Categories
Smart Home

My Experiment: Building an EV Wallbox Smart Home Integration with AI Coding Agents

Having an NRGkick mobile wallbox from the Austrian company DiniTech, I decided to integrate it into a new project. The wallbox has a local API (so controlling it does not need the internet) and exposes over 80 sensors / data points. This includes basics like charging current and total energy, and even the individual temperatures of the charging phase connectors. This is a perfect playground for smart home integration.

My main goal was not just to visualize this data in Home Assistant. I wanted to control the rest of the home based on the wallbox’s charging status. This is useful for a home with a photovoltaic (PV) system that is not big enough to support full car charging and other large appliances (like heating) at the same time. Controlling the wallbox itself (setting current, pausing) was also an important benefit, especially if you don’t have the PV-led charging add-on for the wallbox.

Home Assistant integration for NRGkick
Over 80 sensors and data points are exposed from the NRGkick wallbox and integrated into Home Assistant through the new custom integration.

This project was also an experiment to test the current state of AI coding agents. I wanted to see if they could build a full, high-quality Home Assistant integration from scratch. I used GitHub Copilot inside Visual Studio Code and tested several different models.

You can download and try the full integration from GitHub, and it’s also available for direct installation into your Home Assistant setup through the Home Assistant Community Store (HACS) – search for “NRGkick”; the actual configuration then works through auto-discovery in your local network. Also visit the Home Assistant Community forum discussion if you have feedback or comments!

Categories
Artificial Intelligence Cloud

Generative AI in Education With AI-x-plainer and Amazon PartyRock

Working as a professor at the St. Pölten University Applied Sciences, I’ve observed the dual impact of generative AI in education. In this article, I’ll discuss how we are adapting teaching methodologies.

The result is the AIxplainer educational tool, which you can freely test and remix through Amazon PartyRock.

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Integrating AI in Education

Traditional coding instruction is becoming less effective as AI tools streamline code creation. However, constructing extensive system architectures and corresponding code predominantly remains a human task.

Thus, we need an educational approach where students engage with AI to address advanced challenges that extend beyond what is typically explained within lectures.