--- title: Dipping My Toes into Home Automation | daily.dev description: A personal account of setting up a first home automation system inspired by Jonathan Oxer of SuperHouse. The stack centers on MQTT (via Mosquitto broker) for... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/dipping-my-toes-into-home-automation-mx6yc1ikk twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Dipping My Toes into Home Automation | daily.dev og:description: A personal account of setting up a first home automation system inspired by Jonathan Oxer of SuperHouse. The stack centers on MQTT (via Mosquitto broker) for... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/dipping-my-toes-into-home-automation-mx6yc1ikk og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/Mx6YC1iKk.png og:image:alt: Dipping My Toes into Home Automation og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Dipping My Toes into Home Automation **[apalrd's adventures](https://daily.dev/sources/apalrd)** · 4 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A personal account of setting up a first home automation system inspired by Jonathan Oxer of SuperHouse. The stack centers on MQTT (via Mosquitto broker) for data transport, Node-Red for logic and flow automation, InfluxDB 1.8 for time-series storage, Telegraf for data collection, and Grafana for visualization. Initial testing was done in a VirtualBox VM running Ubuntu 18.04, before deploying to an LXC container named Telstar on a ZFS pool. Key design decisions include routing all sensor data through MQTT topics, separating raw from processed data, and using Telegraf to bridge MQTT into InfluxDB. A 2021 update notes the system ran reliably for over a year, with a gradual transition toward Home Assistant while keeping core infrastructure in Telstar. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### What software stack is commonly used for a self-hosted home automation system with MQTT? A practical self-hosted home automation stack built around MQTT uses Mosquitto as the broker, Node-Red for logic and flow automation, Telegraf to capture MQTT data, InfluxDB 1.8 for time-series storage, and Grafana for visualization. A key design principle is routing all sensor data through MQTT topics, separating raw unprocessed data from processed data before logging to InfluxDB. _Hobbyists building their own home automation stacks share setups and lessons learned on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Setting Up an MQTT Data Pipeline with InfluxDB](https://daily.dev/posts/setting-up-an-mqtt-data-pipeline-with-influxdb-nvi1hz0ud) · InfluxData · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Home Assistant is way more than a smart home dashboard, and here's what I actually run on it](https://daily.dev/posts/home-assistant-is-way-more-than-a-smart-home-dashboard-and-here-s-what-i-actually-run-on-it-7iiiu6oiu) · XDA Developers · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Home Assistant waters my plants\!](https://daily.dev/posts/home-assistant-waters-my-plants--i0o9wij2e) · Hacker News · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Home Assistant is the only self-hosted app I'd never give up, and here's why](https://daily.dev/posts/home-assistant-is-the-only-self-hosted-app-i-d-never-give-up-and-here-s-why-rytw3y8cy) · XDA Developers · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#backend](https://daily.dev/tags/backend), [#grafana](https://daily.dev/tags/grafana), [#influxdb](https://daily.dev/tags/influxdb) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/dipping-my-toes-into-home-automation-mx6yc1ikk) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Dipping My Toes into Home Automation","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/dipping-my-toes-into-home-automation-mx6yc1ikk","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/dipping-my-toes-into-home-automation-mx6yc1ikk"},"datePublished":"2026-08-11T08:53:58.903Z","dateModified":"2026-08-11T09:15:16.498Z","description":"A personal account of setting up a first home automation system inspired by Jonathan Oxer of SuperHouse. 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