Notes on IoT, Smart Home & AI
By Dmitrii Balabanov — practical experiments, setups and fixes
Connecting PicoClaw to My Smart Home
I already had a fairly practical smart home setup: Home Assistant as the main hub, Zigbee devices, ESPHome projects, a few Wi-Fi devices, and a smart speaker for announcements. It worked well, but most control surfaces were still quite mechanical: dashboards, buttons, automations, and service calls. At some point I wanted a different interface — not another dashboard, but a small AI assistant that already knows how my home is wired and can operate it from Telegram. This is where I started integrating PicoClaw with Home Assistant.
Read →The Future of Matter and Thread: 2026 Outlook
For years, building a smart home meant choosing a “camp”: Apple Home, Google Home, or Amazon…
Which Smart Home Controller to Choose: My Setup
People often ask: “What should I base my smart home on?” Over the years, I’ve settled on a setup that’s…
Fixing ESPHome CairoSVG Error on macOS Homebrew Installation
If you use ESPHome on macOS installed via Homebrew and encounter an error like this: Failed config image:…
Simple Dough Rise Detector with ESP8266 & VL53L1X
Below I’ll explain how I built a simple “smart” sensor to monitor when dough has risen enough. As soon…
Garmin and Home Assistant Integration
Continuing the series of articles, this one focuses on integrating Garmin watches with Home Assistant. As I…
Localtuya templating problem fix
To manage my smart home, I use infrared controllers (like these). By using the LocalTuya project, I ensure…
Installing Home Assistant in Supervised Mode
The main advantage of Supervised Mode is the ability to install add-ons. This makes it easy to integrate tools…
Automating Blinds with Zigbee and Home Assistant
I have blinds on my window and for a long time, I was wondering how to integrate them into my Home Assistant…
Zigbee turn on Level
Sometimes, you may encounter a situation where a Zigbee light turns on at its minimum brightness by default.…
Homeassistant и Tuyalocal
I’ve been slowly building a “smart home” for a while now. After a lot of experimentation, I…