Smart Home
—Reviews, setups & automation for a smart home.
Smart Home Reviews & Posts
Ring Alarm Review: 4 Years, 9 Cameras and 3 False Alarms
Four years, nine cameras and one alarm system later: what Ring actually gets right, the false alarms that made us rip out the motion sensors, and whether the subscription is worth it.
Build a Home Assistant Dashboard With AI: A Step-by-Step Guide
A step-by-step method for building a clean, Apple-inspired Home Assistant dashboard with an AI co-pilot — entity list, clear concept, the right cards, and iterative YAML.
Editing Home Assistant With AI: 3 Ways to Manage Your Smart Home
Three honest ways to let an AI help with your Home Assistant YAML — SSH, MCP, and plain chat — plus the entity list that stops the model from guessing IDs.
Home Assistant Green + Connect ZWA-2: The Ready-Made Local Smart Home
The official Nabu Casa bundle: Home Assistant Green as the brain plus the Connect ZWA-2 Z-Wave radio. A ready-made, local-first smart home with no DIY and no subscription.
Amazon Echo Show 5, 8 & 11 – The Smart Displays That Turn Alexa Into a Family Photo Frame
Echo Show 5, 8, and 11 combine great sound, Alexa smarts, and an outstanding photo frame that makes your Amazon Photos library part of everyday family life.
Raspberry Pi + Home Assistant – The Local-First Smart Home That Actually Belongs to You
A calm, private, local-first brain for your entire smart home that unifies Hue, Ring, Zigbee, Z-Wave, Matter, and more—fast automations, beautiful dashboards, and zero cloud lock-in.
SONOFF Zigbee 3.0 USB Coordinator – The Little Stick That Makes Home Assistant Truly Local
Turn Home Assistant into a real, local-first smart-home brain. This SONOFF Zigbee 3.0 USB coordinator delivers instant, private control of lights, sensors, buttons, and plugs—no cloud required.
Featured Smart Home Posts
Our top picks for home automation and smart devices
Build a Home Assistant Dashboard With AI: A Step-by-Step Guide
A step-by-step method for building a clean, Apple-inspired Home Assistant dashboard with an AI co-pilot — entity list, clear concept, the right cards, and iterative YAML.
Editing Home Assistant With AI: 3 Ways to Manage Your Smart Home
Three honest ways to let an AI help with your Home Assistant YAML — SSH, MCP, and plain chat — plus the entity list that stops the model from guessing IDs.
Home Assistant Green + Connect ZWA-2: The Ready-Made Local Smart Home
The official Nabu Casa bundle: Home Assistant Green as the brain plus the Connect ZWA-2 Z-Wave radio. A ready-made, local-first smart home with no DIY and no subscription.
Buying Guides
Expert advice on smart home setups
Ring vs Blink for a Family Home: Which One Should You Actually Buy?
Ring and Blink are both Amazon, both Alexa-friendly, and priced the opposite way round to how people assume. Which one actually fits a family home.
Prime Day 2026: 5 Best Robot Vacuums for Family Households
Our dad-focused Prime Day guide to the top 5 robot vacuums in 2026 that keep family homes clean – from self-emptying Roombas to powerful all-in-one stations from Shark, Dreame, and eufy.
Never Get Locked Out Again: 5 Best Smart Locks for Families (Prime Day 2026)
A dad-focused guide to the best smart locks for U.S. family homes in 2026 – including August, Schlage, Yale, Eufy, and Level – with picks for renters, Apple families, fingerprint fans, and more.
Smart Home Hubs & Brands
Brand portals that collect our smart-home reviews in one place.
