Smarthome visualisation with HomeAssistant

I had KNX installed in my house to automate one or two things. I started with Hager Easy, but for various reasons it soon turned out to be unsuitable for me. After I got myself an ETS licence and extracted the KNX addresses from the Easy environment, I have various visualisation platforms. There are numerous articles comparing the offers, e.g. here.

Essential criteria for me were:

  • Configuration with little/no programming (although or precisely because I come from computer science: I like it when complex technology is easy to master)
  • Modern surface
  • Wide coverage of components (KNX, Z Wave, HUE, Unifi, Doorbird, Logitech Harmony, Sonos, etc.)
  • Future-proofing (=dissemination, community, release cycles)

I experimented with ioBroker at first, but it was too much work for me to configure. The same was true for FHEM, for example, which was far too complex for me. However, I became aware of the HomeAssistant interface through ioBroker and tested it in parallel with OpenHAB. In the end, I decided on HomeAssistant because I was able to make fast progress, my KNX environment could be integrated with all other components under one interface and automation is very elegant in a mix of visual programming and simple coding (YAML-based). The community is also very large and there are really no questions left unanswered.

I installed HomeAssistant on a Raspberry Pi, you just have to follow these few steps. HomeAssistant also offers a cloud integration with which the control can be accessed remotely. This also makes voice control via Alexa & Co child's play. For geofencing-based logics, I use the app Geofency, which works very precisely and reliably. I use old iPads with wall mounts or the family's mobile phones as displays.

All in all, I am very satisfied with the changeover and the decision to use HomeAssistant. The system has been running for a long time without any major problems and since the release cycles have been reduced, updates are no longer a big issue. It is important to always make a backup that can be activated on a spare platform at any time. I haven't exhausted all the possibilities by a long shot, but that's kind of the point, that there's still a lot of room for improvement.

My (new) Life as an Advisor

After selling my company, I had a certain non-competition period that ended this summer. I have used that time to recreate, to have fun, doing some "home "work, but also planning the future. Something I always wanted to do was to share what I have learned as founder and entrepreneur. I believe it's very beneficial for young(er) leaders to hear what worked and more importantly what failed and consider that for the own decision making. Right now I'm an advisor for 3 companies and it's a very rewarding mission for me.

The greatest reward is that discussions and brainstorming is without any politics or hidden agendas. The advisor is there to:

  • Point to new technology trends that could be added to products
  • Provide feedback on roadmaps, development processes, and customer requirements
  • Utilize the own network of people to support the company in their growth plans
  • Give insights on markets and new opportunities
  • Sharpen the go-to-market messages and plans
  • Help to improve pricing schemes
  • ... and whatever comes up to support the company.

The discussions I have experienced so far are a great team experience and I’m grateful having made this step. A closing thought on the target group – who should have a board of advisors? I’d say: the egoless and empathic leaders only. Well, usually there’s no leader without a certain ego. Otherwise they wouldn’t probably be leaders. I believe, however, that leaders are only good leaders if they are empathic to their team, their customers, and their peers. <sarcasm>All others know everything better and don’t need any help.</sarcasm>

People who think that Business is the "Art of War" are wrong. It's not.

I'm back in business since a few weeks and have taken a few advisory roles. Part of my new work life is still to talk a lot with company leaders and customers about how to do business the right way. And this is not only thinking about growth and selling a company, but building something that you like to do, where you are passionate about, and that also serves something bigger (see also my article about vision and mission). Today I like to write down a few thoughts on business ethics.

The title of this article is taken from my interview with Gary McGraw and I like to repeat this as a recommendation for leaders (and those you want to be a leader:

Business is "I want to get this done" and "you want to get that done" and together we can walk for a while because we have the same direction.

Taken from: Number #9: Episode 001: Interview with Gary McGraw, PhD, about the state of security and successfully growing a business

I have always tried to be gentle to my team mates, to customers, and to competitors. Sometimes you lose, sometimes you win and you usually meet more than only once in life. One of my colleagues and friends often quotes Michelle Obama in this context. Let me add some quotes here too (taken from this CNBC article):

"Going low is easy, which is why people go to it," Obama said. "It's easy to go low. It's easy to lead by fear. It's easy to be divisive. It's easy to make people feel afraid. That's the easy thing and it's also the short-term thing."

