Thanks to kickstarter a few weeks ago I got my Aqara U200 Matter over Thread smart lock with Apple Homekey support. I've been waiting a long time for a smart lock to support the full feature set that I wanted. The primary features I wanted were Matter over Thread (not Wi-Fi...
One of the most common automations that people use probably use Home Assistant for is lighting. Several months ago I stumbled on an amazing collection of Home Assistant blueprints by community member Blacky (Craig Black). They do more with light automation than I ever thought possible. The best part is that...
For Home Assistant users that want hyper local weather information, the 2023 ECOWITT Wittboy Weather Station GW2001, with Wittboy Wi-Fi Hub is an excellent choice. Unlike a traditional weather station that you might be thinking of, the Ecowitt Wittboy is solid state with no moving parts. If you are using...
In this final installment of my smart home deep dive on Matter and Thread, I cover a ton of practical advice on how to set yourself up for success with Matter. Even if you aren't using Home Assistant and are entirely into Apple Home, Google Home, etc. the last section...
This is the second installment of the Smart Home Matter and Thread deep dive series. In this post we deep dive into IPv6 routing, and how the Home Assistant Matter controller does failover at the network level between two Apple TVs. I'll also show you how this fails with HAOS...
 Hot off the press is Proxmox VE 8.2, which GA'd in late April, 2024. It is based on Debian Bookworm 12.2, and has a number of new features like defaulting to Linux Kernel 6.8. This post is a completely refreshed version of my popular Home Assistant: Proxmox VE 8.0 Quick...
The modern Smart Home has a host of new standards to enable what is supposed to be a seamless experience across multiple ecosystems. These new standards include Matter and Thread, both of which the likes of Amazon, Google, Apple, Samsung, and Home Assistant support to various degrees. There's A LOT...
I recently purchased the Apple iPhone 15 Pro and Apple Watch Series 2 Ultra, both of which have "Action Buttons." Since I hadn't explored Apple shortcuts much before, I decided to dive deep into Apple automation. This post focuses on my Apple Watch Ultra action button shortcut. You don't need...
If you are using Home Assistant and want to determine if the Apple Sleep focus mode is on or off so you can use it in automations, this post is for you. While on the surface this may seem like a trivial task, due to Apple's limited Focus APIs and...
If you are running Home Assistant and wish to increase its security by using a FREE trusted SSL certificate from Let's Encrypt, then you are in luck! This post will walk you through the entire process. The process is quick and easy, assuming you already have a public domain via...
Today, on June 22, 2023, Proxmox Virtual Environment 8.0 is now out of beta and has been released to the public. This post will walk you through an in-place upgrade of Proxmox VE 7.4 to 8.0. Proxmox is a very popular virtualization platform for home enthusiasts to run their servers on....
One the most important aspects of maintaining Home Assistant is regular backups. Implementing the 3-2-1 backup rule with Home Assistant is now easier than ever, with the 2023.6 release. The 3-2-1 rule states you should have (at least) 3 copies of your data (production + 2 backups), on two different...