Hello everyone! I wanted to share my recent smart home automation project, which has been a fantastic learning experience. I’ve been working on automating my basement lights and sensors, and it’s been quite the journey. Let me walk you through what I’ve done and some of the challenges I faced along the way.First, I started by installing motion sensors and lights in the basement. The goal was to have the lights turn on automatically when someone enters the room and turn off after a few minutes of inactivity. I used Fibaro dimmers for the lights and some motion sensors I had lying around. Setting this up was straightforward, but I ran into a few issues along the way.One of the challenges I faced was getting the lights to flash when the alarm system is disarmed. I wanted a visual indicator to let me know the system is safe, especially when I’m outside the house. After some research, I found that using a custom rule with the Fibaro switch could achieve this. It took a bit of tweaking, but I managed to get it working perfectly.Another thing I wanted to share is my experience with the ESP32 voice assistant. I’ve been trying to get it to recognize my wake word reliably, but it’s been a bit hit or miss. I followed some tutorials and adjusted the audio settings, but the audio output still seems a bit garbled. I’m hoping to get some tips from the community on how to improve this.In addition to the basement project, I’ve also been experimenting with MQTT rules to handle events in my smart home setup. I created a dynamic group of all my items and set up rules to publish and subscribe to MQTT topics. This has allowed me to mimic the event bus functionality I was missing in MQTTv2. It’s been a great way to keep everything connected and responsive.I’d also like to mention the openHAB 3.0 release, which has brought a lot of new features and improvements. I’ve been using it to manage my smart home devices, and it’s been a smooth experience so far. The community support and documentation have been invaluable in helping me set everything up.Reflecting on this project, I’m really happy with how it turned out. The basement now has a functional and automated lighting system, and I’ve learned a lot about integrating different devices and systems. It’s been a great way to enhance my home’s comfort and security.If anyone has tips or suggestions on improving my setup or solving some of the issues I’ve encountered, I’d love to hear them! Happy automating everyone! 