Smart Home

Real-world smart home builds with Home Assistant, sensors, and integrations that survive past the honeymoon period.

Keep your Reolink cameras off the cloud with go2rtc

Keep your Reolink cameras off the cloud with go2rtc

Fully local Reolink surveillance in Home Assistant using go2rtc, Frigate, and firewalled VLANs. Includes model recommendations and firewall rules.

A $60 ESPHome build shuts your water off in seconds

A $60 ESPHome build shuts your water off in seconds

Build a smart water leak detection system with ESPHome and a motorized shut-off valve. Ties into Home Assistant and costs far less than commercial.

Home Assistant 2026.1 adds Matter devices with no phone

Home Assistant 2026.1 adds Matter devices with no phone

Home Assistant 2026.1 lifts Matter and Thread into Settings and adds devices from the web UI, with a new matter.js server for Matter 1.4 coverage.

Circuit board in a wall socket sending radio waves through a wall to a seated figure drawn as breathing and heartbeat waveforms

A $9 chip with RuView can hear you breathe through a wall

RuView WiFi sensing turns a $9 ESP32 into a presence and vital signs sensor for Home Assistant. See which accuracy claims it actually measured.

Home Assistant can hear your wake word with no cloud

Home Assistant can hear your wake word with no cloud

Build a fully local voice assistant with Home Assistant's Wyoming protocol, Whisper STT, Piper TTS, and openWakeWord. Keep commands off the cloud.

The Zigbee binding trick that keeps lights working when Home Assistant dies

The Zigbee binding trick that keeps lights working when Home Assistant dies

Zigbee binding lets switches control lights directly without a hub. Covers Zigbee2MQTT and ZHA configuration, group binding, and common pitfalls.