The Broken Promise of Alexa+
We’ve warned about the dangers of cloud dependency, and Amazon’s Alexa+ debacle just proved our point. Discover why this “upgrade” is the single most persuasive argument for a locally controlled, sovereign smart home.
Protecting Your Smart Home from Itself
A truly smart home should also be a guardian, protecting your devices from damage. Learn a core principle of smart home design with this elegant automation that prevents an expensive accident with your motorized blinds.
Weighted Confidence for Complex States
Level up your automations by building a sensor that thinks. This post details a “Weighted Confidence Sensor” that uses a scoring system to understand nuanced states, making your smart home more reliable and intelligent.
The Gatekeeper
This post teaches a cornerstone of good smart home design: separating the action from the condition. Learn the “Gatekeeper Pattern” to create a powerful Home Assistant setup that is robust, orderly, and sustainable.
One Script to Notify Them All
Simplify your Home Assistant notifications with this universal script. Its “fire-and-forget” design intelligently handles complex photo URLs and multiple users, making your automations cleaner, more robust, and incredibly easy to manage.
There Can Be Only One
Sometimes the simplest automations have the biggest impact. Learn to synchronize two switches in Home Assistant, solving a common annoyance and making your smart home feel more polished, predictable, and intuitive.
The Thinking Home Gets a Brain
From model selection to hardware, this is your blueprint for private AI in the home. Our “Good, Better, Best” guide helps you plan and build a powerful, local AI assistant that you truly own.
Bricked by Design
The Echelon smart bike controversy is a painful lesson in digital ownership. A mandatory firmware update has locked users out of third-party apps, proving that the hardware you paid for may not truly belong to you.