Blogs
Blogs
Track Your Electricity Consumption with Shelly Pro 2PM: Advantages and Home Assistant Integration
Ever stared at your electricity bill and wondered, “How did I use that much power?" I certainly have. That’s why I decided to take control by monitoring my home’s energy consumption in real-time using the Shelly Pro 2PM—a versatile, Wi-Fi-enabled energy monitoring device. In this guide, I’ll walk you through setting it up, integrating it with Home Assistant, and turning raw data into actionable insights. Why Shelly Pro 2PM? The Shelly Pro 2PM is a powerhouse (pun intended) for energy monitoring.
HomeAssistant Air Quality Monitoring: Why PMS5003 with ESP32 is the Best Combo for 2025
Ever wondered why your allergies act up indoors or why that mysterious “musty smell” lingers? I did—until I built my own air quality monitor using a PMS5003 sensor and ESP32. In 2025, with wildfires, pollen, and urban pollution on the rise, monitoring air quality isn’t just a luxury—it’s a necessity. Here’s why this combo is unbeatable and how to set it up with HomeAssistant. Why PMS5003 + ESP32? Accuracy: The PMS5003 laser particle sensor detects PM1.
How to Monitor API Health with Blackbox Exporter and Prometheus
Ever had an API go down silently, only to realize it after users started complaining? I’ve been there—more times than I’d like to admit. That’s why I now rely on Prometheus and Blackbox Exporter to proactively monitor API health. In this guide, I’ll walk you through setting up Blackbox Exporter to probe endpoints, track latency, and alert you the moment something goes sideways. Why Blackbox Exporter? Blackbox Exporter is like having a dedicated API watchdog.
DIY Smart Door Sensor with ESP32 and Home Assistant: A Step-by-Step Guide
DIY Smart Door Sensor with ESP32 and Home Assistant Ever walked out the door and wondered, Did I close it? I’ve been there too—until I built a DIY smart door sensor using an ESP32 and Home Assistant. Now, my phone buzzes if the door’s left ajar, and I’ve even set up automations to turn off the AC when the door’s open for too long (goodbye, wasted energy!). Here’s how you can build your own.
Control an IR Remote AC Using ESP32 and Home Assistant
Ever wished your dumb air conditioner could join your smart home party? I did—especially during a heatwave when I realized I’d left the AC on full blast while away. Enter the ESP32, a $5 microcontroller that (with some tinkering) can emulate your AC’s IR remote and integrate it into Home Assistant. Here’s how I did it. What You’ll Need Hardware: ESP32-DevKit board: Buy it here IR receiver/sender module VS1838B + IR LED: Buy it here Breadboard and jumper wires USB cable for power/flashing Software: Home Assistant (installed and running) ESPHome (via Home Assistant Add-on) Pro Tip: Test your IR LED before wiring—some have narrow angles.
High-Cardinality Metrics: Detection and Optimization in Prometheus and VictoriaMetrics
I remember the first time my Prometheus instance crashed spectacularly after I added a new exporter. The logs screamed about “out of memory” errors, and my Grafana dashboards turned into ghost towns. After some frantic debugging, I discovered the culprit: high-cardinality metrics. In this guide, I’ll share practical techniques I’ve learned for identifying and optimizing these metric monsters in both Prometheus and VictoriaMetrics. 💡 Pro Tip: High-cardinality metrics are like uninvited guests at a party - they consume all your resources and leave you with a mess to clean up.
Automate Your Garden Watering with ESP32 and Home Assistant
Automate Your Garden Watering with ESP32 and Home Assistant Ever forgotten to water your plants only to find them looking like they’ve been on a desert trek? I have—more times than I’d like to admit. That’s why I built a smart garden watering system using an ESP32, soil moisture sensors, and Home Assistant. Now, my plants get watered automatically, and I get to pretend I’ve got a green thumb. Here’s how you can do it too.
Prometheus Anomaly detection: Z-Score in PromQL
Monitoring HTTP request rates is one of the most basic yet essential tasks in observability. A sudden spike might indicate a traffic surge or even a DDoS attack, while a sudden drop could signal a backend failure. Static thresholds work, but they often miss subtle patterns or raise too many false alarms. A better way is to use statistical anomaly detection—specifically Z-score based alerts in Prometheus. In this post, we’ll walk through how to set up a Z-score PromQL alert to detect anomalies in HTTP request rates using only Prometheus and native PromQL.
A Full Guide to Monitoring Strategies for Enterprises
Monitoring, stop being blind! After 3 years working in the monitoring team at the one of the biggest videogames company, I will unveil some secrets and strategies of monitoring for enterprises. These strategies can be applied to small or big companies depending on their context and uses. But what is monitoring? Monitoring is the fact of collecting information about an entity (application, machine, URL…) on a frequent basis. In general, this raw data is passed through visualization apps to give a visibility on the enterprise entities.
Vmalert: Revamp your Prometheus alert with microservices
Vmalert: the prometheus alerting microservice While collecting metrics is important for monitoring, the real end goal is not visualizing the data. The most critical goal of metrics is to create alerts in case of bad behaviors or incidents. In the Prometheus world, prometheus itself generates alerts based on the metrics collected. Let’s discover another product of VictoriaMetrics called Vmalert. To be honest, Vmalert is not a revolutionary product, exactly like Vmagent, but its strength is the ability to do 1 role: handling alerts with the minimum resources.