The Wemos D1 Mini is like a tiny Arduino with WiFi capability, in other words it is a superb little board that everyone should be using! The official boards are produced by Lolin who are seemingly based in China, or at least their official store can be found over on Aliexpress. The D1 Mini is…
Category: Smart Home Tek
ESPHome vs Tasmota (And How To Switch Between Them)
Trying to decide whether Tasmota or ESPHome is the right firmware for your smart home application? Or perhaps you are using one and want to try the other? In which case this article is just for you! Both Tasmota and ESPHome are valuable tools for the smart home enthusiast with the same end result. However…
Super-simple Touch Switch For Home Assistant Using ESP8266
With ESPHome we can easily turn the analogue input (ADC) pin into a touch switch with a bit of clever software configuration and no external components! This switch can be used like any other switch in Home Assistant and has toggle functionality. This is by no means a solution that will replace a dedicated capacitive…
Home Assistant Alexa Media Player (Setup and TTS Guide)
Looking to integrate Alexa into Home Assistant as a media player? Want Alexa to read back custom notifications? The Alexa Media custom component makes it possible and this guide will walk you through the setup process. Adding this custom component to Home Assistant will allow your Alexa device to appear as a media player entity…
Setup Home Assistant Alexa Integration Without The Cloud
Looking for an easy way to integrate Alexa into Home Assistant without any cost? This guide will have you up and running in minutes with a super-simple setup! There are several ways to integrate Alexa with Home Assistant. This guide will focus on using the Philips Hue emulated bridge method, as this is the easiest…
Easier ESP8266 Web Server LED Control Using ESPHome
Want to know a quicker and easier way to to control a LED or relay with a web browser? ESPHome is a powerful IoT tool that sits on top of the Arduino framework and it dramatically simplifies the process of building a custom IoT device using an ESP-based board. Prerequesite Installing ESPHome Configure ESPHome Create…
Home Assistant For Webmasters: Managed Dropbox Backups
Did you know that Home Assistant can be far more than just a home assistant? It is probably not too far fetched to say that it can manage, schedule and automate all technological aspects of your life. Like one third of the other webmasters in the world, I run this site on WordPress. I was…
Home Assistant Shell Integration: Local & SSH Linux Control
Looking to automatically execute commands on a Raspberry Pi or Linux machine from within Home Assistant? This step-by-step guide will teach you how to send shell commands to any other machine on your network. This is a very powerful tool! If you are running Home Assistant inside a Docker container, you can also use this…
Home Assistant & ESPHome Servo Example (Step-by-Step guide)
Looking to integrate a servo with Home Assistant? This step-by-step tutorial will guide you through the process of building a wireless servo and integrating it with Home Assistant! For the example we will be using a readily available Wemos D1 Mini and RC servo, however you can use any compatible ESP device and servo. By…
