The iPhone Action Button is the most under-used hardware on the phone. I rebound it to do exactly one thing: press → speak → release → my AI captures and routes whatever I just said.

The flow:

• An iOS Shortcut records audio and posts it to my n8n workflow
• Apple’s on-device dictation handles transcription — works even offline
• An LLM classifies what I said (smart-home / work / idea)
• Smart-home stuff becomes a task in Nova (my task system)
• Work stuff is sent to my work inbox
• Random ideas drop into my notebook
• Telegram pings me with the result in about 2 seconds

What this kills: the friction between having a thought and actually capturing it properly. No app to open, no typing, no category-picking. Great for joggers, drivers, parents — anyone whose hands are busy and brain is on.

My wife’s Pixel 7a hit the floor. The screen turned into a spider web overnight — still functional, but barely usable in the sun and a glass-shard hazard waiting to happen.

Instead of sending it in, I ordered the replacement assembly, popped the back panel, swapped the OLED, reconnected the fingerprint flex, and reseated the battery in about an hour.

Bricked phone risk: real. Cost vs. a repair shop: a third. Satisfaction of handing it back working: unbeatable.

My house starts heating before I even tell it I’m coming home.

100 km out, a proximity sensor reads my phone’s GPS — the heating leaves vacation mode and slowly ramps the house back to normal. 5 km out, the boiler goes to full temp. By the time I unlock the door, the alarm has disarmed itself.

No app opened. No buttons pressed. Just Home Assistant noticing.

In the Short I walk through the full setup.

Every evening at 8, my house sends me a text. Today’s energy use, solar production, alarm status, whether anything weird happened. I’m on vacation — the briefing follows me wherever I go.

Only rule: tell me what matters. Anomaly → ping. Quiet day → still a short check-in so I know the silence is real.

📺 Watch the full Short:

On vacation, yearly heating maintenance was due. Old me would have cancelled. Instead I generated a temporary access code on my phone — technician let himself in, did the job, code auto-expired afterwards.

Smart locks earn their keep on the days you’re not even there.

📺 Watch the full Short:

A joystick transplant saved my kids’ RC monster truck this weekend. Both original sticks snapped off — I spent hours suspecting the wrong patient (the truck itself) before catching it. Then desoldered the dead sticks, wired in a generic 2-axis KY-084, cut its PCB to fit the housing, modded the top cover. Not fast, not pretty. But the truck rolls again.

📺 Watch the full Short:

Our smart home knew we were stressed before we did. A 0–100 family stress score blends six sensor signals — living-room mic peaks, motion bursts on the ground floor, time of day, who’s home alone with the kids, plus a weekend modifier — into one number that quietly reshapes the house. When the score climbs over 60, lights warm automatically, music suggestions get softer, notifications get held back.

Today the score ran exactly the curve you’d expect: calm morning, red zone in the late afternoon, back to quiet after bedtime. Watch the 50-second walkthrough for the full breakdown.

Another one of my kids’s toys broke. A cheap fire truck with sound and lights — dead in months. Like always.

I won’t buy a new one. I’ll fix it. Not for the money — for the lesson my kids take away: broken doesn’t mean trash.

Maker mindset > consumer reflex. 🔧

▶ Watch on YouTube

#ToyRepair #RepairDontReplace #MakerMindset #SustainableParenting #DadProjects

My house is smart. My terrace? Stone age.

Every tile stains constantly — moss, pollen, dirt — and the only fix is hours of manual pressure washing. There is no smart-home automation for any of this.

We have robot vacuums, mowers, pool cleaners. Where is the outdoor cleaning robot? Who is building this?

It is time to automate the driveway. 🤖💦

▶ Watch on YouTube

#SmartHomeGap #OutdoorAutomation #SmartHomeMaker #RobotEverything #PressureWashing

Tightened the loop with my home AI assistant: I dump rough ideas into it, it drafts proper concept notes from them — and now sends me a Telegram message with Implement / Refine / Discard buttons whenever a draft’s ready. Click → it picks up the next step. No more concepts vanishing in the chat scroll. 🧠

#HomeAssistant #LLM #AI

Smart-home ghost: the sleep-mode notification claimed “activated! score 45%” — but my trigger requires 80%. Both were technically true: 80% at fire-time, 45% half a second later (after motion sensors picked up me going to bed). Fix: log the score at *trigger time*, not when the message gets sent. More on this AI-driven sleep mode → https://the-smart-home-maker.com/sleep-mode-with-ai-smarter-than-any-rule-in-home-assistant

#HomeAssistant #SmartHome #DIY

Smart home automation fighting itself: my stair light wouldn’t stay off at night. Sleep mode turns it off → motion sensor turns it back on → fine, except the automation also tried to “restore the previous state” after motion. Problem: it kept saving the *current* state, including its own “ON”. So restore = no-op. Light stayed on all night. Fix: only save the state when the light is OFF. 🤦

#HomeAssistant #SmartHome #DIY

🎉 Celebrating 20 years of the Maker Movement! From DIY projects to innovative tutorials, this community has transformed how we approach Smart Home tech. What’s your favorite maker project or hack? Share your experiences and let’s inspire each other! #MakerMovement #DIY #SmartHome #20YearsOfMaking

People ask me how many automations I run. Current count: 275+ 🤖 148 Home Assistant automations and 127 n8n workflows. Some save energy, some save time, and some just make me smile. What’s YOUR count? 👇

#HomeAssistant #SmartHome #Automation #n8n

Ever had a Smart Home fail that left you laughing (or crying)? 😅 Share your funniest stories of tech gone wrong! Let’s learn from each other’s blunders and make our homes smarter together! 🏠💡 #SmartHomeFails #TechTroubles #HomeAutomation #ShareYourStory

I track every watt in my house. Last month my solar panels covered 39% of our energy needs ☀️ Not bad, but there is room for improvement! Do you track your energy? What tool do you use?

#SmartHome #SolarPower #EnergyMonitoring #HomeAssistant

“Do you run everything locally?” — I get this question a lot. Honest answer: it depends on the use case. Some things NEED to be local (privacy, speed), others work better in the cloud. It’s not black and white. I discussed this in depth with @hobbyblogging — check it out: the-smart-home-maker.com/local-first-vs-cloud-in-smart-homes-which-strategy-is-right-for-you/ 🏠☁️

#SmartHome #LocalFirst #CloudVsLocal #HomeAssistant

3D printing + Smart Home = perfect match 🖨️ Custom sensor housings, wall mounts, display cases — I design and print all my enclosures. Check out my models on Printables: printables.com/@the_smart_ho_1245492 — more coming soon! What have YOU printed for your smart home? 👇

#3DPrinting #SmartHome #DIY #Maker #Printables

Smart Home fail confession: My hallway light automation had a bug that kept the light on ALL DAY because it kept re-triggering itself in a loop 💡😅 Took me a while to figure out it was an OR condition that shouldn’t have been there. What’s your worst smart home fail? 👇

#SmartHome #SmartHomeFail #HomeAssistant #Automation