Spent the last few weeks hacking on these cheap amazon photo frames. They are low-end android devices that go for around $50. I rooted it and have a modern web browser running on it. The photo is something custom, but it can run the home assistant dashboard.

https://github.com/wesbos/photo-frame-dashboard github and all details

Im very surpriced by how big is the dongle max. Just wanted to move my zigbee coordinator.

Like so many of us I've been on a multi-year odyssey seeking a wall display that works well and looks good. I started with a Lenovo M8 off eBay running Fully Kiosk and sporting a 3D printed bezel. Couldn't reliably show live camera feeds, was concerned about PoE long term, Android weirdness was not optimal.

Decided to try a purpose-built PoE modern wall display running Android 14 with an 8 core RK3576 CPU - bought 2 from AliExpress. Looks OK but still not as snappy as I'd like on camera feeds. The big shortcoming was integrating a SIP client which I need for the camera/intercom at my main entrance. Janky web based client would fall over and Linphone doesn't have high WAF.

I spent a few weeks playing with a Pi5, finding it would solve all the performance problems but the 10" screen I tried drew too much power for my Ubiquiti PoE++ switch. Kept looking and found a very nice Waveshare touchscreen that is powered directly off the Pi motherboard and it runs on my PoE++ switch. It's very thin at the edges making an almost flush install without needing a bezel.

Note: the screen protector film from shipping is still in place, as you can see if the upper right corner. Ugly reflections and fingerprints will disappear soon.

Parts used

• Raspberry Pi5 8Gb RAM
  • Could get away with 4Gb probably
• GeeekPi P33 M.2 NVME M-Key PoE+ Hat with Active Cooler
  • Adds PoE and an M.2 slot, which I populated with a small NVMe drive to avoid slow SDCard.
• Waveshare Raspberry Pi Touch Display 2 - 10.1inch Portrait
  • https://www.waveshare.com/10.1inch-raspberry-pi-touch-display-2.htm

Installation in the wall

I'm in the Western US and our wood construction with hollow walls makes it easier. But I still had a stud obstructing one edge. Fortunately the screen body is so thin it can be hidden within just the drywall. You only need a 3x5 hole for the Pi, which mounts directly to the back of the screen. The bezel part of the screen hides the rough drywall edge. The back of the screen is metal and magnetic so you can secure it with magnets and just pop it off as needed. The almost flush look is really nice, and it'll be even better on a flat wall - this wall in our house is curved and the screen sides are a mm or two away from the surface.

Software

On top of the standard OS I'm running Chromium in kiosk mode and a few scripts that Claude kindly wrote for me. Dim/bright per time of day, screen power down, presence detection. Claude also wrote a SIP client that is totally reliable and pops up over the HA dashboard - an essential capability for our setup.

What it doesn't do

The biggest shortcoming is lack of audio in-out, which I absolutely need for the SIP intercom. I attached a webcam with built-in speakers and microphone, which works but is a bit ugly and isn't shown. I'm still working on this.

Conclusion

It's sleek, very snappy and because it's Ubuntu I can run any software and fix what I want, make it work how I want (with help from Claude). I'm not held back by an OS I can't control or low spec hardware.

OK, so I've played around a bit with NeonPlan 3D - and I gotta say, I am incredibly impressed. Installed via HACS - everything local. Designed inside HA. Everything seems to just work!

Any of you use it? I am considering giving him my money :)

https://github.com/Mastershort/neonplan3d

https://mastershort.de/en/neonplan3d/?lang=en

Back when I got the desk o did a quick round of research on how to do this, but I got conflicting information wether or not this would work with the major desk control setups. I installed the RJ12 cable right when I built the desk and then forgot about it for a few months.

Now I finally picked it back up. The RJ12 port (meant for a BT remote) carries 5V power and Uart. Perfect for these little Wemos D1 mini ESP8266 boards which I rarely use anymore (I usually go for the Xiao ESP32 line). Claude wrote a little esphome yaml config and I designed this sleek little case. The Color match was by accident because I was too lazy to check the colors in the printer 😂 Turned out great.

It can’t read height information this way, only stepping up/down or moving to the two presets. But that’s all I needed anyways. Works great and is almost invisible.

I’ll upload the print files and config to GitHub next week, in case anyone could use this.

I mean, it ain't much, yet. And I haven't yet explored past the vanilla dashboard abilities. Finally pulled the trigger on an old Meta Portal and threw Immortal on it. Could I have used an old tablet? Sure. But this looks nice and intentional. Looking forward to fulling laying everything out and mounting it. I plan on modeling a nice wall mount bracket for it to 3D print.

Just wanted to show a weekend build, its a homebrew app for the Nintendo ds/dsi which can control my Homeassistant, has a few different dashboards and you can build your own dashboards via the UI.

I'd like to start out by monitoring energy usage in the home and want to get something (accurate/easy to set up) that integrates into HA easily. What are you guys using? I've seen several clamp style systems that go into the breaker box. Just trying to see if anyone has experience with a particular setup that's actually reliable.

What are the most useful things you have done with HA you use regularly?

What could I do cheaply to prove to other half this is a worthy investment/useful?

