home-assistant

As voice assistants, smart bulbs, and other devices increasingly become household staples, more people than ever are bringing smart technology into their homes. But the bewildering assortment of products on the market can present challenges: Remembering which app to use and trying to link things together with automation can get complicated quickly. In this article, I’ll show you a few ways I used an open source home automation platform, Home Assistant, to bring all my devices together. ...

When my wife and I bought a house a couple years back, I knew it would only be a matter of time before I started getting into home automation. My house, like many built in the late 90s, was pre-wired for an alarm system. While I had no desire to revive a 20-year-old alarm panel, it did mean all my exterior doors were pre-wired with inconspicuous sensors. I already run Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi, so I was looking for a way to integrate these hard-wired door sensors with what I already have. I had read about these cheap WiFi-enabled ESP8266 boards, so I decided this would be a simple project to try it out with. ...