Category: DIY
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How I killed e-ink display
TL:DR: I don’t know how, but it no longer works. In the previous post, I shared the joy of making #ESP32 #Lilygo T5 2.13′ e-ink display finally work and show some sensor data from #homeassistant. The joy lasted only a week. Yesterday I decided I’d print a nice case for it. I found a great…
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E-ink display showing temperatures from Home Assistant
I had this #esp32 #lilygo board* laying in the drawer for more than 2 years. I tried several times to make the e-ink display work without success.Today I flashed it again with the latest #esphome firmware, stole some code from the web, tinkered for 2 hrs with #yaml and lambdas and whatnot and suddenly… it’s…
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How to make Fire HD tablet talk in Home Assistant
If you have Amazon’s #FireHD (or any other #Android) tablet that shows your #homeassistant dashboard, you can make it talk. I created a new automation (triggered by a motion sensor) which greets me when I approach the tablet: I used the ‘Send notification’ action, chose the tablet and inserted ‘TTS‘ in the message field. Then…
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Home Assistant and nice statistics graphs
One of the things that bothered me in #homeassistant for more than a year was the following: I couldn’t figure out why some entities/sensors can draw nice longterm statistics graphs like this (with average, max, min values): and some show only bulky history charts (10 days of data) like this: #til Today I learned I…
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Fixing junk LED light found on the street
I have a nasty habit of picking up bolts, nuts and other ‘trash’ lying on the ground. A few days ago, I was walking on the road (which also leads to a local waste collection centre) and found a drywall LED spotlight. It looks like it fell from somebody’s trailer. I picked it up, maybe…
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Dishwasher saga part 3 (it wasn’t a microswitch!)
As I wrote in my previous post I was so happy when I finally discovered what’s wrong with my 20yr old #Bosch #dishwasher. A faulty microswitch. Except that it wasn’t. The joy was over after a day and the symptoms returned: I disassembled the dishwasher for the 23rd time. Added a bolt to a microswitch…
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Home Assistant and breaking changes (27. 12. 2023)
I’ve been running #homeassistant for 2 years now and have never dealt with breaking changes. Until today. 1st breaking change: #ESPHome entities are unavailable After updating Home Assistant Core to 2023.12.4 and ESPHome to the latest (Dec. 2023) I’ve noticed ESP entities marked as ‘Unavailable‘. Moreover, all entities had duplicates in the entity list ending…
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Pimp my dishwasher part 2
In my previous post, I wrote about measuring the consumption of the dishwasher using a Tuya smart socket and Home Assistant. The bottom line was that buying a new one doesn’t pay off. But there’s more to it. Knowing how much it consumes per washing cycle I found an issue with the door microswitch which…
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How much electricity does 20y old dishwasher consume (Tuya Zigbee smart socket test)
Aliexpress Santa delivered a cheap (10€) Tuya smart socket (Zigbee version). I have several Aquara smart sockets (SP-EUC01) around the house that work really well in #homeassistant. But they cost 20-25€. I wanted to test the #Tuya smart socket this time. Not sure exactly which model it is, Aliex… markets it as “Homekit Tuya Smart…
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The water meter experiment failed successfully
This, my dears, this is how to fail spectacularly:I wanted to measure my home’s water consumption and track it in Home Assistant. I failed (for now). Read on to find out what happens if you buy all the correct components, follow the instructions but fail to check the type of the water meter first. I’ve…