I’m using a Shelly Plus Plug S smart plug to measure the power usage of my homelab. I added it as a device in Home Assistant — and the power readings began! Kind of…

Within a few days; I noticed something strange with the graph history — there were long periods of time where the graph was completely flat. Logging into the Shelly web interface, I could see the watt reading changing — without this being reflected in Home Assistant.

We have a Dakboard digital calendar in our kitchen — showing lots of house and temperature data. So naturally; it must show the actual outdoor temperature as well.

To do this I used a Raspberry Pi 2, and a DS18B20 HAT I made some years back.

Our Komfovent balanced ventilation system is pretty bad at accurate timekeeping — the time drifts several minutes over the course of a few months. This is a bit annoying as the operator panel is prominently located on the second floor, and we use it to tell time.

Luckily; the time can be set using the Modbus interface.

I’ve been thinking about getting some CCTV cameras for a while, and last summer I purchased two Reolink PoE cameras. The footage is stored on a SD card, and uploaded to a local FTP server.

But I also wanted to record continuously, without getting a dedicated Reolink NVR. I’ve seen some YouTube videos by Tall Paul Tech where he uses FFmpeg to record CCTV footage — so let’s do that! 🙂

In November last year — I started building a DIY security alarm system, using a Raspberry Pi as the controller. My plan was to make a self-sustained system, using proper alarm hardware — like PIR sensors and sirens.

Integration with Home Assistant would be an add-on, not a requirement. I wanted the system to be as redundant and fault-tolerant as I could make it.

This is a pretty long story, with some twists and turns — let’s get into it 👇