Problems from my actual house

I made a ceiling fan smarter. Then it stopped turning on.

The useful part of home automation starts when the individually good products do something stupid together. I use Home Assistant to find those seams, fix them, and document what survived.

The whole setup Lutron Caséta ESP32 + WLED Eufy Power and cost

New case study

Why my Caséta switch made a Bond-controlled ceiling fan unreliable

I tried tracking the RF state with five automations. Then I replaced that with a timed power-on routine. Both approaches were solving the wrong problem. The receiver needed to stay powered.

See all three designs and the final YAML

This is the system behind the articles

These counts come from the Home Assistant configuration and device registry I actually run—not a sample dashboard.

LUTRON CASETA

24 physical controls + a bridge

Eleven wall switches, eight dimmers, three fan controls, and two Pico remotes. Permanent lighting remains usable at the wall.

How Caséta fits

KITCHEN WLED

Six controllers, one light

Six separate LED runs appear as one kitchen light, with direct JSON commands for color temperature that fought Home Assistant’s normal light entity.

Why I build controllers

EUFY S2

The current vacuum replaced the S1

The repository still contains twelve room scripts from the S1 Pro that lightning took out. I now use the S2, so I will verify its controls separately.

Where Eufy fits

What I am pulling apart next

The six-controller kitchen

Why a light group was not enough for mixed white controls, and the direct WLED JSON helper I kept.

Eufy S2 room cleaning through Matter

The live room, zone, whole-house, and rescue-alert scripts—and the Matter telemetry I do not trust yet.

Caséta beyond on and off

Where Pico events, fan controls, and physical-first behavior earn their place.