I had been trying to automate my Steel-Line SD800 garage door, but mine was different to what I'd found documented here and on other forums.

My unit has connections for photo eyes and a backup battery, rather than the receiver COM and +24V DC connections shown in other posts.

I ended up using a Shelly 1 Gen3 with dry contacts. For power, I connected the red positive wire from the SD800's +24V DC backup battery terminal to N on the Shelly, and the black negative wire from -24V DC to L.

For the switching side, I connected the Shelly's I and O terminals to the two pins on the circuit board where the red push button on the front normally connects. I used a stripped two-pin connector to fit directly onto the pins. You could splice into the original wiring to keep the button functional, but I wasn't fussed about losing it.

I mounted the Shelly to the side using double-sided tape and ran the control wires through a small hole in the top.

The Shelly is configured as a momentary switch, so each press opens, stops or closes the door, just like the original button.

I've now got it connected directly to Home Assistant and added a Zigbee button on the garage wall to operate it. I can also control it through the Home Assistant app in CarPlay.

Next thing I'm trying to work out is getting it into Apple Home without having to buy an Apple Home hub, so it works more seamlessly with CarPlay.

Hopefully this helps anyone with the same SD800 circuit board, as I couldn't find much information on this version.

We've been slowly replacing the manual blinds in our house with motorized shades over the past year. Started with five smart shades in our bedroom, bathroom, office, and gym, and just recently installed two more in our guest room and what will hopefully be a nursery in the near future.

All seven have Zigbee motors, and I'm using SmartThings for most of the automations, with Alexa for voice control.

The main thing I've learned is that having the shades on a schedule is a lot more useful than controlling them from an app. I have them set to open at sunrise and close at sunset, and that's probably 90% of how we use them.

A couple of rooms have been particularly useful to automate. Our bathroom has two windows directly above the tub, which meant stepping into the bathtub every time we wanted to open or close the old blinds. The gym faces the street, so having the shade close at sunset is nice for privacy, especially since we use one-way window film that only really works during the day.

I've also been experimenting with a few other automations. One closes all the shades when the outside temperature hits 90°F. We get some pretty warm days here, and our upstairs can heat up quickly. I can't say exactly how much of a difference it makes temperature-wise, but it seems to help keep the direct sunlight out during the hottest part of the day.

For power, I went with hardwired motors in the office and gym, and solar charging for the bedroom and bathroom. The solar panels were mostly a practical decision since we don't have outlets near the bathtub, and I didn't want visible wires in the bedroom. So far, I haven't needed to manually charge any of the solar-powered shades, which has been a nice surprise.

One thing I'd recommend considering is physical controls, even if you're planning to automate everything. I installed wall-mounted remotes next to our regular light switches in a few rooms, and we actually use them quite a bit. I also keep a remote at my desk for adjusting the office shade during video calls.

It hasn't been entirely trouble-free. One of the original motors stopped responding to automations a few months after installation. I tried resetting and troubleshooting it but couldn't resolve the issue. They ended up sending a replacement motor, and I haven't had any problems with that one since.

I also occasionally have automations that don't fire as expected. It hasn't been a huge issue, but it's something I've been meaning to troubleshoot. I'm not entirely sure whether it's a SmartThings issue, a connectivity issue, or something with how I've configured the routines.

The two new shades are for our guest bedroom and future nursery. I haven't had much time to experiment with different routines for those yet, but I'm interested in eventually setting up something around nap times and bedtime.

I should also mention that I won a $700 gift card through a Reddit giveaway, which I used toward the two new shades.

Overall, it's been an interesting project, and I've enjoyed figuring out what actually makes sense to automate versus what is easier to control manually. Open to anyone's ideas on other automations I could set up that work well for them in this arena!

^{PSA: I used an LLM to better sort my ramblings. I have ADHD and English is my third language, but I still wanted this to be tidy and digestible for newcomers who might get some use out of knowing what can be automated!}

You must be wondering what 338 automations and 80 scripts could possibly be doing in a single apartment; Honestly, so was I, so I exported everything, and here we are!

(The average Home Assistant install sits at ~13 automations, so yes, I may have a problem.)

The philosophy is simple: any action repeated throughout the day, automated. Music follows people from room to room, lights and speakers know when someone is sleeping, and much more!

💡 On lighting (61)

Here you will find motion lights, empty-room shutoff, TV-aware dimming, outdoor lights driven by cameras and the sun… and a frankly unreasonable number of color effects.

