I’ve recently embarked on a journey to transform my home into a smart haven, and I must say, it’s been an exciting ride! 
Moving into a new home has given me the perfect opportunity to start fresh with Hubitat as my central hub. One of my first projects was installing a smart lock on the exterior gate, and after some research, I found a fantastic waterproof option that’s perfect for our climate here in Southern California. 
It’s been a game-changer for keyless entry and adds an extra layer of security to our home.
Another area I’ve been diving into is energy monitoring. I’ve been exploring how to track energy usage across different devices, especially with a mix of Qees Power switches and Düwi wall modules. While the Qees devices integrate seamlessly with Vera and show real-time wattage on findvera.com, the Düwi modules have been a bit trickier. After some trial and error, I realized that manually entering the wattage in the device settings wasn’t enough. Instead, I found that creating a custom rule in Hubitat to monitor the state of the Düwi modules and calculate energy usage based on their runtime has been a great workaround. 
It’s not as automatic, but it gets the job done!
I’ve also been experimenting with automating my garage door. Using webCore, I set up a system where the garage door opens when I arrive home and closes automatically after 10 minutes if I turn off the garage light. It took some tweaking, but it’s now working perfectly! 
The key was simplifying the logic and using global variables to track the ‘recently home’ status without overcomplicating things.
One thing I’ve learned is the importance of community support. Whether it’s troubleshooting a device or finding creative solutions, forums like this have been invaluable. If anyone has tips on integrating more devices or improving their energy monitoring setup, I’d love to hear them! 
Cheers to making our homes smarter, one project at a time! 