What this is
A home network with a front porch.
Mallow Network is the name for a small corner of the internet that we run ourselves: the services that keep a household organised behind the scenes, and this public website that sits in front of them.
Most of what lives on the network is private. The Home Assistant setup that runs the house, bookmarks, dashboards and everyday tools are only useful to the people who use them, so they sit behind a sign-in on the Private Hub. This site is the public part: what the network is, what has been built for it, and notes written along the way.
Everything is kept simple on purpose. These pages are hand-written HTML and CSS, with no JavaScript, no analytics and no build step, served from Cloudflare Pages.
More about Mallow Network →Explore
What you'll find here
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The network
What Mallow Network is, what's public and what isn't, and the few principles it's built on.
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Guides and ideas
Dashboard design tips, ideas for dashboards worth building, and lessons for automations people trust.
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Things we've made
Home Assistant automations for lights, laundry and leaks, a kitchen dashboard, themes and this website.
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Field notes
Short write-ups on design and self-hosting decisions, with the details that are easy to forget.
Latest
Recent notes
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A kitchen dashboard and a Home Assistant theme
An old tablet on the kitchen wall, a three-column sections dashboard, and a Mallow theme so it looks like the rest of the network.
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Leak sensors and an automatic water shut-off
Five moisture sensors, a motorised valve on the main, and the small automations that make sure both still work when they're needed.
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A laundry notifier from a smart plug
Watching the washer's power draw to send a 'laundry's done' message, and why the dryer needed a different approach.