"When I want to go low, it's all about my own ego. It's not about solving anything.... It's about seeking revenge on the thing that happened to you."

Michelle Obama at CNBC

I completely agree on that and that's why I don't see business as the "Art of War". Just as in your private life, being respectful is much more fulfilling than fighting others.

And "going high" doesn't mean you won't feel the hurt or have emotions when faced with a challenge, she told The New York Times in 2018. "It means that your response has to reflect the solution. It shouldn't come from a place of anger or vengefulness. Barack and I had to figure that out. Anger may feel good in the moment, but it's not going to move the ball forward."

Michelle Obama in the New York Times

My advice: leave your anger behind and work on solving issues in your way. In the long term, this is a) more successful and b) much more rewarding for your ego and everyone else involved.

Death to (corona) viruses: good and healthy air for all

The Corona pandemic has shown us how susceptible humanity is to viruses. There were certainly "worse" pathogens before, but not on such a scale for a long time. And I am sure that both Corona and future pathogens will be part of our lives. And I am also of the opinion that the cuts in all our lives and large parts of the economy, but also culture and gastronomy must not remain the only answer. That is why I found it extremely exciting to make another investment in SecureAir GmbH.

The policy essentially relies on vaccination and AHA rules: Distance, hygiene, everyday life with mask. Today, FFP2 masks are the required standard. I think that's okay for shopping, but I find it very difficult to breathe through the mask for a longer period of time. In situations where masks have to be worn for a longer period of time, this can lead to problems. In addition, the environmental impact of the masks, which are disposable, is considerable. As far as vaccination is concerned, I don't think anyone can say how a) the protection against virus variants is, b) the long-term effects are and c) what will happen with new carriers of the disease in the future.

The SecureAir solution addresses all of this: by combining different technologies, the disease carriers are not filtered but destroyed. The air you breathe is 100% purified before you breathe it in. A nice double effect is that the exhaled air is also purified and thus the environment is also kept clean.

Since the solution, currently still somewhat bulky called "Securer", is designed like a kind of headset, there will be other applications in the future (such as audio and voice interface, integration with headphones, etc.). One might spontaneously think that not everyone will put it on, but there are already many obvious scenarios in which the Securer makes a lot of sense and offers both security and comfort. Examples are:

  • Air travel and rail travel
  • Working in confined spaces, e.g. in production or on construction sites
  • Hospitals and medical practices
  • Visiting concerts
  • Sports events (as long as they are not handled as negligently as the current European Championship)

You may ask why I can say that? On the subject of safety, we are working with laboratories, but we will also arrange for a global test certificate. On the subject of comfort - well: I had a prototype on my head for the first time today - you don't notice the device at all.

Prototype Securer
Prototype Securer. Even works with (sunglasses).

The next steps are now a) to provide larger quantities via crowdfunding and then b) to find partners for large-scale production. For me, this is and remains a very exciting topic - it's not just about an investment, but about an area of life that affects us all.

Not just talking green, but doing it: electricity from hydropower.

Actually, everyone thinks it is important to act ecologically. After all, we only have one nature and humans are putting a lot of pressure on it. While there is often a lot of talk and thought about bans of all kinds, I have found a project here in which people are getting down to work: it is about electricity generated from hydropower.

Hydropower has many advantages. No exhaust gases are produced. Water is available in almost unlimited quantities. And rivers flow steadily (unlike the sun and wind). The disadvantages so far have been that hydroelectric power plants required a major intervention in the environment - think of a reservoir or a power plant across a river with locks, etc. - and that the power plant has to be built on the river.

Metropolstrom NW's approach is to rely on non-invasive technologies that can be introduced into rivers in an environmentally compatible way. And this can be done throughout the republic. Here sgt. River turbines or river riders (from the company Enertainer Energy) are used, which can be easily positioned or completely sunk. Quote: "The hydroelectric power is base-load capable. It would be possible to supply about 2 million households in Germany with electricity via hydropower. In addition, there are around 9,900 sewage treatment plants with additional potential."

I think it's a great project because it will help bring about an energy transition with technologies that are effective. And not tomorrow, but right now. For this reason, I have become a silent partner in the project. The nice thing about it is that you can also earn a decent return (>6%), as is clearly shown on the company's website.

Blackout. Back to nature.

