Home Automation

Using Xiaomi WiFi Switches with Google Home & Home Assistant

David Williams - DEW IT Home Automation Central Coast , 0 Comment
xiaomi wifi switches

Originally posted 2018-02-19 10:50:21. So after my experiences with the Yeelights and Google Home, I wanted to add a couple of WiFi switches to my system. I already had one of the Belkin Wemo switches but Belkin has abandoned the Australian Market now and their switches are no longer available. Not only that, even if they were available, the price was really steep at around $60-$70 Aussie. Looking around on eBay and also looking in the Home Assistant Community, I saw that some people were using the Xiaomi WiFi switches (pictured). What I didn’t realise initially is that there are
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Home Assistant and Google Actions

David Williams - DEW IT Home Automation Central Coast , , 0 Comment
google home mini

Originally posted 2017-10-31 13:40:06. So I just got another Google Home – but this one is a Google Home Mini. I got this one for my office so I can listen to background music easily without blasting music everywhere at home. I’m also planning on getting a mini for our bedroom to listen to music with the new sleep timer that was recently introduced. However, the purpose of this post is to speak about the Google Actions Integration with Home Assistant. You will remember from my previous blog posts about controlling my Limitless LED lights with Google Home that I
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Setting Home Assistant up for Secure access over the Internet

David Williams - DEW IT Home Automation Central Coast , , , 4 Comments
home assistant configuration

Originally posted 2018-06-05 15:35:04. Lets have a conversation about security when your Home Assistant is opened up so you can access it over the Internet. If you take a look over on the Home Assistant Community forums here there are threads about user’s home assistant instances being hacked with ‘friendly’ hackers who have just changed a few things and left some warnings about their insecure home assistant setups. Traditionally or ‘normally’ external access to your system over the internet means that you would open up some ports on your router so that you can connect over the internet. This would
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How to setup Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi

David Williams - DEW IT Home Automation Central Coast , , 0 Comment
home automation with home assistant

Originally posted 2018-02-12 11:06:20. What can you do with Home Automation and Why should I be interested? I’m assuming upfront that if you have found this article by searching then you are probably interested in home automation of at least have an open mind and would like to know how to setup Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi. I’ll say that my wife is not a fan at all of Home Automation and probably regrets the day that she was given a Google Home device as a work gift to all employees as it opened up a world of possibilities
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Home Assistant Updates May 2018 and Sonoff-Tasmota update

David Williams - DEW IT Home Automation Central Coast , , , 0 Comment
sonoff s22 switch mqtt firmware

Originally posted 2018-05-21 12:56:29. May 2018 will see the release of the latest version of Home Assistant. Home Assistant has been in ‘beta’ for as long as it has been generally available and it seems it is soon to be going to be released as a real ‘product’ if chat on the support chat forum on discord is to be believed. Home Assistant recently changed the way releases are handled so as to release more stable .0 releases than has sometimes been the case and the accompanying up to 6 ‘dot’ releases to fix errors introduced in the new release.
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