home assistant – Systems Lab

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.

February 17, 2023February 17, 2023

Adding an LPS22 to AirGradient and Building a Custom Sensor in EspHome

I picked up some extra sensors for my AirGradient DIY kits and didn’t realize at the time that they’re not officially supported in EspHome. So with that I went on the journey of adding my own custom sensor code to EspHome to run them.

February 17, 2023February 17, 2023

Making the AirGradient DIY

I’ve been working on getting air quality measurements going in and out of my house, however there are a lot of cloud connected sensors out there. I wanted these to be all local, though I wouldn’t mind adding to the public datasets for air quality. I ended up coming to AirGradient as the option that I decided to use, these use all open hardware and can be flashed with the custom AirGradient firmware, or with EspHome. I went the DIY route as well to save some money (and I’ll be customizing them a bit too).

February 6, 2023February 12, 2023

TasmoAdmin and Updating CloudFree Smart Plugs

I have a number of Tasmota powered CloudFree smart plugs in my house. They’ve been working great for years now, however since they are Wi-Fi, I wanted some way to be able to update them quickly (not having to log into each of them myself and install updates). I ended up on the TasmoAdmin addon for home assistant which provides the ability to update devices in bulk.

January 23, 2023December 4, 2022

Adding WLED Previews to Home Assistant Dashboards

I found out recently about the webpage card in home assistant and how it can be used to add a WLED live view to your home assistant dashboard. Not only that, but its pretty simple to do as well!

January 16, 2023January 7, 2023

Setting up Zigbee in Home Assistant on Proxmox

I have Z-Wave setup on my home assistant and a reasonable network of devices. I haven’t been able to find some types of devices using Z-Wave however, only on ZigBee, so it is time to setup another radio in home assistant.

January 2, 2023December 4, 2022

Z-Wave Firmware Updates in HASS

I may be a bit late to the story, but home assistant now has the ability to update Z-Wave device firmwares. This is good for keeping IOT devices more secure and eliminate bugs in the devices. The updates show up in the same list in the settings menu as add-on upgrades and home assistant core updates.

Though there isn’t much in the update details for my GE switches, the update did improve the responsiveness of the physical switch, now button press to light change is much faster (minimal lag) than before the update (maybe 500ms lag).