Home Assistant – Wi-Fi
It is recommended to use Home Assistant with a wired connection, however you may need or want to use a Wi-Fi connection. Follow these steps to setup a Wi-Fi connection within Home Assistant. Setup Wi-Fi You have successfully connected Home Assistant server to your Wi-Fi network.
Home Assistant on Raspberry Pi
I can’t believe I have not written up my Home Assistant setup. Perhaps that is a good thing as I needed to become comfortable with the setup and how to use it. I’ve been using it for nearly a year at this point. What prompted me to do a writeup now is I’m setting up another one for my mom so I can control some things remotely and to help her manage some things around the house. My current installation was on a Raspberry Pi 4 setup to boot from a USB drive. This has been working well, but I’m…
iPad as a second PC Monitor
When I travel, I need to have a second monitor. I have a small Wisecoco monitor that I purchased from Amazon. It works well, but it is one more thing that I take with me when I travel. I had thought about turning my iPad mini into a monitor as it is about the same size as the Wisecoco monitor. I started looking around and found some options, but not pleased as many seem to require an internet connection or at least a monthly subscription. I don’t mind paying a small fee for software so I can use it for…
Write the Raspbian OS to an SD Card
When working with a Raspberry Pi, you will need to format an SD Card to boot the Raspberry Pi the first time. The most straight forward way to get the Raspberry Pi Operating System (OS), Raspbian, onto an SD Card is to use the Raspberry Pi Imager software. It may be downloaded by visiting https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/. There are alternative methods for flashing the OS to an SD Card, such as balenaEtcher, but they will not be covered in this guide. Materials Needed Steps for Flashing the SD Card Once you have Raspberry Pi Imager installed, you may follow the steps below…
Disable On-Screen Keyboard
When using a touchscreen with your Raspberry Pi, depending on the screen size, you may soon be annoyed with the amount of screen real estate the on-screen keyboard utilizes. While it can be useful if you do not have a keyboard attached, it can make it difficult if not impossible to complete forms an know what you are entering. You may want to connect a physical keyboard via USB or Bluetooth but find that the on-screen keyboard pops up anyway. How do you disable it? Follow the steps below to disable the on-screen keyboard for touch screens. You will find…
Revisit Photobooth Project
I had built a Photobooth in 2019 based on Wyolum’s Raspberry Pi Photobooth project as posted in Make Magazine. Caroline Dunn made a YouTube video of her build, which explains different aspects of the project. I had two events where the photobooths could be used, so I pulled them off the self and tested them. The first one started just fine, but the SD Card soon became corrupted and would no longer boot. I flashed the SD Card with the latest Raspbian OS and installed the software, but it would not run. There have been changes to Raspbian and in…
VK-172 USB GPS on the Raspberry Pi
30 June 2025 UPDATE: The fix outlined here seemed to work, but I noticed that some things were not right yesterday. I dug in deeper and I seem to have it working now. It appears that gpsd may have been the problem from the start. Below is a Copilot session that seemed to zero in on gpsd and the need to build a newer version. Copilot session to fix GPS: PDF (430 KB) After applying the changes, I tested three times and each time the correct location was identified, yes that was an issue, and the GPS had a fix…
Updated Raspberry Pi Camera Wi-Fi Monitor Script
My Raspberry Pi cameras have been running well for a while now, but I’ve had one camera that seems to be having issues. I did have some issues earlier with two camera and believe it was due to using cheap Micro Center SD cards and having the Wi-Fi monitoring script write to the card every 5 minutes. I used new cards and did not include the Wi-Fi monitoring script. All was well until a couple of weeks ago, when one camera, that is closest to my Wi-Fi router, would not show up in Blue Iris. I unplugged it and plug…
Review of the UGREEN HDMI Video Capture Card
I have been trying out the UGREEN HDMI Video Capture Card and it works well for my use case. I use it to capture the screen of the Raspberry Pi and PC screens. You may wonder why you may want to use the device to capture a PC screen, but there are several reasons. The first use case is to capture images and videos of BIOS settings. Another is for capturing screen captures or videos of a PC recovery process. Lastly is to capture the installation of software that prompts the user to accept a security dialog that is not…
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