I’ve decided to make my garage/oversized shed, smart. Getting in is a pain as I have to get out of the car to turn off the alarm, so I can’t just drive in. The way the unit was set up, the alarm goes off every time you open the roller shutter. Wouldn’t it be cool to be able to hit a single button on my phone and – with some safety precautions – have the alarm disarm and the shutter open? Likewise when I leave, hitting one button from inside my car and having it all shut down and lock up?

The first step was to add connectivity to the building. I probably could have piggybacked on my landlord’s network but I wanted the control so installed a TP-Link Archer MR200 4G router that I picked up refurbished from eBay. To this I added a spare Home Assistant Blue device – a branded version of the ODROID N2+. This was pre-installed with Home Assistant and carried a bunch of leftover settings and automations from my home setup, so needed a bit of cleaning up.

I mounted these (roughly so far) onto a sheet of ply screwed to the wall of the unit and added a six gang extension for power since there are more devices to come…