I renamed every automation in my house and found four bugs
Four years of ad-hoc alias choices, fifty-six automations, one sitting to rename them all — and four real bugs I'd assumed were working fine.
An occasional journal of reverse-engineering, home automation, and whatever else declines to yield to the obvious solution. Published when the work warrants it.
Four years of ad-hoc alias choices, fifty-six automations, one sitting to rename them all — and four real bugs I'd assumed were working fine.
A twenty-line automation replaced every 'have you tried turning it off and on again' conversation in my house.
How one evening, Gemini 2.5 Flash Image, Next.js, and a Hostinger VPS became a private reimagining studio for exactly one address.
How we reverse-engineered the DEWENWILS / ECO Plugs protocol and built a local Home Assistant integration — with Claude Code as the co-pilot.
An audit of my own Home Assistant install — the patterns that earned their keep, and two habits I'd break if I started again.
Why my smart house lives on its own VLAN, what the three-network split actually costs, and the firewall rules that keep it from breaking Home Assistant.