For whatever reason, controlling blinds in a smart home has always been a bit of a holy grail for hobbyists. DIYer James Wahawisan figured out how to control some with an Amazon Echo, Raspberry Pi ...

Normally, to open the blinds he had to tug on a cord and operating the AC meant fiddling with a remote control. Not anymore. Now [Chris] has an all-in-one Raspberry Pi-based solution to drive both.

Now you have total control over your Raspberry Pi. That’s it, you have complete access to your Raspberry Pi from anywhere in the world with an internet connection.

Home Assistant on Raspberry Pi provides customizable automations for smart home control. Pi-hole on Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W blocks ads and trackers on all network devices.

They compared a Python-based control loop on a Raspberry Pi 3B against an C0-12DD1E-2-D AutomationDirect CLICK Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) using a simple water heating example.