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Showing posts from October, 2026

Bredbandskollen, internet speedtest, integrating with Home Assistant via MQTT Discovery

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In my earlier posts about Lightweight DIY Linux Server Monitoring I used a small Bash script and MQTT Auto-Discovery to get server metrics into Home Assistant (HA) without any manual sensor setup. The same idea works very well for something else I wanted to keep an eye on: the speed of my internet connection. This time the data source is  the command line client for Bredbandskollen. It measures download, upload and latency against a nearby test server, and prints the result as a single line of text, perfect for a script. The script runs on my Proxmox host , publishes the result to the Mosquitto broker, and HA creates a device with all the sensors by itself.
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Lightweight DIY Linux Server Monitoring – Part 2: Integrating with Home Assistant via MQTT Discovery

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In my previous post, Lightweight DIY Linux Server Monitoring , I shared a simple, dependency-free Bash script  designed to monitor Linux environments in a  lightweight way  and push metrics like disk usage, memory, CPU load, and upgradable " apt " packages to an external MQTT broker. While that setup worked great for a standalone MQTT setup with Node-RED I wanted to take it a step further. In this follow-up, we will upgrade the script to seamlessly integrate with Home Assistant(HA) using MQTT and the Auto-Discovery function. Instead of manually setting up sensors in Home Assistant, the script automatically creates its own device and sensors in Home Assistant the first time it runs and each day if something gone wrong !
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The Proxmox integration in Home Assistant

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For a while ago I migrated my Home Assistant environment to Proxmox and in the search for a good server monitoring software I had to test the HA Proxmox integration . As said its lets you monitor your Proxmox VE nodes, virtual machines, containers and storage, in Home Assistant, and exposes control actions if your Proxmox permissions allows it. The instructions are nice but I will add some info to make it even better 😉 A very lightweight version, bash script, MQTT, Node-RED, that will monitor all your Linux servers is found here !
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Installing Ubuntu 24.04 or 26.04 on an old MacBook Air(2011)

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 Updated 2026-10-03 ! I have done several posts Blogging about how to keep an old MacBook Air(MBA), mid 2011(A1369), with SSD disk "alive". I have used the fantastic software package OpenCore Legacy patcher to upgrade the Mac to the latest Mac OS.  A while ago i tested Mac OS  Sequoia (15.3), on the mentioned Mac, but I had to admit that it was to much for the 14 year old companion. I really like the Mac and everything works, after a battery change , so it ended up with installing  Ubuntu latest LTS (UOS) ! (Above link is now UOS 26.04 LTS which was installed as an upgrade from 24.04 without any problem) Ubuntu on  Mac Mini (2018) and MacBookAir (2010)  ?
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Popular posts, last 30 days

Installing Ubuntu 24.04 or 26.04 on an old MacBook Air(2011)

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 Updated 2026-10-03 ! I have done several posts Blogging about how to keep an old MacBook Air(MBA), mid 2011(A1369), with SSD disk "alive". I have used the fantastic software package OpenCore Legacy patcher to upgrade the Mac to the latest Mac OS.  A while ago i tested Mac OS  Sequoia (15.3), on the mentioned Mac, but I had to admit that it was to much for the 14 year old companion. I really like the Mac and everything works, after a battery change , so it ended up with installing  Ubuntu latest LTS (UOS) ! (Above link is now UOS 26.04 LTS which was installed as an upgrade from 24.04 without any problem) Ubuntu on  Mac Mini (2018) and MacBookAir (2010)  ?
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iCloud drive sync, or mount, with a Linux, Ubuntu, device

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Updated 2025-01-23 ! With my project to keep a MacBook Air 2011(MBA) alive , Ubuntu installed, i searched for a solution where my iCloud drive(iCD) was  continuous synced with my MBA. This must work both ways so even a file change made on MBA should be replicated to iCD. rclone now, 2025-01, works with iCloud !! Setup below !! Before "rclone" was working with iCloud I solved my sync between iCD and MBA with Syncthing (ST). Check below. ST doesn't sync with iCloud so the work around here was to use my MacMini, Mac OS, as the "Middle man". It's always on and synced with iCD.
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Clone the Raspberry boot disk

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Updated 2024-02-20 ! A very nice way to fix a backup is to make a copy, bootable, of the actual SD card You are using on the Raspberry Pi(RPi). This will be done even when the RPi is up and running ! This application can also be used to make a bootable SSD or USB drive !! You clone from the command line so You don't need the standard GUI, Pixel, and the " SD card copier "  function. It is also possible to set up a a scheduled job, cronjob explained later, which for example makes a clone every night at 1 o'clock.
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Raspberry Pi OS Lite with GUI, RDP, VNC, Chromium

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Updated 2025-10-02 ! I like the Raspberry Pi(RPi), with Raspberry Pi OS Lite (no Desktop is included), headless operation, and then adding the software You need. Until now I haven't had a use case where I needed a Desktop but now was time.  Why don't use the Raspberry Pi OS with Desktop ?? In that package there is a lot of software I don't need and I really want to optimize the RPi. I think that the less software You install the happier RPi will be... 😉
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Home Assistant with VirtualBox or Proxmox or Linux KVM ???

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 Updated 2026-07-05 !  After testing Home Assistant (HA) for a while, I’ve realised it could improve my home automation, despite that I'm mainly using Apple HomeKit. When I tested HA with Node-RED and some other "Add-ons", on a Raspberry Pi 3 (RPi), I found that its resources wasn’t enough. The following setup could be any computer but I recently bought an Apple Mac Mini M4, replacing my 2018 (M18) model, so the M18 was really a great candidate for my HA setup. I have converted to HA running on Proxmox !   😀
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IVT, Bosch heat pump easy integration, Home Assistant

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Updated 2026-03-27 ! In search of the optimal solution on how to interface our IVT Heat pump,   first try here , I stumbled over   a nice integration   for Home Assistant(HA). A first quick setup is shown at the right. Please note !!! This integration stopped working with HA 2026.3.4 and the XMPP protocol(IVT) !!! But this one still works and can supply HA with data. The first obstacle was that it was HA which I knew about but never used.  So it was "back too school" and doing  a blog post  about a HA Core install.
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IKEA Bäve dimmer hack II

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Updated 2025-01-10 ! Dimming not dimmable LED, IKEA Bäve, produced before 2019-11 and a new idea for later products ! In former post I used a  Fibaro Z-Wave RGBW controller  but in this post I will use an IKEA original or an external dimmer ?!
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SeaTalk1 to NMEA 0183 converter, DIY

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Updated 2024-08-30 !  !! Another SW solution is available for RPi 5 here !  using the same HW. Thanks to Thomas, (the guy with the nice marine interface board ) ,  it's now possible  to decode, one way, the SeaTalk1(ST1) sentences in a pretty simple way. You just  use OpenPlotter(OP) and/or SignalK(SK) and an  Optocoupler . The thing that made it, is that Thomas   has released a "how to" and  Python source code , that will read the data from a GPIO pin on the Raspberry Pi, (RPi), and format it so the standard parser in SignalK can translate it to SignalK delta format. It is then  available as NMEA 0183. It's even possible to send the data in to a NMEA 2000 network, with a proper hardware interface.
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