Tagged with 'home assistant'
Creating a Differential Sensor In Home Assistant
![Home Assistant Gauge Card indicating a temperature differential](/sites/default/files/2024-03/TempDifferential.png)
- March 25, 2024
- 3 minutes
- automation, home assistant, tech
If you've fiddled enough in Home Assistant over time, you might have encountered the situation in which it is useful to trigger off of, or simply display, a calculated value. There are a few different ways this can be accomplished but this post focuses on creating a specific sensor to do both: be used as a trigger value for automation, and also displayed neatly in a dashboard.
Read MoreLighting the Dark Days of Winter with Home Assistant
![Screen snip of two settings in Home Assistant for Light state and a script trigger](/sites/default/files/2024-01/fanlightsteppedup.png)
- January 15, 2024
- 7 minutes
- automation, home assistant, inspiration, tech
This fall, right after the time change, I found myself often working intensely enough to suddenly notice "it was dark outside" in the late afternoon. Good for productivity, I suppose; not so much otherwise? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I'd automated a whole bunch of other light situations, mostly with some combination of brightness level (obtained from my Tempest weather station) and/or time-based. But all of those solutions were "binary" (on/off). My thought here was to slowly and incrementally bring up the overhead smart lights in my home office space.
Read MoreOctoPrint Webhook for Filament Change Notifications
- December 11, 2023
- 4 minutes
- 3d printing, automation, home assistant, inspiration, tech
I've been using OctoPrint to handle nearly all of my 3D printing operations since I moved to it a little over a year ago. It's an absolutely wonderful platform and I can't recommend it enough.
Read MoreTurn off the fan already! Tales of an automation modification
![Snip of details when creating a Home Assistant helper entity for a timer object.](/sites/default/files/2023-07/bathroom-fan-max-timer.png)
- July 10, 2023
- 5 minutes
- automation, home assistant, inspiration, tech
It's been a couple months since my last post, and while I had some things in the queue I have lacked time to finish them out due to MMS in early May, being involved in a community theatre production that just wrapped up a couple weeks ago, and for random reasons building a chicken coop of all things. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Here's to a return of more regular posts, assuming I have adequate time to write and revise them!
Read MoreCreating a Reference Sensor Template in Home Assistant
![Snip of a Home Assistant Dashboard item identifying two sensor states: one for bathroom humidity at a level of 44.6% and another for bathroom humidity target at level 49.0%.](/sites/default/files/2023-03/fan-headline.png)
- March 27, 2023
- 10 minutes
- automation, home assistant, inspiration, tech
It's been a while since I wrote about any Home Assistant stuff so I figured this was as a good time to write about something I'm super happy with: custom/reference sensor templates!
Read MoreSmart Independent Control of a Ceiling Fan & Light with Shelly 1L
![Home Assistant dashboard (dark mode) illustration for independent control of office fan and office lights, with office fan in "off" state and office lights in "on" state.](/sites/default/files/2022-10/OfficeFanLights_0.png)
- October 24, 2022
- 6 minutes
- automation, home assistant, inspiration, personal, tech
As I've noted before, my 1940's-era house has its own quirks with regard to smart home automation in large part due to 1940's wiring standards.
Read MoreSmart Control of a 1940's Three-Way Switch with Shelly 1L
![Snip of Home Assistant dashboard card for Stairwell/Stair Lights with status data](/sites/default/files/2022-09/StairwellLights.png)
- September 26, 2022
- 8 minutes
- automation, home assistant, inspiration, personal, tech
Once I settled on jumping into home automation and Home Assistant (HA), the first "practical" thing I wanted to address was the issue of lights being left on at random throughout the house. Some fixtures were greater offenders than others, but with a control mechanism like HA I could actually begin to address what others wouldn't.
Read MoreJumping into Home Assistant: The Installation (and Hiccup) Process
![Screenshot of Home Assistant Initialization/Setup Screen at the user account creation step](/sites/default/files/2022-09/hastart.png)
- September 12, 2022
- 6 minutes
- automation, home assistant, inspiration, personal, tech
About a month ago, I took the plunge.
After considering it for a long time and hearing about some cool stuff folks were doing with home automation, I decided it was time to start my own dabbling adventure. A warning to folks: home automation is a little bit like owning horses. There can be a bunch of expense in the process for little obvious reward.
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