Your smart home needs both an ESP32 and Raspberry Pi 5, not one or the other
…Making the Pi read the PIR sensor data every 30 seconds seemed like an overkill use of the hardware. So I moved to using ESP32 boards for building sensor nodes and a…
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My old phones replaced three smart devices in my Home Assistant setup
…Sign in to your XDA account Whether it’s building storage servers from outdated PCs, turning refurbished thin clients into retro emulation machines, or reusing dinosaur laptops as FOSS-hosting workstations, I…
I built a gesture-controlled desk buddy with an $8 ESP32 and Grove sensors
…I received the following Grove sensors: a Digital Infrared Temperature Sensor, a Piezo Vibration Sensor, a Gesture Sensor (PAJ7620U2), and a Button. The temperature sensor can pick up both an ambient temperature…
Stop buying networking gear for your smart home that looks good on paper but fails in practice
…Local devices should keep doing useful work even when the wider internet stumbles, especially in a home filled with automations and sensors. Instead, I had a networking device that treated local reliability…
I built a $15 ESP32 display that lets me monitor my Bambu Lab printer from my desk
…It connects to your printer either through Bambu's cloud or directly over your local network. Once those sensors exist in Home Assistant, ESPHome can subscribe to them directly through the Home…
I built a $100 ePaper photo frame that never touches the cloud, and it looks like a real print
…I've been tinkering with ePaper displays and ESP32 boards for a while now, and after building everything from productivity dashboards to a basic Kindle, I figured it was time to try…
I gave Matter two years to work, then ripped out every Thread node for Zigbee
…In 2026, we found that Zigbee sensors still dominate in efficiency. A Zigbee contact sensor can last up to three years and sometimes even longer on a CR2032 coin cell. Matter over…
Stop wasting your old tablet on Netflix and use it as a smart home command center instead
…Besides running old media playback app builds, there might be lingering vulnerabilities. After all, your payment details are attached to the streaming accounts. With a smart home dashboard hosted locally, you are…
The best new Home Assistant feature in 2026 isn't AI, it's a 433MHz transmitter
…Build local automations by connecting your newly smart 433 MHz devices directly to your standard ZigBee sensors or local dashboards, bypassing the original physical plastic remotes. Make your smart home truly smart…
Google Home and Alexa can't do what I built in Home Assistant, and that's the whole point
…HomeKit are the most common options when building smart home setups, and for good reason. Their plug-and-play nature, low reliance on local systems, and cheap maintenance costs make them perfect…