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A Wi-Fi based solution does not seem like a good choice for that environment.
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Sep 9, 2021 20:39
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wolrah posted:A Wi-Fi based solution does not seem like a good choice for that environment. It also doesn't seem to provide any useful capabilities from very boring tried and true solutions that have been around and working for literally decades. A track record I highly doubt these things will ever achieve.
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Sep 9, 2021 21:03
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Motronic posted:It also doesn't seem to provide any useful capabilities from very boring tried and true solutions that have been around and working for literally decades. A track record I highly doubt these things will ever achieve. About the only benefit I got from it was initial setup and configuration from phone vs. the tiny screen -- I don't want to go back to photocells (maybe this was just a bad batch, but 5/6 are dead), but that non WiFi version might be the way to go then, and just beep and boop it once to set lat, lon, and on/off.
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Sep 9, 2021 21:11
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It was either a bad batch of photo cells or very cheap photocells. Most public lighting works entirely on them, and it's not a normal maintenance item. They just work.
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Sep 9, 2021 21:13
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Can attest to the non wifi solution. Mine will be 10 years old next month.
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Sep 10, 2021 18:02
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Does anyone using home assistant on a Pi3B+ have any comment on how not to break the thing constantly? It seems like installing an add on or changing a setting can cause the entire thing to just cease functioning, and I'm not sure how to recover it. I added the ESPHome addon, and enabled DuckDNS/Let's Encrypt. About 15 minutes later the system went offline, and it will not boot up. I've yet to drag my monitor over to look at it, but being a HassOS install, I believe it is just a stack of various docker containers, and I really don't know how to get out of this installation. A couple of people suggested that this happens as the Pi is underpowered and something will fail to install/compile/etc but I can't believe that's the case.
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Sep 13, 2021 13:33
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Partycat posted:Does anyone using home assistant on a Pi3B+ have any comment on how not to break the thing constantly? This was my experience using the Pi3 for HASS. It is just OK for the base HA installation. But anything beyond that... nope. I ended up buying a cheap i3 mini PC off eBay and switching to that using the NUC install. Additionally, the Pi4 performs considerably better in every metric over the Pi3. You'll find multiple reports on the HA forums from people switching to the Pi4 and experiencing a huge performance increase.
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Sep 13, 2021 14:13
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Yeah, I installed VMware esxi on an old PC and started using the VM version and it's been so much better than running it on a Pi. For a while now, I've wanted to get a weather station to put the data into my Home Assistant instance to track temperature, wind, and rainfall. Didn't really want to spend a ton of money on it, and the ones with built-in web access to the data were more than I wanted to spend. I did notice, however, that my neighbor has one mounted on his roof. After a bit more research, I bought a $20 RTL-SDR dongle for my Home Assistant server, and now I'm just borrowing the data from my neighbor's weather station. 
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Sep 13, 2021 14:25
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Adding to that... The PC based install is just sooooo much faster. From clicking restart in Home Assistant, it is back up and working in less than 6 seconds. A complete host restart takes less than 20 seconds. Restarting on the Pi3 was a several minute affair, depending on the amount of addons installed. My machine is a low-end Lenovo Tiny PC with i3-4300U CPU, 8GB RAM, and a 120GB SSD. I paid less than $100 for it from eBay about 3 years ago. Specifically I used the "Home Assistant Supervised" installation method: https://www.home-assistant.io/installation/linux#install-home-assistant-supervised
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Sep 13, 2021 14:51
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n0tqu1tesane posted:For a while now, I've wanted to get a weather station to put the data into my Home Assistant instance to track temperature, wind, and rainfall. Didn't really want to spend a ton of money on it, and the ones with built-in web access to the data were more than I wanted to spend. Alternatively there is the "WeeWX" project. This software can pull the data from many weather stations, so if you already have one of them, it can make use of it. I have a cheap Acurite "5-n-1" station with a display. The display has a USB port on it meant for Acurite's PC connection software. WeeWX can interface with this to pull the data from the weather station and output it as MQTT. I installed WeeWX on a old Pi2b I had laying around and connected it to the Acurite display. It spits all the info out to HA via MQTT. 
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Sep 13, 2021 15:08
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n0tqu1tesane posted:I did notice, however, that my neighbor has one mounted on his roof. Lol, this owns. Nice job.
