Smart Home
This section explains the core concepts behind modern smart homes — from sensors and wireless protocols to platforms like Home Assistant and MQTT. If you’re new to smart home tech, or want to properly understand how everything fits together before building, this is the right place to begin.
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How I use smart alarms with Home Assistant?
Zigbee smoke, carbon monoxide, and gas alarms should always be treated as standalone safety devices first. They need to be loud, local, and reliable on their own. Home Assistant doesn’t replace that, but it gives you much quicker notice that something is happening.
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Choosing the Right Home Automation Server (for Home Assistant)
We stock a large range of Home Assistant servers that come pre-installed with Home Assistant OS. Each machine is hand-picked to provide reliable, local smart home control with silent, fanless operation. Below, we compare the specifications of each model so you can decide which one is the right choice to run your Home Assistant server…
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What hardware do I need to run Home Assistant?
Home Assistant will run on any hardware that meets the following minimum requirements: The easiest way to get up and running with Home Assistant is to run it on a dedicated device such as a Raspberry Pi or a small lower-power computer such as an NUC. NUC A NUC is a small, but powerful computer…
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Basics of automations and scenes in home assistant
Throughout this post, we explain how to write automations and scenes within Home Assistant to control sensors, lights, and other entities in a consistent and reliable way. We cover when to use automations versus scenes, how they work behind the scenes, and how to combine them to create a smarter, more responsive home.
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Unlocking your home assistant dashboard
In this post we look at how to take control of your dashboard in Home Assistant, as well as create and manage views and cards.
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What is Home Assistant?
Home Assistant is free software that helps you control various aspects of your home, such as your lights, thermostat, and security system, all in one place. It is essentially a smart home hub that can help you automate routine tasks and make your home more efficient and convenient to live in.
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What is Zigbee?
Zigbee is a wireless communication protocol specifically designed for low-power and low-bandwidth applications. It is commonly used in smart home technology to connect devices and enable them to communicate with each other.
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Matter vs Reality: What Home Assistant Users Should Know
You’ve probably heard of Matter — the new smart home standard backed by Apple, Google, Amazon, and others. It promises to fix compatibility headaches by letting all your devices talk to each other, regardless of brand or ecosystem. Sounds great. But if you’re already deep into smart home setups — especially with Home Assistant and Zigbee/Z-Wave/etc. — you might…
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