Using a few cheap sensors, a wireless keypad, Zigbee2MQTT and Home Assistant; I was able to get a basic security alarm up and running during a free afternoon 🙂

We recently got balanced ventilation installed, and discovered that our ventilation unit has Modbus TCP/IP support. I even found a thread on the Home Assistant community talking about interfacing the C6 controller, which our unit has, into Home Assistant 😃

Here is my implementation 👇

We have a Raspberry Pi driven digital calendar in the kitchen. I’m currently using crontab to turn the HDMI port off at night, and when we’re at work.

But a much more flexible solution is to control it using MQTT and Home Assistant. That way it can easily be automated to turn on when we’re home, if there is movement in the kitchen, or any number of conditions.

It’s really quite easy to do, here’s how 👇

Earlier this year I put up a Raspberry Pi powered DAKboard display. It shows photos from our Google Photos albums, the time and weather, and most importantly; our shared calendar.

But I’d like it to show some custom data as well — like indoor temperature and humidity. And the measured outdoor temperature, not just the one reported from the weather service.

Here is how I did that — using Home Assistant 👇

I recently watched Jeff Gerling’s video on CO₂ levels, and how to monitor it. My home office is also in the basement, with no windows. So I paid attention to the air quality when setting up down here.

In addition to monitoring the CO₂ level, I’m also automatically ventilating the space when the air quality gets too bad.

I made a simple HAT (Hardware Attached on Top) for the Raspberry Pi to read multiple DS18B20 temperature sensors — it was surprisingly easy. I used the measured temperatures to control a fan using Home Assistant.

My twin boys are, like their dad, fascinated by switches and flashing lights. I needed an excuse to use the Raspberry Pi Zero in a project, so I built them a WiFi MQTT controlled alarm module. With a couple of switches, some panel indicators, a buzzer, and a blue LED strobe.

I’ve wanted to use an ESP8266 WiFi module in a project for some time now, and after reading about the WeMos board, I figured this was the easiest way to get started. The WeMos D1 mini is quite small and much easier to interact with and program than the ESP8266 devices. So I built this single relay controller, with internal temperature reporting. I am communicating with it using MQTT, which makes it really easy to implement it into things like Home Assistant.