Category: Full Disclosures
The unfiltered account of one smart home’s journey through every platform, mistake, and hard-won lesson. These are the long-form stories that don’t fit in a how-to guide, including platform migrations, honest assessments, and the real cost of going all-in on home automation.
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How I Turned a TRMNL Into a Fully Local Home Assistant Display: No Cloud Required
The TRMNL display ships with firmware that tries to phone home the moment it boots. You don’t need a TRMNL account to use the hardware. Here’s how I bypassed the cloud entirely, flashed ESPHome over a 9-second window, and built a fully local weather and calendar dashboard, with two layout options you can choose from.
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My Home Assistant Custom Dashboards Are on GitHub: Free to Download
Google Home and Amazon Echo give you an app and a speaker. Home Assistant gives you whatever you build. I’ve put my full custom dashboard YAML files on GitHub. Two dashboards, nine views, sanitized for public use and commented so you know exactly what to change. Here’s what’s inside and how to get started.
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I Replaced My Smart Display with a Tablet Running Home Assistant: Here’s What I Built
When my Lenovo Smart Display finally gave up, I didn’t replace it with another smart display. Instead I mounted a Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 FE+ running Home Assistant in kiosk mode. What started as a like-for-like replacement turned into something that does more than I ever expected: local voice control, chore tracking, UniFi doorbell alerts,…
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Why I Switched My Entire Digital Life to Proton (And Brought My Whole Family With Me)
Already deep into your Home Assistant setup but still handing your email and passwords to Google? I made that same trade-off — until I didn’t. Here’s the honest story of why I moved my entire family to Proton, what it actually cost, what I gave up, and why the privacy-first mindset that drives a great…
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From a RadioShack Light Switch Motor to 2,600 Devices: My Decade-Plus Smart Home Journey
One IT pro’s honest, funny, and real account of a decade-plus smart home journey — from a teenage RadioShack gadget to 2,600+ devices, four platforms, two kids, a rescued dog, and one very important wife approval rating. Just the unredacted truth about what actually works.