Yesterday I had one of the many online meetings. One of my network components installed an update and suddenly nothing worked. I was very annoyed at first, but it was a coincidence: apparently the internet went down for several hours in the whole of southern Hesse. It takes a while to find out - until more and more messages arrive in the social media, in Messenger, etc. that nothing works anymore: somehow a blackout and obviously something bigger.

But it's not like nothing works any more. Yes, you can no longer edit emails and the video calls don't work properly either. But instead of getting angry, I grabbed my bike (a Stevens Sonora 2.0 with Shimano Di2 - I'll write about that one day) and rode up the mountain. The weather was changeable, but that wasn't bad either. There are rain jackets.

It was a great experience to spontaneously be outside for a few hours and experience nature. The world didn't end because I wasn't at a few meetings. And I simply caught up on the work that had accumulated in the evening. I know that doesn't work in every case, but if it does - take the opportunity for a "digital detox" and go out whenever possible. It's great out there.

519 metres in altitude - no one on the road. Wonderful.

Working on (not in) your Company

I wrote about a focus on growth of companies. My thoughts are around small and medium sized businesses, because that's my personal background. Some of the ideas might work there, too, but I don't know. Also, I don't like the additional, political dimension in larger companies. I wrote about shaping your Vision and Mission and developing a growth model. Building on that I write about operationalizing this working on your company. Yes, it's "on" and not "in". If you still work in your company, your company is either not ready for this phase or you are a poor leader who cannot delegate, focus on strategy, and thinks he is better than the rest of the team.

If you have established your growth model, you should communicate about it at all levels in order to align all forces of the company (see the podcast with Gary McGraw about the importance of communication and transparency). There's also a certain communication rhythm: annual kick-off, quarterly review, and review in day-to-day operations. Determine meaningful goals to each aspect of the different dimensions and track them. The Objectives and Key Results (OKR) framework can be a good tool for this since it connects your goals ("what do you want") to success ("when have I reached the goal"). It's also good to have more abstract OKRs for the company and drill them down to each individuals work.

See this example for more context. On our growth path we have decided to enter new territories for extending our global reach. We have identified the different regions and walked through the dimensions of our growth model clarifying what is needed to be successful. This is an iterative process like this:

  • People: who do we need on the ground to manage the operation? Is it with our own people or with a partner? What are costs for these options?
  • Go-to-market: are there cultural differences that need to be considered in Marketing and Sales? How do we get visible in the new region? What are the first target customers?
  • Delivery: how do we deliver? Onsite? Remotely? Through partners? And how do we establish trust in the delivery approach?
  • Cost: what's the investment needed to get it done?
  • Revenue: what's the expected revenue (minimum and maximum)?
  • etc.

Drilling down each dimension leads to goals and results. For example, you can define marketing campaigns (example: 3 per quarter) and say that results should be a certain number of marketing collaterals, scheduled webinars, and attach the expected number of new leads to this. Additional OKRs should be added when assigned to the team doing the job.

This is for sure over-simplified. The overall process needs focus, focus, focus, and your full attention. Don't give up when things take time and when you see some sort of resistance. Understand the obstacles, remove them, and communicate again. I have used the model for many years and it became a powerful tool understanding the impact of key decisions. Work with the model, communicate, and adjust it whenever needed. And you will see that success is no longer luck, but the result of working systematically on the company.

Towards a comprehensive growth model

After starting a business, things change. You realize that the garage days are over and that you need to make a decision - do we want to grow this leading a market? Or do we let it be as it is. As entrepreneur my DNA is set to growth and I like to share what happened to my company after we have shaped vision and mission more clearly.

Early 2017 we had 80 people working for the company. I was one of the leaders always thinking about strategy (vs. reactive things based on the day-to-day business). I was often asked: where do you and your company (which has been the same for many years) want to be in 5 years. With help of a mentor (I will write about the idea of mentoring later) I have developed a multi-dimensional growth model that helped me to further grow the company, look for growth capital, and finally sell it. I will outline the key ideas in the following:

A natural starting point are the financials. You know your year-on-year growth from the past, you know your costs, and based on that data you can project how the future might look like. You can use conservative data (organic growth - we had an average YoY growth of 25% over several years) and more aggressive curves assuming that you can invest in certain areas.

