Smart home write-ups, Apollo notes, and the occasional opinion from Brandon Harvey.https://smarthomesellout.com/en-ushttps://smarthomesellout.com/blog/2026-07-24-128x128-led-matrix/https://smarthomesellout.com/blog/2026-07-24-128x128-led-matrix/I connected four 64x64 panels to my WLED matrix to make one 128x128 display. Getting WLED to drive it as a single square took some figuring out, since the docs hadn't caught up with the grid feature yet. Here's the actual setup, why the 180 degree flip of the bottom row needs no software setting, and the docs update I sent back.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://smarthomesellout.com/blog/2026-07-24-improving-the-esphome-captive-portal/https://smarthomesellout.com/blog/2026-07-24-improving-the-esphome-captive-portal/The screen that gets an ESPHome device onto WiFi lists the same network once per access point, so a mesh shows up three or four times at different signal strengths. Tapping the strong one does nothing the weak one doesn't, because the device only ever gets the network name, not the access point you picked. I checked the source, then sent a 220-byte fix upstream to collapse the list to one row per network.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://smarthomesellout.com/blog/2026-07-21-sen55-said-sen54/https://smarthomesellout.com/blog/2026-07-21-sen55-said-sen54/Some AIR-1 units report themselves as a SEN54 over I2C even though the module inside is a SEN55, so ESPHome shut their NOx sensor off. It turned out NOx had never worked on those units at all. A small override option settled whether the hardware or the register was lying, and it ships in ESPHome 2026.7.2.Tue, 21 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://smarthomesellout.com/blog/2026-07-18-i-stopped-leaving-the-tv-on-for-an-empty-house/https://smarthomesellout.com/blog/2026-07-18-i-stopped-leaving-the-tv-on-for-an-empty-house/My leaving-the-house automation used to only lock the door and arm the alarm, so anything playing kept playing to an empty room. Now it powers off the TVs, pauses the speakers, and offers a one-tap resume when I get back. Getting Plex to come back where I left off is where most of the wrong turns were.Sat, 18 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://smarthomesellout.com/blog/2026-07-14-how-a-non-coder-uses-claude-code/https://smarthomesellout.com/blog/2026-07-14-how-a-non-coder-uses-claude-code/I'm not a developer, but I use Claude Code every day for firmware, docs, and Home Assistant. The trick is writing down how I work so I stop re-explaining it. I just made my whole setup public: the skills and the memory pattern, cleaned of anything private, free on GitHub.Tue, 14 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://smarthomesellout.com/blog/2026-07-07-youtube-intro-without-video-editor/https://smarthomesellout.com/blog/2026-07-07-youtube-intro-without-video-editor/I wanted an animated logo intro for YouTube and I don't own After Effects. My logo was already an SVG, so I animated it with the browser's own animation API, screenshotted it 378 times, and let ffmpeg turn the pile of PNGs into a 1080p60 video. Total output: 6.3 seconds, about 180KB.Tue, 07 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://smarthomesellout.com/blog/2026-07-02-gifify/https://smarthomesellout.com/blog/2026-07-02-gifify/My screen recorder produces 53 MB GIFs and the wiki needs 2 MB ones. I wrapped my ffmpeg scripts in a local web app with visual trimming, presets, and a file size readout, and now clips for the wiki and Discord take about a minute. It's free on GitHub if you want it.Thu, 02 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://smarthomesellout.com/blog/2026-06-27-mr-freeze-midea-portable-ac-home-assistant/https://smarthomesellout.com/blog/2026-06-27-mr-freeze-midea-portable-ac-home-assistant/Comfort Masters quoted me $24,000 to fix the way my house cools. I passed for now, kept my central air, and added three Midea portable units, around $400 each, to pick up the slack in the rooms it can't keep cold. Home Assistant runs them: a fan-speed deadband, a 20-amp breaker interlock, on-demand network-closet cooling, and a Mr. Freeze button for movie nights.Sat, 27 