Development - A Bug's Life

A Bug's Life

Development

All automation and development stuff

Cover: Glitter Lamp to Smart Lamp, with badges for ESP32-C3, 2N2222, 6 LEDs and Zigbee button, above photos of the real lamp and its installed dev board

Turning a Glitter Swirl Lamp into a Smart Lamp

A cheap glitter swirl lamp, an ESP32-C3 and one 2N2222 transistor doing the job of an electronic finger - and it now answers to the Zigbee button next to my daughter's bed.

My DIY Macro Pad Evolution – From OLED Display to an Integrated Screen Stand

My DIY Macro Pad Evolution – From OLED Display to an Integrated Screen Stand

A couple of years ago I built my first DIY macro keypad. It was one of those projects that started with a simple idea—make repetitive tasks easier—and quickly turned into one of the most useful gadgets on my desk. If you haven't seen the original build,

My Favourite Home Assistant Automations

My Favourite Home Assistant Automations

One of the biggest reasons I love Home Assistant isn't the smart lights or fancy dashboards—it's the tiny automations that solve everyday problems. At the time or writing this post, I have 86 automation in Home Assistant, I love alot of them, but these are

DIY Smart Doorbell with LCD

DIY Smart Doorbell with LCD

In the age of smart homes and DIY electronics, creating a personalized smart doorbell can be a rewarding project that combines functionality and creativity. In this blog post, I will show the process of building this smart doorbell using a 16x2 LCD, a 3D printed enclosure, and some nifty home

Keypad Controller

A problem I faced after moving into this house, was the back garage door that leads to the garden. The door has a motor, but there is no remote, only a button inside the garage. Everytime I needed something in the garage while I was in the garden, I would

Light Notifications

If it ain't broke don't fix it. My My OpenHAB code style automations work for me, for the most part, and when something works I leave it alone, but with time I have been moving my automations into NODE-RED, a very powerful piece of automation

Presence detection

Simple yet cool to have Another recent addition to my home system is the ability to detect the presence of people. There are many ways to achieve this, as a start I went for the simplest, but the beauty of it, is that you can expand on how you determine

Outdoor Automations

Smart Swimming Pool So this was more work than expected, but the end result is really cool. So in order to get my pool onto the home automation system, it needed some electrical work, just to satisfy the OCD factor. Rewiring the pool into an outdoor DB board (Which took

Kitchen Temperature Monitoring

Adding the DHT22 Sensor So as per my doorbell post, I mentioned I would be adding a temperature and humidity sensor as well. Since my doorbell unit sits on a shelf in the Kitchen I thought it would be great to be able to monitor the ambient temperature and relative

Irrigation Automation

So finally I have completed my irrigation set up. This one tested a variety of my skills, Plumbing, electrical, manual labour :) and of course the coding and electronics :) I might still change this in the future to run on Tasmota, but I enjoy writing code, and for this one I