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I am a coffee drinking, beer brewing, IT career, techie that likes to learn new things, play with gadgets, and find solutions to practical issues. Here you will find projects, code, examples of the things I am building and my smarter home project.

I am always interested to try cool new things, especially if it is something my family can use at home and I can build inexpensively and perhaps better than something commercial. For example, we have a sump pump in our house that runs very frequently in the wet season (spring, or winter thaw). We have never lived somewhere that had one before. How do you know its running when we aren't home? What happens if it stops working AND we AREN'T home? These were important questions that needed to be addressed. So this has become a project, and something to fix

I want a "smart" home. I want a secure home. I don't want to have that cost a fortune, but I am willing to spend where it makes sense.

A SmartHome needs to be functional, actually be "smart", but MUST NOT prevent the smart things from being used the way we expect. A light switch can be smart, be controlled from an app, and have a central control system turn the light on/off given the desired conditions. That same light switch, still needs to be a LIGHT SWITCH. Someone should be able to use the light switch just as much as they can used the app or let the central control system handle it.

I have setup smart lights, some appliances, and some internet of things devices, but after moving into our house two years ago, realized some of the mistakes I made in previous setups. Philips Hue lights ........... are controlled through an app on the phone, must be cloud connected, and might work with someone's central home automation hub of choice (i.e. Samsung Smart Things, Home Assistant, etc.). I disagree with this approach. Frankly, this setup makes me not want to use these for most things.

In this blog, I will share my setup. A configuration which is very dynamic, has plenty of room to grow, but follows the simple principle of make the device smart without taking the basic functions away. Do all of this while keeping privacy and security important.

I, like many other people, want a "smart" home. But I want a "smarter" home. Automating something like turning lights off, is great, especially if its doing that when everyone leaves. But I want to take it a step further, or maybe several steps further. I layout my smarter home project in detail here