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How to Add Marketplace (Formerly HACS) to the Home Assistant Sidebar
Put Marketplace back in the Home Assistant sidebar with Custom Sidebar. Copy the YAML for the admin shortcut and the optional Developer Tools…
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Carlo Costanzo · 25+ years in technology
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How to Add Marketplace (Formerly HACS) to the Home Assistant Sidebar
Put Marketplace back in the Home Assistant sidebar with Custom Sidebar. Copy the YAML for the admin shortcut and the optional Developer Tools entry, or go straight to…
Holiday Theming for Home Assistant Dashboards
Give Home Assistant dashboards seasonal accents using the holiday state you already have. Keep cameras, reminders, and controls in place while Codex helps connect the idea to your…
Turn a Roku Into a Home Assistant Dashboard with Raven
See how a custom Roku app and Home Assistant turn idle TV time into a household dashboard, with the regular remote ready when it's time to watch.
Stop Getting Blinded by Your Smart Lights at Night
Set a gentler brightness for any dimmable light that turns on at night, without maintaining a light list. A complete Home Assistant package and a short YAML walkthrough.
Turn a Samsung TV Into a Home Assistant Dashboard with Haven
Our living room Samsung TV becomes a Home Assistant kiosk when the Roku screensaver starts. Here is how Haven, passive camera views, and shared household notifications fit together.
Give an Old Nest Thermostat a New Job as a Home Assistant Display
My retired Gen 2 Nest now cycles through family photos, shows Home Assistant alerts for two minutes, and follows our bedtime, away and guest states.
Smarter garbage reminders with Frigate and Home Assistant
Use separate local Frigate classifiers to see which garbage and recycling bins still need moving, then narrow and stop the existing Home Assistant reminders.
Local Holiday Countdowns in Home Assistant with Python and Codex
Replace Wolfram Alpha holiday lookups with local Python calculations while keeping Home Assistant countdown sensors, personalized speech, and seasonal lighting.
Local Package Detection with Frigate and Home Assistant
Replace cloud LLM Vision package checks with local Frigate state classification. Keep your Home Assistant helpers and alerts, and let Codex help train the model on your own…
The person behind the projects
Hi, I’m Carlo.
I’m a senior virtualization consultant, longtime VMware vExpert honoree, and the person behind vCloudInfo and the Bear Stone Smart Home. I share what I learn so you can build on it.
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