Home Assistant
Getting started with Home Assistant, installing and configuring the Home Assistant Community Store, and then installing an integration for GloBird Energy to track electricity (and later gas) usage.
David Gardiner
A blog of software development, .NET and other interesting things
Latest posts
Solar panel problems
When you start getting emails from your solar panels, something strange is going on
Power Posts
I want to write some blog posts related to energy and electricity, but am having trouble knowing where to start
Multiple .NET SDK versions and PowerShell on macOS with Homebrew
How to run multiple .NET SDK versions on macOS with Homebrew while keeping PowerShell working, by using alternate casks and adjusting PATH precedence.
The network switch that keeps switching more than it should
How I accidentally discovered that one of my home network switches seems unable to decide who its upstream device should be.
.NET Azure Function error - A connection string was not found
Surprisingly, a freshly created .NET Azure Function project isn't running for me without making a small, but critical configuration change.
I bought a MacBook Pro!
The decision has been made. David is broadening his hardware horizons with the selection of an Apple MacBook Pro as his next laptop.
New laptop options in 2026
It's hardware refresh time. Which laptops are in the running for my next main development machine?
16 Mastodon client apps for iOS
A review of 16 Mastodon iOS apps, with 6 making the cut for further consideration
Google, what happened!!?
Investigation notes on why Google stopped indexing parts of my blog, plus the checks I used for sitemap health, crawl access, and Search Console signals.