smart sockets vs smart bulbs – introduction
smart bulbs and sockets have select uses. A smart socket adds a little on/off cleverness to a table lamp, electric heater or the printer upstairs that takes five minutes before it’s warm and useful....
Category: data logging at home
Welcome to our take on Home Automation. It is a collection of ideas to monitor things around the home, usefully, curiously and looking to learn. Today switches can be touched remotely and thermometers send their numbers over any distance. It explores the benefits of things being connected in this way. It’s about my local Internet of Things, helped by ‘Home Assistant’ and a Raspberry Pi. And there’s space to comment and share your perspective too.
what home automation offers – introduction
When you look for home automation equipment you find many systems. They turn on lights and plug sockets; water the garden; unlock a door, turn up the heating; record a security camera, open the...
a case for a home automation platform – introduction
Even if you’ve no need for as much as a smart bulb, you do need to be impressed or surprised by the variety of smart gadgets on sale. There are smart door locks, garage...
calculate how long is the day
… and see how to add features to the Home Assistant display An interest in solar energy is a possible reason to record the sun’s azimuth and the time of sunset. Home Assistant can track...
project: smart thermostat – nest and hive
The Google nest thermostat or its Hive equivalent are items which I’d be happy to pay for rather than make. A first reason is that we rely too much on warmth, and a second...
find the IP address of your things – introduction
When you set up a gadget or device you’ll sometimes be asked what its IP address is – and gosh – becoming at ease with that question is good for you. Every gadget connected...
extending Home Assistant (esphome 2)
If you want to make your own smart measuring device or presence detector or dog watching camera or tea bag lifting robot, the ESP32 and Arduino circuit boards make the gadget you need. A...
get started with home assistant (esphome 1)
The least you need to run your own home automation server Raspberry Pi – a kit with Raspberry Pi 3+ or later with the recommended power supply, 32Gb SD card, heatsinks and/or cooling fan....
flash ESP32-CAM with arduino ide software
Arduino IDE is software that lets us develop code for a writing on a chip. Explore its menu and we soon see it’s made to transfer a great many capabilities to a great many...
link an ESP chip with Home Assistant (esphome 4)
When a ESP32 device has been flashed and powered, it will use the password you added to the code to connect to your wifi. The ESPhome interface in Home Assistant (pic below) will show...
customise a Sonoff smart relay (esphome 3b)
Software which allows you to ‘own’ your devices ESPhome can be used to reprogram a ESP chip so that Home Assistant can control it. I use it to re-program a Sonoff S20 smart plug...
flash a ESP32-CAM to make a smart camera (esphome 3a)
ESPhome is software that can program (or flash) an ESP chip. This chip is at the core of many automation projects. The software works inside Home Assistant running on a Raspberry Pi. The instructions...
comparing the cost of fuels for heating
I’m the person who wants to know if using an electric fan heater in one room costs less than heating the whole house using gas. At parties I can keep a whole sofa to...
automation: turn it off if it’s already hot
The Sonoff POWR2 can be used as the timer on a hot water immersion heater. This model also measures electricity as volts, amps and current. I’ve flashed its wifi chip with different firmware so...
Dupont jumper wires & shells – introduction
Dupont leads connect up projects. They come as male to male pin / female to female / male pin to female types. You can solder the male ends to a headless board to make...
project: smart immersion heater
Domestic hot water can be heated by a gas / oil central heating boiler or by an electrical immersion heater. I choose to take advantage of half-price nighttime electricity and use an immersion heater....
some uses for a raspberry pi computer – introduction
A Raspberry Pi is a small inexpensive low power computer that has numerous uses and hopefully there’s one that chimes for you. I don’t think you’d want to use a Pi for emails and...
which ESP32 did I buy?
“… It’s an ESP32. Yes but which?” ESPRESSIF is the company that markets chips such as the ESP8266 and ESP32 and ESP32-CAM. Other companies buy those chips and fit them inside their smart plugs,...
project: cameras around the house
There are a variety of camera types to help monitor the drive, a pet, a baby, a device, a bird feeder – whatever. You might want to know what’s eating the rabbit’s food or...
project: does my broadband speed vary?
Here’s how to add a little functionality to Home Assistant, the automation platform. Do try this especially if you’re just starting to add features to Home Assistant. speedtestdotnet: scan_interval: hours: 4 Go to the...
project: when is the next train from the station?
Travel information can be one of the things you need easy access to. If you have Google Home or Alexa you’ll find it helpful to recall the exact way to ask for the info....
project: a screen with all I need to know just now
There’s less value in having a camera pointed at the front door if I need to click too many things to see it. The home automation platform Home Assistant lets me fill a screen...
project: monitor temperature around the house
The Xiaomi Mijia sensor runs for ages on a AAA battery and it can be stuck to a wall to show the temperature and humidity. It’s an attractive Bluetooth Low Energy device that beams...
automation: turn on lights when I enter the room
The LED striplights in a kitchen use 12v transformers and they are powered through smart plugs / sockets. The sockets are by TP-link – and they remember their on-off state if ever there’s a...
project: smart electricity meter with historic energy use
fit a sensor to the electricity meter for a minute by minute readout The UK electricity meter has a display showing electricity use in kWatt, and every few months someone pops by to read...
project: oil tank level sensor
A heating oil tank level sensor that’s more useful than anything you can buy. Measures oil level in any unit – litres, gallons or days until I need to refill the tank Displays readings...
some of us have a thing about units, data and graphs
The Home Assistant sensor graph offers painless autoscaling with options to set detail and timespan. But how do I alter the data itself? A car fuel tank measures in gallons but it’s more useful...
how much heating oil does the boiler use?
The need was to meter the use of oil for charging purposes. I solved it easily and inexpensively. This was before the days of home automation so there’s Central heating boilers burn heating oil...
project: desktop volume control with Arduino
A volume control near the mouse and ready to turn. Bash the top and the video or track pauses. Double bash to skip to the next track. It’s plug and play, requires no app...