A Firmware Update Brought My Roller Shutters Back
Two of our roller shutters simply vanished from my smart home a few months ago. They were no longer recognised, and nothing I tried brought them back.
They are connected through a small USB adapter that talks to the shutters by radio. The fix in the end was not my configuration at all, but a firmware update for that adapter.
Firmware is the software living inside the hardware itself. Updating it is easy to forget, and in this case it was the whole problem.
Getting More Out Of An IKEA Air Sensor
The air quality sensor from IKEA is cheap and, on its own, fairly limited. With a bit of custom software flashed onto it, that changes.
After the modification it reports things like fine dust levels, carbon dioxide and how bright the room is straight into Home Assistant, where I can build automations on top of those readings.
This clip is only a short preview of the hack. The step by step version follows separately.
Powering Wearables Through The Human Body
Charging a watch, then earbuds, then glasses. Every wearable device adds another cable and another evening routine.
I came across a research approach that takes a different route: energy travels across the skin to the device instead of coming from a socket. The body becomes the transport path.
It is early work rather than something you can buy. Still, it is the first idea in a while that would genuinely remove the charging habit instead of shortening it.
What My House Does While I Travel
When I am a few thousand kilometres from home, I do not want to wonder whether something was left on. One tap on my phone puts the house into a travel state.
From that moment the heating runs lower, lights stop switching on by themselves, and the security side takes over: the alarm arms itself, motion sensors and cameras stay ready.
If anything unusual happens, I get a message and a recording instead of a surprise when I come back.
Filming Hands Free While Walking The Beach
This clip was recorded while I was walking along a beach, and I never held a camera. The smart glasses on my nose did it after a short spoken command.
That is the situation where they convinced me: travelling, hands busy or full, and a moment that would be gone by the time a phone is out of the pocket.
I expected a gimmick and got something I actually reach for on trips.
Upgrading My Smart Glasses With A Messenger
Out of the box the glasses do what the manufacturer intended and not much more. There is a way around that.
The trick is to route the conversation through a normal messaging app. From there it can reach Home Assistant and other services, so a spoken sentence ends up controlling things at home.
The original idea for that detour came from another maker. I picked it up, tried it, and it works better than I assumed.
A Printed Adapter Between Two Toy Systems
Wooden train tracks in one box, big plastic building bricks in another. My kids kept trying to join them and the pieces just did not meet.
Someone had already designed the missing link and shared it as a printable file. I ran it off on my own printer, and now both toy worlds connect properly.
Small print, twenty minutes of machine time, and an argument in the playroom that no longer happens.
My Smart Home Predictions For The Year Ahead
Once a year I allow myself a look forward instead of a build log. This one is about where artificial intelligence takes the connected home next.
I go through what I expect to change in how houses react to the people inside them, and which of it I think will actually arrive rather than stay a demo.
These are my own guesses, nothing more. I am genuinely curious where other people see it differently.
A Cardboard Christmas Tree With Smart Lights
Our Christmas tree this year was made of cardboard. Cut, folded, and standing where a real one would have been.
The lights on it are wired into my smart home, so brightness and switching happen through the same system that runs the rest of the house.
It cost almost nothing, it packs flat afterwards, and it looks far better lit up than the material suggests.
A Cheap Tag That Reminds Me To Bring Things In
Bikes and toys end up in front of the door in the evening and stay there overnight. Sometimes that ends badly.
I attached small radio tags to the things that matter. Receivers around the house notice when a tag is sitting outside, so I get a reminder before we go to bed instead of a discovery in the morning.
The tags cost very little and need no charging routine, which is the only reason this actually stuck.
A Traffic Light That Tells Me When To Do Laundry
Electricity is not equally cheap or clean at every hour, but nobody in the house wants to read a graph before starting the washing machine.
So I built a small box with red, yellow and green lights. Green means now is a good time, red means wait. That is the entire user interface.
It sits where you see it in passing, and it turned an abstract number into something the whole family reacts to without thinking about it.
A Small Robot That Opens Our Doors
Not every door can be replaced with an expensive motorised version, so I built a little machine that does the pushing and pulling instead.
It runs on a cheap microcontroller with open firmware and reports into my smart home, which means the door can react to automations like any other device.
Nothing about the door itself had to be modified, which was the main condition before I started.
The Answer To My Guessing Game
Over the past clips I showed pieces of a build without ever saying what it would turn into, and quite a few guesses landed in the comments.
Here I finally put the parts together and show what I had been working towards the whole time, including the detail that gives the purpose away.
Some of you were surprisingly close. Others took the project in directions I had honestly not considered, and a couple of those ideas are worth keeping.
Another Piece Of My Unnamed Build
The project on my workbench has moved a step further, and I still have not said a word about what it is supposed to become.
This short clip shows the current state of the parts and how they sit together. Enough to see the progress, not enough to give the whole thing away.
If you want to guess, now is the moment. The reveal comes in one of the next clips, once the last pieces are in place.
Threaded Inserts For Printed Parts
Screwing directly into printed plastic works once, maybe twice. After that the thread is gone and the part is scrap.
The fix is a tiny metal sleeve that gets heated and pressed into the plastic. It cools in place and leaves a proper metal thread behind.
They cost very little and they are the reason my printed enclosures can be opened and closed repeatedly without falling apart.
Can You Tell What This Will Become
A new build is starting on my workbench, and for once I am not explaining the plan before I begin.
The clip shows the first components and the way they are laid out on the table. What the finished thing is meant to do stays open for now.
I am curious whether anybody works it out from these parts alone. Guessing is half the fun, and I will show the result soon enough.
The Odd Gadget That Plays Bird Songs
This one sounds strange when you describe it: a device that notices somebody entering the room and answers with quiet bird song.
It is built on a cheap microcontroller running open firmware and hooked into Home Assistant, so the presence detection and the sound come from the same system as everything else.
I built it half as a joke. It stayed because the room genuinely feels calmer with it running.
A DIY Lock For The Cupboard Door
Some things in the house should stay shut, and I did not want to buy a finished product for it.
The lock I built opens either from my watch or by holding a small chip against the door. Behind it sits a cheap microcontroller with open firmware, connected to my smart home and to Apple’s own home system.
Opening it is one tap. Everything else stays where it belongs.
What Should Vacation Mode Actually Do
Most smart homes have some kind of away or vacation setting, but what happens behind that button differs a lot from house to house.
In this clip I go through the steps mine runs through when we leave for a longer time, from comfort settings down to the security side.
I am not convinced my list is complete, so I asked viewers what they added to theirs.
Building A Box That Sounds Like A Garden
This little box has one job: fill a room with quiet bird sounds, the way an open window in summer would.
It is a self built device rather than a bought speaker, which means I decide when it plays and how it fits into the rest of my home.
In this clip I show what it looks like and how it sounds in the room.
