Tutorials

Start Here: Home Automation Tutorials

Step-by-step, vendor-neutral guides for building a reliable self-hosted smart home.

Shanaka Fernando

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Welcome to the Tutorials pillar. Here you'll find step-by-step, vendor-neutral guides for building a smart home you actually control — running locally, with no cloud lock-in.

What you'll find here:

  • Getting started with a self-hosted hub (Home Assistant and friends)
  • Writing reliable automations and blueprints
  • Dashboards, voice control, and presence detection

Most tutorials include copy-paste config. For example, a minimal Home Assistant automation:

automation:
  - alias: "Porch light at sunset"
    trigger:
      - platform: sun
        event: sunset
    action:
      - service: light.turn_on
        target:
          entity_id: light.porch
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