An ESP32 with Wi-Fi switched on draws tens of milliamps, and short transmit bursts go much higher. Espressif's datasheet lists 240 mA for an 802.11b transmission at +19.5 dBm. A battery will not last long at that rate. In deep sleep the same chip needs about 10 µA (RTC timer and RTC memory running), so a sensor that wakes up, reports and goes strai
A PIR motion sensor notices you walk in and then loses you as soon as you sit still with a book, so the light goes off at the worst possible moment. A 24 GHz radar module such as the Hi-Link LD2410 also picks up a person who is not moving, which is what an office, bathroom or living room actually needs. ESPHome supports the module directly, so an E
A Home Assistant backup is only useful if three things survive the day your server dies: the backup file, the key that decrypts it, and the username and password you had when it was made. When a restore fails, one of those three is usually missing, and very often it is the file itself, because the only copy sat on the SD card or SSD that just gave
Home Assistant's Energy dashboard turns meter readings, solar production and individual devices into one view of what you import, export, produce and store. You can start with a single grid sensor and add solar, battery, gas, water and per-device tracking later. This guide focuses on getting entities into the right shape, wiring them into Settings
The first install is the awkward part of ESPHome. You need a USB data cable, a browser that talks to serial ports, and a board that actually enters programming mode. After that, every change can go over the air. This guide covers installing the Device Builder, creating a first configuration, flashing over USB, joining Wi-Fi, and connecting the devi
MQTT is a lightweight publish/subscribe protocol. A broker sits in the middle: clients publish messages to topics, and other clients subscribe to those topics. Zigbee2MQTT, many Tasmota devices, ESPHome's MQTT client mode, and plenty of DIY sensors all speak it. Home Assistant can act as one of those clients once you point it at a broker.
Matter devices talk over your existing IP network. Wi-Fi and Ethernet Matter plugs and bulbs join the same LAN as Home Assistant. Thread Matter sensors and locks join a low-power mesh, and a Thread border router bridges that mesh to your LAN. In both cases Home Assistant runs its own Matter controller: the Matter Server app on Home Assistant OS.
Most Zigbee problems in Home Assistant look like device problems: a sensor that will not pair, a remote that responds a second late, a motion sensor that drops off every few days. The Home Assistant documentation traces many of them to the same few causes upstream: an outdated coordinator or old firmware, interference where the adapter is plugged i
The first thing the Home Assistant Energy dashboard needs is how much electricity you take from the grid, and the most direct place to read that is the meter. Some meters make it easy with a standardized local port, like P1 in the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. Many others, older ones especially, have no data port at all. What most of them do
