I'm passionate about making homes smarter and life a little easier through automation. Based in Tilburg, the Netherlands, I spend my time tinkering with Home Assistant, building Jinja macros and Blueprints, and sharing what I learn along the way.
When I'm not deep in YAML configs or debugging Jinja2 templates, you'll find me exploring new smart home devices, contributing to the open-source community, or thinking up new ways to connect the physical and digital worlds.
In the Netherlands there is an amusement park called the Efteling, and it there is an attraction
which has a show while you are waiting to enter. The first words uttered are "This house, this
cursed house. It is hell alike!"
That is exactly how I felt about the built-in smart home system when we moved in to our house
in 2019.
Now, several years later my home runs on Home Assistant — the open-source platform that
puts privacy and local control first. Every room, every device, every automation is carefully
crafted to just work, so the technology stays invisible until you need it.
Home Assistant running on dedicated hardware, controlling every connected device with local-first processing using open protocols like Zigbee, Zwave, Matter and Bluetooth.
Hundreds of automations handling lighting, covers and presence detection — all tailored to daily routines.
Using the Home Assistant Voice PE I can control my house without big-tech companies snooping in on my commands and giving my endless possibilities to create any voice command I want.
Real-time energy consumption tracking per circuit and appliance, with smart insights that help cut waste without sacrificing comfort.
Using Music Assistant I can play anything I want, anywhere I want, using a combination of local media and streaming services.
Home-grown Jinja2 extensions, blueprints, and scripts that fill the gaps where off-the-shelf solutions fall short.
| Repository | Description | Tag |
|---|---|---|
| TheFes / HA-configuration | My personal Home Assistant configuration. | Home Assistant |
| TheFes / ha-blueprints | Home Assistant Blueprints for voice control and Telegram bots. | Automation |
| TheFes / cheapest-energy-hours | A Jinja2 macro to determine the cheapest energy hours when using dynamic pricing. | Jinja2 |
| TheFes / relative-time-plus | A Jinja2 macro to create a human-readable text with the time between two timestamps — for example "2 years, 3 months and 2 days". | Jinja2 |
| TheFes / Google-Home-Resume | A package of Home Assistant elements to resume audio after an interruption (e.g. a TTS message) on Google Home devices. | Google Home |
Got a question about Home Assistant, want to collaborate on a project, or just want to say hi? Find me on any of these platforms.