I’ve been thinking about getting some CCTV cameras for a while, and last summer I purchased two Reolink PoE cameras. The footage is stored on a SD card, and uploaded to a local FTP server.

But I also wanted to record continuously, without getting a dedicated Reolink NVR. I’ve seen some YouTube videos by Tall Paul Tech where he uses FFmpeg to record CCTV footage — so let’s do that! 🙂

In November last year — I started building a DIY security alarm system, using a Raspberry Pi as the controller. My plan was to make a self-sustained system, using proper alarm hardware — like PIR sensors and sirens.

Integration with Home Assistant would be an add-on, not a requirement. I wanted the system to be as redundant and fault-tolerant as I could make it.

This is a pretty long story, with some twists and turns — let’s get into it 👇

Controlling my Komfovent balanced ventilation system through Home Assistant — opens up a world of possibilities.

Here are three automations I use to make the system a bit smarter 🙂

We got balanced ventilation installed last year, and have been very happy with the system 🙂 But we quickly found that we needed to expand it into two more rooms — the 1st floor bathroom, used as the laundry room, and the play room, which will be a bedroom at some point.

Time to fix that 🙂

I’m using a Raspberry Pi to communicate with the power equipment in my homelab rack; the UPS, ATS and PDU. For the UPS, I’m using NUT (Network UPS Tools), and for the ATS and PDU; my own PowerWalker Python library.

In this post I’ll be going through how I’ve set up the NUT server to communicate with my PowerWalker VI 1500 RT HID UPS, and NUT clients running on all other physical machines in the rack.