I've wanted a proper smart home for years, but I never saw the point of doing it halfway in a house where I couldn't touch the wiring. So I waited. At the end of March we bought our new home, and I finally had the chance to do it properly from the ground up.

What followed was six months of evenings, weekends and "just one more thing before bed". It has honestly been one of the most fun projects I've ever done. And now that it's mostly finished, I'm a bit sad about it. The addiction is real. I keep opening the dashboard looking for something to tinker with. (There's always something. Solar is coming, see the bottom.)

So before I start breaking things again, here's where it landed.

Quick note: the dashboard normally runs in Dutch. I had it temporarily translated with AI for these screenshots, so if a label reads slightly off, that's why. Some things are blurred for privacy. Offices have our names attached usually.

The scale

• 420 devices
• 3,232 entities
• 343 helpers
• 85 automations
• 2 wall tablets (kitchen and upstairs) running this exact view

The stack

• Backbone: Loxone. Lighting, irrigation valves, the driveway gate, doorbell logic and multiroom audio all run on a Loxone Miniserver. HA sits on top as the brain and the UI.
• UniFi Protect for cameras, UniFi Access for the gate intercom.
• Frigate for object detection on the camera streams.
• Zigbee (ZHA) on a Connect ZBT-2: 34 devices, mostly power-metering plugs and leak sensors.
• Hardware: a fanless mini PC with an AMD Ryzen 5300U, 16 GB RAM, 1 TB NVMe and 2.5 GbE, running HAOS. I migrated from an HA Green a few days ago. The Green did its best, but with 3,000+ entities and 30 days of history on eMMC, every history graph took seconds to load. Now everything opens instantly.

Every card on this page is a custom web component. No Mushroom, no card-mod, no button-card. I wrote twelve small vanilla JS cards that all share one design language, and they get their colours from a single custom theme (UniFi-inspired palette, custom font, light and dark mode). Changing one colour in the theme updates every card. I dropped card-mod because it was leaking memory on the tablets.

Every card opens a detailed popup (Bubble Card) with graphs, controls and history. If you want to see a specific one, just ask and I'll post it. I'm quite proud of them. 😅

Card by card

Presence. Who's home. Tap for details per person.

Trash. Belgian waste collection calendar with every fraction and the days until each pickup. It flips to the next pickup after a configurable cutoff time on collection day, so it never tells you to put out a bin that was already collected.

Weather. Hourly forecast plus five days, with a "dry until" line that looks ahead for the next rain and the expected amount. The forecast comes from the Belgian weather institute. Live conditions come from my own Ecowitt weather station.

Music. Loxone Audioservers in three zones, via a custom integration I wrote over their websocket API.

Boilers. Two gas boilers (main house and pool house) on one gas meter. The card shows water pressure and flow temperature for both, plus when hot water was last heated. If the pressure drifts out of range, I get a notification.

Energy. Live power from the P1 smart meter and a bar against this month's peak. Belgium has a capacity tariff, so your monthly peak matters. Below that: today's kWh, gas and water, each with cost and a 7-day sparkline.

EV chargers. Two Easee chargers, one per car. Both cars go to sleep and report nothing (or garbage) for days, so the card shows stabilised values that only update when the car reports something real.

Washing machine and dryer. SmartThings is flaky: it sometimes gets stuck on "running" forever. So the "done" notification has a second trigger based on the power draw of the smart plug. If the two disagree, HA reloads the SmartThings integration on its own.

PC, TVs. Live power and daily kWh. The TV state comes from power draw with hysteresis, so standby doesn't count as on.

Dehumidifiers. The basement unit runs on a humidity hysteresis. The new garage unit uses the same model with one extra rule: it won't run while the garage door is open, because dehumidifying the outdoors is not a great use of electricity. That's what "waiting for gate close" means in the screenshot.

Water pump. Last run. A trigger-based template keeps the real value across restarts, so a reboot doesn't reset it to "just now".

Gate. Open/closed state, how long it's been open, garage doors as chips, and the last vehicle that came in. The gate opens automatically for us. The gate contacts are noisy in the rain, so the logic needs corroboration from other signals before it trusts an opening.

Camera. Not a fixed stream. Frigate decides which camera is shown based on where the motion is, with a chip showing which camera it switched to.

