I have a lot of appliance manuals that I've collected over the years. They rarely need looking at, but when they do, finding the right manual can be a chore. I decided to stick NFC tags to my appliances so that I could access their manuals more easily.

Motion sensors are popular smart home devices. They're relatively cheap and simple to set up, but often people only use them for basic automations such as turning on the lights when you walk into a room. With the right automations, there's a lot more you can do using motion sensors.

When smart speakers first burst onto the scene, it felt like this would be the way we would all be controlling our smart homes in the future. That future never really became a reality, as smart speakers haven't really improved much over the years. It's reached the point now where your old phone or a DIY smart speaker can do a better job.

My smart home has a lot of complicated automations, many of which have their own quirks. When guests visit, they just want to be able to do simple things like turning on the lights, watching TV, or turning up the heating. I decided to turn an old Android phone into a dedicated guest remote that's simple enough for anyone to use.

Many newer Kindle models allow you to link your Kindle and Goodreads accounts so that the reading progress on your Kindle shows up in Goodreads. This was never the case for my old Kindle 4, and if you jailbreak a newer Kindle and read using KOReader, you lose the benefits of this native integration. Thankfully, I was able to use a KOReader plugin to get my reading stats to sync with Goodreads.

It may be a cliché, but my kids really do start asking if we're there yet about ten minutes into every road trip. One of the best ways to keep them quiet is to let them watch one of their favorite shows or movies on a tablet. Netflix has some great options that keep my kids entertained for hours.

I switched to Jellyfin from Plex some time ago, and I haven't looked back. While Jellyfin gives me control over my media collection, its clients don't always feel designed for people who run their own servers. The free and open-source Moonfin client supports Jellyfin and Emby and was built specifically with homelabbers in mind.

A Raspberry Pi and a mini PC have a lot in common, but most mini PCs can outperform Raspberry Pis for traditional computing tasks. They're intended for different purposes, however, and there are plenty of things that a Raspberry Pi can do that a mini PC can't match.

The number of features packed into Home Assistant is insane. The problem is that there are so many features that it can be easy to overlook some of the best ones. I slept on some of Home Assistant's features for far too long; here are some more of the best features that I wish I'd started using much sooner.

Maintaining an eBook collection can feel like a full-time job. A folder full of public domain books downloaded from the internet can include multiple copies of the same book in different file formats, or file names that bear little resemblance to the titles of the books themselves. I used Yazi, a terminal-based file manager, to clean up an eBook download before the files ever made it into my Calibre library.

I've been clinging on to my ancient gas-powered lawnmower for years. It weighs a ton and literally gave me a hernia when I lugged it up some steps, but it's always done a great job tackling my lawn, even when I've let the lawn get a little bit out of control. A relative was raving about their electric mower, so I took it for a spin and found that most of the things I was most worried about turned out to be complete myths.

I loved my first Walkman to the point where I used it until it fell apart, but my favorite music player was still my iPod. There was nothing quite like flipping through the albums in the Cover Flow view by spinning my thumb around the click wheel. When I found an old remote that had its own wheel-style input, I wondered if I could bring those days back.

Android trackers and AirTags are great for keeping track of your luggage or your keys. You can use your phone to see the location of your tracker and even get precise directions to locate some trackers once you're in their general location. There are some clever ways to use Android trackers and AirTags that go beyond just keeping tabs on your bags.

NFC tags are really useful for triggering smart home automations. They're cheap to buy, they don't need batteries or to be connected to power, and you can stick them almost anywhere. I wondered if it would be possible to use my expired credit cards as NFC tags, and it turned out that they can be even more useful than the standard stickers.

Building a smart home can be an expensive business. Some devices, such as cheap Zigbee sensors, can cost just a few bucks, but other devices can run to hundreds of dollars. The good news is that it's often possible to build your own smart home devices, and the total cost can sometimes work out far less than buying a ready-made product.