3 genuinely different Home Assistant projects to try this weekend (July 24-26)

Published Jul 23, 2026, 10:00 AM EDT Adam has a degree in Engineering and has a life-long interest in technology. He has been writing for over a decade for various print and online publications, with a focus on consumer tech. He joined How-To Geek in 2024 while working at Pocket-lint. As well as being a long-term fan of Apple products, he also has a strong interest in smart home tech, running a Home Assistant server at home to automate all his smart home devices. He believes that the ideal smart home should work with minimal interaction from the user, with automations running as if by magic rather than requiring you to push buttons on a control panel. You can find more of his work on Muck Rack. I've been tinkering with my smart home for well over a decade, so it's rare that I come across anything that feels truly new. Sometimes, however, I find ideas that I've not seen before, and it's always a breath of fresh air. Quite literally, in the case of one of these projects. Control your smart home by snapping your fingers A whole new meaning for point-and-click Maestro app lets you snap your fingers to turn on smart lights with Home Assistant.Credit: Zinoc / YouTube I've tried some weird and wonderful ways to control my smart home, including waving a magic wand, turning over a weird little cube, and speaking to my smart home through a phone. It's always exciting when someone comes up with a way to control my smart home that I haven't seen before. That's exactly what Maestro is. Using an Apple Watch, this app allows you to control smart home devices by literally pointing at them and snapping your fingers. You set it up by "painting" your devices: you point at a device and move your arm around as if you were spray painting the entire device, which teaches the app where the device lives in space. Once you've painted a device, you can point in its direction and snap your fingers to toggle its power. Maestro even knows which room you're in, so you can control different devices in different rooms. The whole system works locally; there's no cloud and no accounts to set up. The commands go straight from your wrist to your smart home devices. The app is currently in beta, but testing is open. I've been trying it out, and it's a lot of fun, with a few rough edges. It works with both Home Assistant and Apple Home. Honestly, my biggest issue is that I'm far worse at snapping the fingers on my left hand, which is the arm I wear my watch on. Home Assistant Green Dimensions (exterior) 4.41"L x 4.41"W x 1.26"H Weight 12 Ounces Home Assistant Green is a pre-built hub directly from the Home Assistant team. It's a plug-and-play solution that comes with everything you need to set up Home Assistant in your home without needing to install the software yourself. Turn a dumb AC into a smart one without IR No need to worry about line of sight Home Assistant has recently added native support for infrared, which enables you to add a whole set of IR devices to your smart home. If your AC has an IR remote, you can use an IR blaster to send out the relevant signals and control your AC directly from Home Assistant. There are a couple of flaws with this system, however. First, IR requires line of sight, so if someone walks in front of the IR blaster when the command is being sent, nothing happens. The second problem is that if the command is blocked, Home Assistant has no way of knowing this; the signal was sent, so your smart home will assume that command was successful, which can throw your automations and smart home controls out of whack. One clever Home Assistant user has made their dumb AC smart by connecting an ESP8266 board to the AC's IR receiver circuitry. Instead of having to send IR signals, the ESP8266 can inject the relevant commands directly, so you don't have to worry about line of sight or whether the command was actually received. The ESP is powered from the unit's internal 5V supply, so the whole thing is self-contained, giving your dumb AC an instant upgrade to a smart version. This isn't a beginner project, and messing with the internals of electrical devices isn't something you should attempt unless you know what you're doing, but it's a clever alternative to using IR. Let your smart home control how your home smells Less Home Assistant, more aroma assistant Credit: mr-sparks / scent-assistant My smart home uses three of the five senses. I have visual displays, touch controls, and audible announcements, so sight, touch, and sound are all covered. I'm not sure I'll ever want to integrate taste into my smart home, as I think if I tell my family that they need to lick a smart device to turn on the lights, they might all move out. Smell, on the other hand, I can get on board with. With a couple of kids, my smart home often feels more like a fart home, so having a smart way to make my home smell good would be a real bonus. That's exactly what the Scent Assistant integration can do. It's a custom integration you can install via HACS that supports a wide range of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi aroma diffusers, and honestly, before reading about this project, I didn't even know that smart aroma diffusers were a thing. The integration gives you control over power, spray duration, pause duration, fan operation, and more. It makes it possible to automate the aroma in your home. For example, you could have an automation that pulls details of guest visits from the calendar and automatically triggers the diffusers before they arrive, or you could ensure that your diffusers only run when people are home. If you really wanted, you could even use aroma as a method of notification, by making your room smell of roses when it was time to water your plants. Home Assistant always has something new to offer This is what I love about Home Assistant. You're never going to reach the point where you sit back and consider that you've done everything there is to do. New ideas and new projects constantly appear, and they're often worth the effort of setting up.