How to – Systems Lab

May 15, 2023April 1, 2023

Using ntfy.sh from Home Assistant

While surfing Reddit one day I ran across a post about Unified Push and setting up ones own self hosted push notification system. A push notification system that can be self hosted and isn’t owned by any of the big tech companies, which I’m all for. So I decided to test it out by setting up home assistant notifications through it. While here I won’t be installing and setting up my own ntfy.sh server right now, I will probably be doing that part in the future.

May 8, 2023February 26, 2023

Getting SVG Data into CATIA

Another day, another type of data to import into CATIA. This time is the classic SVG format used by LightBurn and often edited with InkScape. This is pretty quick but I wanted a bunch of screenshots to make it easy to follow.

April 24, 2023February 12, 2023

Fixing network problems in HASS

Recently I have been working on fixing the configuration issues in my home assistant installation. I run the supervised mode on an Ubuntu VM that I setup myself with some scripts (since it’s not supported by the official installer). Due to this, I encountered a problem with network manager in home assistant that caused home assistant to lose Internet access (so unable to download updates) even though the VM has no problems accessing the Internet as a whole.

April 17, 2023February 12, 2023

Night Security Lights

I wanted to setup some smart lights to turn on and off at various times when I’m away so that it looks like people are still around in the house. These are going to be going between a few rooms to look more legitimate for anyone watching.

April 3, 2023April 1, 2023

EspDeck Generation 3: Simplify!

With the latest iteration of EspHome bringing in matrix keypad support, and the parts ready for a third espdeck build, I decided to redesign it yet again to try and optimize things further.

March 27, 2023February 12, 2023

Cleaning up the docker registry

Working on my docker swarm recently I noticed that my storage was running low. After investigation, I found I had 17GB of usage by my docker registry. I have no need to have that many versions of my custom built containers on hand, so I went through the process of cleaning it up.

March 20, 2023February 17, 2023

Home Assistant Wall Tablet Display with a Fire HD8

I have wanted to add a tablet to control home assistant from for a while. I originally started by using my Nexus 7 2012 as the machine, got WallPanel installed, and found out that the embedded browser in that version of Android was too out of date and crippled to run the home assistant webui. So I decided to pick up an Amazon fire tablet for cheap to try using. I figured if I liked using it, I could use a better tablet in the future (or go through the effort of rooting the tablet and installing regular Android on it).

March 13, 2023February 17, 2023

The Indoor Air Quality (UK) HACS Integration and Sensor

Now that I have a number of AirGradient sensors around my house, I have all sorts of data I can make use of about the air quality inside it. I now have to figure out how to make use of all that data. Creating a single unified data point for general air quality based on the AirGradient data is the first thing I’m going to do. To do this, I’ll make use of the IAQUK HACS integration.

March 6, 2023February 17, 2023

Adding TVOC to the AirGradient

Once I had my baseline AirGradient sensors built and configured, I wanted to add a few more sensors to it. One of the sensors to be added is an SGP30 TVOC sensor (Total Volatile Organic Compounds).

February 27, 2023February 17, 2023

Home Assistant Picture-Elements Card

I’ve seen the picture elements cards in home assistant dashboard screenshots from time to time and was always interested into how they did it. Digging into it, as with most things home assistant, it’s pretty easy to do, and of course can be as complex as you see fit. Here I’ll be setting up a simple picture elements card for my air quality sensors.