I maintain FiestaBoard, a free, MIT-licensed app that can put Home Assistant information on Vestaboard displays or a Divoom Pixoo 64. It runs on a separate Docker host or Raspberry Pi.

There are two different connections. The Home Assistant plugin brings entity data into FiestaBoard pages, using REST or MQTT Statestream. The newer sign-in option and entity picker simplify setup. With sign-in, you do not have to create and paste a long-lived access token manually.

Separately, FiestaBoard can expose display controls to Home Assistant through MQTT Discovery. That needs an MQTT broker and Home Assistant's MQTT integration. An automation can then select a page or collection, send a message, pause the display, or control schedules.

For example, a page can show a door sensor's state, while a separate automation chooses which page appears. Reading the entity and controlling the display are distinct setup steps.

Recent updates also add per-board quiet times, quick messages without creating a page, and custom collection durations. v10 adds pixel canvases and output plugins; the Home Assistant integration itself predates this release.

Source and setup: https://github.com/Fiestaboard/FiestaBoard

What home status would you want visible at a glance, and what should trigger a change to the display?

I made this to control my smart home from a small 3D model of my flat, and thought some of you might like it. Here’s what it does:

• Build your home in 3D in the browser. Trace rooms on a grid and drop furniture from a catalog, with a live 3D preview.
• Objects bound to real devices. Clicking a lamp toggles the real light. Lamps light the room and cast shadows, and the sun moves with the time of day.
• Auto-generated widgets. A side panel with a widget for each device, grouped by room.

Free, open source, installs through HACS: https://github.com/CarlesRojas/ha-diorama

Feedback welcome!

i’ve been looking for ways to make my home cleaning routine less time consuming, especially when it comes to keeping floors clean without having to do everything manually. while looking at different cleaning options, i came across Tineco and got curious about whether its cleaning tools actually make daily upkeep easier or if a simple routine is enough.

for those who’ve found ways to streamline household chores, what’s made the biggest difference for you? i’d be interested in practical tips or setups that save time without making things more complicated. are there any cleaning tools or habits you’ve found genuinely useful?

My aunt was visiting for a few days and ended up getting to my place way earlier than expected. I was at work, couldnt leave right away and she had to sit outside with her luggage until i could get home. Felt pretty bad about the whole thing, especially since she called me like 4 times asking how much longer id be 😭

Now im thinking about getting a smart lock so i can let family in from my phone when something like this happens again. id still want a regular key as backup because i dont trust myself to remember to charge or change batteries. The whole point is avoiding another situation where someone has to wait outside for me.

For those who have smart locks, has the remote unlock ever failed when you needed it? thats the one thing holding me back from getting one.

I originally made this for my own wall iPad: home controls, cameras, weather and my calendar on one screen. After using it for a while, I decided to release it for free.

HomeFrame (iPad, iPadOS 17+): apps.apple.com/app/homeframe-smart-dashboard

- Free, no subscription, no account. The only in-app purchases are optional tips that don't unlock anything

- App Store privacy label: "Data Not Collected". Face recognition runs on the iPad, and no face images are saved or uploaded.

- Accessories, scenes, cameras, weather, calendar,
reminders, music and a screen saver.

- iPad only for now, and English only.

It's 1.0, so I'd love honest feedback and bug reports. I'll be in the comments.

I feel like every smart home brand looks amazing in promotional videos, but I’m more interested in what happens after you’ve lived with it for a year or two.

I have a tiny apartment, around 40m², with four Hue bulbs and a Bridge. That’s pretty much my entire setup right now.

I want to expand into cameras, presence sensors, smart plugs, temperature monitoring and whatever other useful gadgets are out there.

My biggest concern is software.

I don’t want to spend hundreds of euros on devices only to discover that the app is frustrating, automations are unreliable or basic features require subscriptions.

I also don’t really want smart home automation to become a second job. I enjoy technology, but I’d prefer something polished that just works.

Aqara seems interesting because of the variety of products. SwitchBot looks fun too. Govee has some impressive lighting, but I’m not sure it’s the right foundation for an entire smart home.

For those of you who have tried multiple ecosystems:

* Which one has the best app and overall user experience?

* Which brand has the most interesting devices?

* What automations do you actually use every day?

* What would you absolutely not buy again?

And if anyone wants to share their setup or some screenshots, I’d love to see them.

I’m much more interested in real experiences than sponsored reviews.

My take on the ubiquitous thermostat card.

• It uses a few helper scripts to automatically switch between heating and cooling mode so that a cold morning and hot afternoon can be handled without intervention.
• Simple, intuitive buttons to set a comfort range with heat below and cool above targets and the ability to "allow" heating or cooling independently.
• It detects and respects when the temp is set at the thermostat. The card gives you a clear alert so you can re-engage control easily from Home Assistant.
• A clean reflexive design that can be swapped between bar and dial modes.
• Collapses to a simple display of the current temperature, the comfort range you selected, and an status icon (animated for heating and cooling).
• Visual editor for a custom experience.