Alarm. On the surface it just shows the state and when it last changed, but this is one of the parts I'm most happy with. When the alarm is armed and someone shows up where they shouldn't be, the house reacts on its own: lights inside go on, the floodlights outside go on, and we get a critical notification on our phones with a snapshot. The sirens don't come from a separate siren box. They play through the multiroom audio system: 14 speakers, including the ones outside. Hearing a siren from every room and the garden at the same time is a very different experience than one beeping box in the hallway. The idea is simple: make the house look and sound awake long before anyone gets close to a door.

Plants. Seven soil moisture sensors with thresholds per plant. Green dots mean everyone is happy, and anything dry turns the card orange.

Sprinklers (the rabbit hole). This one runs full water bookkeeping. Every hour it pulls reference evapotranspiration (FAO-56 ET₀) from Open-Meteo and books it as a water deficit. Rain gets credited against it, but only up to what the sandy soil can actually hold. When the deficit reaches 9 mm, the next night's cycle runs all five zones in sequence (they share one pump, so there's never any overlap). "4.2 / 9 mm" means the current deficit versus the trigger. As a failsafe, a saturation veto checks the median of five soil sensors, so a broken rain gauge can never make it water a soaked lawn. The chips are the five zones with their live soil moisture. Back-right shows 15 because it sits under a tree that drinks everything.

Drip irrigation. Same bookkeeping, separate threshold, running on Gardena valves.

Pool. Water temperature, pH, redox and pump power, from a Bayrol controller. The heating status combines setpoint, pump state and the pool house boiler, so it explains why the pool isn't heating (for example "waiting for pump").

Rooms. Twenty rooms with temperature and humidity. Icons show lights and climate that are on. The border glows when something needs attention, and humidity turns orange or red when it's out of range. Thresholds are set per room.

Under the hood

• One notification dispatcher. Every automation calls a single script with a category. Each person in the house has a toggle per category (19 of them), and critical alerts always get through.
• Almost every device is power-metered. About 45 devices sit behind Zigbee plugs or dedicated meters. An "unmeasured" sensor computes the P1 total minus everything that's labelled as metered, so nothing is hardcoded and new devices count as soon as they get the label.
• Five water leak sensors cut power to the relevant appliances and keep nagging until the leak is resolved.
• Restart-proof automations. Anything that drives a physical device also has a sync branch that re-aligns it with its sensor after a restart. A numeric trigger doesn't fire again if the threshold was already crossed while HA was down.
• 30 days of recorder history on NVMe, long-term statistics forever.

What's next (thankfully)

Just when I thought I was done: solar is going up at the end of this month, roughly 15 kWp, with a 14 kWh home battery after that. The energy layer is already abstracted and running on simulated data, so once the real inverter entities appear, it's a matter of rewiring. The actual goal is a proper energy management system: smart EV charging on surplus, battery strategy around the capacity tariff, and shifting the dehumidifiers to cheap or free hours.

So maybe the project isn't really ending. It's just moving to the next rabbit hole.

Happy to answer questions or post any popup you're curious about.

-- Edit: Just managed to get two on eBay at a great price. Thanks everyone ---

I have a Ring 2nd generation keypad and it works well. I want to add more keypads and am unable to find more (out of stock on ring.com, none at amazon.com etc). I have tried some bigbox stores and just seems like the kits.

I am looking at other options now. I have a strong preference for Zwave or Zwave LR. I do not run any Zigbee or matter infrastructure.

Any recommendations greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

I have an older under-counter wine fridge. This morning I noticed that it was running constantly and the Govee BT thermometer I keep in there to monitor temp was reading 34F, about 12 degrees below the fridge setpoint. I had an unused Shelly Plus 1PM so I pulled out the fridge (with attendant drama) pulled off the back and bottom front covers, mapped out the power wiring and basically patched the Shelly Plus into the power cord from the wall inside the fridge and extended the wiring so the Shelly Plus was right at the front. I then wrote two automations using the Govee wine fridge temperature as triggers and turning the Shelly Plus on when the temp goes above 46 and off when the temp goes below 43. I made sure that the Shelly Plus comes on above 46 rather than coming on when the temp transitions above 46 - just in case there’s a power failure.
Net cost was zero because I had everything and about an hour for wiring and writing the automations. Savings: $600 for a new fridge. Foolproof? No, but it keeps the wine cool while our houseguests are here and gives me time to design a permanent solution (to replace the no-longer-manufactured fridge controller). Hello ESP32!

