Standby mode is both a blessing and a curse. Fast startup times and background processes are convenient, but have you ever stopped to ask how much these services are worth to you per year?

Your smart home sometimes requires your attention in the same way that your brick-and-mortar home does. Remembering these tasks can help you avoid problems later on.

You can fill your home with sensors that measure things like temperature, humidity, whether you left the garage door open, and who’s at home. Valuable as these are, there’s one sensor that stands head and shoulders above the rest in terms of the amount of money and hassle it can save you.

If you've ever wanted Thanos-like control over your smart home, you're about to get your wish. Developer David Ruiz has released a Maestro app in beta that lets you activate devices just by snapping your fingers.

Smart bulbs are a common gateway into the world of smart home devices. Setting one up is as simple as screwing in a light bulb, and you get instant results with the ability to turn your lights on and off remotely, change the brightness, and even use different colors with the right bulbs. Smart bulbs aren't always the best solution to every problem, however.

If you don’t have sensors hidden all over your house, do you really have a smart home? These devices make it possible to use all sorts of useful automations and alerts, from turning on lights to avoiding thousands of dollars worth of damage.

Ring video doorbells are a popular choice as they're relatively affordable and simple to set up and use. The problem is that to use the best features of a Ring doorbell, such as accessing your video history, you need to pay for a subscription. If you don't want to keep paying to use a device you already bought, there is another option.

I spend a lot of time at my desk in my home office, and I use my smart speaker multiple times during the day. I wanted a more reliable way to interact with my voice assistant, so I decided to go old school and add a phone to my desk.

If you look at the back of your TV, there are many ports that you probably never use. Some older TVs include an RS-232 serial port similar to those that you'd find on the back of old PCs. While the main uses of this port include professional diagnostics and servicing, there are several ways you can use your TV's serial port for other things.

Water leak sensors are the smart home upgrade for everyone. Whether you live in a house or apartment, own or rent, these tiny devices can save you money and hassle.

Home Assistant is, in my opinion, the best smart home software available. It's free, open-source, privacy-focused, works with a huge number of devices, and can make your smart home do almost anything you can think of. Despite all that, Home Assistant definitely has its faor share of problems.

Are you a weekend tinkerer with a love for microcontrollers? Make your network even better this weekend with these simple ESP32 projects—no solder required!

I have a lot of smart home automations that can sometimes feel like magic. I still get a small thrill when I sit down in the reading chair in the living room, and the lamp next to the chair turns on automatically. While some automations can feel like magic, there are plenty of Home Assistant projects that can replicate actual magic.

ESP32 boards are popular for home projects because they're small, versatile, and, most of all, cheap. Not only are ESP32 boards affordable, but if you use them for the right projects, they can also help you save money. Here's how.

Your smart home is constantly evolving, but a poor foundation can lead to problems down the line. Picking the right platform on which to build is arguably the most important decision you can make.

I use local LLMs for multiple purposes, including stripping personal information from documents before I upload them to Claude or ChatGPT and generating a daily RSS digest for my Kindle. Despite the slow performance of even the smaller LLMs on my hardware, I use them for a number of things in my smart home.