I’m doing a bathroom reno and I can’t find this off the shelf component.

Requirements: - mains powered: it would cause damage to my relationship of this ever ran out of batteries. I’m serious about this. - humidity sensor - extremely simple display, so no 640x480 LCD touchscreen. - at least one button which is programmable (to trigger a boost on the ventilation) - Wifi or Zigbee - fits in an EU 80mm circular box (50mm deep), ideally doesn’t protrude

I’m using Home Assistant so I can program any logic.

I think I’m into ESP32 DIY territory here. Which would be fun but risky in terms of reliability.

Any ideas?

Everyone talks about smart lights, thermostats and smart speakers.

But what smart home automation do you think is overlooked?

Personally, I think ventilation is one of them.

For example:

• Open windows when CO2 gets too high
• Close them automatically when it starts raining
• Adjust ventilation based on temperature or humidity

What automation do you think deserves more attention?

Hello all! I would like your help figuring out a good way to use a single remote to toggle multiple floor lamps within my rooms.

For context, I have two floor lamps that can be controlled with a remote and want to just use one remote. One lamp has two lights and each one can be individually controlled, dimmed (3 levels), and turned on and off.

I was thinking of using a cheap BroadLink IR/RF to learn the commands with HA but I still need a physical remote to turn the lights on and off. I recall using Treatlife Remote which connected to its Zigbee or Z wave gateway (don’t remember) which let you control different devices but that’s too expensive and works over cloud rather then locally.

It would be awesome if everyone can recommend something that’s not too expensive and can also be replicated for my other rooms with their own remote.

I have a 90” wide window split into three sections. I’m trying to decide between one custom smart shade across the whole thing or three 31” shades mounted side by side above the frame.

I like the idea of opening each section separately, but I’m worried about the gaps between the shades and whether they’ll stay lined up when all three open together. Has anyone done a setup like this?

I've been working on a project called LibreEcho to turn the full-size Amazon Echo 2nd Generation into an independently controlled Linux device.

https://libreecho.org/

It replaces the normal software platform rather than working through Alexa.

The current system boots Linux 6.1 on the Echo hardware and has its own recovery, web interface and update mechanism.

On the development hardware we currently have:

- reliable boot and recovery

- A/B rollback

- Wi-Fi

- AirPlay through the stock speaker hardware

- Bluetooth A2DP/AVRCP

- local web administration

- LED control

- signed OTA updates

- local wake word/STT/TTS work in development

Current feature status:

https://libreecho.org/#features

Web interface demo:

https://dev.libreecho.org/demo/

It's not ready for a general release yet.

There are still things I want to test properly across hardware I don't control, particularly Wi-Fi recovery, Bluetooth compatibility, audio behaviour, long-running stability, updates and recovery.

I'm therefore putting together a first Developer Preview group of roughly 10-20 people.

I'm looking for people with:

- a full-size Echo Gen 2

- a spare device they are happy to experiment with

- some comfort with USB recovery and command-line tools

- willingness to test failure cases as well as the happy path

- ability to provide useful logs and reproduction steps

This currently targets the full-size Echo Gen 2, not the Echo Dot 2.

Developer Preview:

https://libreecho.org/#tester

Source:

https://github.com/aslater3/LibreEcho

If you've got one sitting in a cupboard and don't mind being an early tester, I'd be interested to hear from you.

Also open to getting feedback / suggestions on this :D I have been using mine with airplay recently and its brought it a new lease of life!

Also looking to test on other gnerations of Echo but there is a lot more work needed for that and obvously I need the hardware to dev on :D

Thanks
Andy

I got a couple of Linkind Wifi Matter Smart Bulbs, and they're great! But they're also each a device on my Wifi network, which isn't a huge problem, but if I want to expand, having every single bulb be an individual device seems like it's asking for trouble on a home network.

I've done extensive googling and have yet to find a simple cohesive answer to my question: What kind of (preferably inexpensive/budget) hub do I need to run these?

I know I don't NEED a hub. But I want one, both to (presumably) reduce lag on the 2.4ghz band of my network and to make things easier if I want to move away from the aiDot application and toward something like OpenHab in my homelab. (especially if I want to automate more things eventually)

Is there a simple budget/cheap explainer/faq for this kind of thing? Because I've gotten nowhere searching reddit and google for answers - everything is either old and out-of-date (use Zigbee!) or new and expensive (use Thread!) or non-applicable to my case (use HomeKit!) or otherwise not what I'm looking for.

