This is a getting started guide with information I wish I’d had when I made my first forays into creating custom dashboards for Home Assistant. Preparation SMB Access to Home Assistant Configuration Set up SMB access to the Home Assistant file system by navigating to Add-on Store and installing the Samba share add-on (docs). Configure it as follows:

I recently replaced my MDT IP router SCN-IP100.03 with its Enertex counterpart KNX IP Secure Router. Why? Download speed over secure tunneling connections! Updating the firmware of one of my room controllers took 95 minutes with the MDT router. The same process is finished in 25 minutes with the Enertex router.

This article shows how to synchronize your Frigate NVR recordings to offsite cloud storage for backup and safekeeping in case your onsite NVR is stolen by a burglar. Toolkit: Backblaze + rclone + Systemd Service Script I’m using Backblaze as cloud storage because it’s fast and inexpensive. It also offers temporary immutability, preventing burglars who gained access to the source machine from deleting uploaded recordings for a configurable length of time. The backup job is left to rclone, a modern file copy and sync tool for a multitude a cloud storage providers. A custom systemd service controls the backup process via a little script. To ensure low upload latency, it monitors Frigate’s recordings directory for changes and invokes rclone immediately when a new file has been created.

This article explains how to install and configure the Frigate NVR software on a Raspberry Pi 5 with a Coral Edge TPU. Overview What is Frigate? Frigate is a free network video recorder (NVR) software. It collects your surveillance camera video streams (typically via RTSP), performs object detection and stores the resulting clips.

Elasticsearch comes with multiple query languages, only one of which makes sense to use for time-series data as ours: ES|QL. It’s obviously modeled after Splunk’s SPL, is easy to read, understand, and write - helped by fantastic autocomplete in the web UI. This article explains some important ES|QL concepts by showing you how to create a chart that visualizes your home’s energy consumption.

If you’re controlling a group of lights from multiple different types of switches, you’ll run into the problem that a switch needs to be pressed twice - the first tap doesn’t have any effect. This happens because state is not maintained properly; the switches don’t “know” whether the lights are currently turned on or off. This article shows how to fix that.

This article describes how to send Home Assistant metrics to Elasticsearch for long-term storage and visualization. It focuses on the integration between the two products and on how to configure Elasticsearch. This post is part of my series on home automation, networking & self-hosting that shows how to install, configure, and run a home server & network with dockerized or virtualized services.

This is a deliberately simplistic dockerized Elasticsearch & Kibana setup focused on long-term stability and minimal maintenance requirements. To forego the need to deal with a private CA and certificates, Elasticsearch TLS is not used. Instead, authenticated HTTPS access is provided via Caddy.

This article shows how to check your KNX installation’s topology with the tools provided by ETS. You can run through all the verifications from your desk without having to deal with the physical wiring.

This is my documentation of how I set up and configured my Hikvision surveillance network camera. I bought a Hikvision camera because apparently their quality and reliability are good, which seems to be true. Their software, however, is rather gruesome.

The ISE Smart Connect KNX Hue is a nifty little device that bridges the gap between the KNX and Hue universes. But why bring wireless Hue lights into the mix if you already have lights controlled via wired KNX/DALI? The answer is simple: even in the most well-planned house there are situations where you want to place lights in positions where only a plain socket without KNX or DALI control is available. In such cases, wirelessly controlled Hue bulbs are a flexible solution. However, you still want to be able to control all your lights - KNX, DALI, and Hue - from one place: your KNX room controllers. The ISE Smart Connect KNX Hue enables just that.

