Category: Hardware
Plexamp Music Streaming with Raspberry Pi Zero
I’ve been a Plex user for a very long while. They’ve recently put a lot of effort into the re-vamped Plexamp music player and it’s quickly …
My Node-Red Smart Alarm Clock with Snooze
Definitely one of my very favorite features of my smart house is my alarm clock. Which is funny because I am not a morning person at all and …
Automating Dumb Devices with Node-Red and Home Assistant
Here in coastal California, air conditioning is extremely uncommon. So during a recent heat wave, I got desperate and went down to the big box store …
Pi to NUC Part 1: Migrating Hass.IO to a Virtual Machine with Proxmox & Docker
As my Home Assistant setup has become increasingly complex, I’ve started to see the limitations of the Raspberry Pi platform. Graphs are slow, and the history …
The Cheapest WiFi Smart Switch: Flashing the Sonoff Basic
Setting up a smart home can be a costly affair, if every device needed an expensive proprietary smart switch you would spend quite a bit of …
Home Assistant: Making My Plants Talk with IoT Sensors and a Python Script
Living in an urban city without a garden, I have been exercising my green thumb by accumulating more and more houseplants. I have them tucked away …
Config: Setting up the Xiaomi Mi Robot Vacuum in Home Assistant
I have a dog who sheds like crazy, and the only thing that keeps the dust bunnies from overrunning me is a robot vacuum. My aging …
Favorite ESP8266 Internet of Things Projects
So many good uses for these chips, here are a few I’ve made and some I still intend to. ESP Easy – by far the easiest way …
Hardware: Odroid XU4 as Plex Media Server
As part of my efforts to be cloud non-dependent, I have a NAS full of several terabytes of music, movies, and TV shows. Plex is of course everyone’s …
My Smart Home: Hardware List
An ongoing list of all the hardware I’ve gradually acquired. Links are to Amazon, but if you are patient most things can be imported from China …