From thinking to tinkering, and back.

  • Project plan

    Project plan

    As described in my post New-build home I want to make a smart home out of a not so smart home. Here’s my project plan. Prerequisites I have some prerequisites I like to keep in mind: Devices This is the list of devices I’d like to control and/or use to make the house a smart-home.…

  • Utility meter: Water

    Utility meter: Water

    We have a water meter that’s by no means smart. We get a letter once a year to update the meter reading in a portal and our monthly fee is calculated. Water is cheap here, so not really a good reason to measure water usage except for sustainability reasons and, off course, fun. Tinker or…

  • Energy monitoring Nibe F1255

    Energy monitoring Nibe F1255

    In my search to interface with the Nibe heat pump I found out that our Nibe isn’t equipped with a standard interface for local control. The newer S series are. What I want to achieve is be able to monitor and control the heat pump from Home Assistant to be able to set the temperature…

  • New-build home

    New-build home

    This Friday we’ll receive the keys for our new-build home. I’ve been living up to this moment for two years now and can’t wait to get started with all things home-automation. First, some wall paper, paint and flooring will need to be done. I won’t bother you with that, what I will bother you with…

  • Moving HomeAssistant config from docker

    Moving HomeAssistant config from docker

    Let me start with a confession. Many months ago I was too impatient to start with HA and I have been lacking my security responsibilities since. Time for change and since I couldn’t find a comprehensive guide, let me write another incomprehensive guide. But hopefully it will be the piece of the puzzle you’re missing.…

  • Filtering DHT temperature sensor

    Filtering DHT temperature sensor

    I have some temperature sensors hooked up to Pi’s in the chicken coop and the basement, but was getting some nasty readings. The sensor in the coop would give erratic values of 5% humidity a few times an hour and the sensor in the basement was continuously dropping to zero. I’m assuming you have the…

  • OTGW on remote pi with ser2net

    Now I am building my own domotica system with Domoticz, I bought and built a open therm gateway (OTGW) to intercept and modify the communications between my boiler and the Honeywell Round thermostat I have in the livingroom. The situation is as follows, I have a rPi in the basement, connected to an RFLink and…

  • Setting up internal DNS(+cache) on Synology NAS

    First thing I did when I received my second hand NAS I bought a completely useless domain name to access it via the internet. Although we have a dynamic IP address I don’t bother setting up DDNS but just change the dns settings from my provider when my IP changes. Why internal DNS? That said,…

  • The Genesis blog

    A.k.a. my first blog post on this website. Don’t expect a whitepaper or something. I just needed some space in my head and that’s best done by writing stuff and since writing on a piece of paper results in tons of head scratching wondering what the hell I wrote down. I decided it was best…