This is a collection of tips and tricks I picked up while learning and working with Docker and Docker Compose on my home server and web server. Container Configuration Environment Variables Where to Define Environment Variables Environment variables are a common way to configure containers. To keep things organized, don’t put them in your Compose file but into dedicated files with the extension env. env_file vs. .env .env file: this “special” file can be used to set environment variable for use in the Compose file. The variables specified in .env are not available in the container. env_file: this section in the Docker Compose file lets you specify files that contain environment variables for use in the container. The variables specified in this section are not available in the Compose file. Bind Mounts vs. Docker Volumes Bind mounts let you control the directory structure. This has the advantage that you know exactly what gets stored where in the host’s file system. It has the disadvantage that you need to create the directory structure before you can start a container. Docker volumes are managed by the Docker engine. They’re stored in /var/lib/docker, “far away” from the Compose file. Personally, I very much prefer bind mounts because of the control they offer. I use subdirectories relative to the Compose file, e.g., ./data:/data. Keeping the container configuration and the container data in one place facilitates backups. Networking Expose vs. Ports Expose serves as documentation which ports a container is accessible on. Note: container ports are always accessible from other containers on the same Docker network. Ports makes container ports accessible to the host. Most of my services are accessible through the Caddy reverse proxy only. Opening ports to the host is, therefore, only rarely necessary. Static IP Address on the Host Network Use the Macvlan Docker network to attach a container directly to the host’s local network. Assign a static IP address by specifying the ip_range parameter in the ipam section of the Docker Compose file. See this configuration for an example. Disable Macvlan Container/Host Isolation Containers on a Macvlan network are isolated from the host. While the container can contact other machines on the local network, communications with the host are blocked. To work around that, create a virtual link with a route that points to the container’s IP address (example). Time Zone Containers should know about your local time zone. To achieve that, make it a habit to pass in /etc/localtime as a read-only volume to every container:

Ever since the original Microsoft OneNote was discontinued I’ve been on the lookout for my ideal note-taking app. Having settled on Markdown as the perfect file format I’ve tried numerous apps and occasionally blogged about the experience. In my quest to find the app that combines a great UX with elegant esthetics, speed and full keyboard control I’ve recently settled on a combination of Typora and Obsidian - none of which are perfect, but both are satisfying tools to use and they even complement each other. This article explains how to get started with Obsidian.

This article explains how to set up VictoriaMetrics in a Docker container with automatic HTTPS via Caddy. It also shows how to forward Home Assistant data to VictoriaMetrics for long-term storage and how to query the data from Grafana. This post is part of my series on home automation, networking & self-hosting that shows how to install, configure, and run a home server & network with dockerized or virtualized services.

Dieser Artikel gehört zu einer neuen Serie zu KNX und ETS. Diesmal beschreibe ich die Raumtemperaturregelung mit dem KNX-Raumcontroller Enertex Meta². Note for my English-speaking readers: this article is one of very few that I’ve written in German.

This article explains how to set up Emby in a Docker container with automatic HTTPS via Caddy. This post is part of my series on home automation, networking & self-hosting that shows how to install, configure, and run a home server & network with dockerized or virtualized services.

This article explains how to set up restic (with the resticprofile wrapper) for automated scheduled backups of your (dockerized) WordPress server. The backups are protected from ransomware through temporary immutability, which makes it much harder for attackers to delete your data.

Dieser Artikel gehört zu einer neuen Serie zu KNX und ETS, deren Beiträge ich auf Deutsch verfassen werde. Diesmal beschreibe ich, wie beim Enertex Meta² KNX-Raumcontroller die Firmware aktualisiert wird.

This article explains how to set up Syncthing in a Docker container and configure synchronization with peers on Windows PCs. This post is part of my series on home automation, networking & self-hosting that shows how to install, configure, and run a home server with dockerized or virtualized services.

If you’re plagued by RSI symptoms, it’s high time you evaluate alternatives to traditional keyboards and mice. For me, moving the mouse to my left hand nearly twenty years ago (even though I’m not left-handed) seemed to do the trick. Ultimately, though, it proved not to be enough. Much later I switched to a lightweight gaming mouse to reduce the weight I’d have to lug around. That helped, but only for a time. I also experimented with various types of split keyboards. But that’s a topic for another post.

This article explains how to set up Budibase in a Docker container with automatic HTTPS via Caddy. This post is part of my series on home automation, networking & self-hosting that shows how to install, configure, and run a home server & network with dockerized or virtualized services.

Dieser Artikel gehört zu einer neuen Serie zu KNX und ETS, deren Beiträge ich auf Deutsch verfassen werde. Diesmal beschreibe ich, wie beim Steinel Multisensor True Presence KNX die Firmware aktualisiert wird.

This article presents a simple, balanced OPNsense firewall configuration for a secure smart home. The config provides good security while still allowing the freedom that is required by a family that is comprised mostly of people who wouldn’t call themselves IT geeks. This post is part of my series on home automation, networking & self-hosting that shows how to install, configure, and run a home server & network with dockerized or virtualized services.

This article explains how to set up Home Assistant in a virtual machine on Proxmox with automatic HTTPS via dockerized Caddy. This post is part of my series on home automation, networking & self-hosting that shows how to install, configure, and run a home server & network with dockerized or virtualized services.