Added a speed camera watchdog for the Tesla using live Waze report-scraped data. Implemented same-street filtering to drop false positives from nearby roads. Still far from ideal. Don't ask why I needed this.
Speed camera watchdog for the Tesla
Home Assistant dashboard on Tesla’s screen
Home Assistant dashboard on Tesla’s screen. Convenient.
Heat pump defrosting today
Our heat pump spent 103 minutes defrosting today, with two more hours to go. Not ideal, but such days are rare. It's foggy outside, with temperatures around freezing.
Frigate performance optimization using Gemini
Impressive Frigate performance optimization using Gemini. My Raspberry Pi 5 + Coral TPU setup handling 8 cameras has seen a 38% drop in CPU usage, despite increasing the detection frame rate from 4 to 5. Gemini made several smart suggestions, including generating a shell script to ffprobe camera streams and determine their characteristics, splitting and…
Our Mitsubishi Ecodan heat pump’s COP vs outside temperature
Our Mitsubishi Ecodan heat pump’s COP vs outside temperature:
AI Tasks
New in Home Assistant 2025.8: AI Tasks. My outdoor cameras now scan the lawn for obstacles before activating irrigation sprinklers. See how they spotted a beanbag left on the lawn and skipped the irrigation cycle. Pretty neat
Sonoff zigbee irrigation timers
Replaced 5 of my old mechanical irrigation timers with Sonoff zigbee ones. Should have done that much earlier. Integration in home assistant was painless.
Adding Zigbee devices to their network
How does one admit they need help to stop adding Zigbee devices to their network? Asking for a friend..
Zigbee soil moisture sensor by Third Realty
Interesting new Zigbee soil moisture sensor by Third Realty. Looks well built, capacitive sensing, single AA battery powered. Also measures temperature, integrates in Home Assistant through Z2M
Third Reality ZigBee T&H sensors
Got some Third Reality ZigBee T&H sensors to sprinkle around the house. Home Assistant integration through z2m is straight forward, looking good so far. Quite big, but run on couple AAAs
Ecodan FTC6 firmware from 18.01 to 20.01
Updated our Ecodan FTC6 firmware from 18.01 to 20.01, using these instructions https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/18RT9mcwQj4Ro-d09x-T1mGcMWAl2tR2e Can’t notice significant difference so far.
IKEA’s INSPELNING in home assistant
IKEA’s INSPELNING is finally available here, grabbed three to test. Integrated in home assistant, and now monitoring a dishwasher, dryer and a washing machine. Great product
My Node-RED Modbus comms flows
@stefanraschbach My Node-RED Modbus comms flows: https://gist.github.com/mharizanov/a7370cb778cc1f185776da8d3180610c
Frigate audio stream of RTSP cameras
TIL that Frigate can analyze the audio stream of RTSP cameras for certain sound types and expose these as Home Assistant sensors. Configured mine to detect barking, yelling, alarms, etc and will create automations based on these https://docs.frigate.video/configuration/audio_detectors/
IKEA TRETAKT zigbee smart plug
Bought the new IKEA TRETAKT zigbee smart plug to test. Design is better than their previous smart plugs, integrates well in Zigbee2MQTT. I only wish it had power monitoring capability
Heat pump annual maintenance done
Heat pump annual maintenance done, “before” and “after” pump flow rate pictured below. I assume this affected performance significantly. Lesson learned 🙂
Home Assistant on RPI 5 hardware
Upgraded my Home Assistant to RPI 5 hardware recently mainly, so it better handles cameras in Frigate + Google Coral TPU. I am now monitoring 5 security cams at 10 FPS with ~25%-ish CPU load, the RPI 4 wasn't able to handle half of that without overheating, and 75%-ish CPU load
IKEA’s new zigbee motion sensor, the VALLHORN
IKEA’s new zigbee motion sensor, the VALLHORN, finally arrives here. Grabbed couple pcs to test with Zigbee2MQTT in home assistant. No ETA about the PARASOLL and BADRING yet. These seem to expose illuminance as well, interesting
Logic level converter between our Ecodan ASHP UART port
Adding (finally) a logic level converter between our Ecodan ASHP UART port and the ESP32 interface to Home Assistant. Don’t ask why I don’t have it in place to begin with…
DEV.BG tech talk: Intelligent Synergy: Heat Pump, PV & Home Assistant
My DEV.BG tech talk on making the heat pump, the PV system and Home Assistant work together – slides and video, in Bulgarian.
Zigbee2MQTT time
Zigbee2MQTT time
Термопомпа с фотоволтаична система и Home Assistant
Да поговорим за интегрирането на термопомпа с фотоволтаична система и Home Assistant. Очаквам ви на: https://dev.bg/event/intelligent-synergy-heat-pump-pv-home-assistant/
ESP32 for full local control and home assistant integration
Getting rid of MelCloud in favor of ESP32 for full local control and home assistant integration for our Ecodan ASHP Using https://github.com/rbroker/ecodan-ha-local
Coral TPU is here
The Coral TPU is here, will add to my home assistant + Frigate tonight Setup complete. Only tricky part was to disable “protected mode “ for Frigate in order for it to recognize the TPU on my rPi4 running HASS OS 10.5; Currently running it on two cameras, CPU load is at 25-35%. Automations based…
IKEA’s DIRIGERA hub in my home assistant setup
Integrated IKEA’s DIRIGERA hub and few of their smart products in my home assistant setup. Oddly, there’s no native support for the hub, I had to register it as a HomeKit device. Anyway, all is working well now and automations are kicking in as expected
Google Coral USB Edge TPU for Frigate NVR + home assistant
Ordered a Google Coral USB Edge TPU to use with Frigate NVR + home assistant. Seems quite overpriced, I hope it isn’t a disappointment
Checking the noise level on our Mitsubishi ASHP outdoor unit
Checking the noise level on our Mitsubishi ASHP outdoor unit
Heat pump’s been battling outdoor temps up to 32-36°C
In recent days, our heat pump's been battling outdoor temps up to 32-36°C in cooling mode. With an EER (think of it as cooling's COP) of 3.81, it's an efficiency superstar – and all this is running purely on solar power
Heat pump at home
Prepping for the installation of a new heat pump at home in the next week or so, but not exactly thrilled about the imminent entropy surge So it begins.. The external unit and the internal hydro box are now mounted and the refrigerant lines are pressurized with Nitrogen for a 24h leak test Progress on…
Our DYI air-to-water heat pump
Our DYI air-to-water heat pump has officially reached the end of its 13-year service life, conveniently at the conclusion of this heating season. We're grateful for the reliable warmth it provided and look forward to replacing it with a new system during the summer months.
Wood chips as mulch in the garden
Chopping tree pruning into wood chips to be used as mulch in the garden, much greener than burning.
Thermostat GUI update
Thermostat GUI update (https://harizanov.com/2020/01/meet-the-ps-thermo) #LVGL #esp32 #iot