Hey fellow Home Assistant nerd 👋

My girlfriend gifted me visiting Utrecht a couple of years ago. Low and behold, the State of the Open Home 2026 was in Utrecht as well. What a perfect timing!

Instead of just going to the event myself, we visited friends in Leiden and then stayed 2 days in Utrecht. Leiden and Utrecht are both beautiful cities and well worth a visit!

But back to Home Assistant:

State of the Open Home 2026

If you missed the event, you can watch the recording of the live stream.

However, the best part was meeting up with the community and the people form the Open Home Foundation, Nabu Casa and partners. The hallway track. I had the chance to talk to the founder Paulus Schoutsen together with Tristran, who has a German Smart Home YouTube Channel.

Tristran also created a great summary in German:

In conversations Paulus mentioned, that they now have 70 people working at the Open Home Foundation. 🤯 And Missy told us, that they need to spend more money on the community than on staff. That is commitment!

I could see Trevor and Justin again from Apollo, meet Missy in real life who helped me with the Meetups in the past and talked to a bunch of other folks from Nabu Casa and the Open Home Foundation.

A few highlights:

Project Blast

Nabu Casa is currently working on an infrared blaster for your TV, AC, amps, and whatever you use infrared for. This fits what they released in 2026.04 with the infrared integration.

They also provide ready made infrared codes for a couple of TVs already and this will grow over time.

Carl did also deliver a great pun regarding the Logitech Harmony 😉. You can see it here: Harmony Pun

ESPHome Starter Kit

Apollo, the second commercial Partner of the Open Home Foundation released the ESPHome Starter Kit. I am kind of jeallous, because I thought of doing this myself a 3-4 years ago. But they went a couple of steps farther than I ever would have:

• No soldering
• No complex wiring
• No lookup of pins
• Just connect

So sign up, if you are interested:

ESPHome Starter Kit

Expected to ship mid-late May! The Official ESPHome Starter Kit is the easiest way to start building your own smart devices. No soldering, no breadboards, no coding experience needed. Plug in a module, use the visual YAML editor, and you’re up and running. Works as a standalone device or integrates with Home Assistant.

Apollo AutomationApollo Automation

There is more! The ESPHome device builder will have a graphical interface where you can drag and drop componentes and this will fill out your YAML, but you still have the super power of YAML. Just more convinience!

Roadmap

One thing I am very curious about is the open roadmap. Frenck told me about that plan on the last Home Assistant meetup I organized in February, but no details.

Now we got details. They make the next 2 months public and ask us, the users, to participate.

I am on the fence about this topic. Especially with AI, a lot of projects stopped accepting pull requests, GitHub had to build a feature to disable that, because mainteiners get overwhelmed.
On the other side I welcome the openess. Curious what the outcome will be.

You can find the roadmap here:

Open Home Foundation Roadmap • OpenHomeFoundation

The roadmap of the Open Home Foundation and all its products, including Home Assistant, Music Assistant, ESPHome, and many more

GitHub

Sendpin

Sendspin, the the open source, synchronous multi room audio soltuion. I have heard about it a couple of weeks ago and talked with my friend Thomas on our German podcast about it.

Sendspin: Music Experience Protocol

Open protocol for synchronized music experiences across devices.

Sendspin

Free Swag for the next meetup

Nabu Casa gifted away posters from their Home Assistant Hardware. They had a bunch of them left over after the event. I offered to take them with me and give them away on the next Home Assistant Meetup I am organizing.

Missy told me, the Home Assistant Community Day might be at end of October/beginning of November. So stay tuned!

That is it

If you know other Home Assistant nerds, forward this email or the link to the blog post.

Have a wonderful day and see you soon!

I had the weirdest latency issue after the update of my UniFi Cloud Gateway Ultra.

After the update, I had a latency of more than 100 ms. Before it was between 5 - 10.

I was going crazy and thought, it might be the ISP. My chain:

The technician came along, and he tested with his special device.

1. He connected to the vDSL line directly and got a good ping. Line is good.
2. He used the Draytek Vigor 167 Modem to check the login with my account. Ping was good. So the Draytek was not broken or anything like that.
3. As soon as I tested from the UCG Ultra with the PPPoE connection, ping was bad.

Dammit, it was my network gear or settings. 😮‍💨

I did:

• Turn off Intrusion Prevention
• Turn off Smart Queues
• Rip off all cables and test from the gateway
• Logged in via SSH and tried to find anything in the logs

No changes.

I rolled back weeks before the update. Nothing changed.

I was fuming. 😡

The only option was a factory reset with the old firmware. 🤦

For some reason I decided to try out one thing: Switch the WAN port

I had my WAN on Port 4, which is only 1 GB, and the UCG Ultra has Port 5 labeled for WAN with 2.5 GB. My connection is 250 MB down and 40 MB up. So nothing to gain there, but I tried it anyway.

WTF! It worked!
I will not question this and just go to bed now.

Oh yeah, I lost the old data because of the rollback. So no cool history to look at.
I really should save those metrics somewhere 😅

I have turned off auto updates for all my UniFi devices.

I hope that this might help some other poor soul.

Have a good day!

Hey folks 👋

What a weekend we had! Last Saturday, I organized another Home Assistant Meetup, and it was a blast!

First, 180 people signed up, and I think we had about 150 people there! That is nuts! Thank you all for attending. I mean it. Without you, I would be alone in a very big venue!

I mean, I planned a few things, but the meetup had its own dynamic, and I loved it!

Also, big thanks to Norman and Linus for the pictures. Without them, this would just be a memory. I need to get better at just taking a picture!

My girlfriend, my daughter, and my podcast partner, Thomas, gave everyone a warm welcome and name tags. Thank you! Special thanks to my girlfriend, Theresa. She is a professional event manager and was a BIG help! Thank you to my baby girl. She behaved very well and made everybody smile 👶. Now, a few pictures!

The cake

The wife or girlfriend (sorry, I do not remember) of a community member (Jan) did create this beauty of a cake!

Nobody was touching that cake, until I decided to cut the first couple of pieces, and then it was gone in no time 😊. Unfortunately, I can not tell you how good it was. I left it to my guest to be the judge. Thank you very much!

A warm welcome from the AI Village

Big thank you to the AI Village! Big thank you to Ann-Catherine for helping out with literally everything, and Wolfgang Prinz for the warm welcome and his small booth to show off what they have done.

My Talk: Creating Open-Source Hardware as an Absolute Beginner

As you may or may not know, I am working on the PokyPow. And I just wanted to share my experience so far, from someone who basically has no idea how to build a hardware product.

I heard at least one person laugh (Andy!), so I consider this talk a success 😉

Eltako

Almir from Eltako was there as well. He called me and wanted to come in private, but I said that he should bring devices to show off. They joined the Works with Home Assistant Program a while back. You can see what they do here:

ELTAKO joins Works with Home Assistant

ELTAKO’s pro-standard Matter relays join our Home Assistant program.

Home AssistantMiranda Bishop

The small desk was always occupied!

Home Assistant Demo

I also prepared a stand with a Home Assistant demo.

I did set up a recipe printer that would print a QR code to my podcast and PokyPow project when hitting that emergency button. After releasing the button, Thorstens Voice would chime from a Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition: "Danke" (thank you).

I had a demo of my PokyPow. Powering on/off a PC and showing the status on a tablet. Of course, it broke during the event ❤️‍🩹

I also gave away some devices from Apollo Automation, but since I am a social media noob, I forgot to take a picture! 🤦

Expanding Smart Home Automation Capabilities | Apollo Automation

Experience the future of home automation with Apollo Automation. Our solutions, compatible with Home Assistant, are designed to cater to your unique household needs.

Apollo AutomationWyza

Food Bike

We had delicious Latin American sandwiches by Maria Maria. That cake was not enough 😉

HOME | Meinewebsite

Meinewebsite

Free 3D printed gifts

Peter asked me if he could bring some free 3D printed things. Why not?