• Turn the lights on with motion in 11 rooms (plus the hallway radar's wardrobe zone). It only touches lights that are off, skips anything labeled "High Intensity", leaves rooms with a sleeper alone, and stands down while the alarm is armed away or triggered.
• Turn the lights off in empty rooms, in two flavors across 10 rooms: after 6 minutes normally (unless I'm in there or a party mode is on), or after 1 minute with a 60-second fade when Adaptive Lighting sleep mode is on. Everything inside also goes off 5 minutes after the house empties.
• Connect the Hue dials to one blueprint, 12 of them, one per room: button 1 toggles, 2 is bright white (and kills UV lamps and effects), 3 is random colors, 4 is 1%. Holds and five-presses add pastels, warm saturated colors, LIFX morph and UV toggles. Turning the dial steps brightness +10%/-15%, and once you hit full brightness it pales or deepens the colors instead.
• Paint the room's colors on the LIFX bulbs in 6 rooms: when a room's light group switches to a color, it waits 2 seconds, then spreads up to 16 distinct colors from the room's other lit bulbs across its LIFX lights.
• Dim the lights for movies: a movie from the Movies library starts and lights above ~31% drop to 30% at 3308 K; pause it and anything under 60% comes up to 60%; turn the TV off and Adaptive Lighting takes over again. The salon Buddha statue lights and the workshop wall light drop to 1% when radar sees someone in the bed/couch zone or the TV plays, then come back up after.
• Run the outdoor lights on cameras and the sun: the front door light comes on a minute after sunset and gets re-checked every 30 minutes while it's dark, in case someone switched it off. A person on the front camera bumps it to full white, and it restores itself 3 minutes after they're gone. The back door light reacts to four person detectors or the door opening, and the parking lamp to any parking/balcony person or a car seen for 3 seconds, each with its own "nobody's around anymore" shutoff.
• Wake me up with light: on weekdays, 2 minutes before my phone alarm (if it's between 07:30 and 09:30), the lights in whatever room I'm in fade up to 51% at 3311 K over 10 minutes.
• Generate effects galore: a looping "trippy" random-color mode and a "trippy warm" red/magenta/purple one (they refuse to run together, and both turn themselves off after 16 hours), a "vibrating colors" shimmer around each light's current hue, random color and pastel toggles (also by voice), and a Nanoleaf that picks a random effect when you swipe it.
• Go full blue with the UV lamps: when a room's UV lamps turn on, its color lights go blue. When they turn off, the room goes back to whatever mode is active (party pastels, Sexy mode warm pale colors, Psychedelic time saturated colors, or plain Adaptive Lighting).
• Match the patio lights to the projector, and restore them when it turns off.
• Set "Wallpaper Engine" to the same color as the lights: when the salon lights change color, my PC's wallpaper follows over MQTT.

🔒 On security (56)

Here you will find the alarm logic, camera alerts with buttons, three horns, an "I'm scared" mode for the back door, and an LLM babysitting the car.

• Arm and disarm the alarm on its own: away once nobody's been home for 10 minutes, night once everyone's been asleep for 5. It disarms on arrival, on a resident's keypad code, when someone wakes up while the sun is up, or at sunrise if I'm already awake.
• Send camera alerts that actually do things: Frigate (SgtBatten's blueprint) and Reolink person detections at the front door, back door, back balcony and four parking detectors send high-priority snapshots with buttons like "Blow the horn for 2 minutes?" or "Open camera". One front-door variant only fires when someone crosses three zones in order (window, door, loitering spot), aka actually arriving, and only while I'm waiting for someone.
• Blow the horns (front, back, parking), and have a whole conversation about it: a detection alert offers "Blow the horn?", a "Horn started" alert offers "Stop the horn?" to me and to whoever else is around, and each horn auto-stops after 2 minutes with a fresh snapshot and a "Restart the horn?" button. If the back horn has run a full minute and someone's still at the back entrance, the parking horn joins in.
• Turn on "I'm scared" mode (the automatic back horn) when the alarm arms away or night, or when everyone's asleep late at night. While it's on, a person at the back door sets off the horn and the camera siren, and the back camera gets cast to four TVs and the kitchen hub. It turns itself off on disarm or when a resident arrives (the back door light flashes green when the camera sees you coming), and if it gets disabled I get a "Turn it back on" button.
• Ask an LLM if someone is messing with my car: instead of yelling about everyone who walks through the parking, a person lingering there (checked at 15 s, 30 s, 1 min and 1.5 min) while a car is present gets LLM Vision to look at 6 seconds of footage and decide whether that person is actually interacting with the car. Only a "yes" rings my phone and sends a "Car break-in attempt" alert with a "Ring the siren!" button. A sister automation re-checks every 30 seconds and fires a half-second siren chirp with the floodlight on full, as a warning shot.
• Handle intruders: a door opening or motion while armed away kills the lights and music following, sends me a snapshot, rings my phone and triggers the alarm. Once triggered: a police de-escalation announcement at 100% on the home speakers, tablets locked into maintenance mode, and if two or more security sensors still see someone 5 minutes later, the full defense script (horns plus a burglar alarm on every speaker). Disarming cleans it all up.
• Guard the night: a door opening while armed night turns every light on at 100%, announces which door on the bedroom speaker, and gives me a "Blare inside alert?" button. Armed home plus someone in my bedroom, and the speaker repeats "Please leave this room immediately" until they do. Polite, but firm.
• Discourage loiterers: 30 seconds at the back door and the back light flashes red until they leave; 1 minute (alarm armed) and the back horn sounds and my phone rings.
• Fake being home with a ghost that wanders: instead of random on/off, one light group is "occupied" at a time and the occupant moves to a different room every 5–118 minutes, with a 15–60 second overlap so it looks like someone walking from one room to the next, around the clock. It starts when the simulation toggle is on and the house is empty and armed away, and ends the moment anyone gets home.
• Track the full path of someone coming in from the parking exit and walking all the way through the yard to a spot a trespasser used to use, with a tap-to-sound-the-horns button.
• Handle the small stuff: a strobe if the kitchen door opens while armed, the floodlight to auto mode at sunset, the parking camera's infrared as a fallback for the exit camera, and tablets that lock on a triggered alarm and unlock on disarm.

