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How to connect an ESP Board to HAOS: My Go-To Setup Guide
I always struggle a bit with the steps required to connect an ESP board to HAOS for the first time. Even though it’s super simple and straightforward, the sequence of steps does matter for a clean setup. So, just for my own reference – here’s what needs to be done. Open ESPHome Builder and add…
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Restarting Apache on Remote Servers via SSH from Home Assistant
Goal Allow Home Assistant to securely restart Apache on a remote server (e.g. AWS Lightsail instance) at the press of a button. This is ideal when a rarely unstable website goes down and a manual restart is sufficient, but you want the flexibility to trigger it from anywhere — even your phone. Step 1: Generate…
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Monitoring Website Status in Home Assistant
This post documents how I set up a simple and reliable system in Home Assistant OS (HAOS) to monitor the status of websites, display the result in the UI, and keep a timestamp of the last check. It uses native command_line and template sensors and is designed to be easy to maintain and extend. Goal…
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Web Monitoring on My Terms: Powered by Home Assistant
I used to monitor my websites with SolarWinds Pingdom. Recently, they migrated me to their new observability platform. It’s not bad – in fact, quite powerful – but way too complex for what I actually needed. I managed to reconfigure everything and set up SMS alerts through another provider (apparently, they no longer supports SMS…
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Raising the bar
I had a bit of an enlightenment today… While listening to The Diary of a CEO by Steven Bartlett, he shared his approach to identifying underperforming employees and the importance of letting them go. He posed a thought-provoking question: Pick any random employee and imagine if the entire company inherited this person’s qualities – their…
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How Money Is Created, Circulates, and Disappears
This post is part of my personal journey to understand how money really works—not just the basics, but the full picture. I started with a simple curiosity: if I make £100 profit, pay taxes, and spend the rest, and that money becomes someone else’s profit (who then also pays tax and spends it)… does all…
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LED Driver Journey
It all started with something simple: my battery-powered Christmas LED lights. I loved how they looked, but I wanted to make them more convenient by powering them through USB instead of burning through AA batteries. Simple idea, right? So, I grabbed a USB cable, did some basic soldering, and connected the 5V to where the…
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Feeling Lost, Disconnected, and Ready to Start Again
Something feels off lately. I’ve been losing interest quickly in almost everything I do. Motivation seems to have vanished. Evenings are spent mindlessly watching YouTube, my work during the day is light and uninspired, and mornings are an unstructured mess. There’s no consistency, no habits – just randomness and a lack of spark. What’s even…
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Seeing Our Sun as the Star It Truly Is
We often take everyday wonders for granted. Take the sun, for example. Every day, it rises above the horizon like a giant fireball, bringing life, light, and warmth. We know it’s there and go about our lives without much thought. But today, something magical happened. A thick fog settled in, so dense that visibility was…
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From Doodle to Waltz: Perception vs Mastery – Does It Even Matter?
When I was about 12 years old, I saw a doodle on a wall. It was simple yet unique, and I was immediately captivated. Although I wasn’t skilled at drawing, I had an idea – what if I learned how to recreate this doodle, line by line? Without a camera to capture it back then,…
Mastering Technology, Systems, Automation and Beyond