In this guide, I’m going to show you how to create a Home Assistant “countdown to date” sensor. This sensor can be used in automations or displayed in a Lovelace card and will show you how many days until a certain event. This a great visual way to keep track of important dates. Sure, you…
In this guide, I’m going to show you how to add and use NFC tags in Home Assistant. Once you purchase a few NFC tags or stickers, you can do all sorts of things with such as unlock doors, turn on lights, run automations, and much more. I’ll include a few ways I use NFC…
In this guide, I’m going to show you how to configure Google Calendar Event notifications before an event starts in Home Assistant. This setup can get pretty complex and largely dependent on your own personal use case, so I’m just going to go over the basic usage in this guide, but there’s more info the…
In this guide, I’m going to show you how to add a Sengled RGB zigbee smart light bulb to Home Assistant. The pairing process for these bulbs is super easy and can be completed in just a few seconds. I have a bunch of these bulbs around my smart home and have been using them…
In this guide, I will show you how to add a MagicHome LED controller to Home Assistant using the FLUX integration. Once added, you’ll be able to turn the Magic Home light strip on or off, change the colors and temperature, and even create automations to cycle between colors. Basically, everything you can do within…
In this guide, I’m going to show you how to setup your Home Energy dashboard, using data pulled in from my Smart Meter Texas energy provider. Not all energy providers offer services like Smart Meter Texas, however if you are lucky enough to live in a area that provides your energy data via an API…
In this guide, I’m going to show you how to split up your configuration.yaml file. This will allow you cleanup and organize all of the packages, binary sensors, automations, or template sensors into their own configuration files. Rather than keeping everything in one large file, you will add an !include reference in your configuration file…
In this guide, I’m going to show you how to create status notifications to let you know when your garage door is opening, opened, closing, or closed. For reference, I am using a MyQ Chamberlain wifi device that paired with my “dumb” garage door opener. Here’s what it looks like: It’s super cheap and has…
In this guide, I’m going to show you how to add some of your internal-facing servers as sidebar items in Home Assistant. This will allow you to manage and use these websites the exact same way as if you were to go to the IP and port directly. For example, you could add Sonarr, Radarr,…
If you use Home Assistant, then chances are that you are familiar with MDI, or materialdesignicons.com. I’ve always had a lot of issues with the MDI website. Speed being the #1 issue for me. On average, it takes 8+ seconds for the searched term to appear. I stumbled across a really neat website that makes…