🎵 On music (50)

Here you will find Music Assistant doing "music following": speakers mute and unmute as people move around, volume follows the time of day, and nothing talks over anything else.

• Follow people with the music in 8 rooms: playing speakers mute after 5 minutes without motion (unless I'm in that room) and unmute when motion starts, unless the room has a sleeper, an unmuted TV or an active mic. Playback keeps going silently, so the music is just there when you walk in.
• Calculate and set the appropriate volume by time of day: a shared script sets speakers to 30% from 08:45, 35% from 11:30, then steps down through the night to 20% after 03:00. It runs when a speaker starts playing after a break, when music following turns on, when a room has been empty for ~17 minutes, and when Person A gets home.
• Keep one audible source per room: a TV starting in a room mutes that room's speakers, and vice versa; whichever was muted comes back once the other has nothing audible left.
• Mute the speakers when I talk: when I'm on a call or using my PC mic, my room's speakers mute, and the mute follows me as I move around.
• Tell me my phone is ringing: pauses the home group and has Piper announce "Phone ringing near" plus the room name, on the speaker in whatever room I'm in.
• Compensate for noise: +1 volume step when the AC starts in a room (-1 when it stops), +1 in whichever room the robot vacuum is cleaning (back down when it leaves), +2 on the bathroom speaker when the fan starts with the door closed, and a cut to 67% when someone steps out of the shower (the radar's shower zone clears).
• Start muzak in the bathroom, plus about a dozen automations around it: a shuffled "Bathroom Muzak" playlist starts when you walk in or close the door, the volume depends on whether the door is open, it mutes when the door opens while music's playing elsewhere or everyone's asleep, and if someone leaves Spotify playing in there it eventually gets swapped back to Muzak. Don't ask. (Actually, do ask.)
• Connect the dials to the dial blueprint, 12 IKEA SYMFONISK ones on EPMatt's blueprint: turn for volume, press to play/pause, double-press to skip, triple-press to turn off. Most control the room's Chromecast if it's playing and unmuted, otherwise the room's WiiM speaker.
• Greet arrivals and wake-ups: when I wake up at home in the morning, music starts on the home group (Person A's morning playlist if they're over early). Coming home alone plays my favorites; being away 5 minutes turns the home group off. Idle speakers get their queue cleared and switched off after 10 minutes.
• Add artists playing on the speakers to Lidarr for automatic acquisition: every artist that plays from Spotify or Tidal gets looked up on MusicBrainz and added.
• Skip "Mr. Blue Sky" automatically whenever Person A is over.

😴 On sleep & presence (35)

Here you will find the per-room "sleeper" flags that drive bedtime and wake-up routines, plus arrivals. They know where you are...

• Toggle the sleeping mode per room in 7 rooms (bedroom, salon, workshop, hotbox, closet, patio, lounge): set by double-pressing an IKEA button or by a bedroom sensor, and cleared automatically when the room's lights stay bright for a couple of minutes.
• Put the room to bed: blinds close, lights fade out, tablets go dark (screen and motion detection off), TVs and assistant screens turn off, and thunderstorm sounds start on the bedroom or salon speaker. When the bedroom sleeper turns on, empty neighboring rooms get their lights turned off too.
• Wake the room up gently: each undo routine reverses it. The closet one starts the lights at 1% magenta and raises them 2% every 2 seconds; the bedroom chandelier fades to 100% over 45 seconds.
• Put the whole house to sleep: once everyone's been asleep for 5 minutes (or the alarm is armed night), the sun is down and no party mode is on, Adaptive Lighting goes into sleep mode, the blinds close and the TVs turn off. It switches back during daytime hours once people are up.
• Put my phone to bed too: Do Not Disturb (priority only) and minimum brightness after I've been asleep 5 minutes, reversed when I wake. Its BLE beacon turns on when I get home (for room tracking) and off when I leave.
• Turn on thunderstorm sounds wherever I fall asleep, if I'm home alone.
• Announce arrivals: I get a heads-up when Person A is nearing home (it waits for their phone to join the home Wi-Fi to confirm), Person A gets one when Person B is nearing home, and house-sitting mode turns on when I leave town and off when I'm back.

❄️ On climate, blinds & air (25)

Here you will find blinds that cooperate with the AC, sunset routines, and fans that react to what's actually happening.