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://smarthomesellout.com/blog/2026-06-25-building-an-air-quality-led-indicator-for-the-air-1/https://smarthomesellout.com/blog/2026-06-25-building-an-air-quality-led-indicator-for-the-air-1/The AIR-1 has three onboard RGB LEDs, so I made them show air quality at a glance. The feature itself is small. Getting there took longer than it should have, because I kept fixing things that weren't the problem. These are the dead ends and where it ended up.Thu, 25 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://smarthomesellout.com/blog/2026-06-21-popcorn-ceiling-air-quality/https://smarthomesellout.com/blog/2026-06-21-popcorn-ceiling-air-quality/I spent two days cutting sheetrock, disturbing old insulation, and scraping popcorn ceiling in the upstairs bathroom, with eight Apollo AIR-1 sensors watching the whole house. The two rooms off the bathroom spiked 20 to 30 times over, and the return air lifted every other room too. The room-by-room data, and why I wore a P100 the whole time.Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://smarthomesellout.com/blog/2026-06-18-the-cast-1-got-a-new-dac-component-and-wizmote-support/https://smarthomesellout.com/blog/2026-06-18-the-cast-1-got-a-new-dac-component-and-wizmote-support/ESPHome 2026.6.0 added a built-in PCM5122 component, so we moved the Apollo CAST-1 off the community one we'd been using and added WizMote remote control in the same update. The move wasn't optional, the old component stopped loading on 2026.6.0, and the swap shipped with a silent-audio bug I had to chase down.Thu, 18 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://smarthomesellout.com/blog/2026-06-12-dehumidifier-full-notification-zen15/https://smarthomesellout.com/blog/2026-06-12-dehumidifier-full-notification-zen15/My dehumidifier is a completely dumb appliance, but it sends me a notification the moment its tank fills up. No smart features, no app, no subscription. Just a heavy-duty Z-Wave plug that watches power draw and one Home Assistant automation that fires when the power falls off a cliff.Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://smarthomesellout.com/blog/2026-06-09-home-assistant-ui-power-user-tweaks/https://smarthomesellout.com/blog/2026-06-09-home-assistant-ui-power-user-tweaks/A recent r/homeassistant thread asked how to get the UI closer to the more advanced, power-user feel it used to have. The comments had a pile of ideas. Two of them stuck with me, and both take about ten seconds to flip on.Tue, 09 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://smarthomesellout.com/blog/2026-06-09-kajplats-zigbee2mqtt/https://smarthomesellout.com/blog/2026-06-09-kajplats-zigbee2mqtt/IKEA replaced the TRÅDFRI line with KAJPLATS, and the new bulbs ship with Matter over Thread. I gave that a real shot and it was a mess. I ended up adding mine to my existing Zigbee2MQTT mesh instead, using the hidden 12-power-cycle sequence that switches the bulb into Zigbee pairing mode.Tue, 09 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://smarthomesellout.com/blog/2026-06-07-home-assistant-database-debloat/https://smarthomesellout.com/blog/2026-06-07-home-assistant-database-debloat/My backups had ballooned, and the recorder database was the reason. I'd had exclude filters in my config for ages and they did basically nothing, because excludes only stop new data, they don't touch what's already there. Here's the cleanup that actually shrank the database, and the backups along with it.Sun, 07 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://smarthomesellout.com/blog/2026-06-02-free-smart-home-class/https://smarthomesellout.com/blog/2026-06-02-free-smart-home-class/My beginner Home Assistant class is now at classes.smarthomesellout.com. If you teach too, the repo is set up so you can fork it, swap in your own gear and stories, and use it for your own class.Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://smarthomesellout.com/blog/2026-05-28-hello-smarthomesellout/https://smarthomesellout.com/blog/2026-05-28-hello-smarthomesellout/This is the first post on my new blog. The plan is to get more content out and share what I'm doing with the world. I work at a smart home startup and spend most of my free time on FOSS smart home projects. Follow along to see more!Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT