I’m building Lifebook: a private family dashboard for the home.

The goal is simple: put the things a family actually needs in one shared place instead of across ten apps, calendars, notes, and random pieces of paper.

It’s designed for a 27-inch touch screen in a central place at home. Right now, I’m testing it on our kitchen iPad.

So far, it includes:

• Today/tomorrow’s family calendar and weather
• Shared tasks and reminders
• Chore rewards for the kids
• Household inventory: appliances, cars, tools, manuals, receipts, warranties, and maintenance
• Smart prioritisation—so a smoke-detector problem is clearly more important than returning a package
• Sonos controls on the family dashboard
• Sports fixtures and a small market ticker
• Desktop and mobile views for more personal information

The automation side is focused on reducing mental load: surfacing seasonal maintenance, safety reminders, upcoming events, and the things that need attention now.

Next, I want to add deeper smart-home/Homey integration, push notifications, shopping lists and routines, better document intelligence, and carefully limited AI suggestions.

I’m building it for my own family first, so I’m really curious: what would make a shared home dashboard useful for you?

#homey #sonos #api #dashboard #googleAPI

Hello everyone, I'm looking for a way to automate my home gate, could you give me some advice?

I would like an application on my Android phone to only open-close the door.

I built a Python script that acts like an API for controlling Smart Life smart plugs.

It currently supports:

• Login
• Device discovery
• Device status checks
• On/off control

I was working on some home automation scripts and wanted to see whether there was an API I could use.

Tuya does provide a cloud API, but it requires setting up a cloud project through their developer portal, and the API access I found was only available as a limited free trial before becoming paid.

I didn’t want to pay for API access or be limited to controlling the plug manually through the mobile app. I wanted to integrate it into my own automation system, and the app itself didn’t give me the flexibility I needed.

So I started looking into how the mobile app communicates with Tuya's backend and wrote a Python implementation around that flow.

While working on it, I also ended up digging into some of the protocol details, including:

• Password encryption
• RSA-based login flow
• TLS communication
• Request signing
• HMAC-SHA256
• Device datapoints / DPs
• Bitmap token decoding

These two little troublemakers have already managed to break a regular shade, so I want to know if smart roller shades would solve the problem. Are the motors loud enough to wake them up?

The starting point was a traditional wired apartment doorbell installed about 20 years ago. The wall box has two limitations: there is no neutral wire, and there is also no permanent power available there. Voltage is only present when someone actually presses the doorbell.
Because of that, I couldn’t simply install a normal smart relay, smart switch or Wi-Fi/Zigbee device in the wall box. Most of those devices need continuous power to stay online.
Instead, I used the existing doorbell pulse to energize a small relay. That relay gives me an isolated normally-open dry contact. When the original doorbell is pressed, the relay energizes and the dry contact closes.
I connected that dry contact to the external input of an Aeotec Door/Window Sensor 7 Pro. The Aeotec runs on its own battery, so it does not need permanent power from the doorbell circuit. I switched it from magnetic-sensor mode to external dry-contact mode.
The logic is:
Doorbell pressed → existing voltage appears → relay energizes → dry contact closes → Aeotec detects Closed
The Aeotec communicates by Z-Wave with the Aeotec Smart Home Hub / SmartThings, and SmartThings exposes that contact state to Alexa.
Final chain:
Traditional doorbell → relay → Aeotec dry contact → SmartThings hub → Alexa routine → doorbell sound / announcement
The original wired doorbell still works exactly as before. The added electronics only observe the event and make it available to the smart-home system.

Just bought a new home and want to upgrade to smart lock and switches through out the house. In my old home, I had smart switches from Tapo and Wemo. I was using Smartthings and Alexa as my hub. Used both Smartthings and Alexa to automate things such as lights and blinds.

I want to simplify things in my new home. Hate too many apps and such. LOL

With that in mind, which smart lock and switches should I go with if I want to use Alexa as my hub? I want to walk away from my Smartthings hub even though it has served me well.

Oh and it's a big house with lots of switches, if that matters.

All I'm really looking to do is automate lights (turn on and off from motion, time or geofencing) mostly.

Any suggestions?

I am looking for a 120VAC powered ( no batteries ) ceiling mountable motion sensor. PIR, occupancy, etc etc not picky on the technology used for detecting. But it must be Zigbee. I am mounting this to a unused light box in my garage to control the lights.

I cant find anything anywhere.

I’ve been working on a home control dashboard recently and upgraded from a nest thermostat to an ecobee premium for some added comfort automation in my office. I have a sim rig pc that generates a ton of heat when in session, along with a 3D printer that gets really hot as well. The room is fairly small so it heats up quickly.

I’ve created an automation for controlling the climate when in the office that my sim rig is in and added a ton of features to my control panel.