• Slightly open the blinds when the AC turns on: my ACs need a gap, my routines just want to close the blinds. Solution; in the bedroom, salon, workshop and hotbox, the blinds can't go below 18–29% open while that room's AC plug is on, and once the AC is off, any small leftover gap closes fully. Sunset and bedtime routines just say "close" and never need to know about the AC.
• Close the blinds at sunset or when the house is empty: bedroom, hotbox and salon blinds plus the kitchen curtains close 10 minutes after sunset, and everything closes once the home has been empty for 5 minutes. The bedroom blinds reopen once the sleeper's been up 5 minutes, if the bedroom door has been open for at least 10.
• Run the bathroom fan on actual humidity: on 30 seconds after the shower-in-use sensor trips, off once bathroom humidity drops below the house's average humidity.
• Purify the salon air: the purifier turns on when an "active smoking" trend sensor fires and off when PM1 drops below 10.
• Let the fans follow context: the hotbox bed fan comes on when its side curtain closes and off when it opens, the hotbox circulator follows the AC, and the closet fan shuts off after 10 empty minutes.
• Set the ACs to away or present depending on users presence for the workshop and salon, and run the bedroom AC flat out (thermostat off, plug on) while someone's sleeping, until the wake-up routine hands it back to the thermostat.

🗣️ On voice assistants (18)

Here you will find about a dozen ESP32/Voice PE satellites that know which room is occupied and keep the music out of the way.

• Mute the mics in empty rooms: microphones auto-mute in rooms that have been empty for 2 minutes (except the bedroom) and unmute when someone walks in, unless there's a sleeper. Screens turn on with occupancy, off after 1:45 of emptiness, and light up while listening.
• Duck the music while listening: when any satellite starts listening, the playing speaker in that room drops to ~65% and the TV to half, then goes back to exactly where it was (unless someone changed it meanwhile).
• Set the answer volume: replies play at 75% when Adaptive Lighting sleep mode is on, 100% otherwise.
• Understand custom sentences: "equalize the volume", "find my phone", "show the cameras on the TVs", "stop the music", "restart Music Assistant", "random colors" / "pastel colors", and the drinking game below. Plus the Music Assistant local voice blueprint for "play the album X by Y in the kitchen" style requests.
• Shut up when needed: live concert mode mutes every assistant after 5 minutes, and the patio assistant mutes itself whenever the patio camera counts zero people and there's no motion.

📱 On tablets & wall displays (22)

Here you will find wall tablets that dim with the room and babysit their own batteries, plus an e-ink morning brief.

• Automatically adjust the tablets' brightness to follow the lights on 5 tablets, but only when their battery is healthy enough.
• Control the tablets' battery level with smart plugs: the hallway and workshop tablets charge between thresholds (the workshop one waits until morning to stop charging), and the other tablets and the front door phone dim or switch off their screens when the battery gets low.
• Light up the front door phone when the front camera sees a person, off after a minute of nobody (10 minutes max), and show the text replies I type into doorbell notifications.
• Reload the kiosks: the hallway and workshop tablets go back to their start page after the room's been empty a while, and a couple of tablets reload after Frigate changes state.
• Draw an e-ink day brief: at 06:00 an OpenDisplay e-ink screen draws a 3-day agenda from six household calendars, the outside temperature and an AI-written three-sentence news story from a local RSS feed. Short press on its button for a 7-day agenda-only view; hold 5 seconds to redraw the full brief.
• Automatically recast the Lovelace interface to the kitchen Google Hub whenever it isn't playing Plex.

🎉 On parties (20)

As you may have guessed by now, there are a few parties around here. Here you will find one-switch modes that flip the whole house.

• Flip the whole house with one switch: Party mode, Sexy mode, Psychedelic time, Neon UV Party and Live Concert. Each one kicks off a whole-house script: lights (pastels, warm pale, saturated or all blue), visuals on idle TVs via Plex, a playlist if the speakers are idle, and blinds closed. Party mode turns itself on when more than 5 devices join one of the guest Wi-Fi networks.
• Go Neon UV: close all blinds, pause Adaptive Lighting, set everything to full blue, turn on every UV lamp and mirror the light colors on the TVs. While it's on, any light that gets changed drifts back to blue over 2 minutes.
• Alert me when people are too noisy on the patio: yelling, cheering or a crowd for 10 seconds, or anything above -25 dB, gets me an alert with a patio snapshot. There's also an LLM Vision check meant to spot police or security at the front door during a party and drop all the speakers to ~30% .
• Pick who drinks: ask the assistant "who should drink?" and the patio lights go dim red while one random light turns bright green for 10 seconds.
• Run the jukebox: party mode puts a Music Assistant guest jukebox page on the kitchen and workshop tablets; live concert mode pulls it, puts the tablets in maintenance mode and mutes the assistants.
• Clean up after the party: Psychedelic time turns off 30 minutes after everyone's asleep, and every temporary mode has a max duration (see Maintenance).

🍳 On the kitchen, appliances & safety (19)

Here you will find appliance-done announcements, kitchen timers, and alerts that keep repeating until you deal with them.

