Posts in Home Assistant

How to Automatically Sync iOS Alarms With Home Assistant

Posted on 11th Sep 2020 23:44:34 in Home Assistant, Tutorial

For a very long time now, I have wanted to be able to sync my "bed time" alarm within the iOS clock app with my Home Assistant automations. It would be so nice to only need to specify my alarm in one place instead of multiple or having to abandon the app I've used for so long. I always thought this was impossible, but I have recently discovered that the Shortcuts app on iOS can be used to do this task, and so much more!

The Shortcuts iOS app is great for automation

How to Install Home Assistant on the Raspberry Pi Zero Super Easily

Posted on 3rd Sep 2020 19:19:14 in Home Assistant, Tutorial

Home Assistant is really nifty software that allows anyone to create what is essentially a DIY smart hub, capable of controlling a wide range of devices from practically any standard that exists. One of the issues with this, however, is that a smart hub acts as a home server, coordinating all sorts of events, actions, and of course providing users with an interface to control everything. How do you use the Raspberry Pi Zero to solve this problem? And is it a good solution? Find out here!

The Raspberry Pi Zero, running Home Assistant

The Best Way to Use Z-Wave with Home Assistant

Posted on 28th Aug 2020 03:25:57 in Home Assistant, Tutorial

Z-Wave is really cool, it has so many great features that can provide both ease of use for regular users and advanced features for use by power users. How can you get the power of Z-Wave into a DIY platform like Home Assistant or OpenHAB? Sometimes, you also want to have a different device act as the network than the one that's running your smart home software.

Zwave without a hub?

Is the Raspberry Pi Good for Home Assistant?

Posted on 23rd Aug 2020 22:50:33 in Home Assistant

Home Assistant is a very popular choice for running a DIY home automation setup. One of the ways many people use to run the software is on the relatively cheap Raspberry Pi single-board computer, but should you be using it for this purpose? There's a lot of things the Pi does really well, and there are also quite a few major gotchas that can cause some problems if no measures are in place to deal with them so let's have a look at the good and the bad when it comes to running Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi.

Raspberry Pi, should you use it for HASS?

How to Easily Make a Smart Kettle

Posted on 5th Aug 2020 23:38:23 in DIY, Home Assistant, IoT, Smart, Tutorial

A lot of people have kettles and wouldn't it be nice if it started boiling water for your morning tea automatically? While there exist many commercial kettles that offer integrated technology, they are often expensive and require replacing your existing device. Lucky for us there is an easy way to convert a regular kettle into a smart one using a cheap smart plug. Learn how to make a smart kettle out of a regular one using a smart plug!

How to make a smart kettle