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Sep 13, 2021 15:53
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Okay, I can try a computer if I have to re-install it anyway. I have an extra desktop I can boot up for this. I'm okay with slow, but less okay with the whole install randomly imploding on itself. Thanks for the advice
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Sep 13, 2021 16:05
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Partycat posted:Does anyone using home assistant on a Pi3B+ have any comment on how not to break the thing constantly? Get a (used) (u)SFF machine from Dell/HP/Lenovo and install proxmox on it. Anything from the last few years will work great, and they can often be found for <$150. Then install proxmox backup server (pbs) and setup differential backups etc. Partycat posted:Okay, I can try a computer if I have to re-install it anyway. I have an extra desktop I can boot up for this. You can also use a VM on your PC for loving around with it before you find a permanent "home" for the install.
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Sep 13, 2021 16:19
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Didn't want to vm it since I consider it more essential than the things I run in VMs, so mine it running off a used HP T620 thin client I got from ebay, albeit with the ssd swapped for a larger spare I had lying around and an extra 4G of RAM I had lying around it never used above 1G RAM and total disk usage is at 12G, but I could easily cut that down if I put any effort into cleaning old docker images. The T620 was $30 on ebay, shipped
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Sep 13, 2021 19:03
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Is there a solution for doing things like turning lights on/off automatically as you walk around the house? You could think of it as geofencing in a sense but on a super high resolution level, but geofencing normally doesn't understand things like walking up/down stairs etc either afaik. Wondering if there's something you could do with BTLE where your phone pings various beacons and triangulates a very precise location, kinda like what stores do with traffic monitoring. On the other hand it might also murder your battery performance to be continuously running the gyroscope/accelerometer and pinging on bluetooth.
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Sep 13, 2021 21:57
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Not to say there isn't a solution available, but I would think motion sensors are way easier and more viable. Triangulating signal strength isn't going to be any good because walls/doors/people are going to have a non-trivial impact and throw off your readings. GPS and gyroscope aren't going to get a fine enough resolution, at least I wouldn't think, for the sort of response time you're looking at. Plus there's the issue of needing to anticipate where the user is going, not just where they are or where they've been. I mean, you don't HAVE to do that, but if you want to outperform a simple motion sensor then you'd need to be predictive in order to justify the cost/calibration/configuration necessary for anything more complex than "IF <person present> THEN <turn on light>." Really fascinating idea, though, I hope I'm wrong. edit: also you'd have to put a tracker on everyone who might ever use it. Kids, guests, etc. Motion sensors wouldn't need any special accommodation. edit again: so I mean i haven't done the math for triangulation, obviously, but consider putting a BT speaker at the edge of its range: if you stand between it and your phone your music will cut out. That's really all it takes to mess up the signal, so trying to use it to triangulate a moving target without extensive calibration of all the walls/etc. is going to be impossible, and then when anything changes you'll have to start over. This is all to say that while it's not impossible with current technology, it's just very challenging to do, and the cost/benefit tilts way towards a way more simple approach. DaveSauce fucked around with this message at 00:56 on Sep 14, 2021 |
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Sep 13, 2021 22:08
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Yeah I just use cheap Aqara Zigbee motion sensors, they work great.
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Sep 13, 2021 22:13
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Is there anywhere better than eBay to buy Lutron RA2 Select stuff? Everyone (Lowe’s, Home Depot, Ace, Best Buy, Amazon) sells Caseta stuff but I’m having a hard time finding a direct-to-consumer vendor for RA2 stuff.
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Sep 14, 2021 14:21
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Paul MaudDib posted:Is there a solution for doing things like turning lights on/off automatically as you walk around the house? You could think of it as geofencing in a sense but on a super high resolution level, but geofencing normally doesn't understand things like walking up/down stairs etc either afaik. Wondering if there's something you could do with BTLE where your phone pings various beacons and triangulates a very precise location, kinda like what stores do with traffic monitoring. On the other hand it might also murder your battery performance to be continuously running the gyroscope/accelerometer and pinging on bluetooth. BT/BTLE presence detection using ESP32. Speed varies by the specific device combinations in use, so it's probably not going to behave like a magical movie system unless you go out of your way to carry a designated tracker beacon, but it can be done. DaveSauce posted:Not to say there isn't a solution available, but I would think motion sensors are way easier and more viable. Obviously it can still be affected by obstacles to signals, but given that the sensors just require power it's usually not hard to relocate and/or add more to correct the issue. quote:Plus there's the issue of needing to anticipate where the user is going, not just where they are or where they've been. I mean, you don't HAVE to do that, but if you want to outperform a simple motion sensor then you'd need to be predictive in order to justify the cost/calibration/configuration necessary for anything more complex than "IF <person present> THEN <turn on light>." wolrah fucked around with this message at 14:40 on Sep 14, 2021 |
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Sep 14, 2021 14:32
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Lawen posted:Is there anywhere better than eBay to buy Lutron RA2 Select stuff? Everyone (Lowe’s, Home Depot, Ace, Best Buy, Amazon) sells Caseta stuff but I’m having a hard time finding a direct-to-consumer vendor for RA2 stuff. I believe prolighting.com will sell direct. You have to make an account, but you're not required to be affiliated with anyone. Remember some RA2 select parts are really just RA2 parts. If you have questions feel free to ask I can probably clarify.
