Are you searching for a House Assistant undertaking to sink your enamel into this weekend? If you happen to’re an F1 fan, or have children who love wizards, there are some initiatives you may need to attempt, and should you’re sick of inaccurate climate apps, you can all the time take issues into your individual arms.
Make your own home react to dwell F1 races
Numerous smart home automations do issues which are helpful, however not notably thrilling. Robotically locking your entrance door whenever you get into mattress could be very useful, nevertheless it’s not more likely to impress your pals that a lot. Your sensible residence does not simply must be sensible, nevertheless; it may be enjoyable, too.
If you happen to’re a fan of System 1, you can also make the expertise extra immersive by having your sensible residence react to dwell race occasions. A House Assistant person created a undertaking known as the Dashboard Reaction Service that gathers real-time knowledge from F1 races and sends the information to House Assistant using MQTT. You may then use this knowledge to do issues resembling change the colour of your lights to match the crew colours of the race chief, have completely different smart home scenes for when the protection automobile is out or there is a pink flag, all completely in sync with the F1 race that you just’re watching.
The creator of the undertaking recommends utilizing scripts to create the scenes for every lighting impact that you just need to use, such because the lighting you need to signify the Ferrari crew. You may then create an automation that calls the relevant scripts based mostly on the MQTT payloads.
If you happen to’re not an F1 fan, it needs to be potential to create one thing related for different sports activities, too. So long as you may get the dwell knowledge into House Assistant, you can create scenes for when a objective is scored in a soccer match or there is a break level in a tennis match.
Management your sensible residence with a magic wand
If in case you have children, it is a undertaking that might make you much more of a hero of their eyes. It would even go a way in direction of making up for the truth that you spend a lot of your time tinkering with your smart home. They might even forgive you for that point that their bed room mild all of a sudden turned on by itself in the midst of the night time when considered one of your automations went unsuitable.
In 2022, Warner Bros. launched a spread of interactive wands known as the Harry Potter: Magic Caster Wand. These wands embody movement sensors and Bluetooth, and utilizing a companion app, you can carry out completely different spells by waving the wands in numerous patterns. If you happen to solid the right spell, the wand may management sensible residence units, resembling turning on a lightweight should you solid the Lumos spell.
The Magic Caster app was discontinued in 2025, however as is so usually the case with the House Assistant group, somebody questioned if it is perhaps potential to make use of the wands with House Assistant and constructed their very own integration to make it occur. The Magic Caster Wand Home Assistant integration means that you can carry out spells with the wand, which may then be used to set off automations. It is beneficial to make use of a Bluetooth proxy reasonably than the Bluetooth connection from your server, for a extra steady connection.
There are a number of spells you should utilize with the wands. You might use Lumos to show in your lights, Nox to show them off, Colovaria to alter the lights to a special coloration, or every other sensible residence tips you may consider. Having the ability to flip the lights off at night time utilizing a wand is one thing any Harry Potter fan will love.
Construct your individual climate station
When an enormous firm acquires a preferred app, it hardly ever ends nicely. I used to love the Dark Sky app, which was the very best app I’ve used for hyperlocal climate. The accuracy of its alerts for rain in my location was scarily good, however then Apple purchased the corporate, folded the app into its personal Climate app, and the alerts obtained an entire lot worse.
If you would like true hyperlocal climate, nevertheless, you then may need to contemplate building your own weather station. You may add temperature, humidity, air stress, wind pace, and different sensors to your station, with all the information being collected by an ESP32 microcontroller, which you’ll then pull into House Assistant. You may add a rain gauge, which can measure the quantity of rain, however rain gauges that use tipping buckets aren’t superb for rain alerts, as they want a good quantity of water to build up earlier than they set off.
For near-instant rain notifications, utilizing an optical rain sensor, such because the Hydreon RG-11, could possibly be a more sensible choice. It could possibly provide you with a warning the second the primary drop of rain hits it, though chances are you’ll need to construct a little bit headroom into your automations, so you do not rush out to usher in the laundry when there’s solely been a single drop of rain.
It is very uncommon that when I’ve an concept for House Assistant, there is not no less than one one who’s already had the identical concept and made it a actuality. It is nice for the remainder of us, as it will possibly save us from repeating the hours of labor that others have put into the undertaking. It is truthfully one of the best things about Home Assistant.
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