I’m a big fan of Plex, and have been using it for years. I have a lifetime Plexpass subscription, and an enterprise server containing not only all my movie and music backups, but also my TV recordings. I use an HD homerun which turns Plex …
Read MoreVoice Assistants: Working with Alexa and Google’s custom entities in Node-red
So for those of you who have been following my blog, you’ll know that I’ve been able to create my own entities in Google Home and Alexa. This has allowed me to not only control entities that aren’t specifically “working with XYZ” but also to …
Read MoreIntegrating the 4 channel Sonoff R3 Pro into Home-Assistant and Node-red
One of the things I’ve been meaning to get for a while now was a Sonoff R3 Pro. Now for those of you not familiar with this device, it’s essentially a 4 channel smart switch. There’s a non-pro version and the pro version. I opted …
Read MoreThe Beginner’s Guide to Node-red with Home-Assistant (Part 3: Timers)
If you’ve read part 1 and part 2, then you’ll already know how to work with MQTT (both receiving and sending commands), how to take sensor information from home-assistant as well as control entities directly in home-assistant, and most importantly, how to work with the …
Read MoreThe Beginner’s Guide to Node-red with Home-Assistant (Part 2: Switch Node)
In part 1 of this series we discussed simple configuration of the MQTT in and out nodes, how to send a payload of On or Off and how to monitor incoming information in the debug window. In this post we’re going to expand on this …
Read MoreThe Beginner’s Guide to Node-red with Home-Assistant (Part 1: MQTT)
I’ve been helping a fair few people online recently with some introductory operations in node-red. I thought I would write a kind of primer to help the beginner get up to speed with some functional flows. I see a lot of information online about how …
Read MoreXiaomi Aqara Sensors: My 2 year review
So it’s coming up to 2 years now since i’ve had the xiaomi aqara sensors up and running, and I thought i’d give everyone an update as to how they’ve performed, battery life etc, as well as some things I’ve been doing with them. If …
Read MoreCreating Custom Google Home entities for integration with Home-Assistant & Node-red
This post has been a long time coming. I’ve been looking at an easy way to create and control custom entities with Google assistant much like the way I can do with Alexa. We have both voice assistants in our household and well it was …
Read MoreUsing Node-red and Home-Assistant to check Unauthorised Computer Usage
So continuing with my Node-red tutorials, I thought I’d take a look at some workstation security related notifications. In this tutorial, I am going to select a couple of scenarios where you might want to be alerted to activity on your windows computer. First, I …
Read MoreA Guide to using Telegram with Node-red and Home-Assistant
I thought I’d publish a post to show you how to use Telegram with Node-red. Telegram is an instant messaging platform with a great channel feature. It means that not only can you receive notifications from your Home-Assistant installation, but you can also send commands …
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