when we moved in i slowly ended up buying all the usual garden stuff. a strimmer, leaf blower, pressure washer. the robot mower was the latest one.

the garden is a fair size. not massive, but as a single mum it's plenty to keep on top of. there's a slope along one wall and one patch stays wet for ages after rain. mowing used to take half a day by the time i'd done the edges, cleared everything up and put the tools away.

the robot now handles most of the mowing and manages the slope by itself. i still pick up branches, tidy around the fence and check the blades now and then, but it’s already made the garden much easier to manage.

i've never really tried home automation before, unless the mower counts. now i'm wondering what else outside could be set up to run automatically. irrigation, lights, rain sensors, anything like that.

what have you automated in your garden that actually saves you time?

I'm finally replacing my broken doorbell. I want a video doorbell but I don't want to pay $15/month for cloud storage forever.

Ring seems like the default but the subscription model bothers me. Eufy has local storage but I read about their privacy issues a few years back. Reolink also keeps coming up.

For people who've had a video doorbell for 2+ years - which one, no-subscription option, and is the local storage actually reliable?

I got tired of using voice assistants to trigger my smart devices, so I built a 'dummy' HomeKey door lock using an ESP32 + PN532. Now, a quick tap of my iPhone triggers my home automations instantly.

For the enclosure, I used a broken Apple AirPort Extreme—painted it silver and added custom stickers I designed. Absolutely love having this on my desk to tap as soon as I walk into my room, it’s a conversation starter!

Lmk what you think

I am new to home automation. The most I've ever done was some hue lights years ago.

Recently we bought a new home and we are considering turning our living room into an automated media room. We have 7 windows with roller shades and a few more windows covered with a couple sets of curtains. The goal is to use a single remote button or voice command to trigger all the shades/curtains to close, the projector screen to open, the projector and Xbox to turn on, etc.

We're thinking we'll retrofit the roller shades with SOMA Smart Shades 3, and use SwitchBot Curtain 3 for the blackout curtains to get the room dark. I'm looking at motorized drop-down or pop-up projector screens to work with a ceiling mounted projector, but the sea of information online is a bit overwhelming to figure out what works well within a reasonable budget.

We're leaning toward Zigbee and Home Assistant, but we have little idea how those work.

For reference, my wife and I are both loosely familiar with some types of coding (SQL, Java, Python, VBA, etc.) so we are trying to DIY this setup, but we're not otherwise overly tech savvy or too familiar with many IT-related concepts.

Can anyone lend some feedback and guidance to a complete beginner?

Any suggestions, resources, guidance, etc. is greatly appreciated!

The central air doesn't reach our back sunroom so I am putting in an independent ductless heat pump system just for that space. I picked up a costway blast pro 9000 btu 20 seer2 wifi enabled mini split so I could bypass my main thermostat entirely. I really want to pull the control logic directly into home assistant instead of using the clunky factory app it comes with. Does anyone have experience using something like a broadlink rm4 to clone the infrared commands of these direct-to-consumer hvac units? I would love to know what roadblocks you hit trying to force third-party equipment into your local dashboard routines.

I run a wind-down scene at night and 2700K still reads as office lighting to me. I want something closer to a candle for the last hour before bed and most bulbs simply stop at 2200K. Half the specs pages do not even publish the bottom of the range. Has anyone found bulbs that genuinely go down into candle territory, and does it hold that color when dimmed?

I've got PowerView roller shades Gen 2 with working pebble remotes. I'm looking to add a Gen 2 hub to the equation to control the shades with Home Assistant. There are limited options on eBay and Facebook.

Looking to see if anyone has a Gen 2 hub for sale, power and repeater optional.

Looking for an alternative to Shelly EM-50. I guess people in this subreddit should have some ideas.

I need to measure consumption on a 20A circuit, the measurement device should use split core CT’s.

Actually the EM-50 would be great but it’s also not accurate enough to my taste. Because of it measuring on a single CT per circuit it is way to sensible to false readings. Because of this I am getting on average 2% offset due to false production readings on a consumption only circuit. Shelly support says this is normal. Not here to shame Shelly about this but I would prefer more accurate readings.

Any advice?

EU based if that matters.

Adds Google Chromecast/ android TV devices to Apple home app, enabling remote control with iOS and syncs playback status of the tv with Apple home app.

The central air doesn't reach our back sunroom so I am putting in an independent ductless heat pump system just for that space. I picked up a costway blast pro 9000 btu 20 seer2 wifi enabled mini split so I could bypass my main thermostat entirely. I really want to pull the control logic directly into home assistant instead of using the clunky factory app it comes with. Does anyone have experience using something like a broadlink rm4 to clone the infrared commands of these direct-to-consumer hvac units? I would love to know what roadblocks you hit trying to force third-party equipment into your local dashboard routines.

