Tag: smart-home

Power monitoring with Shelly EM/Pro/3EM, Home Assistant energy dashboard, circuit-level metering, solar+grid tracking, and wiring sanity checks.

Z-Wave vs Zigbee: range, mesh, cost, and which radio protocol to choose for home automation in 2026.

Matter and Thread protocol overview: what actually works in home labs, what's vaporware, and why you should be skeptical of the hype in 2026.

ESP32 boards + ESPHome's YAML firmware = your own cloud-free smart sensors and switches. Sensors, OTA updates, and Home Assistant integration in 30 minutes.

Two paths to running Zigbee in Home Assistant, Zigbee2MQTT for power-user flexibility, ZHA for plug-and-play. Coordinator hardware, range, and the migration myth.

Running Home Assistant OS as a Proxmox VM beats Docker for full Add-ons, USB passthrough, and Supervisor features. Setup, USB sticks, and zero-headache backups.