[ Home Automation ]

Home Assistant configs, automations, and supporting scripts from
the home lab. Snippets get pulled out, scrubbed of secrets, and
published here as they become generally useful. Most examples assume
a Home Assistant install with the standard integrations enabled
(companion app, ONVIF, a TTS engine like Piper) but each guide calls
out its specific dependencies up front.

Targeting a different sensor brand, speaker, or camera vendor? Most
automations are retargetable by swapping entity_ids — the
underlying state-machine patterns hold regardless of the hardware.

Start-here guide for the action-sequence language Home Assistant uses
for scripts AND automations. Covers the conceptual difference between
scripts / automations / scenes / blueprints, where scripts live in the
config tree, full script anatomy (alias / mode / fields / variables /
sequence), the four execution modes (single / restart / queued /
parallel) and when to use each, the five ways to call a script, three
places to introduce values (fields / variables / inline Jinja), the
five most-common action-flow patterns (chained scripts, choose,
repeat, parallel, continue_on_error), and how to
debug via traces + Developer Tools + Template editor.

Seven common gotchas at the bottom covering the kinds of bugs that
silently waste an evening (wrong mode dropping calls, templates
against None attributes, delay: blocking mode tracking,
reloading the wrong config block, etc.).

Read this before the longer guides below if you're new to HA YAML.

Read the quick-start →

Short guide for flashing an ESP32 as a Bluetooth proxy — extends
HA's BLE range across the house without any coding. Web-flash from
Chrome via web.esphome.io, auto-adopt into HA, plug in near the room
you want to cover.

About 10 minutes per proxy. Covers placement tips, board recommendations
(ESP32-C3 Mini, ESP32-S3, M5Stack Atom Lite), and the usual troubleshooting
(missing serial port, mDNS across VLANs, slow-advertising BLE sensors).

Read the guide → ·
Raw markdown

Drop-in ESPHome config for the Athom Smart Plug V3 that layers
dentra/esphome-components
on top of the official
Athom base package
to add Today / Yesterday / Week / Month / Year energy sensors
alongside the stock cumulative total_energy_sensor.

About 40 lines of YAML per plug. Walks through the four blocks
that matter — substitutions (name, friendly name, current
limit, timezone), the Athom base package include, the dentra
external_components hook, and the
energy_statistics sensor declaration. Includes the
full known-working config up front, then explains why each block
is the way it is.

Closes with a troubleshooting table (component-not-found compile
errors, sensors stuck at 0, wrong-timezone rollovers,
NVRAM persistence) and a multi-plug fleet section: MAC-suffix
hostname convention, ESPHome packages refresh strategy, sed-across-
all-plug-files pattern when you want to bump a pinned ref.

Read the guide →

Seven-step walkthrough for building a self-hosted alarm on top of Home
Assistant's manual alarm_control_panel. Highlight-syntax YAML through-
out, retargetable to any sensor / speaker / light setup by swapping
entity_ids.

  1. Panel           — arm/disarm with code, three armed
                       modes (home / night / away), grace + entry
                       delays
  2. Detection       — perimeter (any armed mode), interior
                       (away only), separate bedroom rule so the
                       2am bathroom trip doesn't trip the siren
  3. Response        — entry-warning TTS, full alarm push,
                       loud local-Piper TTS, YouTube cast to a Nest
                       display, 30-cycle red-strobe lights
  4. RGB feedback    — bulbs flash blue/green/amber for
                       armed/disarmed/pending states using the
                       canonical scene-snapshot → flash →
                       restore pattern
  5. PTZ tracking    — mmWave or PIR sensor trips a zone
                       → ONVIF preset move → settle →
                       snapshot → push notification with the
                       image attached. DRY lookup-table pattern so
                       new zones are a two-line edit
  6. Privacy mode    — five-layer stack engaged when phone
                       trackers or indoor sensors detect anyone home:
                       wall preset, hardware shutter, recording
                       switches off, RTSP stream stopped, tracking
                       automation disabled. Reverses on house empty
  7. Door locks      — Z-Wave / Zigbee / Matter smart locks
                       wired both directions: auto-lock on arm with
                       jammed-deadbolt verification, disarm-via-PIN
                       with per-slot user names, forced-entry
                       detection (contact open + lock still locked),
                       wrong-PIN lockout that triggers the alarm

Plus auto-arm-at-midnight as a bonus, and a caveats block up front:
not a monitored alarm, depends on the network, only as loud as your
speakers, only as bright as your bulbs — with notes on when to
layer in a real Zigbee siren or a monitored service.

