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 and Zigbee compared for 2026: frequency and range, how each mesh breaks, device cost, 2.4GHz interference, and which coordinator dongle to buy.

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.

Sonoff Zigbee Dongle Plus-E vs ConBee III vs SkyConnect, pick the right Zigbee USB coordinator for your Home Assistant home lab or apartment setup in 2026.

Track which room you're in with cheap ESP32 nodes and BLE signal distance, real room-level presence for Home Assistant automations that actually work.