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Sep 14, 2021 14:54
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Quote is not edit.
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Sep 14, 2021 14:54
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wolrah posted:Triangulation shouldn't be necessary in most cases, the exact location in a room usually isn't too important compared to just "which sensor is this person nearest to?" True, but I would think this would give some erratic or unintended behavior. You would need a lot of sensors with very careful placement to prevent conflicts. For example if you're walking down a hallway next to bedrooms, I would expect it to turn on each bedroom lights as you walk past the room, unless you had a bunch of sensors in the hallway to make sure it always had a higher signal strength. You'd also have to think in 3D for a 2-story house... my phone, which is in my pocket, may be closer to a sensor downstairs than it is to one on the ceiling above me, or vice versa if the sensors are mounted by the floor (edit: and then when I take it out of my pocket and put it next to my ear to take a call, it changes which is closest and lights toggle, then when I sit down it changes again... etc. etc.). Then things like thresholds/boundaries would be difficult to do without triangulation. So in the above example, you'd need a way to make sure that when you entered a room that the room sensor was stronger than the hallway sensor(s). So maybe put a sensor on each side of a door would be a way to mitigate that, so that unless you're standing exactly in the doorway you will definitely be closer to one than the other. But that wouldn't stop a conflict say between bedrooms, where in some parts of the room you could technically be closer to the other room's sensor (again, unless you had more sensors). And all that assumes that you can accurately determine which of 2 sensors you're closer to when the sensors are only 6" apart. So sure triangulation wouldn't be necessary, but the tradeoff is you'd need a lot more sensors, and they'd need to be very specifically placed. To be sure, there are definitely systems that can do this, but they're typically industrial systems and are used to control AGVs or something that follow a specific path. They can be highly accurate, but they're also very expensive depending on what technology they use. They're also not designed to respond to random positioning, they're very much reliant on vehicles following the path they were told to take. DaveSauce fucked around with this message at 16:13 on Sep 14, 2021 |
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Sep 14, 2021 15:53
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DaveSauce posted:True, but I would think this would give some erratic or unintended behavior. You would need a lot of sensors with very careful placement to prevent conflicts. For example if you're walking down a hallway next to bedrooms, I would expect it to turn on each bedroom lights as you walk past the room, unless you had a bunch of sensors in the hallway to make sure it always had a higher signal strength. You'd also have to think in 3D for a 2-story house... my phone, which is in my pocket, may be closer to a sensor downstairs than it is to one on the ceiling above me, or vice versa if the sensors are mounted by the floor (edit: and then when I take it out of my pocket and put it next to my ear to take a call, it changes which is closest and lights toggle, then when I sit down it changes again... etc. etc.). Also BTLE actually has explicit protocols for measuring both distance and more recently direction of devices intentionally acting as beacons, so at least in those cases triangulation can actually be quite easy. This tech has been in use in retail for a long time, it's incredibly widespread. Still though, like I said before I think this is the wrong way to go about this. f I really cared about the who rather than just the where I think I'd combine motion or other physical presence sensors with beacon tracking. That way you get instant responses not requiring the person to be carrying a gadget, but can still then customize actions if a specific person is detected as present.
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Sep 14, 2021 17:30
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wolrah posted:Still though, like I said before I think this is the wrong way to go about this. f I really cared about the who rather than just the where I think I'd combine motion or other physical presence sensors with beacon tracking. That way you get instant responses not requiring the person to be carrying a gadget, but can still then customize actions if a specific person is detected as present. Oh I absolutely agree it's the wrong application, I just find it interesting to think about how it could be made to work. I'm still not convinced that something like bluetooth could be accurate enough for consistently detecting which room someone is in without extensive calibration, but that's honestly outside my realm of expertise outside of the generalities of triangulating based on signal strength.
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Sep 14, 2021 18:17
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My cheap wireless outdoor thermometer died and I was going to replace it with something a bit smarter. I don't really need to tie it to any automation that I can think of, my lights are based on sunset times right now through Homekit. However, it had this cheap LCD display for the temperature indoors vs outdoors and phases of the moon (that it got from the date you had to set). I would love to replace that part more, kind of how Amazon has a kitchen top display, but not so invasion-of-privacy. I guess what I'm looking for is something like this: Three Olives posted:I agree, there are much better uses.
