Category: Smart Home
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Send Camera Video by Email From a Home Assistant Automation
Home Assistant can do more than send a push notification when a camera sees a person. You can record a short clip, attach that video to an email,…
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I Was Quoted $34,126 for a 30 kWh Home Battery. The Sales Process Was the First Red Flag.
On 30 April 2026 I had a solar battery sales appointment in Queensland. The pitch was for a large Anker battery system: a 30 kWh Anker setup with…
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How to duty cycle HVAC zones with Home Assistant
Here is a handy script that can help with automating your zone duty cycle, for this you will need to set up a slider card, and have your…
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The Perils of Solar Battery Rebates and Why Homeowners Feel Like They’re Being Taken for a Ride
Australians love a rebate. On paper, it sounds simple: the government offers a generous discount, households get cheaper batteries, and everyone wins. In reality, rebates can create a…
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How To Re-Flash the TekOnline 7-Zone HVAC Controller From Home Assistant
If your board shows up in Home Assistant as something like esphome-web-6ad244, only exposes one or two generic entities, and no longer behaves like the zone controller, it is…
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ESPHome 7-Zone HVAC Controller – Smart 24VAC Zone Control for Home Assistant
TL:DR – You can get it here 🥳 Its been way too long in the making. But its finally done (well…maybe a few small tweaks left!) One of…
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How We Built a 7-Zone HVAC Controller with ESPHome
The 7-zone controller is now running, and this post walks through the build direction we took at TekOnline. The goal was simple: create a zone control platform that…
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From USB Cable To Home Assistant: Getting Our ESP32 HVAC Board Online (And the New Workflow)
On March 5, 2026, we brought a fresh ESP32 HVAC board online and documented a cleaner workflow for future installs. This post is the practical version of what happened:…
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How I Fixed “Improv Wi-Fi Serial Not Detected” When Adding a New ESPHome Device in Home Assistant
If you’re flashing an ESP32 or ESP8266 with ESPHome and get this message: An error occurred. Improv Wi-Fi Serial not detected …it usually happens right after the firmware…
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📂 How to Mount a Network Share (SMB/NFS) in Home Assistant OS
Here’s the correct syntax for each field. 🔹 1. Name This is just a label for Home Assistant.It also becomes the folder name under /media or /backup. 👉…