A truly smart home isn’t one that you control with your voice or phone, but one that is fully automated. Presence detection is key to creating an environment that anticipates your next move, whether that’s turning on a light in a cupboard or understanding exactly who is in which room.

You can plug some weird and wonderful things into your Raspberry Pi’s USB ports outside of the obvious mouse, keyboards, and storage devices. Here are some of the more interesting accessories you might want to get your hands on for your next project.

The power of automations is what draws many of us to Home Assistant in the first place, but there’s no denying that the process can feel a little drawn-out. Good news! A new experimental Home Assistant feature aims to make it easier to create automations, and you can try it out right now with the flick of a switch.

The Raspberry Pi 500+ is most of a Raspberry Pi 5 Model B 16GB that’s been squeezed into a keyboard case, with fancy mechanical key switches and some fetching RGB lighting. It’s fair to ask whether this package is worth the $200 asking price, or whether you’d be better off with a regular Pi instead.

Bluetooth is a well-worn technology that you might be tempted to write off in your smart home, especially if your server doesn’t already have Bluetooth capabilities. I wasn’t going to bother, but then I saw an opportunity to pick up a cheap adapter and gave it a shot.

Home Assistant is amazing because it’s free, but it’s not always the easiest platform in the world to use. Though you can choose to pay for remote access by signing up to Home Assistant Cloud or go it alone with VPN access, there’s actually another easy way to add remote access to your smart home.

Wobbly laptop stand got you feeling seasick while you work? Rather than trying to type like you’re sitting next to a sleeping baby, you might be able to stabilize that stand with a few bits of wood or whatever else you can find.

Home Assistant is a free, open-source, and independent smart home platform, but did you know there’s a company called Nabu Casa chipping in behind the scenes? If you want to pay to make remote access and cloud backup as easy as possible, that’s where your money goes.

The Raspberry Pi 500+ is a ready-to-go single-board computer and keyboard combo, with a 256GB NVMe drive, mechanical keys, and Raspberry Pi OS preloaded. It’s the fastest way to get started with a Raspberry Pi, and it’s a highly capable ARM-based desktop computer replacement that runs Linux.

My Raspberry Pi 500+ has finally been delivered, but I kept the order brief so I could keep the cost down. In spite of my attempts at being frugal, I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t toyed with the idea of throwing a few more items on the order.

Christmas shouldn’t be stressful, but here we are, only a few weeks out and already wondering where the rest of the year went. This year, why not give yourself the gift of a smarter home?

Why is everyone suddenly obsessed with wall-mounted dashboards and control panels in their smart homes? These displays can take the form of touchscreens with controls or E-Ink panels that just display information about your home. For most, the usefulness of such a project is severely limited.

Google and Amazon are particularly good at selling the smart home vision, but these platforms have some big drawbacks, too. Consider switching to or starting out with a more capable and reliable alternative, which will save you money and frustration in the long run.

The Raspberry Pi 500+ is the latest iteration of the best-selling single-board computer with 16GB RAM and 256GB of solid-state storage, all wrapped up in a keyboard that’s beautiful to type on, and I love it.

Buying used is a great way to save money, whether it’s a car, a piece of furniture, or electronics. I’m constantly browsing Facebook Marketplace for used deals, but there are a few lines I refuse to cross.

It’s no secret that smart light switches are better buys than smart light bulbs, but I don’t have any smart switches installed yet. That’s what led me to devise a delightfully devilish hack that still lets me use my existing light switches to turn on my smart bulbs in a pinch.