Home Assistant tutorials

New to Home Assistant? Not sure where to begin? This guide maps out all 20 guides on this site by difficulty level, estimated time, and what you will build — so you can find the right starting point and work your way up at your own pace.

A Home Assistant automation that opens a room's blinds automatically the moment an Alexa alarm fires. Uses the Alexa next_alarm sensor and a timestamp-matching template trigger to fire at exactly the right second. Includes the morning cut-off condition and integration with the temperature-based blinds automation.

Connect a Ratio EV charger directly to Home Assistant using OCPP, bypassing the Ratio cloud backoffice entirely. Covers HACS installation, the required secure wss:// connection via DuckDNS, configuring the Ratio app, and what changes once HA takes over — including losing manual start/stop from the Ratio app in exchange for full local control.

Connect Google Calendar to Home Assistant and use an event's start or end time as an automation trigger — turning on lights and plugs only for a specific calendar event by matching its title. Covers the OAuth setup and the calendar.event_started trigger.

A Home Assistant automation that lowers a room's blinds only when it is genuinely getting hot — checking both the Buienradar outdoor forecast and a real indoor temperature sensor. Boosts ventilation, tracks its own actions, and includes a matching reopen automation once the room cools down.

A simple Home Assistant automation that reboots your HA Green once a night at 02:05, keeping memory usage and system state healthy. Covers when a scheduled reboot actually helps versus when it doesn't, safe timing, a pre-reboot notification, and what to expect during the 1-3 minute downtime.

Use Home Assistant Matter Hub to publish your scripts, scenes, and automations directly to Alexa, Apple Home, and Google Home simultaneously — no cloud skill, no OAuth, no port forwarding. One pairing code per bridge, every selected entity available across every platform over your local network.

Trigger any Home Assistant automation by voice — "Alexa, charge the car" — using a tiny HA script that bypasses automation conditions, exposed to Alexa as a scene, and wired into an Alexa Routine. Reusable pattern for forcing any automation to run on demand.

A Home Assistant automation that sends a push notification at 19:00 only when your garden actually needs water: growing season, warm day, no rain recently, no rain expected soon. Built with four Buienradar-powered template sensors that make the logic readable and reusable. Full YAML and setup guide included.

A Home Assistant automation that runs every morning at 09:00 and sends a single push notification listing every device whose battery has dropped below 20%. No device list to maintain - it scans all sensor entities dynamically using a Jinja2 template, covering every integration automatically. 15 minutes to set up, useful forever.

Set up secure HTTPS access to Home Assistant from anywhere using a free DuckDNS subdomain and a free Let's Encrypt SSL certificate. Covers the DuckDNS add-on, port forwarding on port 8123 for ISPs that block 443, updating configuration.yaml, and the dnsmasq trick that makes the same URL work from inside your home network too.

The File Editor add-on gives you a browser-based code editor inside HA so you can edit configuration.yaml on HA Green without SSH or a laptop. This guide covers installation plus real-world configuration.yaml sections: HTTPS and SSL, external URLs, log level tuning, sensor scan intervals, REST commands for local API devices, and template sensors.

HACS (Home Assistant Community Store) unlocks thousands of community integrations that the official HA store doesn't cover — PS5 detection, WhatsApp notifications, custom cards, and much more. This foundational guide walks through installation step by step, including the Terminal add-on, GitHub authentication, and how to install your first community integration.

Detect when your PS5 powers on using PS5MQTT and Mosquitto, then trigger a full cinema environment automatically: projector on, room lights off, music stopped on all Alexa speakers. One press of the PS5 button, the whole room transforms. Full setup guide including MQTT broker, HACS installation, and complete YAML.

The perfect first Home Assistant integration: a smart plug with power monitoring detects when your washing machine finishes and announces it through every Alexa speaker in the house plus a phone notification. Includes what to buy at IKEA, full YAML, and the input_select trick that prevents duplicate announcements.

Set up a proper Zigbee stack on HA Green using the Connect ZBT-2 external Zigbee coordinator: install Mosquitto as the MQTT broker, disable the default ZHA integration to free the stick, install Zigbee2MQTT with the correct ZBT-2 serial configuration (ember adapter, 460800 baud, rtscts), and pair your first Zigbee device to confirm everything works.

A Home Assistant automation that monitors your solar inverter and P1 smart meter, and automatically starts charging your electric car when you have been exporting more than 2000W for 5 consecutive minutes. Charge on sunshine, not grid electricity. Full YAML with P1 validation, charge flap detection, SoC limits, and Marstek battery coordination.

Set up reliable presence detection on iPhone using the Home Assistant Companion App, combined with a Ping fallback tracker and a person entity. Includes two automations: a Jarvis welcome greeting when you arrive home, and smooth jazz playing through your Alexa speakers — stopping automatically when you leave.

Build a fully self-hosted 'Jarvis' — Alexa captures your voice, Claude thinks, your home responds. Ask questions, control devices, have natural conversations. No subscriptions, completely free beyond the Claude API. Step-by-step guide including AWS Lambda, Alexa Custom Skill, Login With Amazon, and the native HA Anthropic integration.

Set up a Home Assistant automation that checks Buienradar twice a day and sends a push notification to your phone whenever Friday, Saturday, or Sunday looks like proper BBQ weather — warm, sunny, and dry. Step-by-step guide including all dependencies.