After setting up a few Z-Wave switches from GE, I noticed that my kitchen light switch wasn’t updating in the Home Assistant web UI. It usually showed as “on” even hours after it had been turned off. This was the only place where I used the GE 12722 Z-Wave switch with the GE 12723 add-on…
One of my goals for creating a smart home is to keep things as “guest friendly” as possible. With that in mind I decided to go with Z-Wave switches to control the lights and fans in our common areas (kitchen, family room, etc.). These switches work just like a regular switch–perfect for guests–and they can…
For my first venture into using Home Assistant, I went with a Raspberry Pi 3 to keep costs down and because it seems very well supported by the Home Assistant community. Once the hardware was assembled, I followed the installation instructions for HASSbian, which flashes a disk image to the SD card for the Pi…
I’ve been dabbling in smart home devices over the past couple of years, and while many of them do enhance quality of life, I have some concerns. Namely, a dependence on cloud services, eroded privacy, security vulnerabilities, and a lack of interoperability. A smart home should be smart. It should know what you want/need at…