He gifted away various adapters for Shelly devices and very nice NFC tags! I snagged 2 for myself 😇

Home Assistant officials joining the community

Driving over from the Netherlands, Franck Nijhof showed up with a very neat name tag!

But I was missing his iconic pink hoodie!

Guerilla Photo party

I heard some folks did set up a photo printer upstairs. Even though I did organize the event, a lot happend I did not even see, and I like it! Organized and charming chaos!

Thank You!

Thank you for coming. Without you, there would be no meetup with like-minded people!

My friend Flo did a video summary, but that is only available in German 😉

Hey folks 👋

long time no see! Or read? But there was progress!

Hardware Issue resolved

From the beginning, I had bad luck: one of my motherboards never worked properly with PokyPow power LED detection. So, I sent it over to Soldered, and they figured out the issue!

1. A computer is powered on, and a positive voltage is applied to
   the LED plus pin, while ground is permanently connected. This works perfectly.
2. The second type works so that a constant positive voltage is always present on the LED plus pin, while the LED minus pin, which is ground, is normally disconnected and only connected to ground when the computer powers on. This closes the current loop and turns on the LED.

Problem: The optocoupler was tied to ground all the time with the second LED configuration and was always on.
Solution: Connect the optocoupler cathode to the LED minus pin instead of ground.

This is an easy change and does not require a new prototype run, which is good. Those cost time and money!

Still weird that this isn't in a spec for ATX or whatever. Manufacturers can basically do whatever they want. I am glad I encountered this problem myself and early on.

Funding

First, I got pricing from Soldered batches of 50, 100, and 500 PokyPows. Then I did some manufacturing logic and played around with numbers. The spreadsheet was provided by CrowdSupply. Things like manufacturing quotes, tariffs (thanks to Trump), a fee from CrowdSupply, credit card fees, and more.

Still a lot of estimates, but it was very valuable!
Ordering 50 will not make any sense from a cost perspective. But the values for batches of 100 and 500 are something that could work!

I sent the spreadsheet to CrowdSupply 2 weeks ago and am now waiting for feedback.

Now it is time to wait. Again. My biggest personal weakness of impatience is tested with this project to a great degree 😅

Will reach out to you next week again, because I have been cooking something up!

Happy New Year 🎆, and I hope you had a great time over the Christmas holidays 🎄!

Note: I wrote this way earlier, but never published... 🤭 But I keep the happy new year!

What happend 2025?

Becoming a father

I think this is, without a doubt, the biggest change, but also not really. My girlfriend and I became parents for the first time. 🍼

I took some time off for parental leave to adjust to this new phase of my life. First, to help my girlfriend in the beginning, but also to start getting to know our daughter. Kudos to all women, you are, without any doubt, tougher than all men. And I am happy to be a man. 😅

I am writing, therefore, from my perspective. The first months were particularly hard for me. I had no emotional bond or connection to the baby, unlike my girlfriend. Admittedly, she had some more time to build that bond during the pregnancy. It took me about 3-4 months to really like her.

In my opinion, becoming parents is romanticized and creates wrong expectations. It's the happiest day of your life! Not really. You will never feel such joy! Mh, not sure. Everything in your life will change! Yeah, sure, but can't we be more relaxed about that? I mean, we made that decision, right? You will feel a sudden new purpose in your life! Nah mate, same goals as before. Just one more thing to take care of and have fun with 😊

It's just a new phase. Everything is new. You can not learn that. You have to experience it. And everybody is wrong, and right. You can get tips and try them out. In the end, it works what works. And do not forget yourself and your partner.

She is 5 months old now, and we did our first plank/push-up together. Starting the year with good intentions for more exercise, it is 😉

Vacation in Norway

My girlfriend and I went to Norway this year in May. She was pregnant around the sixth month, but we wanted to do one last vacation together before we became a family of 3 👨‍👩‍👧 (4 if cats count as well)

Amazing country. Finally, I have seen the Fjords with my own eyes! If you like hiking four hours without seeing a single person, May is a good time. We were there before the season began. The only downside, we could not use all the roads because they were still blocked with meters of snow. So some scenic routes were not possible for us.

We also had bad luck with hiking to a glacier. I think we went for 3 hours one way. We just had to climb one hill, and then we could have seen a glacier. But the trail was blocked by all the melting water, and we could not pass it. Therefore, we had to go back 3 hours without seeing the glacier.

To fix that, we went to a glacier museum, which was next to a glacier that you could see from far away. 🏔️

The one surprise: The food was just bad. Everywhere, burgers, fries, and pizza. No good food culture in the area we visited.
I expected a more fish-based diet. The only really good meal was at a gas station! The chef did cook us a fresh meal with fresh vegetables. That was amazing!

It was a nice trip 🗻

Other trips

As always, we went to the Netherlands. We are always in Zeeland in Ellemeet, near Renesse and Scharendijke. Man, I love that country. Everything is just so bike-friendly. We were worried because we could not attach our bike trailer to the bikes. Nothing to worry about. The Dutch have you covered. We got this cool electric bike, which can hold a regular Maxi Cosi baby carrier!

Self-Employment

In 2025, I started to do some more freelance/self-employment. Friends asked for setting up laptops, Windows, a printer, scanners, etc. Not my preferred type of work, but they are nice people, and it was nice money during the parental leave anyway.

I started to do some smart home consulting with a friend as well. We set up a website and listed our services on the German classifieds site Kleinanzeigen (English Craigslist).

What have we done so far?

Integrate a heating and water system into Home Assistant. The client had a Modbus adapter already, but was not sure how to connect it to Home Assistant. So I helped him to set up the adapter he bought with MQTT and ebus to get everything working in Home Assistant.
Additionally, he also had some problems with Proxmox VMs. I nailed it down to a memory allocation issue. Not enough memory left for the hypervisor OS.

Then I have a long-term client with a lot of projects.
Currently, mostly writing ESPHome and custom C++ code.

The first project is an ESP32 per room connected to a GPIO expander board. This expander is connected to various things. A 4-way light switch I programmed to make the light cooler, warmer, brighter, and dimmer. The light is also connected to this ESP32 via a DAC and has a warm and cold bulb. Very neat project.

The second project is an ESP32 connected to a motor controller for window covers. Multiple of them are connected to a single ESP32. I had to get the specs for the motor controller and send data via an MOD RS485 Module to the SMI motor controller.
It's very hard to test because I don't have the hardware, and the client lives far away.
Solution: I bought a USB to RS-485 adapter and wrote a small Python server to print the messages it is receiving.

Then some minor Home Assistant help here and there within a remote call.

What is the plan?

Some day I would like to do my own thing. But I think this is not it. I love the topics, but B2C clients are more price sensitive. Still searching for the right business model that does not overburden us with clients who do not want to spend too much money. Perhaps we should consider switching to businesses in the end. Still figuring this out.

Meetups and Events

This year, I attended a few events and organized a meetup as well!

Hackaday and Slovakia Trip

I went to the Hackaday 2025 in Berlin and made some friends there as well. We even met up in Slovakia at Peter's place for some hiking later in the summer as well⛰️ I had a great time!

Home Assistant Meetup at IFA Berlin 2025

I was not really interested in IFA, but there was a meetup happening. Therefore, I took a 6-hour train ride to hang out with a few folks from Nabu Casa, the Open Home Foundation, Trevor and Justin from Apollo and other Home Assistant nerds.

I forgot to take a picture, because I never think of this. At least I got a Home Assistant sticker flower signed by Frank, Marcel, and others from the Home Assistant projects.

Home Assistant Community Day

On May 24th, 2025, the first Home Assistant Community Day was organized. I did not want to travel that far, so I organized my own meetup.

I thought it would be fun with more people, so I invited a couple of popular YouTubers in the German Smart Home scene. To my surprise, a lot of them came along! You can read more about that on the blog post.

Funny enough. Almost all of us did later meet up at another event of another YouTuber later this year. I think we will keep in touch 😊

I am actually planning another Home Assistant Meetup, and there will be over 140 people joining! Including some members of the Open Home Foundation! How cool is that?

