Sonoff Mini vs. Shelly1 – Tiny Smart Switch Battle

Sonoff switches are one of the best deals in Home Automation.  A wifi chip with a relay that is powered by 110v for $5! And the BEST part is how flexible and capable they become when you flash them with TASMOTA firmware, which makes them easy to connect and control with Home Assistant. Here are…

Besides just showing off the awesome stuff you can do with home automation, we’re using the Maker Faire display to demonstrate a few different situations that have come up in questions and comments on previous videos. First, let’s look at a light switch wiring situation from my first “sonoff-as-a-light-switch” video. When I was explaining different…

I play video games. I started with Atari and Intellivision and now it’s xbox and even a little Oculus VR. The games have become so good it is often hard to stop playing. If we don’t set limits it is easy for kids to spend too much time playing. But parents are busy, and aren’t…

Crown molding is beautiful. LEDs are beautiful. What if we put them both together! But wait. Crown molding is expensive, and can be hard to install. Maybe there’s a cheaper, simpler way to get the same result.   Crown molding LEDs on a budget.   These are 12v plain white, non-waterproof, 5050 LEDs are about…

There are a few different ways to communicate wirelessly.  Wifi is the one we use most often in our Smart Homes. But there are also some really useful devices that use Radio Frequency or RF.  So how do you get your RF devices to communicate with your Wifi devices? You grab one of these. The…