There is a lot of automation you can do with this data, but today I want to write up a short guide on how to safely get the information from the UPS connected to your NAS via USB into the Home Assistant.
There is a UPS monitoring through NUT configured in my Home Assistant. So I decided my Home Assistant could shut down my homelab servers on a low UPS battery.
Quick step-by-step guide on assembling an IR receiver for reading IR codes from your remotes based on Wemos D1 mini, Wemos IR shield, and using ESPHome.
My living room multimedia setup consists of numerous devices with varying degrees of stupidity. I’m chasing to improve it adding additional DIY hardware and functionality not always because of hate of TV remotes but also because I’m in love with IoT and soldering. First, I’ve added WiFi power control to my Cambridge Audio amplifier, then I’ve implemented WiFi-to-IR remote control to the TV. Then I decided to improve sound quality from TV and added a DAC between the TV and the amplifier. It is connected to the TV via Toslink optical cable. And it broke my volume control because you can’t change the volume on a digital output port on a TV, you forced to rotate the knob on amplifier instead.
Previously I was using JBL Bar connected to a TV in my living room. It was controlled with WiFi IR bridge, so whenever my Chromecast or PS4 was in playing state, the Bar was turned on and ready.
Now I have passive speakers with a simple integrated amplifier, and it can’t be turned on or off without physical interaction. You need to press and release the button on the front panel to toggle amplifier power. So today we will add WiFi power control to Cambridge Audion AXA25 integrated amplifier.
Many modern TVs can be controlled not only with an IR remote. Many could be easily integrated with Home Assistant or any other smart home solution. Samsung smart TVs, LG with WebOS… But what if your TV is so dumb it even don’t have WiFi or Bluetooth? Today we’ll add WiFi control to an old and dumb Samsung TV with a little help from ESPHome.
Yes, it is possible and you don’t need to build anything from sources. Sending SMS from your home could be useful, for example, to send emergency alerts. But what about receiving and parsing SMS messages? Well, I used it to integrate my car security system with my Home Assistant. Now my Home Assistant could start the engine of my car automatically to warm it up before driving to work.
Bed presence detection could be very useful in home automation to control the lights and appliances you don’t need at night, but want to be ready in the morning. And today we will build a bed presence sensor out of a very universal device for DIY IoT. It is an Aqara ZigBee window and door sensor. Why it is so universal? Let’s take a closer look at its internals.
Home Assistant 0.115 got the ability to use variables in automation and scripts. You can declare variables even using templates and use them across the script or automation. Here is an example from the release notes:
automation:
trigger:
platform: sun
event: sunset
offset: -00:30
variables:
notification_service: notify.paulus_iphone
action:
- service: "{{ notification_service }}"
data:
message: Beautiful sunset!
Previously my presence detection in Home Assistant works through Asus router and asuswrt component. And it was bad. Very bad. Recently I switched to Google WiFi and realized that the only way to implement presence detection with this router is IFTTT (Update: No). I thought it would be the slowest presence detection in the world but I was wrong.