Audio Handoff with Sonos Speakers

With Apple’s introduction of the HomePod Mini they touted a feature which lets you hand-off music and audio between iPhone to your HomePod simply by bringing your iPhone close. A handy feature to have! (Video clip credit to Marques Brownlee) But what if you don’t own a HomePod and instead use other Airplay 2 speakers …

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Smart Motorized Shades for Under $100 with Home Assistant

I’ve wanted to have motorized shades for a while now, and have not found an ‘off-the-shelf’ product that has the features I need, while remaining at an affordable price. The closest product that I’ve found is the IKEA ‘Fyrtur’ smart blinds. However, when pricing out my bedroom window which is almost 96″ wide, it would …

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Tutorial: Home Assistant Presence Detection with iOS and [monitor]

First, I need to acknowledge that there’s numerous methods to get presence detection with Home Assistant, each with their own pros and cons. When evaluating the various detection methods, I focused on three key aspects: The detection needs to be reliable and consistent. When I’m home, I’m home. I did not want incorrect arrivals/departures if …

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Tutorial: Advanced iOS Notifications with Home Assistant

Basic Notification Enhancements The following examples will all be using the Developer Tools, Service calls. We will be calling the notify.mobile_app_xx service, replacing xx with the iOS mobile device name. If this is unclear, take a look at the first part of this tutorial! There are still a few more enhancements you can add to …

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Actionable Notifications from Alexa to Home Assistant

In my last post, I discussed how to add actionable notifications from iOS into Home Assistant. Today, we are going to add actionable notifications from our Amazon Alexa thanks to the newly updated Alexa Media Player custom component. The author of this integration, Keaton, has a thorough ‘Getting Started‘ guide available on their Github Wiki. …

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Tutorial: iOS Actionable Notifications with Home Assistant

iOS Actionable Notification received on Apple Watch

Adding notifications to your Home Assistant server can really help to take your automations to the next level. And, by having your home automatically notify you with an actionable notification, the whole system can feel just that much more futuristic. I’ve decided to write a tutorial to hopefully help those who want to get started …

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Monitor Proxmox Computer Temperatures using Home Assistant, Telegraf and MQTT

Lovelace Dashboard in Home Assistant showing CPU, HDD and SDD temperatures

After moving the computer I use for Home Assistant (HA) into a closed cabinet, I felt it was a good time to add computer temperature monitoring & recording to my Home Assistant server. Most tutorials and suggestions I’ve seen to add temperature monitoring involve implementing the command_line platform in Home Assistant and using the command: …

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