Thought Blocks

My Rachio sprinkler controller unexpectedly died so I decided to build my own using ESPHome and Home Assistant.

My Rachio sprinkler controller unexpectedly died so I decided to build my own using an off-the-shelf microcontoller, ESPHome, and Home Assistant.

I wasn’t using my weather dashboard in Home Assistant, here’s what I did to make it fun again.

Their name and use may be new, but dollar backed stablecoins are really quite familiar.

Bitcoin and Ether are widely recognized as cryptocurrencies.

Products and services sold as subscriptions are more popular than ever.

Getting kids to do chores is always a battle.

Aside from my monthly utility bill, understanding my home’s energy consumption has always been fairly opaque.

While network diagrams are essential in a corporate setting, outside of that context they are often unknown or under appreciated.

Note: This is a update/sub-post to a broader blog post on smart heating I published earlier in the year.

No one likes spam.

Once you start down the home automation rabbit hole path, you’ll find a seemingly ever expanding set of automation opportunities.

Getting started with Traefik 2 can be a handful (…even if you are migrating from v1).

Lights are things not normally given a name.

Covid-19 has pretty much turned everything upside down.

I needed a reliable method to properly heat a detached home office.

I have two QNAP NAS’s running a variety services in Docker.

Prerequisites: Container Station: If this is not already on your device then install it from the QNAP App Store.