Blog
Articles on residential automation in Medellín and the Aburrá Valley.
If you're looking for air conditioning in Medellín, you don't need to replace a working unit with a Wi‑Fi model. How to turn yours into smart AC with network control and a room thermostat.
How to build a home alarm in Medellín with door, window, and presence sensors—without generic sirens or apps that depend on another brand's cloud.
How to set up Wi‑Fi or wired security cameras in your Medellín home with local recording, no cloud plans, and control from your own app.
How to choose a mortise smart lock for a security door in Medellín: Zigbee and Matter, Tuya, TTLock, and which models ship to Colombia.
A universal air-conditioner remote only copies buttons. A thermostat with ESP32, infrared, and sensors closes the loop: it measures, sends, confirms, and adjusts on its own.
What you can automate in a Medellín house or apartment, how to integrate the gear you already have, and what changes with the climate, power outages, and building rules.
What a smart plug is for in a Medellín home, how to use it to measure consumption per appliance, and why it fits with panel monitoring.
What a smart switch is, how it's installed in a Medellín apartment without rewiring, and why it makes sense to put it on Zigbee instead of depending on Wi‑Fi.
How a small per-room sensor kit—with mmWave radar for real presence, plus temperature, humidity, and light—lets each room in your Medellín home know if someone is there and how it feels.
How to strip unused apps from your smart TV, turn off ACR and viewing tracking, block telemetry on the network, or keep the TV offline and feed it from a home media computer.
How to protect your home from leaks and flooding with a motorized shutoff valve, flood sensors, drain sensors, and tank level monitoring.
How to get hot water fast at the farthest sink with an automated recirculator, why Medellín showers go hot-then-cold, and how a booster pump fixes it.
How contact sensors work for doors, windows, drawers, and closets, what you can automate with them, and where to place them in your Medellín home.
How to measure electricity use on each circuit with clamp sensors at your panel, what to plan for if you’re remodeling, and how to use that data to use less energy.
How to motorize the roller shades you already have in Medellín: a tubular motor inside the tube, a bridge for your remote, or direct integration.
WLED on ESP32, Zigbee, and Matter over Thread versus brands locked in the cloud. Effects, stair lights, motion paths, and home scenes—all local.
With so much daylight, the home is won in the evening: 2200–2700 K, layers, dimming, circadian scenes, and warm-dim. Criteria I use in Aburrá Valley homes.
COB vs SMD, tunable white, RGB and addressables, how to size the power supply, aluminum profiles, and Zigbee controllers. What I check before installing in a home.
How to build a home media center in Medellín with a Mac mini or a NUC, your TV or projector, the sound you already have, and your own app — no subscription.
Why Wi‑Fi devices fail inside walls, and how a Zigbee or Matter-over-Thread network with a USB coordinator makes your smart home more stable.
A practical guide to upgrading any minisplit with ESP32, infrared, and Zigbee: learn the remote, close the temperature loop, and run the AC from the home network.
Turn the mini-split you already have into smart AC with an infrared emitter and a room thermometer. A guide for homes in Medellín.
What happens to home automation when the power goes out in Medellín, how to protect equipment when it returns, and how to design a home that resumes on its own — with EPM context.
What to automate first in an apartment or house in the Aburrá Valley — without rewiring, and with one app for the whole home.