Building a DIY Advent Calendar powered by Home Assistant
24 days of Bibi Blocksberg
Christmas is coming!
That also means it’s time once again to fill Advent calendars for the kids. This year, I came up with something very special for my daughter: a smart audio Advent calendar powered by Home Assistant!
Some time ago, I built my daughter her own music box. The box is based on ESPHome, recognizes when NFC tags are placed on it, and then starts an album via Home Assistant → Music Assistant → Spotify on a SONOS speaker. I packed the whole thing into a LEGO case and attached a few buttons — basically a DIY Toniebox. Since so many people have asked about the LEGO version, I still owe you a separate blog post on that. But you can find the guide to the first version here.
The box is used daily. Unfortunately, she’s been playing Christmas music every day since September. Anyway, she’s a huge fan of the German audio series Bibi Blocksberg. And as it happens, there’s even a Bibi Blocksberg Advent calendar episode! That’s when the idea hit me: I could make her a special NFC card for the box just for that.
The problem, though, is that she wouldn’t stop after the first chapter. She’d binge the entire story on December 1st. And that’s definitely not the point of an Advent calendar...
To avoid that, I needed to give her one card per day. But since the cards are a bit too expensive, I found a cheaper alternative: 24 NFC chips. I numbered them from 1 to 24 with a marker and mapped each tag ID to a single track on Spotify.
Result: Each chip plays only one chapter.
We put the chips into a regular Advent calendar — in our case, a Haribo one. I took the gummy bears for myself, of course. But don’t worry, my daughter also gets a regular analog calendar with sweets. The chips are placed into the doors, which can then be resealed.
And there you have it — the smart audio Advent calendar!
On December 24th, she’ll get the full episode card. Afterwards, I’ll collect the chips. If the idea is a hit, I can easily recycle them next year for another story.