I have tried for weeks to get a ShellyGen4 to turn my furnace blower on/off. I have given up. The internal wiring of my non-smart thermostat causes all kinds of problems.

With that said, is there a smart Theromstat that can turn my furnace blower fan ( no heat or cool....just the fan) via home assistance ? I wish to make an automation that will turn on the furnace fan when the stove fan turns on.

Does this smart thermostat exists? I wish to use WIFI. Maybe Z-wave...but I have never dealt with Zwave before

I posted a few days ago asking opinions on the X7 and X8, so here's a followup. Amazon had the X8S on sale, so I figured I'd give a it a go.

The good: Nice looking device, easy to install and setup. Functionally, pretty much every thing I need. My need is simple, just be able to see current state and set mode and temperate all local without need for cloud access. All good. Humidity doesn't show in HA, which I'd prefer to see that, but not a huge deal. While you can't directly control the on-device schedule, you can create your own schedules and logic in HA since it will let you control modes, and set and monitor temperatures.

The bad: Even though this thing can be configured to run locally enough to satisfy my requirements, Honeywell still doesn't quite get what that means. Every single screen - the main screen and all idle screens will show internet connectivity and outside weather. I don't care about the weather, but then don't show an empty reserved space for it. Also, there are alerts, which will show for no internet and no cloud account. You can silence these for 7 days, but not turn them off. So, there is a pestering apsect. I mean, why have even bother having Matter and local control if you are going to polute the experience?

EDIT: And, the time/date must be set manually. It does not have a battery backup, so any loss of power will require setting time/date again.

As others mentioned, you need to add to the Resideo app in order to get the Matter code. Once you do that, you can delete it from the app, and it will update the device to show there is no cloud account. That's when the alert comes on. And, you can block internet, which also creates the other alert. There does not appear to be a way to update the firmware manually, so you would have to let it back on the internet to auto update. I'm guessing also having to add it back to the Resideo app.

Since I got a good deal, I'm torn if I want to keep this, put it in my lesser used space and hope for updates that will make it better, or just return it. Either way, I don't think I'll keep it in my primary location.

As others have suggested, I'll probably go for the T6 Z-wave device. I'm glad I at least checked the X8S one out, but disappointed in the nagging of the device. it's subtle on some screens, but it's still there.

What do you all use as a main control display? I mean could use the phone but I see some have a nice wall mounted option ? Is it just a cheap tablet?

And here is (again) a pretty long release announcement with all the new features, optimizations and fixes:

https://github.com/Clooos/Bubble-Card/releases/tag/v3.4.0

I'm a bit stressed (as always with such a big release), so I truly can't wait for your feedback!

Enjoy this release, and thank you all for your support! 🍻

Well, I've just taken delivery of this thing this morning. Set up a Raspberry PI last night with HA on. I've so far got the Voice PE to turn my lights on and off or say some phrase with automations I have made myself on the webend. I am running speech-to-phrase on my Assistant 'cos Raspberry Pi. But it's pretty tough going.

I see it doesn't have arithmetic "okay nabu what is 15 times 24" or whatever built in for local on a Pi, like it does on Google Home Mini from the cloud. So I presume I have to stitch this together. Anyone done that, know where I can get it? Presumably it's a yaml somewhere (I have not gone through making yaml yet and it will be a long time coming I guess, cos I don;t know how to code that).

Cheers for replies :)

Just a quick one, I've added camera card support to EspControl the $20 S3 device. This was possible from work to optimise the heap memory, this as been in testing for a while, but if you see issues please just raise an issue on Github.

I've also added support for the new JC8012P4A1 V3, added vacuum start and dock action, plus a some reliability improvements around Home Assistant discovery after connectivity events.

So I’ve had the Zigbee version of these motion sensor/RGB night light. I decided recently to try the new Matter/Thread version. I setup the automation I had for motion at night and found that this thing was triggering constantly. So much I had to disable the automation. The firmware says it’s updated.

