Eelviny.

When you go full smarthome and start adding a million devices, the second challenge you tend to encounter is how to interface with all of them. Sure, your Home Assistant is full of a big list of everything, but scrolling through it just to find that one light or sensor can be a bit of a chore. For viewing stats about the house, I opted to install a e-ink display on my kitchen cabinets which is visible from the living room. I can see the temperature inside and outside of the house, along with the time and current power usage. There’s plenty more things it can support, but for me these are the basics that I want to be able to see at a moment’s notice.

One of the greatest advantages of building your own DIY smarthome solutions, for me at least, is the ability to combine sensors and outputs in ways that would make no sense for a traditional manufacturer to implement. My bathroom mirror not only shines light onto my face when I’m brushing my teeth, but also makes sure my towel is nice and warm just after I take a shower. Let me show you how!

Picture the situation: your alarm’s gone off at 5am, you’re re-thinking all your life choices that lead to setting it to 5am, and you’ve now got to get yourself dressed without annoying your partner on the way out. You could get your phone light and fumble around, or you could spend many hours integrating smart lighting into the sides of your wardrobe to give you some soft illumination while you search for the clothes you probably should have laid out the evening before. Naturally, I chose option B, and here’s how I did it.

I hate the idea of smart home appliances. Things like your fridge, dishwasher, oven, or microwave. The thing is, it’s not about the idea of them being smart, but just purely the implementation that all manufacturers are following on a home device that’s meant to be reliable for 5, 10, or maybe even more years. That means that unlike a lot of other devices in a smart home, if properly maintained, they could outlive the current new hotness when it comes to smart home control. However, if you add the smart-ness yourself, you can upgrade it down the line without replacing the appliance. Here’s what I did to add some intelligence to my trusty Samsung washing machine.

You know what’s the biggest mood killer in the bedroom? Alright, maybe there’s plenty of situations that I’m skipping over here, but for me it would be turning on the big light, and blasting a peaceful space with the power of a small sun. That’s why I set out to add some more subtle lighting to the space, by building my own integrated hotel-style bed.

Looks cool, right? We’re skipping ahead a bit here though, let’s rewind to the beginning. It starts with the IKEA MALM. This simple, mostly solid bedframe has lasted me through many house moves, and still soldiers on to this day. With its simple, square design and plenty of integrated storage underneath, it’s everything I could ask for out of a standard IKEA product. But under its faux-wood dark exterior, it’s either chipboard or hollowed out paper. Plenty of space to add some smartness. I not only wanted to have some lighting, but also the ability to hook into the rest of my smart home, based on Home Assistant. ESPHome came as the obvious choice, allowing me to hook up lights and buttons, and have it all controlled centrally.

My homelab needs are pretty simple. Sitting in the closet by the front door, just below the energy meter, is what I call the Vault. A single tower PC on a shelf, that runs my entire smarthome. I designed it as an everything in one device - it pulls duty as a NAS, OPNsense router, Jellyfin server and Home Assistant hub, among other things. Single point of failure? Absolutely, which is why I’ve got a UPS to protect it.