Who am I? 👨💻
👋 A smart home enthusiast, daily optimization fanatic and tinkerer, I originally just wanted to "better manage my heating"… then I discovered Home Assistant, and I never really left.
Here, I share what I set up at home: automations, integrations, energy monitoring and fine-tuning for everyday comfort.
You'll find detailed real-world use cases, ready-to-adapt code and honest feedback on what works… and what doesn't, all with one obsession: optimize without over-complicating.
🚀 The origin story: from home automation to global optimization
My journey into home automation started very pragmatically, driven by two essential needs: security and heating control.
I started with mainstream solutions like Blink, then Tapo.
These tools helped me discover the potential of connected homes… but also their limitations:
- restricted automations,
- cloud dependency,
- closed ecosystems,
- near-zero interoperability between brands.
🔁 The turning point: taking back control
Very quickly, these limitations became blockers. I then chose to migrate to Home Assistant, and progressively replace my devices with Zigbee-based, local and interoperable solutions.
This change marked a real turning point:
- a centralized system,
- advanced automations,
- coherent logic,
- greater reliability,
- less dependency on cloud services.
Since then, my setup has never stopped evolving.
❤️ My favourite automations
Some automations have become so natural that I don't even think about them anymore — and that's precisely the sign that they're working perfectly.
🎷 Wake up to music
Five minutes after I wake up, my amplifier turns on automatically and plays a Jazz playlist on shuffle. No manual action, no screen: just the right atmosphere to start the day.
💡 Smart outdoor lighting
I repurposed indoor motion sensors, installed in weatherproof junction boxes outside. They automatically trigger the lights around the house whenever movement is detected. Simple, reliable, and incredibly practical every day.
📬 Smart mailbox detection
My mailbox is connected: mail delivered = instant notification on my phone, mail collected = the notification disappears automatically. No unnecessary reminders, no doubt: the information is accurate and contextualized.
🏗️ My stack & how I work
- Home Assistant Green as the core of the system
- a local-first approach
- automations designed as real processes, not gadgets
I also developed a Home Assistant expert agent, used as a co-pilot to:
- design,
- maintain,
- optimize automations.
Today, a large part of my work relies on:
- Claude Code,
- and its MCP, used as an automation engineering tool.
AI isn't there to "do things for me", but to improve the quality of decisions and the consistency of the system.
🧠 The real challenge in home automation (WAF included)
The biggest challenge in home automation isn't the installation, maintenance or bug fixes… it's getting your household to accept and use it.
A technically perfect automation is worthless if:
- it surprises people,
- it complicates everyday use,
- or it creates frustration.
User experience always comes before technical performance.
🔮 Current & upcoming projects
- Building a connected bird feeder, capable of detecting and recognizing bird species
- Improving system monitoring, with intelligent alert prioritization
- Integrating Discord as a central notification and supervision tool
- Using n8n for complex optimization and alerting workflows
