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Best Home Energy Monitors for Home Assistant UK 2026   ·   How to Migrate a VM Between Proxmox Nodes   ·   GEAK OS Review: Testing a New Preview NAS OS on Proxmox   ·   Sonoff Zigbee Smart Plug Review: Still Worth It?   ·   Best Zigbee Temperature Sensors for Home Assistant 2026   ·   Best Home Energy Monitors for Home Assistant UK 2026   ·   How to Migrate a VM Between Proxmox Nodes   ·   GEAK OS Review: Testing a New Preview NAS OS on Proxmox   ·   Sonoff Zigbee Smart Plug Review: Still Worth It?   ·   Best Zigbee Temperature Sensors for Home Assistant 2026   ·   
Smart Home Guides

Sonoff SNZB-03P Zigbee Motion Sensor: Honest Review 2026

Honest 2026 review of the Sonoff SNZB-03P Zigbee motion sensor: local HA setup, fast timeout, real drawbacks vs Aqara P1 & Philips Hue.

markrgriffin · 15 October 2026 · 11 min read
Smart Home Guides

Best Zigbee Outdoor Motion Sensors for Home Assistant 2026

The best Zigbee outdoor motion sensors for Home Assistant in 2026: Philips Hue Outdoor, ThirdReality R1 mmWave, Sonoff SNZB-03P, and IKEA VALLHORN compared.

markrgriffin · 13 October 2026 · 10 min read
Smart Home Guides

Zigbee vs Matter Smart Plug: Which Is Better in 2026?

Zigbee still wins for Home Assistant energy monitoring and cost. Matter-over-Thread is a real alternative in 2026. Here's how to choose and which plugs to buy.

markrgriffin · 10 October 2026 · 15 min read
Smart Home Guides

Best Zigbee Motion Sensors for Home Assistant 2026

The Aqara P1 is the best Zigbee motion sensor for Home Assistant in 2026 — configurable timeout, lux sensor, no hub required. Full picks inside.

markrgriffin · 8 October 2026 · 11 min read
How-To Guides

A Rotatable 3D House Dashboard for Home Assistant (Free on HACS)

House 3D Card is a free, open-source Home Assistant dashboard card: a rotatable 3D model of your house where lights glow in their real colour, sockets show on/off LEDs and thermostats can be adjusted. Trace your own floor plan and install it from HACS in minutes.

markrgriffin · 8 October 2026 · 4 min read
How-To Guides

How to Share a NAS Drive with Proxmox (NFS and SMB)

Step-by-step guide to sharing a NAS drive with Proxmox over NFS or SMB/CIFS: creating the share, fixing permissions and adding it as storage.

markrgriffin · 7 October 2026 · 16 min read
How-To Guides

How to Set Up an IoT VLAN for Home Assistant

Split your homelab into trusted and IoT VLANs step by step: hardware, firewall rules, mDNS for Home Assistant and migrating devices safely.

markrgriffin · 7 October 2026 · 16 min read
Smart Home Guides

Best Budget Zigbee Hubs: Local Control on the Cheap

The SONOFF ZBDongle-E is the best budget Zigbee hub for Home Assistant: EFR32MG21 chip, external antenna, works with ZHA and Zigbee2MQTT out of the box.

markrgriffin · 6 October 2026 · 9 min read
Smart Home Guides

Best Zigbee Smart Locks for Home Assistant (2026)

The best Zigbee smart locks for Home Assistant in 2026: Yale Assure Lock 2, Kwikset 914 Convert, ULTRALOQ U-Bolt Pro, and Aqara U100 — honestly reviewed.

markrgriffin · 3 October 2026 · 1 min read
Home Assistant Backups page showing backup status, My backups summary and the Backup now button
How-To Guides

How to Back Up and Restore Home Assistant (2026 Guide)

Back up and restore Home Assistant step by step: automatic backups, off-device locations, your encryption key, Proxmox VM backups and moving to new hardware.

markrgriffin · 30 September 2026 · 19 min read
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Best Home Energy Monitors for Home Assistant UK 2026

27 October 2026
Migrate VMs between Proxmox nodes: a Home Assistant VM moving live from pve1 to pve2, with the qm migrate progress

How to Migrate a VM Between Proxmox Nodes

27 October 2026

GEAK OS Review: Testing a New Preview NAS OS on Proxmox

26 October 2026

Sonoff Zigbee Smart Plug Review: Still Worth It?

24 October 2026

Best Zigbee Hub for Home Assistant (2026)

18 comments

Zigbee Hub vs Dongle: Which Should You Buy?

9 comments

Best Mini PCs for Proxmox Homelabs

8 comments
Proxmox Create Virtual Machine wizard, General tab with node, VM ID and name

Creating Your First VM and LXC Container in Proxmox

7 comments

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Recent Posts

  • Best Home Energy Monitors for Home Assistant UK 2026
  • How to Migrate a VM Between Proxmox Nodes
  • GEAK OS Review: Testing a New Preview NAS OS on Proxmox
  • Sonoff Zigbee Smart Plug Review: Still Worth It?
  • Best Zigbee Temperature Sensors for Home Assistant 2026

Recent Comments

  1. How to Install Proxmox: The Next Step After a Raspberry Pi on Installing Home Assistant in a Proxmox VM
  2. Proxmox LXC Network Share: Mount SMB or NFS Read-Write on Set up a Windows drive for sharing to Proxmox
  3. How to Set Up Zigbee2MQTT in Home Assistant (2026 Guide) - The Homelab Bench on Best Zigbee Smart Locks for Home Assistant (2026)
  4. mmWave vs PIR Motion Sensor: Which Is Smarter? - The Homelab Bench on Best Z-Wave Door Sensors (What Reddit Actually Uses)
  5. How to Back Up and Restore Home Assistant (2026 Guide) - The Homelab Bench on How to Share a NAS Drive with Proxmox (NFS and SMB)

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