And this leads directly to follow-up questions like driven by bottleneck thinking: what hinders me to further grow the company and what do I need to do closing the bottleneck? If I do that, what would be the next bottleneck? And so on. A second layer is: what would unleash new revenue streams that you don't have today (new products, new sales territories, etc.) and how do you get there?

I found that besides financial planning (revenue, cost, margin) the following dimensions should be considered: people, go-to-market approach, portfolio, innovation, and delivery. I will write on those topics later.

Such a comprehensive growth model helps you to better understand your company. You will find out the different dimensions that are interdependent and that changes on one end have an impact on other ends. Understand that and you get into control of your planning and execution. Such a model is also not static but helps you to move forward strategically and adjust it whenever needed. I will talk about working with the model, too.

Murder for coffee withdrawal

Coffee has been a part of my life since I was in college, back in the late 90s. I could only survive so many lectures in which the professor made little effort and which were therefore just boring. Later, at work, coffee was a companion for many exciting hours when we were researching something new at university, inventing something at the company or working on a tricky deal. In the morning, coffee is part of the wake-up routine and at meetings (now via web session) it is still an integral part. At the weekend, a good coffee is part of an indulgent breakfast. So why on earth would you want to get off coffee? I did and I want to report on it here (yes, I survived it!).

Coffee belongs to the sgt. stimulants. We do not need them to survive, but consume them because they simply do one thing: they taste good and they provide (short-term) happiness. This is also the reason for the danger of addiction, which varies depending on the stimulant. But that's not why I gave up coffee, because I love drinking coffee. It was rather a recommendation in the context of a 1-week cure fast to do without any stimulant. And I can therefore confirm that coffee is a) addictive and b) giving it up can lead to real withdrawal symptoms. In my case it was mainly persistent and sometimes severe headaches, but also restlessness, followed by listlessness and a certain irritability. This only got better after 2-3 days, but I managed it with a lot of discipline. At least for one week.

What has it done for me? I see (at least) the following advantages:

  • Conscious perception of body and mind: You learn to pay more attention to the signals and to act accordingly.
  • Concentration: focused work is also possible without coffee. Take a break to enjoy your coffee instead of drinking gallons of it.
  • Natural flow: without coffee you learn to follow the flow of your biorhythm. Work in the high, rest in the low.
  • Better sleep: for me, coffee works 100% and I can't fall asleep if I have another cup after a certain time. Without coffee I can simply sleep better and recharge the batteries.

What's the next step?

Forever giving up coffee and other stimulants. I'm too much of a hedonist for that (another topic for another article). However, the planned and controlled withdrawal has taught me mindfulness (another topic!) for pleasure: to enjoy pleasure consciously . I've since significantly reduced the amount of coffee I drink, and I've been enjoying every cup double and triple ever since. For me, this now applies to many other indulgences and foods as well. If you ever get an idea like that, let me know if you've managed to do it without making a killing.

The power of discipline

In all my years as an entrepreneur, athlete and private person, I have observed that discipline is a virtue that can help you move mountains. For me, discipline is therefore a positive term. It means "the mastery of one's will, feelings and inclinations in order to achieve something."

Discipline is important to achieve goals. If you want to be successful, I think discipline is essential. Because success is rarely luck, but the result of perseverance (do not stray from the path), consistent action (decide and do) and personal responsibility (vs. blame always the others). It is quite possible to provoke success, and therefore happiness, with discipline. A positive cycle to the freedom and self-determination created by discipline.

Applied to oneself, one moves from discipline that is often externally determined to self-discipline. Wikipedia says: "Several long-term studies in recent decades found that the level of ability to self-discipline in childhood, as determined by tests and examinations, was a sure indicator of diverse success in later adult life." I have always considered myself to be very (self)disciplined and can only confirm this from my perspective and career.

In the following articles I write about my experiences with discipline and where it can lead. Privately and at work. Examples of this are manifold:

  • Coffee withdrawal (just went through this in the context of the next topic - I can already tell this takes a lot of discipline for a techie).
  • Fasting
  • Digital fasting
  • Writing a diploma thesis (is called Bachelor and Master today, isn't it)
  • PhD thesis
  • Build a house
  • Various sporting goals, e.g. finishing a triathlon
  • 30 Days Kettlebell Challenge
  • Start a company and make it big

I'm already looking forward to the follow-up articles on this topic, but now it's time to get out into the air. Because the sun is shining and I have to enjoy it. What is your attitude towards discipline?