I was getting tired of digging through bins for paints and decided it was time to organize my paints. I have tried those acrylic nail polish organizers but I found they took up too much desk space. I decided I wanted something completely vertical so I started with some Ikea Skadis pegboards. Ikea makes a number of accessories but the shelves aren’t the best shape for small bottles of paint and they’re a bit expensive....

With recent news articles about children being left at home alone with deceased parents (example 1, example 2) I set out to make a panic button my 4 year old could operate if they needed to tell somebody outside the home they need help. I already use the Zigbee Home Assistant integration so I just purchased and paired an Ikea SOMRIG shortcut button to act as the panic button. Within Home Assistant, I created an entity called input_boolean....

I live in the Canadian Prairies where it gets extremely cold. In late January and into February, we always seem to get a few weeks where temperatures range from -20 to -40 °C. During these cold spells, I get condensation forming on the inside of the windows caused by the humid air in my home contacting the cold panes of my windows. The solution is to lower the humidity in the home during extreme cold and then raise it to a more comfortable level once temperatures warm up again....

I recently replaced my old thermostat with a smart thermostat I can control through Home Assistant. I chose the Zen thermostat because it uses Zigbee, doesn’t require a common wire (c-wire), and they were available for under $30 on ebay. When I paired the new thermostat using the Zigbee Home Automation integration in Home Assistant, it appeared as a generic thermostat that I could control using Automations. The generic thermostat device creates a new sensor Entity called hvac_action....