Five YAML files for driving a Storz & Bickel Volcano Hybrid from
Home Assistant: an auto-progress temperature automation (Vapesuvius
ladder), a manual ±step action set for dimmer remotes, a
fill-a-bag script, six voice commands wired through HA Assist, and a
single-paste Lovelace dashboard card.

Each file is independent — drop in whichever ones you want, or
use all five together. Requires the
SavageNL/home-assistant-volcano-hybrid
HACS integration; retargetable to other vaporizers / heated-element
devices by swapping the climate entity.

Read the build →

Voice command that turns on a TV and plays a random YouTube Dog TV
video automatically. Say "dog tv bedroom" → TV powers on
→ deep-link fires into the YouTube app on the TV → one of a
curated list of long-form ambient videos starts playing. Different
video each call.

Stack: Android Debug Bridge integration for deep-link firing,
Android TV Remote integration for reliable power-on, a custom
sentence in custom_sentences/en/ for the trigger
phrase, an intent_script entry to route the intent
into the script, and the script itself in scripts.yaml
with the random-URL Jinja template.

Documents the three load-bearing details that silently break this
kind of setup: avoid trigger phrases starting with "play" (built-in
HassMediaSearchAndPlay intercepts), use
script.turn_on with a target for async dispatch so the
Voice satellite doesn't time out on the 15-second TV boot delay,
and use service: (not action:) inside
intent_script because that block predates the newer
syntax alias. Includes troubleshooting table and notes on
retargeting to webOS / Tizen / Roku TVs via
media_player.select_source.

Read the guide →

Home Assistant guide for outdoor lights that come on automatically at
sunset, ramp up gradually as it gets darker, and fade back out before
the overnight off-time.  Two flavours covered — a single 30-minute
fade from ~0% to 100%, or a three-stage step fade (20% → 60% →
100% across the first hour past sunset).  Both share the same fade-out
+ midnight-off tail.

Includes the two-step turn-on trick that works around HA's
"transitions don't apply when the light starts from off" quirk, a
warm-amber default plus four other color presets, and a troubleshooting
table for the usual snags (location not set, transition not honoured,
bulb floor > 0).

Pair with the
outdoor-lights snippet on
the snippets page if you just want the short-form copy-paste version
of the simple-fade variant.

Read the guide →

Multi-dose medication reminders for Home Assistant — for pets or
people — with actionable nag notifications, missed-dose
escalation, and given / not-given state synced across every household
Companion app. Two implementations of the same idea; pick the one that
matches how you like to manage HA.

Path 1 — ha-medication-reminder — YAML package (stable)
A single package file dropped into packages/, with no
external dependencies and no custom code. A data-driven
doses: list defines every reminder; the package generates
one input_boolean.med_<id> per dose, the caretaker
notification automations, and TTS-ready escalation entities. Actionable
push with a "Mark given" button, 15-minute nags until acknowledged,
household-synced state with logbook accountability, and a
zero-maintenance auto-entities dashboard. Timer-based, so it survives
restarts. Production-ready, no upgrade churn.

Path 2 — ha-medication-reminder-hacs — HACS custom integration (alpha)
Same goal, managed entirely through the Settings UI instead of YAML —
and now with a meaningfully richer feature set than the YAML version:

  — Flexible scheduling per dose — daily,
    specific weekdays, or every N days from a start date
  — Supply & refill tracking — optional
    number.<patient>_<med>_supply counter that
    decrements on each dose, plus
    binary_sensor.<patient>_supplies_low for
    threshold alerts
  — Early-dose warning with an undo button if
    you mis-mark a dose given
  — Auto-discovering dashboard card —
    red/green status panel + schedule overview, no manual entity
    enumeration as you add patients
  — Event publishing
    (medication_reminder_dose_given /
    _dose_undone) for wiring into other automations
  — Blueprint-based automation imports —
    reminder automations come in as HA blueprints rather than a
    static companion YAML, so updates propagate cleanly
  — 12h / 24h time format, configurable nag
    windows, configurable daily reset time

Plus the original feature set: per-patient notification routing,
switch entity per dose, binary_sensors for
all-doses-given and needs-attention. Install via HACS as a custom
repository. Optional companion cards
(auto-entities,
card-mod)
for the prettier dashboard. Still alpha — not
widely tested, breaking changes possible between releases.

