Smart Home Projects, Development Insights, and Stoic Reflections

Turn your pet fountain smart using an Aqara leak sensor and Home Assistant for low-water alerts.

Building a C service that connects Home Assistant and UniFi Protect using MQTT and SFTP to control doorbell sounds and animations.

Automate UniFi Protect alarms with Home Assistant using webhooks for doorbell, motion, and line-crossing events. Learn how to trigger notifications, actions, and even send commands back to Protect.

After 18 months of North Dakota winters, the UniFi G4 Doorbell Pro proves its reliability. Learn how it integrates with Home Assistant, displays LCD messages, and powers smart automations..

Back in January 2023, I wrote an Obsidian note documenting how I migrated a Hyper-V VHDX into Proxmox. At the time, I had just spent days piecing together half-answers from forums and scattered doc...

Learn how to use the Tempest Weather Station with Home Assistant for local data, dashboards, and smart automations like rain and lightning alerts.

Using architectural floor plans and ChatGPT to troubleshoot outdoor Zigbee sensor placement.

How to install and integrate the Aqara Smart Valve Controller with Home Assistant using Matter, HomeKit, and MQTT for leak detection and water damage prevention.

How I use Papercut SMTP in both Point of Sale development and my home lab to test email delivery safely—without worrying about accidentally emailing customers or setting up real SMTP servers.

After testing the new Aqara M3 Hub, here's how it fits into my Home Assistant setup, what works well, and how I'm using its new features—including Thread, Matter, and automations.