All articles about my Home Assistant energy system and the rest of my smart home: what changed, what went wrong and what I learned from it. Newest first.
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What is EMHASS, and why I use it
Every quarter of an hour, EMHASS works out when my home battery should charge and when the hot water heats up. What it is, how it works, why I chose…
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What is evcc, and why my car is not charged by EMHASS
evcc controls my charger based on solar, price and the state of the home battery. What evcc is, how it works with Home Assistant and EMHASS, and why I deliberately…
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Kia e-Niro in Home Assistant: Kia Connect and the login problem
My Kia e-Niro is connected to Home Assistant via Kia Connect. Since Kia added a reCAPTCHA to the login, signing in with your password no longer works. Here is how…
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Smart Home Assistant irrigation with GIEX Zigbee timers, a Gardena distributor and a soil moisture sensor
My garden gets water based on soil moisture, not on the calendar. This is how I control GIEX Zigbee irrigation timers and a Gardena water distributor from Home Assistant.
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Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition review: my voice assistant with Gemini and ChatGPT
I bought the Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition and connected it to Gemini and ChatGPT. What the device can do, how to set it up with Home Assistant Cloud, and…
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Sun shading with hysteresis in Home Assistant: why my screens kept opening and closing all day
In October my screens opened and closed all day long. The cause wasn’t a sensor, but the way the automation was set up. This is how I rebuilt it with…
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Somfy screens in Home Assistant: connecting our Hardol screens via the Connexoon
Our new Hardol screens have Somfy motors and are connected to a Connexoon. This is how you link them to Home Assistant in a few minutes, with up, down and…
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Alarm system with Home Assistant: build your own with Zigbee and Z-Wave
You build an alarm system with Home Assistant from door and window contacts, motion sensors and a siren on Zigbee or Z-Wave, plus Alarmo. Which parts you need, how to…
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Z-Wave in Home Assistant: the Aeotec Z-Stick 7 next to my Zigbee stick
Besides Zigbee, I also use Z-Wave in Home Assistant. Why two protocols, how the Aeotec Z-Stick 7 works with Z-Wave JS, and what to watch out for.
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From Fibaro to Home Assistant: fifteen years of home automation and why I switched
I started with a Fibaro Home Center 2 about fifteen years ago. Which Fibaro devices I used, why I switched to Home Assistant after all, what hardware that took and…