Home Assistant is arguably the best choice for anyone looking to start a smart home, but this is especially true for power users. If you want unhindered freedom to decide how your smart home functions and you’re not afraid to get your hands dirty, there’s no better choice.

Home Assistant is arguably the best choice for anyone looking to start a smart home, but this is especially true for power users. If you want unhindered freedom to decide how your smart home functions and you’re not afraid to get your hands dirty, there’s no better choice.

The January weekends are already flying by. If you have a few hours to spare, here are some Home Assistant projects you could try, from creating your own weather display to making your smart home easier for guests to use.

Apple Home is my favorite of the “big 4” proprietary smart home systems, with its focus on local control and tight integration with Apple’s devices. But it still pales in comparison to Home Assistant, a powerful open-source solution.

Sometimes, you can create an automation in Home Assistant, and it will work perfectly the first time. Sadly, this isn't always the case. If your automation isn't working as expected, you may be able to find the problem faster using traces.

Home Assistant is free, open-source smart home software that allows you to connect and control a huge number of smart home devices, regardless of their brand or ecosystem. It's a technological marvel, but my favorite thing about Home Assistant has nothing to do with the tech at all.

It's easy to look back on the past with rose-colored glasses and remember everything as being better than it actually was. It's hard to deny, however, that a lot of apps and services are getting demonstrably worse. The Home Assistant smart home software is thankfully a clear exception to this rule.

Most smart home sensors are designed for use inside the house, which is where their presence is most useful. But there’s no reason the data they gather and triggers they enable can’t have utility outside, too. Here are a few all-weather examples of outdoor sensors that you might have overlooked.

Contact sensors, often known as door or window sensors, use magnets to sense open or closed states. You can use this information and the changing of these states to do all sorts of neat things in your smart home.

Home Assistant is a Linux-based smart home operating system with a very low barrier to entry. In addition to being completely free, its minimum system specifications mean it works on most computers produced within the last 10 to 15 years (plus humble single-board computers).

If you associate IKEA with affordable flat-pack furniture and kitchen utensils with unpronounceable names, you might have overlooked the fact that the company has been at the forefront of the smart home revolution for decades.

When I first started using Zigbee devices in my home, I wasn't impressed. The devices would regularly drop off the network, causing automations to fail. The solution was a $5 accessory that made all the difference.

Many smart home devices serve a clear purpose. If you want to measure humidity, for example, a humidity sensor fits the bill perfectly. There are some devices, however, that are so strange that it can be a challenge trying to figure out how to use them.

For many of us, having remote access to our smart homes over the internet is non-negotiable. But is this really necessary? And more to the point, is there anything to be gained from not doing so?

Creating automations in Home Assistant can be a long and time-consuming process. You don't have to reinvent the wheel, however. There are some useful blueprints that you can use to create complex automations in next to no time.

I was very late to the party with Notion. I tried the all-in-one workspace app a couple of years ago and didn't really get the hype. I recently tried it again, and now that I know just how much you can do by combining Notion with the automation software n8n, I kind of wish I'd left it alone. It's awesome—and that's the problem.

January is already flying by, and if your good intentions are still intact, you may be itching to continue improving your smart home. If you have some free time this weekend, here are three Home Assistant projects you might want to try.