Home Assistant Meetup Köln/Hürth · Luma

Agenda: 13 Uhr: Einlass 14 Uhr: Kleiner Wilkommensvortrag ~ 15 Uhr: Quatschen und Spaß haben 18 Uhr: Ende Anreise & Parken: Der Bahnhof Hürth-Kalscheuren ist 5…

Andrej Friesen

3D Printing

A new hobby began when I got a 3D printer at the start of 2025. To this day, I have not designed much. Almost everything is either ready-made 3D print files or generators.

The best projects are by far:

• Gridfinity for my drawers (still not done)
• OpenGrid with Underwear for my desk and cable mess.

Goodbye 2025, Hello 2026

A few things are missing, but how can you pack a whole year into a blog post? This is not a diary afterall. 😉

What comes in 2026?

• More parental leave in March. Looking forward to that!
• More PokyPow! Separate post coming soon!
• Maybe for self-employment stuff? Who knows!

That is it, have a pleasant day!

Hey nerds 🤓

I had a weird issue I could not understand. So here it goes.

When I got the new PokyPow from Soldered, I had to adjust the code a bit, since we now have sensors for button presses on the PC case side. Then we evaluated if we have the child lock active. If not, then we short the power and reset button on the motherboard to turn on/off or reset the PC.

So far, so good. It worked on my gaming PC. However, connecting it to a different mainboard was not working. So I started by connecting one cable after the other. Connecting everything except the power and reset button on the mainboard side, the board was working fine.

As soon as I connected the power or reset button to the PokyPow the PokyPow would just shut down.

I called my friend and hardware engineer Niklas. He has the knowledge and the equipment at home to debug these issues. I just have a multimeter and a simple understanding of electronics.

Why the shutdown?

It looks like the one random mainboard I had lying around saved my bacon 🥓. There was some current backflow of 40mA from the power button. We think that led the ESP32 to get into some failsafe mode: "Nah man, this is too much. Gonne shutdown!"

After putting a diode in the circuit, we could prevent the current backflow and the PokyPow did not shut down anymore when connecting the power and reset button from the mainboard.

When triggering the button via the web interface, the mainboard did not turn on. 🤔

Why does the power trigger not turn on/off the mainboard?

We checked the voltage on the power pins of my mainboards. The one that worked had perfect 3.3V. The one that did not work had 3.7V. More than the ESP32C3 can provide. Looks like the mainboard also expected this voltage, and 3.3V was just not enough.

Solution

When I got the board, the Soldered team suggested a change: Switch from MOSFETs to optocouplers again. Because that would allow using an external power supply. With MOSFETs, you can only use the PokyPow as long as it is plugged into the same PC.

Luckily, the optocouplers are the solution for the problems we discovered as well (current backflow, voltage not high enough).

So we are going back to optocouplers.

There were also some minor things:

• Wrong labeling on the backside of the board
• a male instead of a female USB 2.0 connector
• ESPHome did throw a warning about using a strapping pin. Since we have 2 pins left, we are moving to another pin. That way, people will not be confused when they compile the firmware themself.

I already paid for the next prototype. Let's hope it comes soon 🤞

That is it for now.

Feel free to reply to this via mail, comment down below, or join my Discord!

Join the ajfriesen Discord Server!

Check out the ajfriesen community on Discord - hang out with 13 other members and enjoy free voice and text chat.

Discord

Enjoy your day!

👋 Hey nerds 🤓

I wrote this almost 2 weeks ago and forgot to send it. 🤦‍♂️ So here you go, a small update on the PokyPow project.

I reached out to Soldered, if it would be okay with them to give me updates on the progress of the prototype.

That is what they did, and they will give me updates every ~2 weeks during the prototype development.

I am not sure if these updates are interesting for you. Please let me know if you want to know the nitty-gritty details.

Soldered Update

Most of the changes are related to BOM optimization, replacing parts and changing circuits.

• USB-C connector with the same characteristics selected, but at a lower cost
• TVS protection was replaced with a lower-cost alternative of the same specifications
• Optocouplers replaced with MOSFETs
• RGB LED replaced with a WS2812B LED, as the previous one required a higher
  control signal voltage, which would have required additional components
• Replaced the antenna with a more affordable TX2400-FPC-5015

They also suggest redoing the power circuit.

PokyPow Blink Demo:

They told me that 95% of the functionalities were tested successfully. Still waiting for the new antenna to arrive to finalize the testing.

What is up next? I should get a board soon-ish. I am so curious about getting the board and testing it by myself 🙂

Until then, enjoy your day! 🌻

Hey nerds 🤓

This is for about 20% of my audience. The German-speaking 🇩🇪 folks.

I started a podcast with my good friend Thomas. We meet up weekly and talk about:

• Home Assistant & Smart Home in general
• Self-Hosting
• Tech Stuff that comes to mind

If you are interested, feel free to give us a listen. We like long-form podcasts, so that is what we do. We already recorded 2 episodes, clocking in for about 2 hours each:

SmartHütte

Zwei Freunde, ihr Smart Home, Self-Hosting und anderer Technikkram.

SmartHütte

We are also thinking of starting a second one in English. The idea is to interview makers in the smart home area. But this is still an idea, and we will first get a bit more practice with the first one.

That is it for now, and enjoy your day 🌻

Hey fellow nerds 🤓

A couple of weeks ago, I signed a new contract with Soldered. At the end of June, they will start developing the prototype. This prototype is optimized for their manufacturing process and will add the child lock feature I wrote about a couple of weeks ago.

I also joined the Soldered Electronics Inkubator.

Soldered is known for its E-Ink screen Inkplate in the maker scene.

What does this mean?

• I get a reliable manufacturer in Europe
• A partner with experience bringing a product to the market

One of their recent project was the Zerowriter Ink, which I have been following for quite some time. A very interesting device for writers!

Zerowriter Ink

Your open-source e-paper typewriter

Crowd Supply

I love single-purpose devices. They remove the distractions a laptop or smartphone has. That is why I use an E-Ink reader for reading and a voice recorder for creating drafts with my voice and Whisper.cpp for transcoding them to text.

Anyway. When a new prototype arrives, I will write something here.

If you have any friends or coworkers who do not know about the PokyPow yet, let them know! Hardware Parental Control for your kids' gaming PC is a must-have when your kid is anything like me 😉

PokyPow

Remotely power and monitor your computer with Home Assistant

Crowd Supply

Have a great day! ☀️

Hey nerds 🤓

I reached out to the Home Assistant Podcast a couple of months ago. They were open to recording an episode with me, which is super cool!

We recorded this in May 2025 and discussed my Smart Home journey, as well as PokyPow, of course.

You would not believe how nervous I was. I am not entirely sure why, but I was. Maybe because English is my second language, maybe because potentially a lot of people will see this, and I mess up. But after a couple of minutes with Phil and Rohan, it got a bit better.

I haven't watched or listened to my episode yet, as I feel weird about watching myself 😅. I might need to do it, though, to improve for the next episode. Phil and Rohan were awesome and are open to having me on the show for another time, when there is more progress with PokyPow.

Go ahead and have a listen or watch:

Andrej’s smart home journey and designing PokyPow

Rohan and Phil chat with Andrej, a passionate Home Assistant user with some truly creative automations—from a relationship point system to a cat doorbell! He’s also developing PokyPow, an ESP-based device that lets you control your PC with Home Assistant.

Home Assistant PodcastWebsite

Thanks to the podcast, we also got a few more people on the waitlist on CrowdSupply. Around 40 people signed up after the podcast aired.

We are now above 500 people!
I am starting to wonder how many would actually buy the device later on. 🤔

If you have friends or coworkers who want to control their PC with Home Assistant or have a Child Lock on their kids' PC (or your own), then forward this mail and tell them to subscribe on CrowdSupply!

PokyPow

Remotely power and monitor your computer with Home Assistant

Crowd Supply

That is it, and I wish you a great day!

Hey nerds 👋

At the Home Assistant Community Day in Cologne, I had pretty interesting conversations regarding PokyPow.

