---
title: "Smart Home Projects, Home Assistant, MQTT & IoT | moonweb"
section: "smarthome"
tags: "smarthome"
description: "Smart home projects: Home Assistant, MQTT sensors, AirPlay audio, OctoPrint, and energy monitoring."
layout: base.njk
sections:
  - heading: "Control & Automation"
    cards:
      - title: "Home Control Buttons"
        summary: "Lighting, music, and Tasmota device control shown on the home dashboard."
        href: "/smarthome/home-dashboard-controls/"
        emoji: "🎛️"
      - title: "Tasmota & energy monitoring"
        summary: "Smart plugs and power monitoring across the flat, feeding daily usage stats."
        href: "/smarthome/tasmota-energy/"
        emoji: "⚡"
      - title: "HomematicIP + MQTT"
        summary: "How HomematicIP room sensors are bridged into MQTT and stored in InfluxDB."
        href: "/smarthome/homematic-mqtt/"
        emoji: "📡"
      - title: "Balkon Pi"
        summary: "Balcony sensor, lighting, and audio automation unit."
        href: "/smarthome/balkonpi/"
        emoji: "🌿"
  - heading: "Dashboards & Hardware"
    cards:
      - title: "LED Matrix"
        summary: "ESP32 LED matrix displays around the flat. Full write-up currently lives on the CV site."
        href: "https://stefankoelle.de/ledmatrix/"
        emoji: "💡"
      - title: "WT32-SC01 dashboard"
        summary: "Touch dashboard on a compact ESP32-S3 display."
        href: "https://github.com/skoelle/wt32sc01-dashboard"
        emoji: "📱"
      - title: "M5Stack dashboard"
        summary: "ESP32 dashboard showing weather, calendar, and MVG departures."
        href: "https://github.com/skoelle/m5stack-dashboard"
        emoji: "🖥️"
      - title: "Air quality dashboard"
        summary: "Real-time temperature and humidity monitoring across all rooms with historical charts."
        href: "/smarthome/air-quality/"
        emoji: "🌡️"
  - heading: "Personal services"
    cards:
      - title: "iCloud Contacts Sync"
        summary: "Private iCloud contacts synced into the homelab, with birthday notifier and web UI."
        href: "https://github.com/skoelle/icloud-contacts-sync"
        emoji: "👥"
      - title: "MVG departures"
        summary: "Compact Munich transit departure monitor for desktop and mobile."
        href: "https://github.com/skoelle/mvg-departures"
        emoji: "🚇"
      - title: "Google Calendar sync"
        summary: "Private calendar synced into the homelab with notifier and web interface."
        href: "https://github.com/skoelle/calender_sync"
        emoji: "📅"
      - title: "Focus App"
        summary: "A clean, modern todo application with drag & drop reordering."
        href: "https://github.com/skoelle/focusapp"
        emoji: "✅"
  - heading: "Media"
    cards:
      - title: "AirPlay audio"
        summary: "Multi-room AirPlay receivers with software volume boost."
        href: "/smarthome/airplay-audio/"
        emoji: "🔊"
      - title: "OctoPrint"
        summary: "Remote 3D printer control and camera streaming."
        href: "/smarthome/octoprint/"
        emoji: "🖨️"
      - title: "YouTube archiving"
        summary: "TubeArchivist and TubeSync for self-hosted YouTube downloading on the Synology."
        href: "/smarthome/tubearchivist/"
        emoji: "📺"
      - title: "Kids RFID MP3 Player"
        summary: "Arduino-based audio player for kids using RFID cards, built as a custom alternative to Hoerbert."
        href: "/smarthome/kids-rfid-player/"
        emoji: "🎵"
---
<h1>Smart Home Projects</h1>
<p class="site-intro">The heart of the homelab. Home Assistant, MQTT sensors, dashboards, and automation projects that make everyday life a little more interesting.</p>

{% include "card-grid.njk" %}

<section class="about-expanded">
  <h2>The stack</h2>
  <p>Everything connects through MQTT. HomematicIP thermostats report room temperatures via Home Assistant automations, Tasmota smart plugs feed energy data, and various ESP32 and Raspberry Pi devices publish sensor readings. InfluxDB stores the time-series data, and Grafana dashboards visualize it all in real time.</p>
  <p>The home dashboard runs on multiple touch displays around the flat: an ESP32-S3 WT32-SC01 in the living room and an M5Stack in the study. Both show room temperatures, energy usage, and quick-action buttons for lighting and music control.</p>

  <h2>Automation philosophy</h2>
  <p>The goal is subtle automation that improves daily life without being intrusive. Lights turn on when someone enters a room, music starts playing in the bathroom when the light switches on, and LED matrix displays show the time, weather, and laundry status. But nothing talks unless spoken to, no voice assistants, no always-on microphones, just simple sensor-driven automation that runs locally without cloud dependencies.</p>

  <h2>Self-hosted services</h2>
  <p>Beyond hardware automation, several self-hosted services run on the Synology NAS: TubeArchivist and TubeSync for YouTube archiving, OctoPrint for remote 3D printer control, iCloud Contacts Sync for keeping the address book up to date, and a Google Calendar sync for dashboard widgets. Each service is containerized and backed up as part of the NAS backup strategy.</p>
</section>