PROJECT 04 / HOMELAB / HOME AUTOMATION
One home.
Working together.
A Home Assistant virtual machine on Unraid connecting smart-home devices, household sensors, and infrastructure—with lighting automations driven by presence and sunset.
Devices & services
VM on Unraid
Presence & sunset
Lighting actions
Connected devices feed a shared Home Assistant environment, where the two lighting routines use presence and sunset conditions.
01 / THE IDEA
One place for a connected home.
My Home Assistant instance brings together the devices I use around the house and the infrastructure supporting them. Lights, motion and door sensors, 3D printers, Google TVs, Unraid, and UniFi equipment are all connected.
The goal is to bring these integrations into one place and use them for practical automations. The lighting routines are two examples of that setup in daily use.
02 / CONNECTED DEVICES
From lights to the network itself.
The connected ecosystem reaches beyond lighting. It includes household sensors, entertainment devices, printers, and the systems running the home network and server.
Smart-home lights
Motion & door sensors
Connected printers
Entertainment devices
Home server integration
Network equipment
03 / THE AUTOMATIONS
Two routines. Less manual work.
Lights off when we are both away
A presence-based automation turns off the lights when both household members are out of the house. The routine uses household presence as the condition for the lighting action.
Both people away → turn off the lights.
Lights on before sunset
A second automation turns on the lights 30 minutes before sunset. The timing follows sunset rather than a fixed time of day.
30 minutes before sunset → turn on the lights.
04 / HOSTING & OPERATIONS
A VM with a place in the lab.
Home Assistant runs as a virtual machine on my Unraid server. It sits alongside the other workloads hosted on that system, while the UniFi network connects the host and the rest of the home.
I access the Home Assistant instance locally by IP address.
Current backup setup
Backups are not currently configured for this instance. The project has the integrations and automations in place; backup and recovery are an area for improvement.
05 / THE TAKEAWAY
Infrastructure that does something useful.
This project connects the homelab to everyday life. The server provides a home for the VM, the network connects devices and services, and Home Assistant uses presence and time-based conditions to carry out lighting actions.
The connected devices range from lights and sensors to printers, TVs, and the infrastructure itself—all brought into the same Home Assistant environment.
KEEP EXPLORING
More connections.
More possibilities.
Have a question about the project?
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