PokyPow

Remotely power and monitor your computer with Home Assistant

Crowd Supply

One of the attendees asked me:

What is the difference to PiKVM and alike?

First, the PokyPow integrates with Home Assistant easily, allowing you to not only power on and off your PC but also check if it is actually running.
Second, I will build a child lock in the upcoming version.

Then he got interested! His kid was only allowed to game from Friday to Sunday, for an hour a day. The PokyPow would be the perfect use case.

With this, he could prohibit turning on the PC from Monday to Thursday while also tracking gaming time. When gaming time is over or soon to be over, you can send a notification and or clean shutdown the PC. No discussion needed 😉.

The Child Lock

I have made a new contract with a company to produce the next and hopefully last version of PokyPow. (Still have hope!)

My current version does not allow the child lock feature because of the electrical design. But instead of waiting, I got myself an ESP32-C3, wired a button and LED up, and want you to see what it will look like:

On May 24th, 2025, the Home Assistant Community Day took place. A global meetups on the same day with and for us Home Assistant nerds 🤓

Since there wasn’t a meetup near me, I took the opportunity to organize one in Cologne. Die Wohngemeinschaft warmly welcomed us.

I immediately reached out to a few people via email and posted in the German communities of Simon42 and Community Smart Home. I believe we also got a bunch of sign-ups through the Meetup platform.

Thanks to all the participants!

We ended up being around 50 people!
A big thank you to everyone who came — it was a great day with amazing conversations! Without you, it would’ve been pretty boring just standing around on my own 😉

I also received some great feedback on my PokyPow project!

PokyPow

Remotely power and monitor your computer with Home Assistant

Crowd Supply

Here’s a mini vlog by Flo from Flotomation:

Sieh dir diesen Beitrag auf Instagram an

Ein Beitrag geteilt von Flo | Flotomation | Smarthome mit Home Assistant (@flotomation)

Other YouTubers and content creators were there as well:

• Simon from simon42
• Matthias from haus:automation
• Flo from Flotomation
• Tristan from Tristans Smartes Heim
• Thorsten from Thorsten-Voice
• Daniel from SmartHome yourself

And here are some pictures:

Thanks to Athom (now IoTorero)

Big thanks to Athom (now IoTorero)!

They sponsored tons of devices, so everyone got to take home a new smart home gadget.

I’m just thrilled that these run with ESPHome and can be integrated into Home Assistant so easily. Just enter the Wi-Fi password and connect directly to Home Assistant. No app, no nonsense — that’s how a smart home should be.

Here’s the link to Athom’s online shop:

Athom Technology Tasmota ESPHome WLED ESP32 ESP8266 Smart Home Shenzhen,China

Open sources smart home hardware developer and manufacturer. Tasmota ESPHome WLED Homebridge Homekit Zigbee2MQTT Powered by ATHOM

AthomTech

Next Year

I received great feedback and had a lot of fun, so I’ll definitely organize this again.

See you next year at the latest!

Hey smarties 👋

A couple of days ago, Home Assistant announced the Home Assistant Community Day on their blog.

Saturday, the 24.05.2025.

This is a bunch of meetups happening on the same day around the world.

If you want to meet up with me and other enthusiasts, feel free to join my local meetup in Cologne, Germany:

Cologne meetup · Luma

The location is not set yet. Might be in Hürth, which is near Cologne and reachable by train.

Andrej Friesen

If it is too far away, check the other places where meetups are happening. Since the announcement is still fresh, I guess a few more will pop up.
You can also create your own 😉

Home Assistant Community Day · Events Calendar

View and subscribe to events from Home Assistant Community Day on Luma. Gathering the community together for a world wide meetup celebration! 👏🏻

Have a great day and maybe see you soon! 🌅

I got the 40 oz or ~ 1.2 liter water bottle from LTT. It is just perfect for holding your drink cool, in my case only water.

Insulated Water Bottle

Stay hydrated in style with our iconic motherboard-inspired water bottle, now with our improved Spout Lid V2. Double-wall vacuum insulated to keep your drinks at the ideal temperature. Double-wall vacuum insulatedKeep cold drinks cold for up to 16 hours and hot drinks hot for up to 8 hours. Improved spout lidA convenie

LTTStoreAnonymous (Utica, US)

We went on a bike last year and drove around 500 km for a week. And I like my water cold, and the LTT bottle is the only thing I have with insulation. I also really hate the plastic taste from these typical bike bottles.

So, I checked the dimensions:

• Height - 12" / 30.5cm
• Diameter - 3.5" / 8.9cm

I could not find a single bike cage until I found the BiKASE ABC - Any Bottle Cage:

Water Bottle Holder for Bikes , ABC Cage - Any Bottle Cage, Adjustable

The Ultimate Water Bottle Holder for Bikes! Our ABC - ANY BOTTLE CAGE is an adjustable water bottle cage that fits almost any bottle, cup, or container 2 1/4″ to 4 3/4″. Turn knob to tighten and turn to loosen. Crank it down so drink won’t come out or set to desired interference fit for easy in or easy out. US Pate

BiKASEBikase Store

However, the shop does not ship to Germany, and my time was running out. ⌛

I reached out, and they gave me the contact to a European shop and they enabled shipping Germany for me on that shop. What a group of champs!

The bottle got scratched up pretty good after 500km. We had all kinds of weather and I guess some sand and debries has taken it toll on the paint.

I think it adds some character to the bottle. I will keep using it until it is blank 😅

I bought myself a new Zigbee Dongle, which works with ethernet and even POE, even if I do not have POE 😅

The SLIMLIGHT SLZB-06P7:

SLZB-06p7 Zigbee Ethernet PoE LAN USB WiFi Adapter CC2652P7 | Zigbee2MQTT | Home Assistant | SMLIGHT | SMLIGHT Official Homepage

SMLIGHT Official Homepage

My current dongle is a SONOFF Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus-P. The problem is, that the dongle is downstairs behind the TV where my Home Assistant Blue is running. I have 2 devices working as routers downstairs but none upstairs. So with the ethernet dongle, I could place that dongle upstairs, and my devices upstairs will hopefully not drop off the network all the time. This would allow me to move the Home Assistant Blue to a different location as well, when I want/need to.

After reading the Zigbee2MQTT, I realized I did not even need to repair all the devices! The Sonoff Dongle is a CC2652P chip and the new one has the CC2652P7, which is just a newer version. That sounds great!

Migrate with the IEEE address

For the migration, I have to copy the IEEE address of the old dongle to the new dongle. That process is described in the docs as well: Copying the ieee address of an adapter

You will get a value looking like this: 0x00124b0018e1afa8

Now you need to flash that with that number. But you need to reformat the number a bit. Just remove the 0x sections and add : after every pair of characters.

0x00124b0018e1afa8
00:12:4b:00:18:e1:af:a8

Go to the interface of your SLZB-06P7 stick, put in the MAC address, and flash.

After a minute or two, the device should be back up.

Home Assistant

Now, I stopped my Zigbee2MQTT add-on and disconnected the Sonoff Dongle. Then, I powered down my routers (1 Phillips Hue bulb and an Aqara Pet Feeder).

The web interface conveniently offers a copy-paste section for the Zigbee2MQTT add-on. When I restarted the add-on with the changed config, it crashed and the output still showed the old USB device path.

So, I had to edit the config configuration.yaml for that add-on directly. This is also stated in the copy-paste dialog:

# Pay attention, if you use the Z2M addon for HA, it is better to edit the yaml configuration file directly
serial:
# Location of SLZB-06P7
  port: tcp://192.168.178.134:6638
  baudrate: 115200
  adapter: zstack
# Disable green led?
  disable_led: false
# Set output power to max 20
advanced:
  transmit_power: 20

That was easy to do with the VS Code add-on.

After starting up the add-on, everything was up and running again.

Super happy with the migration!

Have a great day! 👋

There are plenty of NAS & Server cases out there. Since I have changed my case 3 times now, I have done some research for myself and just put it out there for others.

