I’ve been adding more and more devices to my smart home lately, so naturally, my garage door opener had to follow. But instead of swapping it out for a new unit, I used a Shelly 1 and a cheap door contact sensor to make it smart for less than $20!
It runs ESPHome (open-source, no cloud) and integrates seamlessly with Home Assistant. Here’s how I did it.
Static websites are still a hot topic. They are fast, and they’re incredibly secure because there isn’t a CMS to hack. Once you build a static website, however, the question becomes: Where do I host?
In other words: what is the fastest static website hosting provider in 2020? Well, let’s find out!
Last year I made that video in response to a sponsorship offer that I got from various VPN providers. They all told me the same thing: our service is the best way to protect your privacy, and we were hoping you could convey this message in one of your videos.
So I decided to do just that. Minus the sponsorship part. Here’s why.
Many devices in my home have become “smart” over the last couple of months, with one big exception: my trusty 3D printer. It’s a super reliable Prusa i3 MK3, but it lacks an internet connection.
So I decided to use a Pi Zero to keep track of my 3D prints and send the progress to my Home Assistant installation.
I have a few ESP32’s running in my house. A few of them are running 24/7 and require an always-on WiFi connection. That’s been quite tricky to implement. I used to include various checks throughout my code, but that’s not scalable.
What I need is something running in the background that is continuously monitoring my WiFi connection, regardless of what other code is running. Luckily we can use FreeRTOS on the ESP32 to do just that!
