Welcome to Balmoral Manor 🏡

A 5-minute setup so you can control the lounge lights, TV, speakers and PlayStation from your phone.

What this is

Balmoral Manor runs on Home Assistant — one app that controls the lights, the TV, the speakers, the PS5, and more.

This little guide gets you set up. Nothing here is techy — it's mostly "tap this, then tap that", and the one fiddly bit at the end is optional.

Your phone, your rules: nothing gets installed on your phone except the official Home Assistant app, and you choose what permissions to give it.

Step 1 — Get the app

Install the official Home Assistant app (blue hexagon house icon):

iPhone — App Store
Android — Play Store

Just install it — don't open it yet. Your account needs to exist first (next step).

Step 2 — Tell Vincent about you

Fill this in and hit send — it goes straight to Vincent so he can create your account and hook up the right devices.

⚠️ Never type any passwords into this page (it will refuse them anyway). Vincent will give you a login separately.
💡 Lounge lights 📺 TV 🔊 Speakers 🎮 PlayStation 🚪 Front door lamp

Step 3 — Wait for your login

Vincent got your details ✅. He'll create your account and send you a username and temporary password (text, in person, carrier pigeon — his call).

Got them? Carry on. If not, park this page — it remembers where you're up to.

Step 4 — First login

  1. Make sure you're on the home WiFi (network name: wifi).
  2. Open the Home Assistant app.
  3. It should find the house server itself. If it asks for an address, type: http://192.168.0.185:8123
  4. Log in with the username + password Vincent gave you.
  5. Say yes to notifications (that's how the Manor can ping you).
  6. Location permission is optional — saying yes lets the house know when you're home (nice-to-have, e.g. lights that greet you). Totally fine to say no.
  7. Once you're in: tap your initials (bottom-left) → change your password to something that's yours.

Step 5 — PlayStation (optional)

You use the PS5 with your own PSN account. If you want the house to show your now-playing games too, there's one fiddly-but-quick step:

  1. On your phone or laptop, log in at playstation.com.
  2. Then open this link: ca.account.sony.com/api/v1/ssocookie
  3. You'll see a short line of text containing npsso followed by a long code.
🔐 That code works like a password for your PlayStation account. Don't paste it into this page or any form. Show it to Vincent in person, or send it to him in a private message and delete it after.

Skip this entirely if you don't care — the PS5 power button in the app works for everyone regardless.

🎉 You're set!

What you can do from the app:

  1. 💡 Lounge & common-room lights — tap to toggle, hold for colours
  2. 📺🔊 See and control what's playing on the TV and speakers
  3. 🎮 Turn the PS5 on/off
House rules, the good kind: automations only ever touch Vincent's bedroom and office when he leaves — nothing you use will ever turn off because he walked out the door.

Questions? Yell at Vincent, not the Manor. The Manor is trying its best.