My personal case study 😜 (pun intended):

1. Fractal Design Node 804
2. SilverStone DS380B
3. Fractal Design Define 7

My general advice for building a NAS with some HDD storage: If you have the space, do not go into small form-factor builds.

• They tend to be more expensive
• They are generally louder
• They are generally warmer
• Building in them can be a pain

And as a reminder for motherboard sizing:

Anyway, here is the list of cases I had a look into.

Smal Form Factor (SFF) NAS cases

SilverStone DS380 / DS380B

The DS380B is a newer revision and has smaller capacitors on the backplane for the SATA/SAS ports. They were pretty big and could be knocked off easily. You can still manage that; just be a bit careful. That is about the difference, as far as I can tell.

• Drive Bay:
  • 8 x 3.5" SAS/ SATA hot-swap (2.5” compatible)
    • These are external and easy to swap!
  • 4 x 2.5"
• Motherboard: Mini-DTX, Mini-ITX
• Power Supply: SFX PSU
• Dimension:
  • 211mm (W)
  • 285mm (H)
  • 360mm (D)
  • 21.6 liters
• Price: ~175 Euros (06.04.2025)

I owned this case at some point. It is okay. Back then, I needed the small form factor, and it was great for that. However, building in here is not fun at all! especially when you think of populating all 4 SSDs in the small SSD cage. Getting them out there is also a major pain.

Mods

• If you want to use a full-size PCIe card for an HBA, then you need to mod the case slightly. I have written about it here: Silverstone DS380B mod - How To Fit a Normal Size PCI Card into the SilverStone DS380 without losing a HDD slot
• If you populate all the disk bays, the disks can get pretty toasty. Brian Moses created a 3D printed cooling duct, which I highly recommend:
  • DIY NAS: 2017 Edition
  • Cooling Duct for SilverStone D380

It was a blast!

This was my first time in Berlin and attending a hardware-related event.

I arrived on Friday evening. There was a meet and greet at a Biergarten in Berlin. Sponsored by CrowdSupply! They are not only helping me with my crowdfunding campaign, but they are pretty involved in this community. I even met my CrowdSupply contact Helen Leigh. She was showing us a bit of her fabric for electronics projects!

Welcoming community

Since I was traveling alone, I felt a bit lost the first couple of minutes. But that was over fast. After getting a beverage, I moved to the next group of people and asked if I could join. Thanks very much for being so friendly and inclusive! (Shoutout to Lefki, Peter, Marijn, Lukas, George, Francis and probably more!)

The crowd was super diverse. All kinds of countries (US, Netherlands, Slovakia, Tschekisloawai, Sweden,etc). All kinds of backgrounds. Artists, embedded engineers, industrial engineers, business owners, professors, PhD students, you name it. Nerds in every direction. Everybody was passionate about what they were doing, making every conversation interesting and fun!

In the beginning, I did not want to talk much about my PokyPow project. I had the feeling that this was nothing compared to what everybody was doing. But after some time, I did open up, and it was nice. The whole flow with the development of hardware, software (ESPHome and ESP Web Tools), and how the next steps will be. Also found a few people interested in the project.

PokyPow

Remotely power and monitor your computer with Home Assistant

Crowd Supply

Next time, I will bring a business card with a QR code to let people sign up quickly when they are interested.

Talks

Even though I am not really in the hardware and embedded space, the talks were interesting!

One of the Arduino founders (David Cuartielles) talked about biodegradable PCB manufacturing: What if the Future [of Electronics] was Compostable?

Bunnie was there, which I knew for some reason I can not remember. He seems to be pretty well-known in the community and has shown the latest research on how you can scan property chips with cheap/affordable off-the-shelf parts like a microscope and webcams. Seeing Through Silicon with IRIS (InfraRed, in-situ) Imaging

The talk about Developing a NFC Decentralized Payment System was also super interesting!

Check out their YouTube Channel for all the talks. You might have different interests. 😉

Badge Hacking

The ticket did include food and drinks for the whole event, a t-shirt, and of course, the badge.

Since the interface was public just before the event, people started hacking at home. It was crazy what people came up with. Even though I am not that into badge hacking myself, it was fun watching people go crazy and enter the contest as well.

10 out of 10, would go again

I hope to attend again and recommend the event to everyone slightly interested.

Have a great day! ☀️

Since I am waiting for parts and other things regarding the PokyPow, I thought: Why not start with documentation?

So that is what I did. Here is the website:

PokyPow

PokyPow is a board to power on/off, reset and monitor your PC/server via Home Assistant. It build with ESPHome and does not need any cloud connectivity.

Andrej Friesen

The Tech Stack

I decided to go with a static site generator. I decided to go with Material for MkDocs.

Material for MkDocs

Write your documentation in Markdown and create a professional static site in minutes – searchable, customizable, in 60+ languages, for all devices

Martin Donath

I really like the default design and have seen it in different projects. I bought myself a PiKVM and Home Buttons and those docs were made with Material for MkDocs as well.

Flashing via Browser

My goal was to use the ESP Web Tools:

1. Connect the PokyPow
2. Go to docs.pokypow.com
3. Click connect and start the flashing procedure
4. Then, a dialog should pop up to configure the WiFi for the device
5. In the end, you can directly set up the device in Home Assistant
6. done ✅

That way, users do not need to install tools for flashing and also do not need the ESPHome Device Builder Home Assistant Add-on. You still can, but you do not need to. Here a gif on how it looks like to flash:

ToDo

I can build the site locally and push it to my server via rsync. That is enough for now. Later on, build a pipeline so that when people find mistakes in the docs, a PR is created, and I get notified.

I also want to add a pipeline to build with the latest ESPHome version. That way, users and I can check if changes are needed.

Another thing I want to add is OTA updates from GitHub. Instead of copying and pasting new changes to the yaml and building the firmware yourself and flashing it, it is possible to create an update URL, and the device can check that URL for a new binary. That way, you do not even need the ESPHome Builder Add-Ons in Home Assistant. Just update like other devices.

But that is for later.

What do you think?

I know it is still not available for sale, but I am working on it. Product development takes way longer than I like!

But what do you think about the docs?
Anything I missed?

I very much appreciate your feedback.

Have a great day! 👋

Python and its package management is pure pain.

I have the feeling there are more tools around package management than libraries on PyPi.

I would recommend this to everybody using Python in multiple projects and possibly even different Python versions. I did not come up with this, but it is the dumbed down version of this amazing article I have bookmarked for ages:

Managing Multiple Python Versions With pyenv – Real Python

In this step-by-step tutorial, you’ll learn how to install multiple Python versions and switch between them with ease, including project-specific virtual environments, even if you don’t have sudo access with pyenv.

Real PythonLogan Jones

If you want to have a deep dive, go ahead and read that article. It is pure gold 👌

Anyway, here is the short version.

Do not use Python from your OS

It does not matter what you run, do not use your operating system Python version.

If you install package A to that Python version and you need a different version of package A in a different project, you are already in version hell. You can solve this, with virtualenv but what if you need a different Python version as well (like 3.11.0 vs 3.12.0)? Virtualenv does not help you with that AFAIK.

The easy solution: pyenv

If you are not allowed to use your system Python, then which one should you use? You can install and manage multiple Python versions very easily with pyenv.

So install pyenv checking their GitHub. This is mostly for Linux and Mac, but I believe there is a fork for Windows mentioned as well:

GitHub - pyenv/pyenv: Simple Python version management

Simple Python version management. Contribute to pyenv/pyenv development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHubpyenv

When you have pyenv installed, you can list what is available. They even offer different Python "distributions" like Anaconda which already has a lot of packages preinstalled for data science stuff. But also niche things like PyPy that you could put on systems that do not have a package manager and still get a full Python runtime.

Pick your poison from this list (truncated output):

pyenv install --list

Available versions:
  [...]
  3.12.9
  3.13.0
  3.13.0t
  3.13-dev
  3.13t-dev
  3.13.1
  3.13.1t
  3.13.2
  3.13.2t
  3.14.0a5
  3.14.0a5t
  3.14-dev
  3.14t-dev
  [...]
  anaconda-1.4.0

Install your Python version:

pyenv install 3.11.9

Now, you create a new virtual environment for your project. Let's say, I want to use 3.11.9 for my PokyPow project:

pyenv virtualenv 3.11.9 pokypow

You can actually name your virtual environments anything you want. Sometimes I use project-python-version like: pokypow-3.11.9.

