Follow me while I learn and explore the world of Internet of Things while I share and document my steps in creating an SmartHome, Home Assistant and other IoT projects.

  • 12 October, 2021: Smart lights
    Add features but don’t take away basic operation Using connected smart bulbs means the old and simple switch on the wall is useless. With smart bulbs you need an constant power for it to function correctly. Turning on and off a light using a wall switch is so common that it is hard to unlearn. You could use a sticky note over the switch, off course to prevent people from using the switch. Another way is to hard-wire the bulb(s) so that no matter the state of the switch, the bulb(s) are connected. This leaves you with a useless switch on the wall, but at least your automated lights will keep on working. You can remove the switch entirely if you like, but that can be more work than it’s worth. And it can be useful to be able to use a physical switch in case of an automation not working for what ever reason.
  • 10 September, 2021: Wallpanel
    Improve the Family Acceptance Factor For a while I used the webinterface of to interact with Home-Assistant via a web browser on my PC and the Home-Assistant app on my phone. This works great, but using a PC to view the current temperature in my living room is not the most convenient way. Now days, most houses in the Netherlands have a thermostat in the living room to view the temperature. The apartment I rent doesn’t have a wall-mounted thermostat control panel. Because I did have a temperature sensor connected to a Wemos d1 with ESPHome connected, Home-Assistant could measure and show the temperature on its dashboard. I had an old 7inch tablet lying around which was way too slow to be usable for anything else than showing a webpage.
  • 10 February, 2021: Wallpanel II
    upgrade of the tablet After my first steps in using a tablet on the wall as an interface to Home Assistant using an old tablet with a cracked screen. I got hands on a slightly newer but most of al undamaged tablet a Samsung Galaxy Note although support was ended long ago by Samsung for this tablet LineageOS still has support for at least Android 11. This meant I can use Fully Kiosk Browser for a more native feel and less risk of accidentally closing the browser.
  • 24 May, 2018: First light
    Start cheap build from there After my first steps in Home Automation, I soon got a couple of cheap lightbulbs from Milight that were controllable by Home Assistant. At that time I didn’t know about a serious drawback, which is the reason I do not recommend them. There is no feedback from the bulbs to the controller. Which means that the controller has no idea about the real state of the bulbs. For instance, they are controllable with a remote when you use the remote to turn a bulb on Home Assistance still think that bulb is off.