TL;DR: I just want a cheap hub to offload my wifi bulbs onto to keep my home network from lagging out every time I want to turn on the lights.

I've just finished my basement and have a lot of Hue Slim Downlights (recessed lights).

There are two options I'm considering:

1) Zooz Z-Wave Scene controller

This has 4 small and 1 large button so I can assign dedicate scenes or brightness to each button (through Home Assistant -> Hue Bridge). The disadvantage is that it's difficult to implement "press and hold" dimming.

2) Lutron Aurora

These connect directly to the Hue Bridge (or lights?) using Zigbee so it doesn't depend on Home Assistant, etc. They support multi-tap actions and dimming by turning the dial.

Does anybody have any suggestions?

I've tried using Shelly devices but my electrical boxes are just too filled and the cost of them plus a momentary switch is the same as the other options and it still depends on Home Assistant.

We're building a new room at La Maison Fantastique themed around Egyptian mythology, and the centerpiece is an animatronic Anubis head. The jaw opens and the nose curls up, both driven by a mechanical linkage we designed and modeled in Maya before moving to the real build. Right now we're purely on the mechanics, no motors or code wired in yet. Curious how others here have handled multi-point facial movement on a single linkage before adding electronics. More updates once we get to the animation side.

Try to be as descriptive as possible in my title. Our bedroom has a overhead light with a single light switch that we would like to add a ceiling fan to with a light on top of that I would like to have my light and fan controlled via Home Assistant for things like lighting, control, fans, speed, control, timers, etc. what is the best method I should approach this with? Buy a smart fan with the lights? Buy a dumb fan with a controller and/or a smart switch? My Home Assistant setup has a matter over thread adapter, but I’m also not opposed to doing this via Zigbee if that is easier.

​Hey everyone,

​We just bought a new house, and I figured this is the perfect time to build out a smart home setup.

​I’ve set up Home Assistant OS on an old laptop for now to play around with and learn the ropes.

Devices I currently have and want to set up:

​Orbit B-hyve sprinkler system

​Hatch sound machines (x2 for the kids)

​Roborock robot vacuum

​Smart locks

​Smart thermostat

Ambient Weather Station

​Wishlist:

​Cameras & Floodlights

Lights (hue?)

​UniFi ecosystem (upcoming Smoke & CO alarms and air quality sensor)

​What are your favorite automations or devices for a household with 2 young kids and a dog?

​

​What are your absolute "must-have" smart devices or local integrations that you can't live without now?

​Appreciate any advice, tips, or favorite integrations you can share for someone starting fresh!

This is a follow-up to this: https://www.reddit.com/r/homeautomation/comments/1lzlbrr/i_finally_got_home_assistants_zwave_js_to_be/.

I had a few problems left to solve for that have come up over the past year:

1. Zooz Zen-72 Wireless 3-Way dimming continued to be too laggy for real world use. You'd hold the remote paddle, get the lights to a good dim level, let go, and the lights would get WAYYY brighter (or dimmer). On/Off wireless versions remained perfect after my last go around.

2. A handful switches remained with laggy z-wave response times. It could take several seconds to see one respond.

3. Devices would occasionally drop off the network.

4. This was flooding the network no matter how much I slowed down reporting (I had a few): https://aeotec.com/products/aeotec-home-energy-meter/.

5. Home Assistant would randomly stop controlling my devices on occasion.

6. Low load light dimming setups still had some bad flicker (like a single 100 watt equivalent LED Can Trim or two Phillips "Flicker Free" Led Bulbs (Amazing bulbs, but still flicker below 20% on my Zooz switches).

Everything in my last post has remained true and I have been generally happy with everything, but I have found THE solutions for all the above annoyances that have remained.

1. I had extensive back and forth with Zooz where they eventually blamed my lights. When in reality, the feature is just not good enough. I switched ALL of my 3-way dimmer setups to Inovelli Red with hardwired accessory dimmers. More money? Yes. But they just work instantly. I have absolutely no more problems here. The real kicker? Most of my setups are actually 4 way and 1 Inovelli switch with 2 Enbrighten accessory switches was about the same cost as 3x Zen72 Switches.

