Kasa Smart Devices and Home Assistant

August 10, 2024
Kasa Smart Devices and Home Assistant
When I moved into the new house, I decided I wanted to leave Philips Hue behind. The lights were too expensive and I wanted to incorporate more kinds of devices like switches into the system. At the same time, I wanted to reduce the number of Home Assistant integrations as…

Google Coral TPU Card

August 5, 2024
Google Coral TPU Card
Today I added some AI processing horsepower to my Frigate server. This little chip can handle object detection on 15 cameras without breaking a sweat. I am using the m.2 variety, but you can get a few variants from Google. I originally experimented with the USB version before adding the…

Home Automation Server – Tower 1

August 2, 2024
Home Automation Server – Tower 1
With the Frigate server complete, Tower 1 is officially out of space. Top to Bottom Home Assistant & Frigate Docker Server Ryzen 9 5900X, 64GB RAM, 8TB SSDs (2x2TB nvme, 2x2TB SATA), 16TB HDD RAID, Coral m.2 dual TPU Home Assistant Frigate Netdata Dozzle UPS Power Supply Cisco 24-Port Switch…

Pond BI

July 31, 2024
Pond BI
It started with "I should know the temperature of the pond I guess."

Dedicated Frigate Server

July 28, 2024
Dedicated Frigate Server
I've decided to use Frigate as the platform for AI object detection using my existing Amcrest IP cameras. It's working as a sidecar to Synology Surveillance Station as detection only. frigate-server 12-core Ryzen 5900X, 64GB RAM, 8TB SSD & 16TB HDD storage, Google Coral TPU, nVidia RTX3050GPU. Hosts Frigate and…

Home Assistant – How Did I Get Here?

May 30, 2024
Home Assistant
I am absolutely horrible at turning off lights. That's how it began. The color changing aspect of Hue bulbs was cool, but adding motion sensors was when I saw the power of automation. I expanded Hue and added Amazon's Alexa for voice control. Then I tried Samsung's SmartThings to integrate…

Earthquake Data

May 6, 2024
Earthquake Data
I get asked about Rainier and volcanos a lot. I decided to integrate some seismic data into Home Assistant today for information and future notifications.

Shelly Garage Door Hack

January 9, 2024
Shelly Garage Door Hack
Turns out my garage doors are dumb. They make smart ones, but I don't really want to give up privacy on my locks. Enter 2nd buttons triggered via Shelly over WIFI. When I looked into my garage openers, it was clear going smart with their tech wasn't an option. I…