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Marco Dodaro
Marco Dodaro

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From Zero to AWTRIX App in 30 Minutes: Vibe Coding with Home Assistant, Yahoo Finance and a LED Matrix

#automation #showdev #vibecoding #homeassistant

💡 There's something very satisfying about seeing your code literally light up on an LED matrix in your living room. ✨

This little project started as a "what if" and turned into a working AWTRIX 3 app in about 30 minutes, built live with AI as a coding buddy ("vibe coding" style).
The goal: show live Yahoo Finance stock data on an AWTRIX 3, with colors and icons that react to the market in real time, all driven by Home Assistant blueprints. 📈

🚀 What we built

In half an hour, the setup ended up as:

  • A Home Assistant blueprint that:

    • Reads stock data from the Yahoo Finance integration
    • Formats text like AAPL 190.25€ (+1.32%)
    • Picks an icon and color based on percentage change
    • Pushes everything to AWTRIX 3 via MQTT as a custom app

  • A small ecosystem around it:

    • GitHub repo: ha-awtrix-yahoofinance-stock
    • Blueprint YAML
    • README with one‑click import for Home Assistant
    • MIT license

Check out the repo:

🧱 The stack

The tech is intentionally simple:

  • Home Assistant blueprints (no custom component needed)
  • Yahoo Finance integration for live stock data
  • MQTT to talk to AWTRIX 3
  • AWTRIX 3 as the LED matrix display (compatible with devices like Ulanzi TC001)

The core logic is basically:

  1. Read sensor.yahoofinance_*
  2. Grab regularMarketChangePercent
  3. Decide:
    • If change > threshold → green + "up" icon 📈
    • If change < −threshold → red + "down" icon 📉
    • Else → white + neutral icon ⚪
  4. Publish a JSON payload to awtrix_device/custom/stock_app_name

But instead of hand‑crafting everything from scratch, the AI handled:

  • Turning an ad‑hoc script into a clean, reusable blueprint
  • Adding options for:
    • Threshold
    • Lifetime
    • Repeat count
    • Scroll speed
    • Currency symbol
  • Generating a full README and import badge for Home Assistant
  • Creating a new GitHub repo and wiring the files correctly

🎧 Vibe coding: pairing with AI instead of building alone

The interesting part wasn't the complexity (there isn't much), but the workflow:

  1. Start from a tiny working script:
    • "Here's my stock display script for AWTRIX."
  2. Ask the AI to:
    • Turn it into a blueprint
    • Make it configurable
    • Generalize it to multiple devices
    • Add icon‑upload automation
  3. Let the AI:
    • Generate the YAML
    • Wire topics for multiple AWTRIX devices
    • Add sensible defaults
    • Produce proper documentation in English

That back‑and‑forth is what made it feel like vibe coding: you keep the vision and constraints, the AI does the boilerplate, refactors, and docs while you stay in flow. 🧠🤝💻

🛠 How to try it yourself

Rough steps (see the repo for details):

  1. Install AWTRIX 3 on your device and connect it to MQTT.
  2. Install the Yahoo Finance integration in Home Assistant.
  3. Import the blueprint via the My Home Assistant button in the README: awtrix_stock_display.yaml from https://github.com/Raythekool/ha-awtrix-yahoofinance-stock
  4. Create an automation from the blueprint:
    • Pick your stock sensor (e.g. sensor.yahoofinance_aapl)
    • Choose an app name (e.g. stock_aapl)
    • Tweak threshold, repeat, scroll speed, etc.
  5. Watch your AWTRIX display live stock data with reactive colors and icons. 🌈

💭 Why this matters

This wasn't about reinventing finance dashboards. It was about:

  • Turning a "small quality‑of‑life idea" into a polished integration quickly
  • Using AI as a companion to:
    • Avoid YAML fatigue
    • Keep things DRY and reusable
    • Ship with proper docs and structure from day one
  • Making Home Assistant + AWTRIX 3 feel more like a creative canvas than a config chore 🎨

If you've been sitting on a tiny Home Assistant idea that "isn't worth the time", pairing with an AI and aiming for a 30‑minute build is surprisingly effective. Start from a script, extract the pattern into a blueprint, wrap it in a repo—and suddenly you have something you can share with the rest of the community. ✨

📝 TL;DR

Built a complete Home Assistant blueprint for displaying Yahoo Finance stocks on AWTRIX 3 LED matrix in ~30 minutes using AI-assisted "vibe coding". The blueprint reads stock data, formats it with dynamic colors (green/red/white) and icons based on market changes, and pushes to AWTRIX via MQTT. Fully configurable (threshold, currency, scroll speed) with one-click import for Home Assistant.

Repo: https://github.com/Raythekool/ha-awtrix-yahoofinance-stock

Takeaway: Small home automation ideas become shippable projects incredibly fast when you pair with AI for the boilerplate, YAML, and documentation work. 🚀

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