Brian's Smart Home
Real house · real setup

A smart home that works in a 1920 house.

Plaster walls, 10-foot ceilings and a lot of rooms to cover. I run Home Assistant, a Zigbee mesh and local voice control — and show you what works, what breaks and what I'd buy again.

Tour my setup Browse the gear
Cross-section of Brian's house showing how the Zigbee mesh of smart plugs, bulbs and sensors covers the attic, second floor, main floor, basement and workshop
How my Zigbee mesh covers the house — tap for the full tour
  • 1920house, plaster walls, 10 ft ceilings
  • Home Assistantruns every automation
  • Zigbee meshplugs and bulbs carry the signal
  • Local-firstno vendor cloud where I can avoid it

Start here.

Everything on this site comes from my own house. No lab, no studio set — just the devices I actually live with.

01 · The setup

See how it's all wired

The host PC, Home Assistant, the Zigbee coordinator, the sensors and the voice speakers — laid out in diagrams you can click through.

Tour the setup →
02 · The gear

What I run, and where to get it

Sensors, switches, plugs, bulbs and speakers I own and use every day, with a plain-English note on each.

See the gear →
03 · The fixes

When the alerts go quiet

Home Assistant alerts that stopped firing, and how I tracked down why. Real problems from a real house.

Read the fix →

Two pictures explain most of it.

The brain and the radio on the left, the voice coverage on the right. Open either one for the details and the exact parts.

Diagram of Brian's Home Assistant Zigbee setup: Windows 11 host, Home Assistant OS, Zigbee2MQTT, USB coordinator and Zigbee devices

The Home Assistant + Zigbee tree

One host, one Zigbee coordinator, every device grouped by job.

Diagram of voice speakers placed around Brian's house and workshop, Google Nest and Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition

Voice speakers, room by room

Where the Google Nest and Home Assistant Voice speakers sit.

The YouTube channel is on its way.

Setup tours, gear tests and fixes for the things that break. Until the first videos land, the guides here are the best place to start — and tell me which device to test first.

Tell me what to test

Hi, I'm Brian.

I live in a 1920 house in Ontario, Canada, and I've spent years making it smart without ripping out the plaster. Home Assistant runs on a spare Dell workstation, Zigbee devices fill the rooms, and a mix of Google Nest and Home Assistant Voice speakers answer to my voice.

This site is where I keep the setup, the gear and the fixes in one place — everything tested here, in the house, before I tell anyone to buy it.

I also make videos about AI experiments at Everyday AI with Brian. This channel is just for the house.

  • PlatformHome Assistant, Zigbee2MQTT in Docker
  • RadioZigbee 3.0 coordinator, plugs and bulbs as routers
  • VoiceGoogle Nest speakers + Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition
  • RuleIf I wouldn't put it in my own house, it isn't on this site