Now you can activate your virtualenv with this:

pyenv activate pokypow

Most shells will show you that you are now working in that specific virtualenv. In my case Oh-My-ZSH:

Automate Python environment switching

Now you can activate your Python pyenv virtualenv, install packages via pip, switch to another project, and do the same.

But we are not cavemen!

You can create a .python-version file in your project. This will automatically switch the Python version when you change the directory and that is super handy!

The file just contains a single line entry with the virtualenv name:

cat .python-version
pokypow

Here a one-liner to create it in your current directory:

echo "pokypow" > .python-version

Happy hacking!

So, recently my server did not boot up. I thought: Nice, I have PiKVM and everything will be easy.

The screen looked super broken. It looked okay in the beginning, but when I tried to navigate the screen looked weird and not readable anymore.

After a quick search, I found out, there is a fix for exactly my motherboard and many others out there.

Tuning HDMI EDID - PiKVM Handbook

KVM over IP on Raspberry Pi

logoMaxim Devaev

In short, ssh as root into your PiKVM:

# make the system read write
rw

# create and copy the edid file content
vi /root/edid.hex

00FFFFFFFFFFFF005262888800888888
1C150103800000780AEE91A3544C9926
0F505425400001000100010001000100
010001010101D32C80A070381A403020
350040442100001E7E1D00A050001940
3020370080001000001E000000FC0050
492D4B564D20566964656F0A000000FD
00323D0F2E0F000000000000000001C4
02030400DE0D20A03058122030203400
F0B400000018E01500A0400016303020
3400000000000018B41400A050D01120
3020350080D810000018AB22A0A05084
1A3030203600B00E1100001800000000
00000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000045

Apply your changes and DO NOT REBOOT the PiKVM. Check the UEFI/BIOS.

kvmd-edidconf --edid=/root/edid.hex --apply

Now you can test if everything is working.

If everything works peachy, apply changes permanently:

kvmd-edidconf --import=/root/edid.hex

Make the system read-only again with:

ro

Done, that is it.

After fixing this I could fix the actual issue: Secure boot and Proxmox.

I think it was just quickly disabling TPM in the UEFI, booting up and enabling it again. Need to write that stuff down immediately. This was in September and now I forgot. I will do it next time. Maybe 😉

When I ordered my last batch of PokyPow prototypes, I thought my USB header connector was broken or wired wrong.

Instead of the USB 2.0 socket on the mainboard, I tried a USB-A port from the back and tried it that way. With the regular blue USB-A to USB-C cable, the PokyPow was powered, when I turned off the PC.

I was confused. Maybe the USB 2.0 socket on the mainboard is broken?

Nope. The PokyPow will power on when I power on the PC when plugged into the mainboard USB 2.0 socket. 🤔

Turns out it was just my BIOS/UEFI settings. I was assuming that USB Always On was enabled because the USB ports on the back did power my devices when the PC was on. But for some reason, MSI decided to split that logic.

To turn on USB Always On for the MSI MAG B550M MORTAR WIFI with the AMI BIOS version 7C94v1K from 2024-08-09:

1. Go into your UEFI
2. On the top right is a search icon and search for "USB"
3. Enable Resume By USB Device

You also might need to disable the ERP power setting, but I am not 100% sure about that. This was disabled by default.

For me, this only works on the USB Port, which is labeled BIOS/Flash.

PokyPow updates

We have a new schematic. Switched a couple of components for cost, reliability and adding features. We will probably order PCB this week for testing.

As soon as the new PCBs work, I will let you know!

The original goal of 200 people on the mailing list was surpassed and that is good! We are now slowly going to the 400 mark!

Thank you so much and stay tuned!

I use my Desktop PC like a console since it is only used for gaming. Unfortunately, Windows is not a good operating system when you have it running occasionally.

The Problem

By occasionally I mean sometimes weeks or even months. But then a friend contacts me:

Friend: Are you up for an hour of Hunt Showdown/Space Marine 2?
Me: Hell yeah.
Friend: Have you got the 100GB update yet from last week?
Me: 😮‍💨

When I boot the machine I have to wait for the password prompt for logging in and only then does Windows start everything. It is not only games though:

• Windows Updates (and the needed reboots)
• Graphics Driver Updates
• Game Launcher Updates (Steam, Battlenet, Epic, etc.)
• Game Updates
• etc.

This should not be a problem!

Desired State

Often these gaming requests come in the evening, while I am cleaning the kitchen. My desired goal:

• Turn on my gaming PC from everywhere, even when I am not at home
• Update the important games immediately

Remove password for Windows 11 login

First, we need to remove the password prompt to let applications like steam start. Start with the shortcut Win+R and then type in netplwiz and hit enter/run:

Then align the setting, so that there is no password needed and boot:

That is it for the Windows part. Now my PC starts, logs me in and all applications will be started.

Steam Update Settings

I do not fully understand Steam's automatic downloads, but I do know that you can overwrite the setting per game. So, the two games I play at the moment are Hunt Showdown and Space Marine 2.
Those get the High Priority setting, and as soon as Windows starts and Steam starts, the games get the necessary updates.

Remotely start my Gaming PC with Home Assistant

For that, I developed the PokyPow. It's a small PCB you put into your PC and then you can remotely Power On/Off and monitor the Power On state.

PokyPow

Remotely power and monitor your computer with Home Assistant

Crowd Supply

Now I can use Home Assistant and power on my PC! 🎉

Here is a small demo:

That is it for now. I wish you a great day! 🌄

Hey nerds 🤓

This blog now has over 400 Members and I wanted to thank you all and wish you nothing but the best for the next year. 🙏 I hope you have/had a wonderful time for Christmas and enjoy the holidays over New Year's Eve. 🎆

My best smart home gadget

I wanted to share my best home automation gadget with you. It is hands down the two DREAME L10s Pro Ultra! We have 2, one for each floor; these things are a time saver. It is mind-blowing not to use this tech anymore.
Even the mopping is very good.

I bought the first one in November 2023 for 729,90 Euros. I was so happy with this device that I bought a second one in August 2024 for 366 Euro (Factory seconds).

You can get one of these in Germany for 396 Euros brand new. That is a no-brainer for me! 🧠

If you want to build this as well, here are the parts I used. To be transparent: I get a small commission from these links.

• DREAME L10s Pro Ultra

• DREAME L10s Pro Ultra

Flashed both with Valetudo because I am not a fan of China Cloud devices in my home. It is a bit scary and you also need a small PCB and you can brick your device. Please do your research.

This device vacuums and mops both floors perfectly. I use an Aqara switch near the door. When we go out we can hit it once for vacuuming both floors and hit it twice for vacuuming + mopping both floors. 🏠

I also got a Home Buttons. A small E-Paper device. The kitchen sink symbol is for just vacuuming and mopping only the kitchen. It is really handy after a heavy cooking session! 🧑‍🍳

The game controller 🎮 symbol is for turning on my gaming PC upstairs with my PokyPow. Sometimes a friend asked me for a small gaming session after dinner. I say yes and push that button. While cleaning I get the latest updates for my game and everything is up and running when I go upstairs and sit down.

If you want a PokyPow, just sign up, we are almost at our goal of 200 people 😉

PokyPow

Remotely power and monitor your computer with Home Assistant

Crowd Supply

Anyways.

My next project - automatically clean around the cat litter box

I want to let my vacuum automatically vacuum when my cat uses the cat litter box. I already built a scale with ESPHome and those HX711 and the CLW1001 sensors on a piece of wood. I have to admit, those sensors were bought in 2018 and I never used them. 😅 I plan to check if a weight change has happened (the cat entered the litter box) and then the vacuum robot will clean up the litter lying around. Let's see how it will work out.

