Home-Assistant

Home automations are code that controls physical things. When they break, the consequences aren’t a 500 error — they’re a garage door that won’t close in a snowstorm, or window shades that open at 3 AM, or a tablet that charges to 100% and stays plugged in for months until the battery swells. I run about 20 AppDaemon automations in my homelab, all deployed as Kubernetes ConfigMaps and tested with appdaemontestframework. The testing isn’t academic — it’s caught real bugs that would have been annoying or expensive to discover in production. ...

My Home Assistant dashboard has evolved significantly over the past year. What started as the default auto-generated cards has become a carefully organized interface that my whole family actually uses. Here’s how I built it, with a focus on the whole home audio system that ties everything together. Dashboard Philosophy Before diving into implementation, a few principles guided the design: Function over flash - Every card earns its screen space One-tap actions - Common tasks shouldn’t require drilling into menus Status at a glance - The overview tells you what’s happening without interaction Mobile-first - Tablets mounted around the house are the primary interface The Stack Lovelace YAML mode - Full control over layout and structure Mushroom cards - Clean, consistent UI components Custom Layout Card - Responsive grid layouts that work on any screen Stack-in-card - Grouping related controls together Overview Page The overview page is designed to answer “what’s happening right now?” at a glance: ...

I have six Honeywell T6 Pro Z-Wave thermostats throughout my house controlling a multi-zone HVAC system. Out of the box, these thermostats have their own scheduling and “smart” features that conflict with Home Assistant automations. Here’s how I configured them to let HA take full control. The Setup 6x Honeywell T6 Pro Z-Wave thermostats (TH6320ZW2003) Z-Wave JS UI running in Kubernetes Home Assistant with Z-Wave JS integration Gas furnace + AC (not heat pump) with multi-zone dampers The zones: ...