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Home Assistant Guides, Blueprints & Automation

Real-world Home Assistant guides, hardware reviews, and automation blueprints. No fluff — just what works.

Home Assistant Morning Briefing — TTS with Calendar, Weather, and Electricity Price
#home-assistant #tts #automation

Home Assistant Morning Briefing — TTS with Calendar, Weather, and Electricity Price

How I built a daily 06:00 spoken briefing in Home Assistant using Google AI TTS (Gemini), calendar.get_events across three family calendars, EV charge status, Waze commute traffic, live electricity price, and a garbage collection countdown.

May 31, 2026 · 4 min read Read more →
Home Assistant Recorder: Cut Database Growth from 160 MB/day to Under 50 MB
#home-assistant #database #recorder

Home Assistant Recorder: Cut Database Growth from 160 MB/day to Under 50 MB

My Home Assistant SQLite database hit 963 MB in six days. Here's the exact recorder config that cut daily growth by over 70% — with the full YAML and the reasoning behind each exclusion.

May 31, 2026 · 4 min read Read more →
Window Opens, Heating Stops — A Blueprint for Every Room
#home-assistant #blueprint #heating

Window Opens, Heating Stops — A Blueprint for Every Room

How I automated the radiator in Louise's room to turn off when the window opens and back on when it closes — built as a reusable Blueprint so the next room takes 30 seconds to add.

May 17, 2026 · 4 min read Read more →
Nightly Health Checks for Home Assistant — GitHub Actions as Your Watchdog
#home-assistant #github-actions #testing

Nightly Health Checks for Home Assistant — GitHub Actions as Your Watchdog

How I built a nightly CI pipeline that runs 22 tests against my live Home Assistant setup and automatically opens a GitHub issue when something breaks — before I notice it myself.

May 11, 2026 · 4 min read Read more →
Škoda Elroq + Home Assistant — Six Months In
#ev #skoda-elroq #myskoda

Škoda Elroq + Home Assistant — Six Months In

What the MyŠkoda integration actually gives you in Home Assistant, what's missing, and how I built a useful EV dashboard with a battery progress bar and calendar-triggered pre-conditioning.

Apr 13, 2026 · 4 min read Read more →
MailBoxGuard: LoRa Mailbox Sensor 200 Metres from the House
#lora #iot #home-assistant

MailBoxGuard: LoRa Mailbox Sensor 200 Metres from the House

How I wired a PricelessToolkit MailBoxGuard to an AliExpress LoRa gateway, got instant push notifications when mail arrives, and haven't touched the battery in over a year.

Mar 20, 2026 · 4 min read Read more →
Running Sonos and Google Nest Speakers as One System in Home Assistant
#sonos #google-nest #audio

Running Sonos and Google Nest Speakers as One System in Home Assistant

Unifying a Sonos speaker with four Google Nest Audio speakers via Home Assistant scripts — no third-party bridges, no subscription.

Jan 23, 2026 · 4 min read Read more →
Circadian Lighting With WiZ — Color Temperature That Follows the Sun
#wiz #lights #circadian

Circadian Lighting With WiZ — Color Temperature That Follows the Sun

How I built a circadian lighting system using WiZ bulbs and the HA sun entity — no third-party integration, just a single automation that maps solar elevation to colour temperature every 30 minutes.

Dec 12, 2025 · 4 min read Read more →
Outdoor Lights on a Sunset Schedule — Govee and LEDVANCE
#govee #ledvance #lights

Outdoor Lights on a Sunset Schedule — Govee and LEDVANCE

How I stopped manually adjusting the outdoor light timer twice a year — a simple HA automation that turns on Govee and LEDVANCE string lights at sunset and off at midnight, every season.

Nov 28, 2025 · 4 min read Read more →
WiZ Lights That React to the TV — Cinema Mode Without the Button
#wiz #lights #automation

WiZ Lights That React to the TV — Cinema Mode Without the Button

How I automated the living room lights to dim when a movie starts, brighten on pause, and restore fully when the TV turns off — no scene button, no voice command.

Nov 14, 2025 · 4 min read Read more →
TV Auto-Pause When the Phone Rings — Regular Calls and Messenger
#tv #automation #phone

TV Auto-Pause When the Phone Rings — Regular Calls and Messenger

One automation that pauses the TV the moment either phone rings — regular mobile calls resume automatically, Messenger video calls get an actionable notification button.

Oct 17, 2025 · 4 min read Read more →
Reolink CX810 in Home Assistant — License Plate Reading and TV Snapshots
#camera #reolink #alpr

Reolink CX810 in Home Assistant — License Plate Reading and TV Snapshots

How I got a Reolink CX810 4K PoE camera to read license plates with AI and push a snapshot straight to the TV when someone pulls into the driveway.