What are you working on?

What is your best smart home device? Anything that brings you joy or saves a huge amount of work?

I am curious, please let me know in the comments below.
And enjoy the rest of the holidays and see you next year! 🍾

Hey Nerds 🤓

This year in January we got a new owner of the house we are living in. Luckily, she lets us live here. Her name is Chili 🌶️

Anyhow. She is an outside cat and when we adopted her, the organization checked our living situation and we had to let her go outside. Not a problem. But we can not install cat doors. First, we are renting, second, we have big glass windows. We always have to check manually, if the cat wants to get back inside. And I do not like to do things manually if you can automate them 🤖

Then we were visiting my grandparents and they had one of those pressure mats that made a CRAZY loud sound when their cat sat on it. I did not want to get a heart attack 💔 every time that thing goes off.
So, I looked at the device to see if I could integrate it into Home Assistant without the LOUD alarm.

Turns out, it is a simple on-off switch. Since this will need to be outside I picked up another Aqara Water Leak Sensor on the used market, wired it up and voila, it works!

After a couple of months, the cable broke and I decided to do it a bit more properly. That means with hot glue and a project box I had lying around:

Every time, when my cat now is sitting on this mat, the lights in the living room flash, a light on the window will also flash (as feedback for my cat) and I get a notification on my phone.

It is not perfect though. My girlfriend likes to put stuff on that mat while gardening and it is our entrance door in the summer as well.

Also, we sometimes have other cats parking there while Chili is in the house:

I think this is a neat little project, useful, and does not require any tools other than a screwdriver, something to clip the cables, and some hot glue (you can also go with tape).

It also shows how useful and versatile these Aqara Water Leak Sensors are!

You could even pair this up to my PokyPow to turn on or off your PC when someone steps on a mat.

PokyPow

Remotely power and monitor your computer with Home Assistant

Crowd Supply

I do not know why you would ever do that, but you could. And that is reason enough for us home automation nerds 🤓

Affiliate Links

If you want to build this as well, here are the parts I used. To be transparent: I get a small commission from these links.

• Aqara Water Leak Sensor
• Pressure Mat

• Aqara Water Leak Sensor
• Pressure Mat

Have a great day! 🌅

Hey nerds 👋

a few updates regarding the PokyPow.

We are still in the pre-launch phase. The most important thing right now is getting email addresses on the prelaunch page.

We are at 124 subscribers but need at least 200. This is a friendly reminder for you to get on that list 😉

PokyPow

Remotely power and monitor your computer with Home Assistant

Crowd Supply

Tasmota

The PokyPow is based on the ESP32C3 and next to ESPHome, there is another big project in this space: Tasmota

I am currently figuring out how I can compile Tasmota for the PokyPow. I think it looks possible, but I have to learn a bunch of things regarding PlatformIO. I got it somehow working but I am missing the sensor LED in the web interface and I want to configure the button's time interval for power and reset.

Another hurdle: the LED I am using is not part of the official binary, so I need to compile a custom version anyway. I also do not want users to need to enter a bunch of commands via the console; rather, they should have a ready-configured product.

Adding Tasmota will allow you to use the PokyPow in any other Smart Home project like ioBroker, FHEM, openHAB, etc.
And without any smart home hub, this can be used as well, way better than with ESPHome. No promises yet, but it looks doable.

If you are super handy with Tasmota and or PlatformIO, please let me know. I might want to pick your brain 🧠.

Hardware revision

No big news yet, other than there is a new revision coming. Cost-optimized and part-optimized in the sense of longevity, reliability, etc. Things I just could not know without having years of experience in the industry.

Have a great day! 🌅

Hey nerds 🤓

The prelaunch page for PokyPow went live on Crowd Supply!

Next milestone: At least 200 subscribers on the prelaunch page on Crowd Supply. So go over there and subscribe, if you want to help make PokyPow a reality. 🙂

PokyPow

PokyPow is your companion for conveniently powering on, off, resetting, and remotely monitoring your PC’s power state. Integrates into Home Assistant and needs no cloud. Open Source and Open Hardware.

Subscribe for PokyPow at Crowd Supply

We are 324 Members on this blog just for the PokyPow. But I need you 🫵 on the Crowd Supply page! So in theory this should work. But hey, you never know what the conversion is. 🤷

If you are not interested, do not bother to subscribe. No hard feelings. Feel free to unsubscribe here as well. I rather have fewer people and face reality early.

Only when we reach the milestone 🪨 of at least 200 subscribers over at Crowd Supply I will get the next task I have to tackle.

At the moment we have 12 subscribers. I am not 100% sure where these came from. I messaged a couple of friends and added the link on top of my blog. And the one unsubscribe dip was me testing, how responsive this graph is. 😉

So smash that button and see you there!

Have a great day! 👋

Hey nerds 🤓

I made the button—the button every Home Automation nerd needs and wants.

Translation:

How useful is this?
You smell.

The cool thing about this button:

• wireless via ZigBee
• good battery life
• Only wires are needed when you use the Aqara Water Leak Sensor

When the button arrived, I happened to have an Aqara Door Sensor in my drawer. So I took that one, opened it, soldered two wires onto it, and tested the button.

Actually, I would prefer the Aqara Water Leak Sensor. Then there is not soldering and tinkering needed. You just attach 2 cables via the screws and you are good to go. I am using one right now for my cat doorbell in Home Assitant. I checked the size and it fits as well.

You can use a hot glue gun. I wanted to get it out easily when the battery needs changing therefore I used some of the awesome 3M Dual Lock Fasteners.

There is also a version that can only be reset when you turn the key. This can be pushed without the key but unlocking only works by turning the key.

This could be used as a condition in Home Assistant. For example as a lock for certain things like turning on your TV, only when the parents are home 📺

I am curious about your ideas for the version with the lock. I am in need to justify the purchase 😉

Affiliate Links

If you want to build this as well, here are the parts I used. To be transparent: I get a small commission from these links.

• Emergency Stop Button
• Emergency Stop Button with Key
• Aqara Water Leak Sensor
• Aqara Door and Window Sensor
• 3M Dual Lock Fastener

• Emergency Stop Button
• Emergency Stop Button with Key
• Aqara Water Leak Sensor
• Aqara Door and Window Sensor
• 3M Dual Lock Fastener

Have a great day! 👋

Hey nerds 👋

I am working with Crowdsupply on a couple of things, including the campaign's landing page. I hope I can make it public soon. Send them some prototypes and they took very nice product photos. And a couple of administration things.

While working on these things, we figured, we needed a better name. Have you tried searching for "pc-switch" on the internet?

You will never ever give get the right result. It is so generic, that people will never be able to find it.

After some back and forth I came up with the name of PokyPow - Poke the board in and power your server. Is it the best name ever? I doubt it. But I kind of like it. No overthinking here 😉

I also updated the GitHub repository with the version I have been using at home for the last couple of weeks. For the people who use the original pc-switch I created a branch with the old config so nothing is lost.

GitHub - ajfriesen/PokyPow: PokyPow: turn on/off your PC or Server with Home Assistant and ESPHome

PokyPow: turn on/off your PC or Server with Home Assistant and ESPHome - ajfriesen/PokyPow

GitHubajfriesen

Since I am a nerd and maker with too many ideas and even more domains, I had to buy the domain pokypow.com as well. It is currently redirecting to this blog with all posts related to this project. Let's see what I will do with this in the future.

That is it for now. Hope I can give you more updates soon. I can make a more or less fun post about how I am using my PokyPow right now. It is a super fun button I always wanted to have and easy to DYI at home. One of these 😉

Have a great day!

Hey nerds 👋

As you may have read in the last blog post My first disk failure with BTRFS I lost an SSD. Here is the follow-up on what I had to do to replace those SSDs with my new M2 NVMEs.

Adding the disks - Proxmox annoyance

For myself I will document, where I put which SSD since I will not remember this, when the next will fail.

Here a short diagram of my mainboard, the MSI PRO Z690-A DDR4.