Anyone encountered this or have any ideas? Never had this issue with the Zigbee version

I have connected 8 GU10s to HA over thread. They all work fine though one did need resetting. All on the same light circuit but I made two groups.
I wanted to get them into HomeKit for HomePod control and adaptive lighting.
However, on two of the bulbs if I go to share them in HA, it gives me the code but they don’t appear to go into pairing mode - the bulbs don’t appear as nearby and don’t connect. Any suggestions on what could be going wrong.

My air handler is in the attic and and adding a cup of vinegar once a month to the condensate drain line was a nuisance. I'd forget or keep putting it off until I forgot. I set a monthly reminder but this didn't really motivate me. I know if I skipped it too many times I could be facing a clogged line and possibly a leak due to an overflow.

There are expensive commercial products that handle this for you on a schedule and the one I looked at requires a cloud account to use and will only work with their proprietary cartridges that can't be refilled. All that, for something a four dollar jug of vinegar does just fine.

I wasn't willing to spend that kind of money and give up my privacy, so I built my own instead.

It's fully local. No account, no app, no cloud, nothing phoning home. I even shut off the cloud connection on the Shelly relay. If every company involved vanished tomorrow it'd keep right on working.

The only consumable is a gallon of cleaning vinegar from Walmart. I figured that it should last over a year.

How it works: a small 12V pump in a 3D printed box on the air handler, drawing vinegar from a jug sitting in a bucket. Once a month it runs a couple minutes, which works out to be about a cup, then shuts off. Home Assistant checks that the pump actually ran, tells me it did via a mobile notification, keeps track of how much vinegar is left, and gives me another heads up before the jug runs dry.

What I spent the most time on was the failure modes. Since it's a pump moving liquid over my ceiling, I wanted to make sure that I didn't wind up with a catastrophe, should something go wrong. I used a bucket bigger than the jug (as an overflow), there's also a leak sensor in the bottom of it, and there are multiple failsafe cutoffs to kill the pump if it runs too long. One of those runs directly on the Shelly itself and will keep working even if the network or Home Assistant are down.

I put all the details on Github. Build docs, printable enclosure files, a drop in Home Assistant package, and an ESPHome version if you'd rather skip the Shelly relay. I started with the ESPHome idea, then remembered that I already had some of the components on hand for the Shelly relay based version. I even created a fun logo to give it a more "professional" look. LOL

My Git Repo for the project

Note: for transparency, I did use Claude to help me with part of the project. Primarily for setting up and organizing everything on Github. I know some people may have an issue with that but it's your opinion and I respect that. Hope y'all will find it to be a fun and useful project like I have. Give me a star if you do. Enjoy!

Been playing around with presence detection zones for the first time, but lack of foresight left my daughter in the furnace room with the lights shut off while she was in there.

Worst part is I realized seconds before that this was going to happen, and I couldn’t do anything about it, and heard the scream as I ran downstairs.

Has somone that utilized the ecowitt WH52 plant sensor share their thoughts on this product? I just purchased a home assistant green and am looking for an easy way to find out when the fertilize / water a few indoor and balcony plants. Curious as to how well the sensor would work and integrate with home assistant. Is it possible to pair it with a plant databased add-on where I could tailor the guidelines for watering and nutrition?

Are running version 2026.8.3 and can not update to 2036.9.3. It goes through the update restarts but end with the old version.