Sep 19, 2025 · 4 min read Read more →
Bosch Dishwasher in Home Assistant — Schedule by Electricity Price
#bosch #home-connect #dishwasher

Bosch Dishwasher in Home Assistant — Schedule by Electricity Price

How I connected the Bosch dishwasher via Home Connect, built a dashboard with programme selection and finish-time control, and added a button that finds the cheapest hour to run it.

Aug 22, 2025 · 4 min read Read more →
A Family Calendar in Home Assistant — Four People, One View
#calendar #google-calendar #dashboard

A Family Calendar in Home Assistant — Four People, One View

How I combined four Google Calendars plus waste collection into a single colour-coded HA view that replaced the wall calendar we'd had for years.

Jul 25, 2025 · 4 min read Read more →
A Home Screen That Shows Less — Context-Aware Cards in Home Assistant
#dashboard #lovelace #conditional

A Home Screen That Shows Less — Context-Aware Cards in Home Assistant

How I built an HA home screen where every card earns its place: conditional cards that appear only when something is active, a priority alert ticker, and a Škoda section that changes based on whether the charger is connected.

Jun 27, 2025 · 4 min read Read more →
Charging a Car on Danish Spot Prices — What I Actually Built
#electricity #ev #energi-data-service

Charging a Car on Danish Spot Prices — What I Actually Built

Using Energi Data Service in Home Assistant to track hourly spot prices, find the cheapest charging window, and automate Škoda Elroq charging without touching the app.

May 2, 2025 · 4 min read Read more →
Roborock in Home Assistant — The Map, the Rooms, and What's Actually Useful
#roborock #vacuum #dashboard

Roborock in Home Assistant — The Map, the Rooms, and What's Actually Useful

Setting up the Roborock S5 Max in Home Assistant with an interactive map card, room-segment cleaning, and the maintenance tracking that will eventually save you from a burnt-out brush.

Apr 4, 2025 · 4 min read Read more →
Tado + card_mod — Making a Heating Dashboard Worth Looking At
#tado #heating #dashboard

Tado + card_mod — Making a Heating Dashboard Worth Looking At

How I set up 5 Tado zones in Home Assistant with mushroom climate cards, a CSS breathing animation for active heating, and presence-based setback that actually works.

Mar 7, 2025 · 4 min read Read more →
Camera Notifications That Actually Tell You Something
#camera #security #home-assistant

Camera Notifications That Actually Tell You Something

How I got the Sentinel camera to send useful, actionable alerts instead of 40 motion pings a day — one automation, a mute toggle, and action buttons.

Feb 7, 2025 · 4 min read Read more →
Mammotion Flora in Home Assistant — What Actually Works
#mammotion #lawn-mower #home-assistant

Mammotion Flora in Home Assistant — What Actually Works

Mammotion Flora (Luba Mini 2) in Home Assistant: GPS boundary mowing, weather-aware scheduling, and the satellite count quirk nobody warns you about.

Jan 10, 2025 · 4 min read Read more →
Building a Consistent HA Dashboard with Glassmorphism — The CSS That Actually Works
#dashboard #design #card-mod

Building a Consistent HA Dashboard with Glassmorphism — The CSS That Actually Works

The six CSS constants I use across every card on three Home Assistant dashboards, plus the patterns for progress bars, map cards, and suppressing the Frosted Glass Dark theme's ::before overlay.

Dec 13, 2024 · 4 min read Read more →
Running Home Assistant on Proxmox — The Right Way
#proxmox #home-assistant #getting-started

Running Home Assistant on Proxmox — The Right Way

Moving Home Assistant from Raspberry Pi 4 to a Dell OptiPlex 7060 on Proxmox VE — VM sizing, USB passthrough, and why snapshots changed how I handle updates.

Nov 15, 2024 · 4 min read Read more →
#ai-vision #alpr #audio #automation #blueprint #bosch #calendar #camera #card-mod #circadian #conditional #dashboard #database #design #dishwasher #diy #electricity #energi-data-service #ev #gemini #getting-started #github-actions #google #google-calendar #google-nest #govee #heating #home-assistant #home-connect #ikea #iot #lawn-mower #ledvance #lights #lora #lovelace #mailbox #mammotion #messenger #mill #multiroom #myskoda #optimization #outdoor #phone #proxmox #recorder #reolink #review #roborock #security #skoda-elroq #sonos #sqlite #tado #testing #tts #tv #vacuum #virtualization #wiz