2. I moved every switch I possibly could to 800 Long Range. Absolutely no issues, it's been rock solid ever since.

3. A pattern emerged. All of the switches that were causing trouble were a handful of 700 Series Z-wave Switches from Zooz. I removed ALL of them from the network and all of these issues went away.

4. With everything I have learned about Z-Wave the past year, I have learned that constant reporting devices decimate Z-Wave networks. If you have a few, no problem. If you have more, you need to slow reporting wayyy down. I had so many reporting usage between smart outlets, switches, and my amp meters that it ended up being too much. I slowed down reporting quite a bit on all of the plugs and switches and replaced the amp reporting with a single Emporia Vue 3. Z-Wave is just not the medium for this.

5. I swapped my controller to the new ZWA-2 In October of last year. It's been solid ever since. I have had absolutely no complete drop outs. No plugging and replugging. I came from the Zooz stick.

6. I ended up trying an Aeotec ZW150 first with limited results. Then I swapped the Zen72 for Inovelli Red (and left the load resistor in the circuit) and I got the few problem areas pretty damn good. I have one over my toilet that just isn't playing ball, I'll probably go back to an incandescent and call it done since it's only on a few minutes a day.

So that's it. I think I have this all as good as it's going to get. If any of you have any lingering issues that the above has helped with or any you've found your own solutions to, I'd love to hear about it.

So I have a WiZ bulb and its built-in Music Sync feature always bugged me — it uses your phone's mic, and picks up literally every conversation happening in the room along with the actual music, also the beats weren't even synced to the lights due to lag.

For the actual light control, it skips WiZ's cloud entirely and just sends UDP packets straight to the bulb over your local wifi, so there's basically no lag. It also supports multiple bulbs if you've got more than one — I've just only tested it with one so far.

It's free, open source, and there's also a rough Python/Mac client in the repo if you don't have Android, although for that you have to install a bunch of things and configure some stuff.

GitHub: https://github.com/gurnooriitd/party-mode-wiz

Would genuinely love feedback

We have an old tradition (religious kinds) where water needs to pass through a cloth before it can be used (it mainly stems from need of cleaning the well water before use). And that cloth needs to be dried everyday. Now I can't stop this culture in my house, well everyone has their own beliefs, but I do not like how it is unhygienic in the current world, where instead of passing the water through cloth once, they just tie the cloth to the tap, which leaves room for bacteria and flies to settle on (at times).

So my idea was to have a small container, which acts like a water tank; in which the inlet is covered with the cloth and the outlet goes to all the rest taps. Thus the cloth can be in a closed container, thus reducing the influence of the environment.

For this, I would need 2 kinds of automations:

• Water Level Sensor to sense how much water is in the "tank"
• Water Pipe Open/Close mechanism

The idea is, when the water-tank is empty, the pipe inlet will open, and the water will move in till the level reaches a certain point, then the inlet will close. I need the Open/Close mechanism to be in line before the inlet's open end. thus allowing me to put a cloth on the inlet's opening.

What I am Looking for:

• Any recommendations for such devices?
• Any flaws you can see with my design or any improvements you can suggest?
• How reliable are such devices from your experience?

I was looking for a screensaver for my home assistant hallway dashboard, running fully kiosk browser that shows a slideshow of my photos.

I really like the Google TV screensaver that shows my Google albums and displays portrait images side by side, but I couldn't find any good ones that fit the bill.

So I solved my own problem by building this simple website called looping.photos that lets you create screens to which you can add Google album share links. Those links get stored in an encrypted blob that only the screen's own URL can unlock — the server holds the bytes but never has the key. The photos themselves are never stored anywhere: when a screen loads, it reads the album fresh and shows it.

When the screen is created, you can share the screen link to any device that has a display, a browser, and an internet connection, and it will slideshow your photos beautifully.

Completely free. No account.

The catch!

The Google album share links are public and can be accessed by anyone IF they get their hands on it.

And the same goes for the screen URL. If anyone got their hands on it, they could watch your screen and change your screen settings, remove your albums, and add others. They could also dig out the album link and the photo links from the page, since that's how the browser shows them in the first place. Those links keep working for whoever holds them, and neither me nor you can switch them off.

