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Open Source Ambilight LEDs on a Raspberry Pi for $100
I made this for about $100 with a Raspberry Pi and no soldering: I’ve always thought that Philips Ambilight TVs were cool. They do what you see in that video: shine the edge colors past the TV. But it was always a “nice to have,” so when I was buying my TV I prioritized other…
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iOS Widgets for Home Assistant with Workflow
One of the key principles of home automation is being able to control things quickly and easily. I don’t want to have to unlock my phone, open an app, wait for it to load, and then finally find the device I want to control. I like that SmartThings supports the Today screen widgets in iOS. They let…
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My Home Automation Rules
In my last post about smart homes, I promised to outline what I have automated. A lot of home automation talk is about the gizmos and I don’t think enough is about the actual automation. These are actual automations; things a computer does to my house for me. Our front porch light turns on at sunset. It turns off…
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What’s the stupidest/weirdest project you used a RPi for?
This thread on reddit has some really fun ideas for a Raspberry Pi. Some of my favorites: Comment from discussion What’s the stupidest/weirdest project you used a RPi for?. Comment from discussion What’s the stupidest/weirdest project you used a RPi for?. The NoIR module is a camera for the Raspberry Pi with no infrared filter,…
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Smart Home Advice At The End of 2016
My friend, a recent dad, asked me for some advice on what smart home stuff he should get. I figured I’d share my response with everyone. This is just an overview of the stuff I recommend for him, a savvy dev-turned-leader. He’ll be reading this, so if you have suggestions or alternatives, leave them in the…
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How to put Amazon Echo shopping list items in Wunderlist
First off, if you use iOS and don’t have an Echo, use Kitchen Sync for your shopping list. It organizes everything by shopping aisle and works with iCloud so it’s super easy to share a list with your family. Plus Adam is a good guy. We use Wunderlist for our shopping list, so I set up…
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My Life With SmartThings (so far)
I’ve been using SmartThings for home automation for about 6 months now and figured it’s worth getting some of my thoughts down. I’ll start in this post with what I’ve got set up: 5 GE Link LED bulbs in my family room. I actually needed to get an updated firmware for these to work, so…