early_riser

joined 2 weeks ago
[–] early_riser@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

I use a z-wave thermostat (Honeywell T6 IIRC). If you want to avoid the cloud WiFi probably isn’t what you want. I’d look at z-wave or zigbee models. Some thermostats also require a common wire (C-wire) which means they’re powered by the HVAC system itself rather than using batteries. This is especially true of WiFi models.

[–] early_riser@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

The cameras are connected to a Unifi Dream Machine Pro. Home Assistant is running on a Raspberry Pi 4.

[–] early_riser@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago (2 children)

¯_(ツ)_/¯ maybe. I assumed the detection happened on the NVR (Dream Machine Pro in my case).

 

So the result is a camera that yells 'Doggo!' more or less at random.

[–] early_riser@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

I don't own a yellow but I'm also blind. I'm not sure it would be that difficult to set up physically from what I know. IIRC you just have to slot the compute module in place.

[–] early_riser@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Not unless there's a Home Assistant auto body disposal as well. Also I was wrong, it was a opossum.

[–] early_riser@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago

This is a Sonoff PIR sensor.

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submitted 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) by early_riser@lemmy.world to c/homeassistant@lemmy.world
 

We've been having trouble with ~~rodents (I assume squirrels)~~ in the crawl spaces on our second floor. I decided to stick a PIR sensor on the door to see if I could catch any movement, and sure enough, a bunch of movement around 1 AM this morning. (Correction, it was a possum, which makes sense in hindsight as they're nocturnal).

[–] early_riser@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I'm already running a proxmox server on an old laptop. Maybe I could look into that. I need to figure out USB passthrough for the zwave and zigbee dongles.

 

I've been using the same Raspberry Pi 4 to host HA for years. It's worked well enough, but I worry about the stability of the SD card. I'm no stranger to cards that fail suddenly. Had one fail on another Pi just yesterday.

The various HA hardware offerings (Green/Yellow) use more stable flash storage. Can I swap out one hub for another? If so, how difficult is it? What would I be gaining or giving up by going with HA's offering? I know the Yellow has a built-in zigbee radio and PoE, but you need to buy a Pi compute module. There are also fewer USB ports on both the yellow and the green compared to the pi.

I know I could use any computer to host HA, and thus gain arbitrarily performant storage/memory/other stuff. Is there any advantage to, say, having more storage? What exactly is HA storing besides the history of entity states?

[–] early_riser@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Just installed the Kwikset HomeConnect 620 deadbolt last weekend. It's a Z-Wave lock, which as others have said makes it independent of ~~someone else's computer~~ the Cloud. It has a keypad using tactile buttons which makes quick no-eyes operation easier. It also has a regular key that can be used in the event the smart features fail. It works with Home Assistant meaning you can operate it remotely if you open the right ports on your router or buy a HA cloud subscription.

The only gotcha is that creating and revoking PIN codes via HA/Z-Wave JS isn't straightforward. You have to go into the developer tools and search for the correct action.

[–] early_riser@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

You can buy a zigbee USB dongle and use the ZHA integration to control (most?) Philips Hue products. I can at least confirm their light bulbs and motion sensors work. You add them like any other zigbee device.

Thirdreality might be a better fit than Hue if you're using HA, as they advertise HA compatibility right on the product page. I started home automation with Hue bulbs right after they first came out, so my HA setup was very much brown field.

This is the zigbee dongle I use. It came in a 2-pack for some reason.

[–] early_riser@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I'll look into that, though I was hoping for more of a plug n play solution.

 

First, I have a Kwikset Homeconnect 620 deadbolt. It locks and unlocks fine. I can add codes via the keypad itself but the manual recommends using the smart home hub the lock is paired with, which is HA of course.

I don't see a way to do this in the Z-Wave JS UI.

Second question: I'm looking for a DLNA speaker to use for TTS announcements. I really wish I could just pair a bluetooth speaker with the raspberry pi that HA is running on, but that seems to be difficult to impossible, which is surprising. Is there an integrated (as in not a puck with a 3.5 mm jack) DLNA speaker that y'all would recommend?

Are any of you aware of any of the following. I don't think I've ever seen these but they seem like no-brainers to me:

  • A zigbee/z-wave/matter over thread E-ink display for arbitrary visual or text output. E-Ink sips power, which would be perfect for these low power protocols.

  • Status lights, also running on the above protocols. By this I mean RGB LED arrays that I can program to display different colors to indicate different statuses of things around the home. Like red for bathroom occupied and green for bathroom free, etc. Yes I could get light bulbs to do this but I don't want to use the same thing for both status and regular illumination. This nightlight comes tantalizingly close. Maybe I'm thinking too hard about this? I guess I could just use LED strips, but I'll leave this here in case anyone has any ideas.

UPDATE:

Regarding the granting and revoking of user codes for the lock, I still can't find anything in the Z-Wave UI, but there's an action that can be triggered from developer tools which in tern can by scripted.