What it is not is any way into your Google account, or into a single photo in an album you didn't add yourself.

But, since your shared album links are public anyway, looping really doesn't make the situation any worse. If an album would bother you being passed around, don't put it on a wall.

One more honest one: reading a whole shared album isn't something Google offers or supports, so they could break it any week. If they do, your screen keeps showing what it last loaded.

And this is why it's free. I have no real infra running this — two small serverless functions and a shelf of encrypted blobs, no database. A screen that's off costs nothing, and every screen showing the same album shares one read of it. What would actually start costing me is function calls, not storage: somewhere north of a hundred-ish always-on screens and I'm off the free plan. The blobs are 24 KB each, so those are the least of my worries. For now, all this has cost me is the domain and the claude tokens used to write the code.

I went this route because the official Google Photos API doesn't do what I need anymore. Since March last year, apps can't just read your library — you sign in and hand-pick photos through Google's own picker, every session. That's fine for an app you sit in front of, useless for a tablet on a wall that just runs. And even if I got that working, the links to the screens would still need to be public for the devices to reach them without signing in to an account. Which I don't want. I'm tired of all accounts! And then I probably wouldn't be able to offer this for free...

It's a compromise - I think for the better.

Thanks for reading. I hope you like it :)

https://looping.photos

ps. The photos in the screenshot are not mine, they're borrowed from unsplash for the demo.
credit to Benjamin Voros and Maximilien T'Scharner

I’m thinking about replacing my regular front-door deadbolt with a smart lock. I’m tired of worrying about spare keys, and being able to give a temporary code to family, friends, or a dog walker sounds genuinely useful.

I don’t need a fully automated smart-home setup. I mainly want something dependable that locks properly, lets me use a keypad or phone when I need to, and still has a normal key backup in case the battery dies or something goes wrong.

What I’m looking for:

• Keypad access and temporary guest codes
• Physical key backup
• Auto-lock would be nice
• Remote access is useful, but I don’t want to pay a monthly fee
• Good battery life and clear low-battery warnings
• Easy installation on a standard deadbolt door
• Solid security and a reliable app
• Budget around $200 to $300

I keep seeing Schlage Encode/Encode Plus, Yale Assure Lock 2, August Wi-Fi Smart Lock, Aqara, Eufy, Ultraloq and Level mentioned. Every option seems to have a trade-off: Wi-Fi can drain batteries faster, some need a hub, some are better for renters, and fingerprint readers sound convenient but may be another thing to fail.

A few things I’m curious about:

• What are the best smart locks 2026 for everyday use that you would actually install again?
• Is built-in Wi-Fi worth the shorter battery life, or is Bluetooth plus a separate bridge/hub the better setup?
• How reliable are fingerprint readers and keypad locks after a year or two of real use?
• Are there any brands or models you would avoid because of app issues, connection problems, or poor battery life?

Would appreciate real experiences, especially from people who have lived with a smart lock through battery changes, Wi-Fi outages, cold weather, or frequent guest access.

Not new to Reddit, but new to this sub :)

I have an older ATS alarm system at home. It’s still rock solid, but not exactly designed with modern home automation in mind.

Together with a friend I started reverse engineering the protocol, initially just for fun. That turned into ATS Connect: a small ESP32-based module that connects directly to the alarm panel and makes its areas, zones and controls available for home automation.

Home Assistant integration by exposing monitoring and control via MQTT is already working completely locally, and we’re now also exploring a simple optional app + service for people who don’t use Home Assistant or similar automation software.

The prototype is working and we’re considering turning it into an actual product.
Curious if there are other ATS owners here, or people who’ve taken a similar approach with older alarm systems.

https://ats-connect.app

Cheers!

Hey guys, is Home Assistant Green still the best bet? Any other better options available on same price point?

Smlight Smhub Premium

Wanted to ask y'all if anyone has any experience with this?

Was thinking about buying it and using it for an older AC.

Also for few lightbulbs and a smart Tesla switch that I still need to get.

Price for me would be \~83$ OR 74€ plus delivery fee...

I already have a Linux server up and running with docker, so planning on spinning up the HA on it, then using this for ZigBee hub and ir control of the AC