By including a small circuit board within the base of the bulb, they are able to wirelessly communicate with a controller such as a phone or a hub. They report their state back to the controller and accept commands, such as increasing the brightness or turning off. The convenience of simply screwing in the device makes it immensely popular and a common question is: do smart bulbs work in lamps? The answer is mostly yes.

Read More

How to Build an RGB LED Strip Controller Easily

Updated on 31st Jan 2021 16:43 in DIY, Home Assistant, Tutorial

Colour-changing RGB strips are fun! While there is nothing wrong with buying a commercial kit, I found that they were quite expensive for what I wanted to do. Here we are going to use WS2812B LEDs in a strip to achieve individually addressable RGB lighting. All that just means that we can tell any LED on the strip to do something different than the rest, which is really cool for effects! Let's see how to build our own controller so we can control them from Home Assistant!

Read More

The 4 Most Common Smart Bulb & Dimmer Questions Answered

Updated on 18th Oct 2020 17:36 in General, Smart

Smart bulbs are a great way to get smart technology into your home easily and at a reasonable price. What happens if you have existing dimmer switches though? Can smart bulbs work with dimmer switches? The short answer is no, not really. There are a lot of reasons that this is the case, but having the wrong kind of switch installed does not mean you can't use smart bulbs. In this post, we will look at the different ways to get around this annoying issue.

Read More

The Ultimate Guide to Smart Home Protocols

Updated on 17th Oct 2020 16:52 in General, Smart

Home automation is primarily supported by the interconnection of many different devices, all talking to each other to make your life easier. Each connected device needs to be able to talk to other nodes on around it, but how? This is where protocols come in, they specify how to communicate and ensure compatibility. One decision that every smart homeowner needs to make is which protocols will be used, which can be pretty difficult as there are so many. Here we are going to list every smart home protocol available and provide some insight about why you might pick each one.

Read More