Smart Home15

How I update a Docker-based Home Assistant to a new version without breaking my smart home: full backup, update custom components first against the old core, recreate the container instead of in-place, note the image ID for a real rollback, and a post-update checklist.

A reusable Home Assistant pattern: one input_datetime helper per motion sensor that records the exact time of the last movement — the data foundation for presence heuristics and a tidy "last seen" dashboard, no expensive mmWave sensors needed.

A complete Home Assistant motion-light recipe with a choose: block that dims by time of day, a sensible off-delay, and the one tweak that actually stops the light flickering on and off.

After every Home Assistant restart my KNX thermostats fell to 'standby' and stopped heating. Here is the homeassistant-start automation — with the crucial 30-second delay and a choose block — that re-initialises every thermostat to the correct mode.

A reproducible Home Assistant automation: a KNX window contact switches that room's thermostat to building_protection (frost guard) when it opens and back to comfort when it closes — with a 5-second debounce that stops the false triggers most tutorials ignore.

A practical guide to the Home Assistant REST sensor: tap any JSON cloud API, pull out single fields with value_template, authenticate via header, set a polling interval and scale raw values — shown on a real manufacturer API, transferable to any device without a native integration.

Why your KNX thermostat ignores the temperature you set in Home Assistant — the five HVAC preset modes, the snap-back that looks like a bug, and how I automate them.

I didn't want Home Assistant to be a slave to the JUNG alarm panel. So I inverted ownership: HA owns the alarm state and pushes it back onto the KNX bus.

In this story, we’ll explore HACS (Home Assistant Community Store), why it’s a game-changer, and how to get started with it.

A bare humidity number doesn't tell you when a cellar will condense. I added a cheap Tapo T310 to my H100 hub and turned it into a dew-point mold early-warning.

Building a security dashboard in public: simulated sensors, a debounced trigger, dual logging, and the one decision that mattered most — what NOT to show.

Making KNX motion sensors drive lights that feel like the room is paying attention — the real trick is one extra group address, not a cleverer trigger.

I let a 40-line Python script reshuffle my whole home-automation config — but only because a second script proved it didn't lose a single automation along the way.

You can use different approaches to integrate code blocks on your blog or website (TailwindCSS, etc.). I came across a modern approach to syntax highlighting and discovered Shiki

Let's dig deeper and build a nice UI on our Nextjs foundation with the help of Tailwindcss/Contentful