Home Automation on A.J. Elsinga

A Cuckoo Clock, but Digital - Cuckoo in Home Assistant

Tue, 20 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Since I absolutely detest the ticking of clocks, a cuckoo clock is not welcome in my house. That sound of gears turning, or even worse, the ticking away of every second, brrr. Fortunately, this is a cuckoo clock that can be switched off, as I’ve built it into Home Assistant. The clock has been cuckooing to my satisfaction for about five years now, without the need to wind it up.

How to make your kitchen smart - A practical guide

Tue, 06 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

How can you make your kitchen smart? I’ll show you. It doesn’t mean you have to spend thousands of euros and replace all your appliances. No, it can be done with relatively simple means. It all depends on how far you want to go and what ‘smart’ means to you. For some things, I’ve included pseudocode, so you can also relatively easily incorporate this into your own smart home. You can do this with IFTTT (if-this-then-that), but you can also use Google Home, or Amazon Alexa. I do it with [Home Assistant].

3D Printing, Wi-Fi Wins, and Pi Clusters with Turing Pi 2

Thu, 01 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In episode four of NTVN, AJ and Alex discuss their recent experiences with 3D printing, Wi-Fi setups, and the Turing Pi 2 cluster board. AJ had some failed 3D prints and ruined a build plate, but also had some successful prints, just like Alex. Alex printed a shelf support with a honeycomb design and a wall mount for a new device called “Homey.” AJ talked about his plans to upgrade his smart home system with a Loxone and LoxBerry setup and expressed his preference for wired connections over Wi-Fi.

Our smart home story — X10, Homey, Home Assistant & more

Thu, 25 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Evolution of our Home Automation, X10, Indigo, KlikAanKlikUit, Homey Pro and Home Assistant

🔊 Tune in this week for a journey through home automation history with New Tech, Vintage Nerd! 🏠✨

Hello and welcome, tech enthusiasts and retro gear aficionados! In this episode, AJ and Alex delve into the evolution of home automation systems and explore their own tech-laden odysseys. 🤖🚀

Automatic Volume Control in Home Assistant

Fri, 29 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Do you hate that too? When you switch on your Apple TV from YouTube to Music, or from Prime Video to Plex and then your amplifier’s sound is way too loud?

Well, I do. That’s why I’ve created an automation in Home Assistant a while ago that ensures the sound levels from different sources are automatically adjusted by Home Assistant. How? I’ll explain.

How

Apple TV integration

Order coffee via a NFC tag in Home Assistant

Sun, 29 Jan 2023 13:35:46 +0000

You can think what you like, but I cannot imagine life without coffee. You would think I’d be ’trained’ by now to get new coffee in time or place an order. Far from it. It even happens that the last coffee goes into the coffee machine while I haven’t ordered new ones yet. And a day without coffee is a day not lived. When I received NFC tags with my Switchbot order, I knew exactly what I was going to do with them: Automate the coffee ordering process using an NFC tag in Home Assistant.

A snapshot of a RTSP-stream every second

Sun, 30 Jan 2022 14:37:19 +0000

Thought it wasn’t possible to display an RTSP stream on a Grafana dashboard? Think again. I’ve recently started making a snapshot of an RTSP stream every second and displaying it on my dashboard.

In my office, I have a monitor displaying a Grafana dashboard. On it, I show all sorts of things that our [home automation system]/wat-is-domotica/ Home Assistant measures and controls.

Pi-Hole switch

Tue, 17 Dec 2019 07:09:00 +0000

I’ve had some trouble getting a proper Pi-Hole switch into Home Assistant. Eventually, I found something that worked. It wasn’t entirely what I wanted, but at least it works AND I can explain to my wife how it works.

I used the command_line platform to create a switch that is based on the output of the following commands:

switch:
  - platform: command_line
    switches:
      pihole_switch:
        command_on: !secret pihole_command_on
        command_off: !secret pihole_command_off
        command_state: !secret pihole_command_state
        value_template: "{{ value_json.status == 'enabled' }}"

In secrets.yaml I added the following lines:

My first steps with Home Assistant

Sun, 15 Dec 2019 19:03:24 +0000

Recently I (re)started with Home Assistant to get my home into tiptop shape.

I will update this site with my successes and my struggles on my way to make the term ‘Living in Comfort’ reality.

If you don’t want to wait until I have something (more) useful te wite, checkout my configuration at Github.

[Video Friday] Control your shades with Somfy

Fri, 09 Mar 2018 09:00:00 +0000

Watch on YouTube

[Video Friday] Busch-free@home

Fri, 02 Mar 2018 09:00:00 +0000

Every supplier nowadays comes up with items with which you can automate your house. Busch also has a solution for your home: Free@home