Guides, explainers, and editorials for the modern smart home engineer.
Explainer
A Google Coral USB accelerator is the cheapest way to make Frigate’s object detection effectively free on your CPU. It runs a neural network over...
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Explainer
Freeze sensor pipe protection is the cheapest catastrophe insurance in cold-climate home automation: a $15 temperature sensor on a vulnerable pipe run warns you —...
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Explainer
The difference between an mmWave presence sensor and a PIR motion sensor is that PIR fires on a moving warm body and then goes blind,...
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Explainer
Hardware acceleration moves video decoding off your CPU cores and onto the GPU built to do it, and in Frigate it’s the difference between a...
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Explainer
The best automatic self-cleaning litter box scoops itself after every use, logs your cat’s visits for early health warnings, and — critically — works without...
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Explainer
Frigate is a local, open-source NVR built for real-time object detection, and paired with Home Assistant it turns a pile of cameras into a system...
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Explainer
The best mini PC for Home Assistant is a fanless Intel N100 box with an SSD and at least 8 GB of RAM — it’s silent,...
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Explainer
Adding a Zigbee repeater is simple in theory — plug in a mains-powered device and your range extends — but the step almost everyone misses...
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Explainer
Smart home presence detection is the difference between a house that reacts to movement and one that knows a room is occupied — and it...
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Explainer
The right way to get low-battery warnings in Home Assistant is one automation that watches every battery in the house at once. A template loops...
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