victorchang.codesMake Your Ceiling Fans Smart with Home Assistant - Round 2Following up on my post about controlling ceiling fans, let’s address some of the shortcomings, which are: ESPHome 2025.2 removed support for dbuezas’ CC1101 custom component. We need a way forward. IoT controls generally assume you can specificall...Jul 31, 2025·11 min read
victorchang.codesAccurate Thermal Control with Basic Space HeatersThere’s a problem with temperature-controlled space heaters — they’re all terrible at temperature control. Hear me out It’s physically impossible for any (self-contained) space heater to maintain a target temperature with any respectable precision. A...Mar 16, 2025·6 min read
victorchang.codesControlling Ceiling Fans with Home AssistantMy ceiling fans are not smart, but let's try to control them using Home Assistant to make them smart! The key is that they have remote controls, so it should be possible to make something that can act like those remotes. Signal Gathering These are my...May 13, 2024·6 min read
victorchang.codesReverse Engineering the Emporia Vue Utility ConnectI got the Emporia Vue Utility Connect with the intent of using jrouvier's port to ESPHome, but it turns out my model doesn't communicate the same way as the version jrouvier had. Specifically, upon flashing ESPHome onto the Vue I was greeted with thi...Dec 10, 2023·6 min read
victorchang.codesHumidity Readings - A Rabbit HoleI've been getting sensors like this that can measure temperature and relative humidity. Coupled with microcontroller boards like the Raspberry Pi Pico W running ESPHome, I'm able to create small USB-powered wireless thermometer/hygrometer units that ...Sep 9, 2023·15 min read