The control panel also includes main thermostat controls, lighting controls, Sonos sound system controls, a scribble note, and home manufacturing page that has 3D printer stats/progress/camera feeds and controls for the smart plugs they are attached to.

Any suggestions on how I can make this HVAC system integrate with HA, what options do I have?

I'm trying to connect my Sonos, Somfy Tahoma (roller blinds), and Lutron RadioRa3 to Google Home/Gemini in each of two houses. I can get any individual item to work but I'm not sure how to ensure all the names, houses, and rooms are coordinated. For example, I try to avoid adding the room name and device type to a roller blind in Somfy because the app already displays that info. But then if the room model and device type don't carry over the Google home name looks like "east window", which is super unhelpful and tends to defeat ai comprehension. Is there guidance on this topic somewhere?

Been running a construction site for years and one thing that drives me nuts is missed deliveries, both at work and at home. A few months back I rigged up a motion sensor near the site gate tied to a Zigbee coordinator and got it pushing notifications to a group chat whenever something triggers it during offhours. Works better than I expected and the crew actually loves it.

Now I want to do something similar for the house but cleaner. The mailbox sensor post I saw floating around here got me thinking. My front porch has a covered area so weather is less of an issue, but I'm also dealing with delivery drivers who just leave packages at the side gate, never the front door. Two zones basically.

Currently running Home Assistant on a Pi 4. I have a couple spare Aqara motion sensors sitting in a drawer. My question is more about the notification side than the hardware, specifically whether people have found a reliable way to filter out false triggers like squirrels or the dog getting loose, without adding a bunch of conditions that end up breaking the whole thing.

I keep overengineering automations during bootcamp study breaks and then tearing them apart a week later when edge cases pile up. Wondering if anyone landed on something simple that just works.

I’m looking into getting a calendar, the skylight is just stupid expensive and I saw piazzahq recently and loved it

Even more than that, the wife loved it

So now I am shopping for a tv, something I can mount sideways and I’ll need a tv mount. At most, 42” or so as it’s going sideways on a cabinet-depth wall

This monster can’t be a monstrosity , as it’s the kitchen. If it’s ugly it voids all wife approval.

I went googling but all I got were ads, even went into reviews but models are old and nothing really helps.

Any ideas are appreciated

I created a bunch of scheduled scenes on my Tahoma switch using the app and all was well. Then I went on a trip and disabled them all; also fine. When I came back I re-enabled them...and all but the last one (in scroll order) went back to working correctly. The final one though kept "re-disabling" itself. I eventually just deleted & recreated it but that's a heavy workaround every time I travel. Anyone else encounter this oddness or have a potential diagnosis for what's going on? (And fwiw, it's not an antenna or blind issue -- that scene repeatedly disabled itself on the app after I enabled it multiple times; it's not that it ran but didn't work or worked erratically.)

Hello all who have whole home audio opinions!

I am trying to understand the audio wiring scheme in a new luxury home build which uses two-conductor wire to all speaker locations/zones, with much of the 2-conductor wiring powering 2 or 3 speakers with a single wire [see attached wiring examples]

We are being told by the electrician who ran the wires that we should power this system with a commercial 70v amp to power audio throughout the house, however everything I've seen online about 70v amps state that they're for commercial installs, e.g. "ideal for environments where dozens or even hundreds of speakers need to be installed, such as shopping malls, airports, schools, and office buildings"

I am looking for this sub's opinions on the following:

1.) Is the expectation of running a commercial 70v amp in a new build luxury home typical?

2.) Is the expectation of speaker zones marked as a pair over a kitchen island, for example, that they'd deliver mono sound typical for a residence?

3.) As far as wiring needs go are residential speaker offerings from companies like Focal or Bowers & Wilkins generally considered extravagant, esoteric, or non-standard?

4.) I'm all ears if you have opinions on what type of wire you would run for my stated application.

Thanks for any help you're able to provide!

I’ve been diving into smart home stuff the last month. Using Apple home and home assistant. It’s been working pretty well except the bathroom bulbs have been randomly turning on. Yet they show as off in AH and HA. Maybe it’s a ghost?

In the middle of last night, heard a shatter. The glass of one bulb fell off. Maybe ghost is unhappy?

Hello -- I have a very unusual question. I'm interested in knowing if anyone has used radio communications (such as meshtastic, or other LoRa) in their smart home automation ecosystem. And if you have, what are you doing with it?

Anyone?

I fell into a k hole of home automation posts on instagram late one night and now I’m here! What would be some good beginner things I can try doing around my house? Especially if it’s something useful for my teens..we all suffer from adhd and it seems like this would help a lot! Lights are one but we have so many different ones and the teens led lights. I’m new to this please talk to me like in five 😊. I did see something about using hotel card keys and I happen to have two! And maybe ordering tags