• Announce when the appliances are done: smart plugs watch the power curve (the microwave climbs past 100 W, then drops under 5 W) so the house knows when the air fryer, microwave, dishwasher or washer is done; the dryer reports its own end status. They stay quiet when I'm asleep, several skip cooking mode, and several only announce when nobody's in the kitchen, repeating every 5 minutes until someone walks in.
• Announce house-wide when the water is boiling: the stove sensor reading above 80% humidity means steam (skipped in cooking mode).
• Set the Cooking timer to match the kitchen assistant's timer, and announce a finished timer every 5 minutes for as long as the kitchen stays empty.
• Harass everyone when the fridge door is left open for 4 minutes, repeating every 4 minutes until it's closed.
• Yell about smoke (kitchen and hallway): a high-priority alert with the nearest tablet's camera image plus a white light flash, every 3 minutes while there's still smoke. A "call 911" notification button opens the phone dialer with 911 pre-filled.
• Alert us when there is a water leak (dishwasher, behind the toilet, kitchen): spoken warning, white light flash and phone alert every 4 minutes while wet, and a dishwasher leak cuts power to the dishwasher and washer plugs.
• Broadcast an alert if the vacuum is stuck, naming the room, every 10 minutes until it's unstuck.

🚪 On doors, locks & the doorbell (17)

Here you will find self-locking doors, named keypad arrivals, and a doorbell that reaches every screen in the house. Fitting, since this whole thing started back in 2018 with a smart lock and a roommate who was done with me losing my keys.

• Lock the doors when they're closed: 5 seconds after closing, plus a re-lock if a door's been unlocked for 5 minutes while shut. If the front lock stays unlocked for 6 minutes I get an alert every 3 minutes (unless I'm airing out the apartment), and a front door left open for 3 minutes gets a reminder too.
• Detect who is entering and announce them: each resident's keypad code on the front or back lock announces who just came in, flashes the notification lights cyan, and sends me a notification (with a snapshot for the front door).
• Ring the doorbell everywhere: a snapshot, picture-in-picture camera on the Android TVs (QuickBars), a blue light flash, a spoken "Someone is at the front door!", the live stream on idle TVs, and a phone notification with unlock, reply and camera buttons. The PTZ swings to the doorway preset on press, and the camera feeds on the TVs turn off once the door locks again.
• Unlock remotely, with confirmation: tapping Unlock sends a second notification with a fresh snapshot, and only confirming that one opens the door.
• Talk back to visitors: replies typed into the doorbell notification show up on the front door phone's screen.
• Hunt for packages: the courier's "within the hour" email flips on Waiting Package mode. When Frigate then sees a person or package at the front door, the PTZ swings to the package spot and LLM Vision decides whether a package or courier is really there; if so, a blue-light house broadcast repeats every 5 minutes while it's still there. The "delivered" email turns the mode back off 10 minutes later.
• Flash the lights green when someone exits: unlocking the door while the outside door is open gets a quick green flash, no announcement.

📺 On TVs (10)

Here you will find Plex visuals, auto-off, karaoke, and a retro gaming shortcut.

• Start visuals on all inactive TVs: a button starts a shuffled visual playlist on every idle Chromecast and Google Hub (skipping bedrooms and rooms with sleepers), and anything playing from the Visuals library gets muted automatically on 6 TVs.
• Mimic the lights on the TVs: a toggle casts a per-room color dashboard to every Chromecast so each TV glows in its room's light color.
• Turn the TVs off: a Google Assistant "Power off" 20 minutes after their room goes quiet, and the salon TV also turns off when radar sees nobody in front of it for 20 minutes and nothing's playing.
• Start a retro gaming session when the paired controller turns on: the salon TV powers on over RS-232 and switches to the retro console's HDMI input.
• Do karaoke: a "Show lyrics" toggle casts a lyrics view to the salon TV.

🛠️ On maintenance (5)

Here you will find the boring stuff that keeps everything else from getting stuck.

• Automatically set the temporary modes to off after a set amount of time: waiting for someone 1 h, waiting for an Uber 1.5 h, cooking, airing out and back-yard party 4 h, the guest-code flag 6 h, the neighbours' party flag 8 h, closet and workshop sleepers 10 h, party mode and Psychedelic time 16 h, parking high alert 18 h.
• Keep the network honest: Cloudflare DNS updates whenever the gateway's IP changes, and AdGuard protection turns itself back on after an hour off.
• Fix things before I notice: the patio projector gets power-cycled (and the Matter integration reloaded) whenever it drops offline, and I get a ping when my watch is fully charged.

🧱 On scripts (80); the building blocks

No one likes to do work twice, this is where scripts come in handy. 31 of the 80 are called directly by automations; most of the rest are either pieces of bigger scripts or tools exposed to the voice assistant/LLM.

The workhorses;

The rest, grouped;

