Posts in Tutorial


Home Assistant Remote Access - How To Make It More Secure

Posted on 28th Aug 2021 21:11:49 in DIY, Home Assistant, Tutorial

Home Assistant has transformed the world of do-it-yourself (DIY) home automation. Its compatibility with smart products is virtually unparalleled, as it offers a community-supported module for almost everything. Furthermore, in the rare situation where something doesn't already exist, creating the functionality yourself is surprisingly easy. If you haven't seen it, be sure to check out my article on setting up remote access with Home Assistant here before reading this one! This guide aims to demonstrate how you can increase the security of your remotely accessible control panel.

Securing remote Home Assistant control panel

Read More

How to Build a DIY RGB Wall For Cheap With ColorWall

Posted on 7th Feb 2021 19:24:11 in DIY, General, Home Assistant, Tutorial

LED strips have become a popular option for decorating a room as they can be used to create a vastly different ambience with the press of a button. While strips are awesome, they aren't always the most practical thing as they can be difficult to mount in the right way for your application. To make things easier, some companies sell light panels which are easy to mount directly on the wall. They can change color and offer tons of effects to keep things interesting. The most common product in this space is perhaps the "Nanoleaf light panel" which does the job perfectly, albeit a bit expensively. To save some money and get additional personalization I built my own light panels in a project I call ColorWall.

ColorWall DIY light panels

Read More

How to Make Complex Automations With AppDaemon Easily

Posted on 2nd Jan 2021 19:18:41 in DIY, Home Assistant, Tutorial

Home Assistant is an amazing application that provides a way to connect all of your smart devices into a single controller regardless of what protocols they support. Many users encounter a problem after using it for a while because the automations you can create aren't always as powerful as they would like. There has always been the option to use Python by writing your own integration or script, but they are difficult to use just for an automation. Here we will be providing a beginner's introduction to Appdaemon by looking a few examples and explaining how they work. You'll be writing up awesome scripts in no time!

Appdaemon automation tutorial

Read More

4 Awesome Ways to Use Home Automation For Fitness

Posted on 29th Dec 2020 18:50:03 in General, Smart, Tutorial

Millions of people commit to living a healthier lifestyle every year, but we all know that this, unfortunately, doesn't always stick around for very long. Many of the problems encountered are due to the difficultly of adapting new routines that we aren't familiar with ahead of time. Lucky for us, nowadays we can use home automation to help us keep our commitment despite living a busy life where it can be difficult to manage everything. From remembering to work out to maintaining a healthier eating habit, there is an automation that can help!

Home automation can help with fitness

Read More

How to Use NFC Tags As Powerful Home Automation Sensors

Posted on 20th Nov 2020 17:03:40 in Home Assistant, Smart, Tutorial

Smart homes often include little quality of life improvements such as automatically turning off the lights after everyone has left a room or reminding you of certain things. A challenge regularly faced by homeowners is the method of detection for determining that a certain situation has occurred. Sensors provide good feedback but are often hard to get in the right place or are simply too difficult to install in a certain location. Enter NFC, a technology that can embed an action into a sticker that can be placed anywhere!

An NFC tag

Read More