As a general rule, don't use the router that comes from your ISP. It's typically overpriced, but that's not all — it may even be causing issues with your smart home, at least with the default settings.
As someone who is very fond of my smart home setup, I’ll be the first to admit that a lot of it is surplus to requirements. Rarely would I recommend everyone install color-changing bulbs or relinquish control of the HVAC to just a smartphone app or a Home Assistant integration.
We ask our smart home devices to do a lot for us, and rarely spare a moment to think about what life might be like for them. I decided to give some smart home devices personalities and let them loose in their own Discord chat to see what they would say if they could.
Smart bulbs are one of the most common entries into the world of smart home devices, but they're not without their problems. If your internet goes down, you may find that you lose features or simply can't control your bulbs at all. There are several ways to stop this from happening.
Wi-Fi 7 routers and network cards are finally becoming affordable and commonplace, but if you're a homelabber or someone who just enjoys any sort of self-hosting, you probably haven't had a pressing reason to upgrade to this latest standard.
Putting sensors all over the home and connecting them to Home Assistant is fun, I know, but it isn't for everyone — not yet. Thankfully, there are smart home upgrades that don't require any apps. I may have replaced every light switch in my home with a smart one, but my favorite smart home upgrade doesn't connect to my Homey Pro at all, and it's an improvement my entire family likes as much as I do.
I added my Bambu Lab 3D printer to Home Assistant as soon as I realized I could, but it wasn’t until after doing so that I realized what I’d been missing out on. How you go about this depends largely on which printer you own, but there’s an integration out there for most printers.
Smart TVs have been around for a while at this point, which means there's a good chance that there's an aging TV somewhere in your home that doesn't have the smarts to be a TV anymore.
We live in an increasingly digital world, but as Olivia Newton-John said, sometimes you just need to get physical. Here are three projects that let you interact with Home Assistant in a physical way.
A smartwatch can do far more than show notifications or count your steps, especially if it's connected to the rest of your smart home. Google's ecosystem has quietly turned the wrist-worn device into a surprisingly capable remote control, letting you interact with devices around your home without reaching for your phone.
Smart video doorbells can be incredibly useful, but they don't last forever. If you have an old or even broken video doorbell, you don't need to throw it away. There are plenty of ways you can put it to good use.
Raspberry Pis have been popular devices for DIY projects for years. They're ideal for many tech projects, but they're not always the perfect choice. There are many projects where a cheap ESP32 board is a better option, and the benefits go beyond the much lower price.
For many years, I built smart home automations that my family tolerated at best. It took a change of approach to finally create an automation that my family genuinely appreciated. That single automation ended up being a real turning point in how my family sees my smart home hobby.
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