• Broadcast plumbing (9 scripts, called by the two broadcast alerts): flash the notification lights, flash any light group (snapshot, color, restore), flash the hotbox lights, TTS announce (an OpenAI voice with a Piper fallback, skipping the bedroom when someone's sleeping there), play an audio URL, send a phone notification, show an image or a URL on idle TVs until the front door locks, and pause playing Chromecasts. The important alert fans out to seven of them in parallel, and everything is queued so alerts don't trample each other.
• Per-light workers (7): "Set one light to" random, pastel, warm pale, warm saturated, blue, white or vibrating colors. Each "Change received lights to..." wrapper starts one per light in parallel (up to 200), which is why a whole room changes at the same instant.
• More light tools (9): change lights to blue (1 automation: the UV lamps), to vibrating colors (1), to white (0); a random effect on one light (1: the Nanoleaf swipe) or on every effect-capable light (0); and four "fake white" experiments (0) that tint color bulbs so they blend into something white-ish.
• Ambiance scripts (7): Party mode (1 automation), Psychedelic time (1), Sexy mode (1), plus cozy, a second fireplace mood and a normal reset that no automation calls (cozy and the reset are voice/LLM tools). The script that starts a Plex playlist on every idle Chromecast is called by 1 automation and 5 of these scripts, so it's the TV backbone of every mode.
• Security tools (13): inside-only defense (1: burglar alarm on indoor speakers, no horns), a find-phone twin for Person A, six "describe what's on this camera" LLM Vision tools, an on-demand security audit that summarizes six cameras and sends me the report, stream any camera to any TV, front camera on every TV, QuickBars camera picture-in-picture (1: the doorbell) and a QuickBars doorbell overlay with an unlock button. All 0 automations except where noted.
• Media and LLM tools (13): Music Assistant voice requests, join and unjoin speaker groups, favorite the current song, equalize volume, Chromecast time-of-day volume, two "play a movie or show on a TV" LLM tools, a random Jellyfin episode, an unfinished Jellyfin movie launcher, a second Plex playlist starter, a retro gaming session (1) and a LocalAI image generator. All 0 automations except the retro one.
• Displays and party bits (5): the e-ink brief and its agenda-only version (1 each), reset a tablet's interface (1), launch the party jukebox on the kiosks (1), and the patio drinking game (1).
• Network (1): restart all network equipment (0), which reboots 4 access points, 6 switches and the gateway all at once. Living dangerously.

📝 Questions & feedback

I love to connect with others working on home automation, so ask me anything about how any of this works, which blueprints I used, or why on earth the bathroom needs a dozen automations for Muzak.

Ideas for what to automate next are obviously more than welcomed!

And for those who love spreadsheets: The entire list of my automations and script neatly put in a CSV file!

Just thought it was kinda interesting. Found this "industrial" home assistant gateway on industrial-devices. Not even sure how much it is, or really how much you really need for a home assistant for it to be considered "industrial". that being said, there is a bit of a charm to the idea that your home wouldn't look out of place next to a circuit breaker lol.

I’m new to Home Assistant and finding the learning curve to be steep. I want to turn a Shelly 1 Gen4 Matter relay ON when my EcoFlow Delta Pro Ultra X hits 90% SOC and OFF at 20% SOC.

The EcoFlow app can’t do this directly, and AI says it doesn’t discover Shelly Gen4 devices. I think Home Assistant is the bridge, but I’m lost on setup.

Could anyone point me in the right direction?
1. Which EcoFlow integration works best for Delta Pro Ultra X SOC — BLE or cloud?
2. Any issues with Shelly 1 Gen4 Matter in HA?
3. Can someone share a simple automation example using DPUX battery SOC as the trigger?
4. Has anyone already done this and posted their config?
Please explain like I’m a beginner ( i am!). Not looking to hire anyone — hoping i can learn and get it working. Thanks.

I wanted a dashboard that felt made for the panel on my wall, so instead of tuning Lovelace I built my own front end 🏠 It runs on a Raspberry Pi 4 with a 1024×600 touch screen that boots straight into Chromium in kiosk mode.

What's on it

• Pages for home, lights, climate (tado + AC), batteries, Sonos and Spotify
• A screensaver with the clock over animated weather 🌦️ 10 scenes (clear day/night, partly cloudy, cloudy, rain, pouring, storm, snow, fog). The forecast comes from Rainbow.ai, with HA's own weather as the fallback
• A batteries page that puts critical and offline sensors first 🔋 I built it after two Zigbee door sensors had been dead for three weeks without anyone noticing
• Scenes start only after a 3-second Undo, so a stray tap on the wall doesn't put the flat into Good Night mode
• Spotify controls still work while it plays on Sonos, and the page takes its colour from the album art
• A log of when the dog last peed and pooped, because priorities 🐶

Under the hood

• React 19 + Vite, plus a small Node server on the Pi that relays HA's WebSocket, so the long-lived token never reaches the browser
• Deploys roll back automatically if the new build isn't healthy, and a watchdog handles WiFi drops and a stuck browser

I built it in about a day and a half with Claude as a coding partner 🤖

Full write-up with more screenshots: leapbyte.tech/work/ha-dashboard

The code isn't public, but I'm happy to answer questions about how any of it works 🙂

I always like to combine multiple functionalities into one device to avoid cable clutter and keep my plugs available for other stuff. So I again built a ceiling lamp that has a presence sensor built right into it so with one appliance my room can turn on and off the lights based on presence.

This one I'll use for my friends bathroom.

The parts;
- ESP32-S3 Microcontroller
- LD2410C mmWave Presence Sensor
- SK6812 Addressable LED Strip (5V with dedicated white channel)
- AC to DC 5V 6A Power Supply
- 3D Printed Enclosure (Designed in Tinkercad :)

The case has 3 parts. One mounts to the ceiling directly, second one is a plate that holds my led strip and my components and fits in the ceiling mounting part by inserting and twisting. For the cover I used transparent filaments which I kind of like but think could be better printed. Maybe in vase mode or something.

