Smart Home on NCoT Tech

Sonoff Hacking to install Tasmota

Sat, 04 May 2024 16:31:55 +0000

I bought some of those Sonoff BASIC smart switches off Amazon and flashed them with Tasmota. It’s a pretty painless affair, the programming contacts are right there on the board, and the case comes apart with your fingernails.

Custom HomeAssistant display using openHASP

Fri, 29 Mar 2024 17:25:28 +0000

It’s my opinion that if you’re going to fill your home with smart devices, they need to be easy to control and monitor. Having to pull a phone out a pocket just to switch some lights on is annoying. Equally, having to open a browser just to see the state of everything is equally annoying.

estimating Battery Runtime Using Home Assistant

Sat, 28 Oct 2023 09:08:37 +0000

I have a whole house battery solar system with 3kW of roof mounted panels and 9.6kWh of battery storage. I can monitor this using Home Assistant and it’s interesting to see my power usage and generation stats. Interesting, but not that relevant to daily life.

What is relevant is knowing how long the battery has left, especially now we’re in autumn/winter and the typical British weather is in full effect. As I look out my window right now it’s misty, yesterday it rained all day.

Hacking IoT Smart Plugs

Sat, 18 Mar 2023 19:46:23 +0000

Let’s make the Internet of Things a bit more useful, and less like The Internet of Turd by hacking some smart plugs so they no longer phone home to China.

This is an update to a [previous blog post]https://ncot.uk/blog-posts/freeing-smart-devices-with-tasmota/ I wrote about modifying [smart sockets]https://ncot.uk/blog-posts/hacking-smart-home-devices-literally/.

Hacking Smart Home Devices - Literally

Mon, 09 Jan 2023 14:25:47 +0000

This week I have literally been hacking smart home devices. With a Dremel and a knife…