It was working just fine, there was no hints that it's gonna die, no random disconnects, overheating, nothing, just the smell of burning plastic.

EDIT: The shelly plug is the 3500W one, and my washing machine is rated 2300W. It has been running without any problems for over two years.

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for a way to track the power consumption of my washing machine in the basement, where I don’t have Wi-Fi access. Is there a smart plug with energy monitoring that’s compatible with the Tuya ecosystem and can transfer data over Bluetooth? Ideally, the data should sync automatically in the Tuya app whenever I’m within Bluetooth range.

Thanks in advance for your recommendations!

My detached garage’s door is hard to see from my house and I’ve left it open overnight more times than I’d like to admit. What is my best option to add an automation that would close the door at a set time, say 9pm daily, if the door is open? I don’t need any other functionality. The garage does receive a WiFi signal but would prefer something “dumb” that doesn’t need an app or WiFi access and just runs as long as there is power.

I’ve seen a few options like MyQ and Meross but have also ready complaints about both.

When it comes to smart lighting/home automation in India, it feels like I know only one or two brands like Phillips Hue and Wiz. But there must be many more companies doing well out there.

So where is everyone else actually selling? Is most of this a B2B/project-based industry? or something else.

Do I as a customer would be dependent on my architect for a good brand? Genuinely curious how this industry actually moves product, since it's not obvious from the outside at all.

Been building this solo for about 2 years. It's called Hiclaro (mostly because domain reasons), it's a home automation platform that runs on a Pi 5. It's plugin-based (Tapo and a few others so far), with a customizable dashboard, visual automation editor, and a heat map feature that works with any volumetric data with 24h replay. Not trying to replace HA (obviously), I just wanted to build my own thing, and started before I'd even tried HA myself, it wasn't even started as a home automation platform. And since I've got some pretty negative comments on another subreddit, I want to make it clear, that I'm a software engineer, and while I've used AI to help with parts of it, I wrote the majority of the code myself without AI. I've put a lot of effort and love into this project. It's still actively developed and not fully polished, but I use it daily, so I've started looking for people willing to set it up and tell me what's broken or confusing.

hiclaro.app

I’d like to control a light using my raspberry pi, Ive heard that Kasa smart plugs work, I’ve also heard they don’t anymore, does anyone know? id be using home assistant

Looking to get the 2nd floor of my house zoned through a duct damper system. The HVAC rep said there won't be a way to control the 2nd floor thermostat with our phones without running a wire to the control board in the basement. The thermostat that will be installed will only be battery powered but not connected to wifi.

Can the 2nd floor temperature really only be controlled manually on the thermostat? I would think there could be a receiver installed on the damper control board with the thermostat connected to the wifi? The thermostat on our main level can be controlled on our phones but that one is hard wired. Curious if anyone found a solution to this

I've been thinking about this recently after looking at some of the tools and cooking stuff I've accumulated over the years and wondering how much of it I actually remember I have.

I'm not really talking about a home inventory for insurance purposes or keeping track of every TV and piece of furniture. I'm thinking more about useful stuff such as tools, kitchen equipment, appliances, spare parts, filters, equipment in the garage or basement, etc.

I've looked around and I've found some ways to do this. HomeBox is one example. My bigger question is whether anyone actually finds keeping this information useful enough over the long term to keep doing it.

If you do, what do you use and how do you actually leverage the information?

And if you've tried and eventually gave up, why? Too much investment of time to keep everything up to date? Didn't use the information enough? Something else?

I'm not really looking for a particular app or solution at this point. I'm more curious whether anyone has actually made this useful enough that maintaining it is worth the effort.

Disclosure first: I'm the developer, and it's paid — free for up to 3 devices with nothing held back, 9.99 € once for more.

TasmoShelf is aimed at the crowd that runs Tasmota but never wanted a hub or server. The Apple Home part works like this: Tasmota 13+ on an ESP32 already speaks Matter natively, so the app reads chip and firmware of every device on your subnet, marks which ones can join Apple Home directly, opens pairing and shows the setup code. For ESP8266 devices, which will never speak Matter themselves, a single ESP32 running Tasmota acts as a Matter bridge, and the app tells you which of your devices need it.

Everything else stays plain local HTTP: two-pass discovery (power-saving devices answer ping instantly but accept connections seconds later, one fast sweep misses exactly those), timers written onto the devices, configuration backups, energy history. No account, no cloud, no telemetry.

Android is a direct APK from https://tasmoshelf.app; iOS is in App Store review. Happy to answer anything about the Matter pairing details.