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Sep 15, 2021 22:03
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IUG posted:My cheap wireless outdoor thermometer died and I was going to replace it with something a bit smarter. I don't really need to tie it to any automation that I can think of, my lights are based on sunset times right now through Homekit. I'm using kindle fire tablets around the house for display and control purposes. It displays a Home Assistant web page in an app called Fully Kiosk. Maybe there is something similar you can do with HomeKit.
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Sep 15, 2021 22:20
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I couldn’t install HA on my old computer as it doesn’t support UEFI. Oh well. I found installing the esphome Python package for the CLI works in WSL. You can use esphomeflasher windows build to flash, and avoid attempting to compile on the Pi, which ain’t happening. Works super easy if you get the wires connected - really nothing to it. I now have a USB powered temperature, humidity , and CO2 sensor I can link into stats or whatever else suits
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Sep 17, 2021 03:21
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How are caseta switches supposed to work when you have one on each side of a circuit? I have two switches at the front of my home that control exterior lights. I have to have the first switch "on" for the second one to work. Should I just cap all the wires on the second switch and use a Pico remote thing there? I'm quite confused in general at Caseta's docs.
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Sep 19, 2021 01:35
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Gyshall posted:Should I just cap all the wires on the second switch and use a Pico remote thing there? Yep
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Sep 19, 2021 06:26
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IUG posted:My cheap wireless outdoor thermometer died and I was going to replace it with something a bit smarter. I don't really need to tie it to any automation that I can think of, my lights are based on sunset times right now through Homekit. On the display side, Adafruit has an e-ink display that will happily run off of a battery for months if you aren't updating it constantly. If you want it updating faster it can also run off of USB. https://learn.adafruit.com/magtag-weather That doesn't do any sensing itself, but adding them is pretty trivial.
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Sep 19, 2021 09:11
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Is there a standard recommendation on some cameras (hoping to include good vision in the dark which I guess most cameras should have these days) for the house?
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Sep 19, 2021 16:17
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Any recommendations for leak sensors ? Looking at some of the DIY parts for arduino/esp they look not to be particularly suited to laying on the basement floor. They look like a raw PCB that corrodes.
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Sep 19, 2021 17:53
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IUG posted:My cheap wireless outdoor thermometer died and I was going to replace it with something a bit smarter. I don't really need to tie it to any automation that I can think of, my lights are based on sunset times right now through Homekit. So, a weather station?  Although I have been really tempted by this project if you are into e-ink:  With regards to my 50 inch 4k home office display, it's just running an app that displays a webpage, in my case Dakboard, but there are similar web apps and anything that will display a webpage works with them. We have Chromecast with Google TVs on all the TVs in our house that run Dakboard as screensavers that we leave on 24/7 and I have a cheap docking Lenovo tablet in my office office that serves as a Dakboard display.   Three Olives fucked around with this message at 02:32 on Sep 20, 2021 |
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Sep 20, 2021 02:19
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A TV... over the... stove? 
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Sep 20, 2021 02:46
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spf3million posted:A TV... over the... stove? It's a Sceptre, I've spent more money day drinking on a Sunday, regularly, than that TV cost, it's disposable.
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Sep 20, 2021 02:59
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totalnewbie posted:Is there a standard recommendation on some cameras (hoping to include good vision in the dark which I guess most cameras should have these days) for the house? Reolink is cheap and works well. Insert standard recommendation to put any and all iot devices/ip cameras on their own non-routable vlan. 
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Sep 20, 2021 03:10
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I'd go loving insane if my house was plastered with TVs all over the goddamned place.
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Sep 20, 2021 03:20
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I’ve thought about it, but only because I have multiple teenagers in my house, all with completely different sports schedules. It’s a nightmare to keep everything straight and people on time everywhere. I prefer stuff on my phone calendar so it alerts me prior, but my wife writes everything on a paper calendar on the wall. And not everything makes it to the other calendar. Above the stove has not been considered, however; just one in the downstairs hallway.
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Sep 20, 2021 03:55
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spf3million posted:A TV... over the... stove? Getting into groverhouse territory.
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Sep 20, 2021 04:21
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re: Calendars, has anyone gotten the Google Calendar integration with Home Assistant working? I've tried following guides (eg: https://siytek.com/home-assistant-google-calendar/), but I don't know if stuff has changed with Google or I hosed something up with my Google account, where I don't get quite the same options. I should make some time and give it a serious go. The right options are probably there, I just need to find them. Meanwhile, happy with my pellet stove automation. Just need to decide which way to go with temperature sensors. So far it's just triggering in the morning (at different times depending on if it's a workday) if it's lower than 10C out. odiv fucked around with this message at 04:49 on Sep 20, 2021 |
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Sep 20, 2021 04:38
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