48 articles on smart home gear, setup and buying decisions — newest first. Page 1 of 8.
Home Assistant's Energy dashboard is free, but it only becomes useful once it separates solar export from grid import and prices each kilowatt-hour at the right peak, shoulder or off-peak rate. Here's how to wire up the data, the tariffs and the sanity checks.
Renting or in an apartment and stuck for somewhere to park the dock? Here's how to choose a spot that works with the power points you already have — clearances, self-empty and mop-wash docks, extension lead safety, and the places that quietly cause trouble.
Your existing split system almost certainly speaks infrared, and that's all a smart IR controller needs. Here's how to add app scheduling, voice commands and geofencing to a reverse-cycle head unit you already own, what the cheap controllers get wrong, and when you genuinely need an electrician.
Filters, brushes, mop pads, dust bags, detergent and a surprisingly hungry dock all add up long after the sale price is forgotten. Here is a realistic annual running-cost budget for robot vacuums in Australian homes, plus the parts worth buying generic and the ones that are not.
Double brick, foil sarking and a Colorbond garage will stop a Zigbee mesh dead. Here's how to place your coordinator, chain mains-powered repeaters through the right windows and doorways, pick a channel that dodges your Wi-Fi, and decide when the granny flat needs its own hub instead.
Some robot vacuums will talk to Home Assistant entirely over your own LAN, others refuse to move without a server overseas. Here's how local control actually works in 2024-25, which brands are realistic, what rooting involves, and how to automate cleaning even when the vacuum itself stays cloud-tethered.