Looking for a little feedback before I submit to HACS.

I’ve been developing ESP32 Tailnet Gateway, an open-source firmware that turns an ESP32-S3 into a lightweight Tailscale/Headscale gateway.
The most useful feature is selective LAN-to-Tailnet forwarding.
Imagine having an IoT device in one house and an MQTT broker running on a remote server in another house.
The IoT device cannot run Tailscale, but that doesn’t matter.
Just configure it to connect to the ESP32’s local IP address and a chosen port.
IoT device → ESP32-S3 → Tailnet → Remote MQTT broker
The ESP32 forwards the connection securely through your existing Tailnet. No VPN client or special firmware is needed on the IoT device, and it doesn’t have to join the ESP32’s Wi-Fi.
I also added:
● Wake-on-LAN to recover a NAS or PC remotely, with reachability checks.
● MQTT and Home Assistant Discovery for automation and monitoring.
● Subnet routing and IoT Wi-Fi gateway options.
● Service monitoring, event history and notifications via ntfy, Telegram or email.
● Web interface, configuration backups and OTA updates.
Firmware v3.0.2 supports ESP32-S3 N8R8/N16R8 boards with 8 MB PSRAM.
It’s intended for lightweight IoT connectivity and homelab recovery, not high-bandwidth routing. Ethernet and cellular support remain experimental.
GitHub: https://github.com/Mattboxx/esp32-tailnet-gateway
Screenshots and documentation: https://mattboxx.github.io/esp32-tailnet-gateway/
Flash directly from your browser: https://mattboxx.github.io/esp32-tailnet-gateway/install-firmware/
The firmware builds on Csontikka’s ESP32 subnet-router and MicroLink work. Claude Code and Codex were extensively used during development, testing and documentation.
This is an independent community project, not an official Tailscale client.
I’d love technical feedback — especially from anyone using Tailscale for IoT devices, remote homes or homelab recovery.

I maintain **Orphan Entity Cleaner**, a custom integration (HACS Default) that finds entities left in the registry after an integration was removed, and lets you delete them from a sidebar panel.

The most common complaint with tools like this is that they flag entities that are only temporarily unavailable. 4.2 tries to fix that by putting every candidate into one of three categories:

- **Safe** - nothing provides it any more. Only these are selected or deleted automatically.

- **To review** - integration disabled, failing or retrying.

- **Only unavailable** - device just off for a while.

It also uses HA's own "no longer provided" signal (`restored: true`), shows a **"used by N"** badge for entities still referenced in automations, scripts or scenes, can remove **orphan devices**, and waits 10 minutes after start-up before reporting anything. There's a dry run and a JSON backup before deleting.

GitHub: https://github.com/Franz646/orphan-cleaner

Happy to hear what it gets wrong on your setup.

I built a camera recorder for my own house. Now I want a few people to test it.

What it does:

Records up to 4 network cameras. Any camera with an RTSP stream works.

Sends a push to your phone when it sees a person, a car or an animal.

Learns the faces of the people you add. Pushes about your own family arrive without sound.

Reads number plates and names the cars you know.

Keeps a log of who came and went, with a report each week.

Shows live view and clips in the browser, also on a phone.

Copies alarm clips to iCloud, Google Drive, a NAS and more. The copies are encrypted.

Connects to Home Assistant through MQTT.

Updates itself from the settings page. A failed update puts the old version back.

What you need:

A Linux machine with Docker. I run it in a Proxmox container.

No graphics card. It runs on the processor.

Windows and Mac work through a small Linux system. I have tested that part very little.

What I would like from you:

Try the install and tell me where you got stuck.

Tell me which cameras you use and whether they worked.

Send ideas with the “Request a feature” link in the app.

Limits:

I built it for one house, so you will find bugs.

The install still needs one settings file. A step-by-step installer is next.

An AI assistant wrote much of the code with me. I test every release on my own cameras first.

Everything stays on your machine. Nothing leaves it unless you set up the off-site copy.

Code, install steps and screenshots: https://github.com/johanhoel/amplitude/tree/main/CamWatch

Hey! I have ASD but am v good at masking. Recently I realised I was really overwhelmed and I want to work to make my life easier. I love systems for efficiency or making lil changes, but i am new here and feel there’s things I am not thinking of.

If anyone has any suggestions for someone who wants to start implying more things like this in their house of what worked for them or etc etc.

Bought a new fridge recently and first week no matter what we did it was too hard when scooping ice cream we bumped the degrees up one degree twice. Then our ice cream was like melted as scooped it out too soft. We left the 48 return window for appliances. Bought a govee temperature sensor and now we need to know what looks normal so we know if we need to return a fridge again because we are still getting constant fluctuation though not as big. I did put one in our outdoor freezer and it stayed within a degree the whole time so the 5+ without us opening anything is concerning. But maybe I need more data? Please help.

