Around 2023 I finally got myself into home automation projects.

Though I was later to arrive on the scene than many of my nerdy friends, I quickly found myself digging into the weeds and building custom hardware to automate things around the house.

Here’s how my ugly Home Assistant dashboard looks today:

Christmas Lights

I built my own automated, addressable LED light strands to hang up around the bushes in front of my house. Here’s a post about it.

Office Whiteboard Lights

I made a similar set-up to illuminate the border around the glass whiteboard in my office. Paired with an LD2410 sensor it can also detect when I’m in my office even when I’m sitting still at my desk and turn the lights on/off accordingly.

Automated Air Conditioners

Seattle having a historically mild climate, our house is not equipped with central air conditioning. But we do have a few standalone AC units for the few weeks where the heat becomes unbearable.

I managed to probe around inside of a couple of these AC units and install an ESP32 to act as a remote control.

Here’s a demo of setting the temperature of the air conditioner via Home Assistant:

Automated Plant Watering

TODO