Blog
Topic: Smart Home
8 posts on this topic.
25 Automations Later: What Actually Helps in a Smart Home
Motion lights, good-night scene, solar control, fireplace effect: which of 25 automations proved their worth, and which are mere gadgetry.
Solar, Storage, Spot Prices: My Smart Home Energy Setup
Solar on three roof faces, three batteries with net-zero balancing, prices from ENTSO-E: how Home Assistant orchestrates car, hot water and heat pump.
An Energy Manager That Starts by Just Watching
Energy management as a custom Home Assistant integration: roles instead of entity IDs, an explainable heuristic instead of a solver, observing before acting.
What the Heat Pump Reveals When You Ask It Directly
High pressure, superheat, energy per heating degree day: which diagnostic values a Modbus-connected heat pump delivers, what they mean, and the dashboard code.
Mapping Unknown Modbus Registers Without Breaking Anything
No datasheet to hand? How to identify the Modbus registers of an unknown device: scanner strategies, an observation mode, and the rule to never write blindly.
LG Therma V and Home Assistant: Modbus via ESP32
Connecting an LG Therma V to Home Assistant via Modbus RTU and an ESP32: terminals, DIP switches and the three pitfalls that decide whether any byte flows.
Heat Pump Without the Cloud: When the Gateway Died, the ESP32 Arrived
The cloud gateway of my LG Therma V failed and support barely replied. Why the fix was a 35-euro board, and what a heat pump actually does.
Smart Home Without the Cloud: Why My Home Runs Locally
1,744 entities, one server in the house, hardly any vendor clouds: a field report on why my smart home runs locally, and where compromises remain.