Smart Home

Automating my home with the help of Home Assistant. All devices are ’local-only’ and don’t require the cloud to work.

Theory

Augment don’t replace - The home should function the same without the IOT gear.
Local Only - All hardware must not require a proprietary app or hub. Open protocols like zigbee, mqtt, and ESPHome keep hardware vendor agnostic.
Portable - Adds on top of the existing infrastructure. I live in apartments so many devices are standalone and not seamlessly integrated into the home’s fixtures.
Isolated and restricted - Unless necesary, most devices are blocked from the internet as well as segmented to their own IOT network.

Modes
- Home = Normal operation
- Away = No motion automations because of cat. Simulated presence
- Guest - Limited automations.
Lighting - Motion activated with adaptive color temperature and brightness
Climate - Humidifier and thermostat adjust based on home/away/night status.
Blinds- Auto tilting triggered via sun events. Close blind to prevent tv glare.
Weight Sensors - Bed and couch activate lighting/cover scenes
Weather Station - alerts and long-term tracking
Home Theater - Triggers lighting scenes and blind tilting. TV backlighting reacts to visuals.
Whole Home Audio - syncronized speaker systems for music and alerts. Un/mutes based on room presence.
Home Security - Object detection and NVR using Frigate.
Litter Robot - No possibility for local control so I don’t use the wifi features. Instead I added a door/window contact sensor for tracking usage and alerting faults.
Robot Vacuum - Activated based on litter usage and only when nobody is home
Hydroponics Garden - Automated temperature, humidity, ventilation, and water consumption tracking.
Shopping lists and reminders
Alerting - Weather, system errors, storage capacity,
Voice Control - Home Assistant Voice PE offers local-only wake word detection, STT using Whisper, and TTS using Piper.

Room presence, temperature, humidity, luminance
Window blind tilt motors for cheap horizontal blinds. Custom 3d printed mounting brackets
Weight Sensors - Bed, Couch, Humidifier, Garden water tank
IR blaster - TV control without remote. Custom dashboard on phone and usable via voice commands

Most lighting projects are running the WLED project.