Over the last few weeks, I have been working very hard to improve my smart home to make life easier, but the primary focus has been making things easier for other people when they use my house. I've been adding stuff for myself as well, of course.
The first thing I did was get myself into Matter. Following the rapid transition from technologies like Zigbee and Z Wave to Thread and Matter for smart homes, I have decided to adopt Matter devices in my house. I will make them the primary technology going forward. This happened after I decided to get a new lock for my door, which is Thread/Matter-based. After several attempts to connect it directly to Home Assistant, I opted instead to run it through my HomePod Mini, which immediately connected and gave me complete control of it, and it works nicely through it. Home Assistant then connects to the HomePod Mini to get the device through it, too. This new Aqara U200 is absolutely brilliant, and I am loving not having to carry keys around with me.
I now also have an excellent new robot vacuum, the Roborock QV 35S, and not only does it integrate really well into my smart home, it also makes my floor spotless and is hundreds of times better than its predecessor. I cannot believe how effective it is.
Next, I've been adding NFC contact points around my house. One of my new innovations is an NFC tag you can tap on each photo and picture around my house. Your device then takes you to the location where the image or picture was taken (all my pictures are of places). I've also developed a clever filter that, when an Apple user taps a location tag, opens Apple Maps; however, for others, it opens OpenStreet Maps. Nice.
Additionally, I've added new NFC points around the house to control devices that you'd typically have to manage from the front door tablet (known as my Home Control Tablet), either via Siri or HomeKit. To make this accessible to everyone in my house, I've created straightforward URLs to activate web hooks, eliminating the need for a specific app like Home Assistant. I'm very proud of how these have come along.
I also have NFC points in the garden, allowing me to activate various features such as my Home Sweet Home mode, which will simply turn on the appropriate lights when I get home (I do also have my detection automation on my iPhone, actually).
I'm doing a video in the current month that will show everything that I have done so far, so keep an eye out for that.