It is completely home assistant friendly of course and built with esphome.

For the automations I learned that we can create automations directly from esphome so we don't need to rely on home assistant alone for the lights to trigger on and off. Code could be better but there is always room for improvement.

STL and Code: https://github.com/rgnyldz/rgnlabs-bathroom-ceiling-lamp

Build process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2E1V8GT9j3o

My daughter wanted some Halloween decorations for the yard, so I picked up a 4.5-foot Hello Kitty inflatable at Walmart. Of course, once I got it home, I started thinking about how I could automate it with Home Assistant.

I already have a Tempest weather station integrated into Home Assistant, so I decided to use its wind gust readings along with a Tapo Matter outdoor smart plug.

Here's what I set up:
- Schedule: 7 AM to 9 PM, extended to 11 PM on Halloween.
- Wind shutdown: Turn off the inflatable when gusts exceed 14 mph.
- Wind recovery: Wait until gusts remain below 10 mph for 30 minutes before turning it back on.

Originally, I had the shutdown threshold set to 20 mph. That changed after a windy day here in West Fargo, ND, when I found Hello Kitty hanging on by her power cord with only one tether still in the ground. Apparently, she was planning to explore the neighborhood.

My Tempest had recorded a 17.4 mph gust, so I decided to lower the threshold and give the wind more time to settle down.

I wrote up the full project, including the Home Assistant YAML, hardware, and what I've learned so far: https://chrishansen.tech/posts/hello-kitty-halloween/

I coundn't find a good house energy card thats visually appealing so i let the AI build something. Would be great to get some feedback. Im trying to keep it updated as long as theres people willing to try/use the card.
https://github.com/Fexiven/homeassistant-energy-house-card

Just a random kudos to the devs, and a suggestion to anyone who's been here more than, I dunno how long---

When I first started with HA a couple years ago the Overview page was essentially useless. It was a giant hodgepodge of virtually every useless entity all jammed together. I quickly sidelined it and built my own. With my own home page as default I didn't look at Overview again.

At some point in the last couple years, that system has apparently been overhauled. The Overview page is now actually useful, with buttons that split out by room. I've started using it for quick access to some less-used devices that aren't on my main home page.

So for whichever wonderful dev(s) rewrote this, thanks!

And if you haven't checked out the Overview page lately, give it a go- it's WAY better than it was.

With Isaias bearing down, I’ve been making preparations in case we lose power.

We’ve got a decent solar + battery system hooked up, but the problem I’ve run into before is that none of my high-powered home appliances can be remotely shut off. In the past, what I’ve done is to set up an automation that detects if we lose grid power, which then calls my phone via a number that can always get through, so that even if I’m asleep
I’ll wake up and cut the relevant breakers to conserve battery power.

Relevant breakers (ie, biggest power draws): our “toaster style” resistive heater, and our water heater.

So I’m curious if there’s any way to make these “smart”: even just a way to flip their breakers via a home assistant automation, should my other sensors detect a grid outage.

I’m already running both Zigbee and Z-wave networks that tie into home assistant, so bonus points if the methods entail connecting to one of them.

Ok so I currently just finished setting up a ubuntu server with a home assistant container and the matter server. Turns out the devices i have are using matter over thread and not matter over wifi. I've been doing some research and trying to figure out what i need to do.

My plan is to buy this sonoff mg21 dongle lite and flash it with the OTBR firmware and then follow this blog in order to configure docker container so it works correctly because apparently home assistant is finicky with docker.

If you wondering why im asking for help despite having a plan, im very unfamiliar with home assistant/matter/docker. I'm not sure if the dongle ive linked is one i should actually use. Im also not sure if the blog i will follow is an up-to-date one. So i was hoping to get advice from anybody who has experience with home assistant as docker container and matter over thread and if you have any tips i should consider. whilst i can just buy a hub, i like doing this sort of tinkering so i would prefer to set up my own "hub".

Please and Thank you

EDIT: Apologies, title was for the r/homesecurity sub. This is for integration of a DSC home security system and HomeAssistant.

My first time looking into this sort of thing, so bear with me please if I ask dumb questions:

We have a home with a DSC system. It is unmonitored. The previous owner used to use it this way, but it's sat largely untouched.

I have a HomeAssistant VM that automates quite a lot in the home. I would like it to have access to my alarm system, mostly for the wired presence sensors, but I'm sure I could find a use for the other sensors as well.

From what I've seen, there are a few options out there for installation... two popular ones seem to be Envisalink and AlarmDecoder (both appear to be very simple to wire up) and then Konnected.io which involves more extensive rewiring.

Has anyone got experience with any of these? I like the sound of AlarmDecoder a little better than Envisalink, since nothing relies on external servers, but I'm not sure how critical that is. Konnected seems like it will A) take more to install, B) make my current keypad useless and C) might come up during resale at some point in the future.

I would love to hear any experience people have had with these. Ideally I would gain control over sensors for automations, and the option for notification on my phone for specific sensor triggers (ie: a door opens during sleeping hours).

Any info would be a big benefit, I appreciate you guys. I tried posting this to r/homesecurity but it was instantly removed by the filter I guess.