The slots below were already populated for Proxmox VM storage. Now I have added the 2 new ones as well. I checked the board docs before as well to verify I do not lose speed or something on the GPU. So here are my slots with the serial of the mapped SSD.

• M2_1: 70B005D6 pass through nas VM
• M2_2: 70B00681 pass through nas VM
• M2_3: S69ENF0W951426J proxmox
• M2_4: S69ENF0W951396Z proxmox

Since I disabled everything I thought noting down the HDDs serial from the top is a good idea for future me as well (pass through nas VM):

• ZS800MA1
• ZLW279PA
• ZLW22PX8
• 8DKW17XH

Adding those disks has already caused some problems with Proxmox. My NAS VM no longer boots. Figured it out quickly. Adding PCIe devices changes the numbering of some of them. My HBA card, which is passed through did have a new PCIe number and therefore was not found anymore. Adjusting that and adding the 2 new NVME drives did the trick.

My HBA was 0000:06:00 before. Now I added the 2 new NVMe drives they got

• 0000:02:00
• 0000:03:00

Now my HBA has 0000:08:00, okay whatever. Changed it and everything is good.

I would love to give those PCI Devices custom names. I will not remember what is what in a week or two. Did not find an option, though.

After that was settled, I could boot my NAS VM again.

Removing my old disks - A problem

Now let's tackle the actual issue. Trying to replace my old SSD and my backup HDD from the raid.

Adding devices was easy. I created a LUKS container again and added those drives to the /etc/crypttab for automatic encryption at boot time. Then a simple btrfs device add to the raid.

Now, removing was not that trivial. I could not remove my old disk with btrfs device remove

sudo btrfs device remove /dev/mapper/ssd-backup /ssdraid/
ERROR: error removing device '/dev/mapper/ssd-backup': Input/output error

A scrub showed me that I have two uncorrectable errors:

sudo btrfs scrub status /ssdraid
UUID:             cc6d1c26-d69e-4c75-b0cd-3edddf3ffb00
Scrub started:    Sun Oct  6 07:49:28 2024
Status:           finished
Duration:         0:00:29
Total to scrub:   64.08GiB
Rate:             2.21GiB/s
Error summary:    csum=2
  Corrected:      0
  Uncorrectable:  2
  Unverified:     0

Looking at the dmesg -T output, I could see the checksum errors. Looks like inluxdb index files are corrupted. I guess that happened because the container was running while the filesystem ran full. But that is just a guess.

[Sun Oct  6 07:49:32 2024] BTRFS warning (device dm-4): checksum error at logical 1500790784 on dev /dev/mapper/ssd_raid-1, physical 1500790784, root 257, inode 3305984, offset 0, length 4096, links 1 (path: influx/influx-data/engine/data/d397af7b60aa91c2/autogen/531/index/3/L3-00000008.tsi)
[Sun Oct  6 07:49:32 2024] BTRFS error (device dm-4): bdev /dev/mapper/ssd_raid-1 errs: wr 0, rd 0, flush 0, corrupt 29155121, gen 0
[Sun Oct  6 07:49:33 2024] BTRFS error (device dm-4): unable to fixup (regular) error at logical 1500790784 on dev /dev/mapper/ssd_raid-1
[Sun Oct  6 07:49:33 2024] BTRFS info (device dm-4): scrub: finished on devid 1 with status: 0
[Sun Oct  6 07:49:38 2024] BTRFS warning (device dm-4): checksum error at logical 1500790784 on dev /dev/mapper/ssd-backup, physical 1479819264, root 257, inode 3305984, offset 0, length 4096, links 1 (path: influx/influx-data/engine/data/d397af7b60aa91c2/autogen/531/index/3/L3-00000008.tsi)
[Sun Oct  6 07:49:38 2024] BTRFS error (device dm-4): bdev /dev/mapper/ssd-backup errs: wr 0, rd 0, flush 0, corrupt 45896582, gen 0
[Sun Oct  6 07:49:38 2024] BTRFS error (device dm-4): unable to fixup (regular) error at logical 1500790784 on dev /dev/mapper/ssd-backup
[Sun Oct  6 07:49:43 2024] BTRFS info (device dm-4): scrub: finished on devid 2 with status: 0

After finding those errors, I also checked the filesystem with btrfs device check on all devices, but the filesystem itself was totally okay. It was just that one file.

Fixing influxdb index

After some research, I figured out how to do that. At least I believe that fixed everything. First, I deleted the file and then recreated the index again:

docker exec -it influx influxd inspect build-tsi --data-path  /var/lib/influxdb2
?
You are currently running as root. This will build your
index files with root ownership and will be inaccessible
if you run influxd as a non-root user. You should run
build-tsi as the same user you are running influxd.
Are you sure you want to continue? Yes
2024-10-06T08:26:58.730759Z     info    Rebuilding bucket       {"log_id": "0s4EryDW000", "name": "engine"}
2024-10-06T08:26:58.944877Z     info    Rebuilding retention policy     {"log_id": "0s4EryDW000", "db_instance": "engine", "db_rp": "data"}
2024-10-06T08:26:58.944917Z     info    Rebuilding retention policy     {"log_id": "0s4EryDW000", "db_instance": "engine", "db_rp": "replicationq"}
2024-10-06T08:26:58.944932Z     info    Rebuilding retention policy     {"log_id": "0s4EryDW000", "db_instance": "engine", "db_rp": "wal"}

Checking the filesystem on the path influx/influx-data/engine/data/d397af7b60aa91c2/autogen/531/index/3/ did show me new files.

A proper backup or snapshots would have been nice! Need to think about my non-existing backup strategy. 😅

Actually removing my disks

Now, the removal of the old disks did work without any issues.

sudo btrfs filesystem show /ssdraid/
Label: none  uuid: cc6d1c26-d69e-4c75-b0cd-3edddf3ffb00
        Total devices 2 FS bytes used 32.11GiB
        devid    3 size 1.82TiB used 34.03GiB path /dev/mapper/m2_1
        devid    4 size 1.82TiB used 34.03GiB path /dev/mapper/m2_2

A final scrub to see if the errors are gone:

sudo btrfs scrub status /ssdraid/
UUID:             cc6d1c26-d69e-4c75-b0cd-3edddf3ffb00
Scrub started:    Sun Oct  6 12:33:48 2024
Status:           finished
Duration:         0:00:19
Total to scrub:   64.39GiB
Rate:             3.39GiB/s
Error summary:    no errors found

And a double check on the device stats as well:

sudo btrfs device stats /ssdraid/
[/dev/mapper/m2_1].write_io_errs    0
[/dev/mapper/m2_1].read_io_errs     0
[/dev/mapper/m2_1].flush_io_errs    0
[/dev/mapper/m2_1].corruption_errs  0
[/dev/mapper/m2_1].generation_errs  0
[/dev/mapper/m2_2].write_io_errs    0
[/dev/mapper/m2_2].read_io_errs     0
[/dev/mapper/m2_2].flush_io_errs    0
[/dev/mapper/m2_2].corruption_errs  0
[/dev/mapper/m2_2].generation_errs  0

Nice. My fast raid is running again and even faster.

Conclusion

One thing I know for sure: This was Yak shaving at its best.

Problems often happen at the same time (disk full + corruption). Then you try to solve the initial problem but need to solve a bunch of other sometimes unrelated problems (Proxmox PCIe device numbering, PiKVM display output for MSI board, etc). If you do not know what work looks like in it, that is it. 100%! 😄

Anyway, I hope you had some fun. I know I did.

Let me hear from you if you encountered some Yak shaving yourself in your home lab. I can't be the only one!

Have a great day! 👋

Hey folks 👋

just a quick technical update. I configured this Ghost blog to use my own Mailcow instance. But there was a misconfiguration on the Ghost side of things and therefore I missed a few comments. I found that those emails were rejected from rspamd in the Mailcow interface.

Still new to hosting Email myself, but I think I got it figured out now for this blog at least.

You can directly contact me via blog@ajfriesen.com or just answer the blog post in your mail directly.

Enjoy your day!