When to use which

  — YAML package if you keep your config in
    version control, want zero dependencies, are happy editing a
    doses: list, and want something you can leave alone
    for months. It's the stable, production-ready path.

  — HACS integration if you want every-N-days
    scheduling, supply tracking, the auto-discovering dashboard, or
    event hooks into other automations — and you're comfortable
    running alpha software that may break between updates.

Both are MIT licensed. Either way: it tracks medication, so treat it as
a convenience layer, not a medical device — validate against your
own setup and keep a backup reminder method before relying on it.

Reusable Home Assistant blueprints — templates with named inputs
that you instantiate per device or per scenario instead of hand-rolling
a new automation each time. Import once via Settings →
Automations & Scenes → Blueprints, then create as many
automations from each as you need.

Current catalog:

  Contact Sensor — Issue State Notification (Advanced)
    — contactSensorIssueState.yaml
       binary-sensor "left in issue state" alerts with debounce,
       auto-clear, repeat reminders, N-target notify, and custom
       enter/leave actions. One blueprint per door, window, or
       motion sensor — instantiate as many automations as
       you have entities

  Outdoor Lights — Sunset Fade-in / Overnight Fade-out
    — outdoorLightsSunsetFade.yaml
       single-automation wrapper for the full sunset-to-midnight
       cycle: fade in at sunset, fade out at a configurable late-
       evening time, hard-off after. Configurable color, brightness,
       durations, sunset offset, and an optional sun-elevation gate
       so high-summer evenings don't kick the lights on while it's
       still bright outside

For the full per-blueprint write-up plus the install recipe (both
HA UI and file-drop methods), visit
blueprints/.

Smaller standalone automations and templates — one-liners,
helper sensors, and YAML patterns extracted from larger setups:

    — Low-battery aggregator (any device under N%)
       template binary_sensor that fires when any battery-class sensor
       drops below threshold, no per-device enumeration
    — Smart-charging cutoff (stop at 80%)
       cut a smart plug when phone hits 80% to preserve lithium cell life;
       state-condition prevents the trigger from firing during discharge
    — Door auto-lock with open-door safety
       re-lock front door after 5 min unlocked, contact-sensor interlock
       prevents bolt-vs-strike-plate grinding
    — Outdoor lights — sunset fade-in / overnight fade-out
       sunset → 30-min fade in to warm amber, 23:30 → 30-min fade
       out, midnight off; demonstrates the two-step fade-on trick that
       works around HA's no-transition-from-off limitation

Each snippet on the dedicated page is shown inline with its YAML; copy
what you need into your own configs. New snippets get added directly
to snippets.html as they're written up.

Curated outbound links across the home-automation stack: platform
core, protocols, voice, cameras, hardware vendors, and the community
docs worth bookmarking. All on their own page now — same structure
as pubCarHacking/links.html.

  Platform & tooling
    — Home Assistant
       The dashboard / automation engine the whole stack rides on
    — ESPHome
       YAML-configured firmware compiler for ESP32 / ESP8266

  Protocols
    — Zigbee2MQTT
       Coordinator-stick bridge to MQTT, vendor-neutral
    — Z-Wave JS UI
       Z-Wave dashboard + driver, runs as an HA add-on
    — Matter / Thread
       The cross-vendor standard that's finally landing

  Voice / TTS / STT
    — Piper TTS
       Local text-to-speech, Wyoming-protocol native
    — faster-whisper
       Local speech-to-text on Whisper + CTranslate2
    — openWakeWord
       Always-on wake-word detection

  Cameras & NVR
    — Frigate NVR
       Real-time AI object detection, HA-native
    — go2rtc
       Universal RTSP / WebRTC streamer
    — ONVIF
       Open camera control protocol

  Hardware
    — Espressif ESP32 / ESP8266
       The default microcontroller for HA-friendly DIY work
    — Sonoff (ITEAD)
       Cheap WiFi / Zigbee switches, relays, sensors
    — Aqara
       Polished Zigbee sensors + cameras at consumer prices

  Community & docs
    — Home Assistant Documentation
       Official docs — automations, scripts, blueprints, templates

For the full landing page with descriptions and per-entry cross-links,
visit links.html.