Home Automation Energy Monitoring with Shelly EM and Home Assistant Over the last couple of years, I've been putting Shelly devices into my house as part of my home automation journey. Although I've mainly used Shelly devices for automating lighting, they produce other devices such as an Energy Monitory (Shelly EM). So, with the recent energy
Home Automation Using a Template Light to Control a Custom Light in Home Assistant Last year I made my own Raspberry PI powered LED strip for the desk in my home office, and since then, I've been using an integration I developed using AppDaemon to control the strip via Home Assistant. Whilst this approach does work, it does have several limitations. My
Home Automation Ensuite Automations - Using Home Assistant to Perfect My Morning Routine I'm a morning person, and I usually get up quite early. As a result, I'm the first person up in our house. Once I'm awake, I'll get out of bed, find my way to the ensuite to get ready, and once I&
Home Automation Making traditional light switches smart A few months ago I started on a home automation journey with a plan to integrate all of my existing smart devices into Home Assistant, and to continue making the house smart with helpful and practical home automation improvements. The next step in this journey is to make the traditional
Raspberry Pi Getting Started with Home Automation and Home Assistant Home Assistant has been around for years, but I've never given it a try until now. With smart devices becoming more prevalent and affordable I wanted a better way to control all the smart devices I have as well as putting in some cost effective smart sensors. Smart
Electronics Using a Raspberry PI to Make My Office Desk Glow (Part 2) In a previous blog post I put together a step-by-step guide on how to put together the hardware for a Raspberry Pi controlled LED strip [https://www.jamesridgway.co.uk/using-a-raspberry-pi-to-make-my-office-desk-glow/]. In this post I will focus on the
Python Using a Raspberry PI to Make My Office Desk Glow (Part 1) tl;dr – I wanted to see if I could make a computer controlled LED light strip to go under my desk. Turns out I can, this is how I built a LED light strip that's controlled by a Raspberry PI. Disclaimer This project involves working with mains electricity.