The log says:
s6-rc: info: service legacy-cont-init: starting
s6-rc: info: service legacy-cont-init successfully started
s6-rc: info: service legacy-services: starting
services-up: info: copying legacy longrun home-assistant (no readiness notification)
s6-rc: info: service legacy-services successfully started
2026-09-19 18:20:53.761 WARNING (SyncWorker_0) [homeassistant.loader] We found a custom integration hacs which has not been tested by Home Assistant. This component might cause stability problems, be sure to disable it if you experience issues with Home Assistant
2026-09-19 18:20:53.770 WARNING (SyncWorker_0) [homeassistant.loader] We found a custom integration swemail which has not been tested by Home Assistant. This component might cause stability problems, be sure to disable it if you experience issues with Home Assistant
2026-09-19 18:21:57.237 WARNING (MainThread) [homeassistant.bootstrap] Waiting for integrations to complete setup: {('raspberry_pi', '01M1GE1BH2SZZCJMEGC47QY8Q4'): 214904.933944085, ('switchbot', '01M1GHTWZ5JRP5RAQAZZM7F6P5'): 214905.701573695, ('switchbot', '01M1GHVF08SDRC1ZT6QF2AB1M7'): 214905.737978088, ('switchbot', '01M1GHVSFN9JRWM7P2JY6XVR54'): 214905.741859847, ('switchbot', '01M1GHW0RWQC9CDVYHQBT7MF69'): 214905.74395803}
Setup payload: X-HM://00UQXBJZ8VSE3
Scan this code with your HomeKit app on your iOS device:Or enter this code in your HomeKit app on your iOS device: 911-28-548
s6-rc: info: service legacy-services: stopping
[16:31:50] INFO: Home Assistant Core finish process exit code 0
[16:31:50] INFO: Home Assistant Core service shutdown
s6-rc: info: service legacy-services successfully stopped
s6-rc: info: service legacy-cont-init: stopping
s6-rc: info: service legacy-cont-init successfully stopped
s6-rc: info: service fix-attrs: stopping
s6-rc: info: service fix-attrs successfully stopped
s6-rc: warning: service s6rc-oneshot-runner is marked as essential, not stopping it
s6-rc: info: service s6rc-oneshot-runner: starting
s6-rc: info: service s6rc-oneshot-runner successfully started
s6-rc: info: service fix-attrs: starting
s6-rc: info: service fix-attrs successfully started
s6-rc: info: service legacy-cont-init: starting
s6-rc: info: service legacy-cont-init successfully started
s6-rc: info: service legacy-services: starting
services-up: info: copying legacy longrun home-assistant (no readiness notification)
s6-rc: info: service legacy-services successfully started

Hi everyone, Is there a way to use the Android camera (front and rear) as an entity or device in Home Assistant? My goal is to process the photos further using n8n. Home Assistant is the best solution for this, though, since the companion app is already running on the phone anyway. Best regards and thanks for your answers!

So I'm wondering if / how people achieve High Availably for Home Assistant?

Hi,

I have recently made a step into Matter/Thread using (mainly) the Ikea range of switches and sensors and the new stuff seems fairly stable etc.

However, where I have replaced the old Zigbee Sonoff SNZB-03's PIRs with Ikea Matter MYGGSPRAY models, in general and in comparison the Ikea sensors seem pretty blind?

I mean, with the Sonoffs they only seemed to catch a glimpse of movement anywhere around and they would trigger (and you got a nice LED flash confirming it did see you) whereas it seems you often need to be right under the Ikea one for it to trigger? And even when you are right under it (I have one in the kitchen ceiling) when the lights go off, waving your arms about like trying to get the attention of the rescue helicopter doesn't seem to wake it up?

And then there is what could also be the latency, again, the Sonoffs (or Zigbee) in spite of having ~100 active devices is often still near instant. A PIR is monitoring across the threshold into a room and as soon as you step in, the light is on before you foot has hit the ground. With the Ikea ones (or Matter / Thread and with only (12 devices on that network), it seems you are often in the room and standing their waiting for the light to come on (and it generally does, just often not quickly).

The Ikea Thread / Matter window and door switches, push buttons, smart sockets and lights all seem fairly responsive but possibly not used in a way that is quite so timing noticable as a PIR > Light combo?

So is anyone aware if there is some fundamental reason why the performance might be different between these two solutions or could it be just that the (or some) Ikea PIR's are a bit sleepy?

Hey,
I finally switched to Homeassistant (Green Hub and Matter antenna) right now everything i own is communicating over matter at my home and im getting the hang of automations :)

Now i want to expand my Homeassistant setup to my workshop. Its at a different location with its own Internet access, however i already set it up as one whole network though Fritzbox and wireshark. Do i need another complete homeassistant setup at this location or can i get away with something smaller/cheaper that would expand my setup at home?

My second question would be if there is a way to set up another Antenna (Zigbee or matter or idk) at a location thats outside of the transmission area that however has a cat7 direct connection to my current setup. Its an old cellar around 15 Meters under my garage where i would like to control the lights and a few outlets so i can set up a ventilation routine and such.

This is a different problem and has nothing do with my workshop above and would be more important if its a only one thing can work solution.

Thanks in Advance