Recently I wanted to set up 2 new Home Assistant instances, and I installed the same add-ons I am using for my "main" instance. They are tested and I have automations built with them; one being the Signal Add-on.
Asking my home to play music
Posted on Saturday, 12th of June 2021 • personal • permanent link •Read time: 7 minutes
Don't you love open source and the capabilities it provides? My constant tinkering of my home automation has no end! The latest improvement is asking the system to play my favorite music. And I remembered that the advanced capabilities of using Rhasspy with Home Assistant with as little code as possible is not clear to everybody. So here is an explanation of how this works, and how I leveraged these capabilities to satisfy my music needs.
Reviving a broken laptop
Posted on Monday, 31st of May 2021 • personal • permanent link •Read time: 4 minutes
What do you do when your laptop breaks? If you're like me, you try to find a way to give it a second life. You either replace the broken parts, or, some times, you just imagine other ways to repurpose the laptop.
NUC and Zigbee and USB
Posted on Tuesday, 30th of March 2021 • personal • permanent link •Read time: 6 minutes
My Home Assistant was misbehaving lately and I could not figure out why. It did take me time, effort, a lot of cursing, troubleshooting and head scratching, and eventually it was solved by the typical "this can NOT be the problem, but there is nothing else to try!" approach!