Category: How to

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Automated Pantry Light

I have a light in my pantry that isn’t super obvious when its on if the door is closed, and I may leave the light on from time to time by accident. The light switch is also partially buried in things hanging from the wall, so why not automate it to make things a bit easier, that is what smart homes are for. My idea is to use a smart door sensor and light switch to automate it and keep things from being left on.

Goal

  • Turn on the pantry lights while the door is open
  • Close the pantry lights when the door is closed
  • Allow lights to be turned on with the door closed
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WLED Notice of Laser Cutter Use

I have a laser cutter in my office that I use from time to time. I close the door when its running because you need safety glasses on while its running, but since I use my office for other things, the door closed doesn’t necessarily mean safety glasses are needed. To make this simpler, I decided to try and make some automations to notify when the laser is running. I want to use a WLED strip around the door and light it different colors based on laser operating status (and other statuses in the future).

Goals

  • Set the WLED strip to red when the laser starts cutting
  • Set the WLED strip to the previous settings (or turn it off) when the laser stops cutting
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MDNS Across Unifi VLANs

I started working on some hardware projects related to home assistant using the ESP8266. in working on these I learned that the ESP devices use mDNS to advertise their hostnames for communicating with them. My devices however are on a separate VLAN that’s unable to communicate with the internet, and that VLAN was also blocking the mDNS updates from making it through to home assistant, keeping it from being able to know the hostnames. I could use static IPs for this, however I want to avoid locking all my little smart devices to static IPs.

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EspDeck: Home Assistant Macro Pad

After seeing some posts with EspHome and Zigbee keypads, I realized I wanted to make one too. I wanted the ability to easily trigger more complex actions in home assistant that I don’t have an easy way to fully automate. I decided to make the EspDeck project to provide construction and technical details on building one of these macro pads. EspDeck provides a 9 key macro pad supporting single, double, and hold click actions on every key and can be integrated with home assistant easily through the ESPHome integration or add-on.

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Server Rack Repair

I noticed a bit of damage on my server rack recently. The top of it is starting to crack around two of the screws. This isn’t good as it undermines the integrity of the rack and could cause problems in the future, and so I had to fix it. The lid was crushed downwards, likely due from a heavy object sitting on it (more than likely my NAS sitting on it at some point in time).

2 Screw Failure Points in View
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Upgrading Ubuntu Host for Unifi Controller

My unifi controller was installed on an Ubuntu server back on 16.04 LTS. This server finally reached end of life and I needed to run an upgrade to Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. I decided to first try to just release upgrade it two steps. I’d tried this in the past and failed which is why it stayed out of date for so long, but maybe the upgrade process was fixed for things to work automagically. I was a bit wrong on that, however I also found out that rebuilding from scratch is pretty easy.

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