The Maestro Blog
Build logs, Home Assistant guides and homelab notes.
The toilet flush chain that justified my 3D printer
Every maker has to justify the printer to somebody. Mine is my wife. So when the metal chain in my toilet tank rusted through, I didn't buy a new one, I printed it. Here's the print-in-place design, and the one dead line of code that fused the whole thing into a solid brick.
How I reverse-engineered my NordicTrack treadmill
My treadmill talks Bluetooth, but Home Assistant could not see a thing. Turns out older iFit machines ignore the standard fitness protocol and speak their own. Here is how I cracked it and got live speed, incline and calories landing in Home Assistant with zero taps.
Local Tuya control without the cloud
Those cheap Tuya smart plugs and breakers send every single on and off through a server in some other country. Here is how I cut the cloud out completely and run them straight on my own network, faster, private, and still working when the internet is down.
A one-tap baby tracker for Home Assistant
At 3 a.m. with a newborn you have one free hand at most, and zero patience for unlocking a phone to hunt for an app. So I got feed, diaper and sleep logging down to a single tap, both in Home Assistant and on a little 3D-printed button stuck to the nursery wall.