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I used to run nest protect. After it got discontinued, I swapped in a set of x-sense smart smoke and CO alarms, and they got put to work pretty quick.

Last week, I was out of state for work when my phone lit up with a push notification that an alarm was sounding. The app showed which unit. Nobody was home, and I was hundreds of miles away, so before that, I'd have just sat there stressing.

But now I have an optional fire dispatch add on. After the alert, I asked my neighbor to check the place. He confirmed something had been smoking in the house, then I just needed to confirm the fire in the app. Not long after, the monitoring side called and sent a truck. I feel lucky that I have this setting rather than just hoping a neighbor noticed.

I am looking for an outswing automated door opener that meets the following criteria:

• Activates with a fob or button.
• Allows people to open the door even without the fob (manually by pulling)
• Has hardware that will not be visible on the outside of the door.
• Ideally under $200 and available in the U.S.A. Used would be fine as this is for a home project.

I don't have wiring running to the location but could figure something out, though ideally no major wiring requirements. The door is light and mostly hollow core, so it doesn't need much power behind it.

EDIT: images of exterior door face (closed), exterior top of door (open), interior top of door (open)

Just finished setting up our first proper connected living room and wanted to share where it landed. Nothing enthusiast-grade, more just whatever we could get to talk to each other without buying a whole hub ecosystem.

Google Nest Mini in the living room as the main voice point. Two Mi smart bulbs in the hallway, Xiaomi video doorbell, and the Comfee Gusto in the bedroom. The bulbs and doorbell live in Mi Home. The AC uses the SmartHome app which linked to Google Home on the second attempt, so now voice control for temperature and on/off works through Nest Mini. Cloud-to-cloud, latency around two seconds, reliable.

The thing that actually surprised me is how useful the AC schedule is once I set it up properly in the SmartHome app and left it. Comes on 20 minutes before I usually get home from the office, room is already cool. Doorbell notification goes straight to Google Home too so I can hear who's at the door from the kitchen.

Still three apps on the home screen. Mi Home has those main page banners I keep meaning to disable. I've thought about a Tapo IR hub to pull things into Matter but honestly the setup works, and adding another box feels like solving a problem I don't have yet.

Thinking about adding a motion sensor next so the hallway lights don't need manual commands when my hands are full.

A few months ago I bought a Shelly Gen4 Presence sensor, direct from their store on Aliexpress.

It worked well, though I noticed it did occasionally run VERY warm.

While it was being powered off the USB-A port on a multi port USB charger, the charger has always worked perfect well and delivered consistent voltages. I needed to use a longer USB cable (2.5m) to reach the area I was placing it, and as such it looks like there was a slight amount of voltage drop on the cable, but nothing crazy, and it seemed to be working fine until the day I stumbled upon it's smoking corpse.

Shelly are now fighting me on this and claiming that just because my charger can do 100w using a usb-c to usb-c cable, they are confused and think it's somehow possible for it to do 100w over a usb-a to usb-c cable, despite the attached picture of a USB multimeter demonstrating that port / cable delivering.... 4.87W!

They also tried to claim that the 5v/1A charger spec in the specifications of the sensor was a maximum amperage for the charger 🤦 This seems laughable to me, as I don't recall the last time I ever saw a 1A USB charger for sale, and it's my understanding that a device will only draw as much current as neccesary.

Edit: I just noticed on THEIR website they recommend a multi port 65w GaN USB charger...

https://www.shelly.com/products/shelly-presence-gen4-white? - On the right with 'pair with'

I've also seen a number of other complaints of these running very warm, and suspect it may not be an isolated issue. It was kept in an air conditioned environment, away from any direct sunlight or other sources of heat.

I am setting up motion-activated lighting in two rooms and want to run my plan by this sub to see if I am missing better options, especially since my house runs on Google Home.

For the utility room, I am planning on a flush-mounted WiZ SuperSlim ceiling light paired with a WiZ battery motion sensor. Mostly because gemini offered it as an alternative to Philips.

I want it to trigger at a low brightness when I walk in, and have an option for high brightness for normal utility room business.

For the hallway, I want to keep my existing pendants, so I am looking at standard smart bulbs paired with a separate smart motion sensor linked through Google Home routines. My main concern is latency - how noticeable is the delay between detecting motion and the bulbs actually firing?

Any alternative hardware recommendations would be hugely appreciated

Like many of us im sure, this started with a small fix to replace the drive belt on this old gate motor. Next thing you know im installing a wifi controller, connecting it to my ring cameras, auto closing based off my phone location, and auto open/close for door dashers. Yes it was vibe coded but i am software engineer. Full details on how I did it here https://danielyaa5.github.io/gate-opener-widget/