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Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

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Re: Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

#251

Post by Fiahil »

bduerst wrote: post #74
Fiahil wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [...] Currently running a HP G2 [...] Great, except it's fucking huge and noisy. I'm running a kubernetes cluster on a pair of raspberry pi and a 4-bay NAS as storage. What kind of lunatic would store data on a single, non-redondant, disk or an SD card ?

Pi's don't have SATA or PCI - what's the I/O of the drives? Is it noticeable?

Something like 30MB up/down, drives are mounted directly inside kubernetes pods with NFS or iscsi depending on the application. Not noticeable, everything else is loaded from memory.

Re: Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

#252

Post by ThatPlayer »

mobiuscog wrote: post #250
bmurphy1976 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All my lights have a physical switch or button. The smarts come in subtle ways: 1. Turn lights on 45 minutes BEFORE sunset at any time of year 2. Turn lights on and off at specific times, automatically adjust for Daylight Savings Time (I'll never have to listen to my wife complain about the lights needing adjustment again) 3. Start warming up/cooling off my house BEFORE I get home from vacation 4. Double click a butt…

> All my lights have a physical switch or button. Maybe it's just the UK, but I struggle to find any suitable physical switches that both look like a normal light switch but also function with smart devices. I understand the benefits of some automation, but if there isn't a 'normal' switch that works completely 'as expected' for the family to use, it's not worth the trouble.

What do you consider 'as expected'? Personally I want switches that will turn off when flicked down, and turn on when flicked up. On the other hand, 3 way switches have already broken that rule so instead, toggling a switch will always toggle the light regardless of its position.

If that toggling is okay with you, I've heard good things about Shelly which you can use to convert a regular switch to be smart. Otherwise I'm looking at GE Enbrighten switches which looks to keep the switch itself in a neutral position and have two buttons on the up and down rather than being an actual switchable switch.

Re: Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

#253

Post by not1ofU »

Semaphor wrote: post #240
not1ofU wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you dont mind, do you have some link to hand that you used to set that up? Edit: - sorry, nevermind, I should have read the rest of the comments, there is a link below this comment (at time of writing)

I don’t see a link, so here’s the post I used: https://jamesachambers.com/new-raspberry-pi-4-bootloader-usb... Make sure you use the right adapter, I got an enclosure at first that wasn’t on the list, and it ended up not working. I switched to the recommended StarTech 2.5″ and everything worked.

Thank you

Re: Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

#254

Post by swah »

tomxor wrote: post #192

Unless it magically cleans and tidies everything I really don't see the appeal of home automation. Pressing a switch is far more convenient to me when walking into a room than fishing out a smartphone - whether it be through a raspberry pi or otherwise. Same with central heating, I rarely need to adjust it and I don't see the appeal of messing around with some integrated interface, i'd rather an old fashioned radiato…

Yes - I bought two triple-switch wifi-connected switches and only installed one of those. I rarely use it - the only automation that I could leave on for years was "turn the living room led lighting at sunset". This one works because it doesn't make a diference if other lights are already on, etc. Its "robust".

Every other idea failed in some "corner case" I had not thought about (eg turn off all lights as midnight - until one day you have guests at midnight etc).

You would have to add more and more sensors and logic for that to be robust enough for cases like this. (Or Alexa would get smart enough to confirm with you before applying that logic.)

Re: Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

#255

Post by bmurphy1976 »

mobiuscog wrote: post #250
bmurphy1976 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All my lights have a physical switch or button. The smarts come in subtle ways: 1. Turn lights on 45 minutes BEFORE sunset at any time of year 2. Turn lights on and off at specific times, automatically adjust for Daylight Savings Time (I'll never have to listen to my wife complain about the lights needing adjustment again) 3. Start warming up/cooling off my house BEFORE I get home from vacation 4. Double click a butt…

> All my lights have a physical switch or button. Maybe it's just the UK, but I struggle to find any suitable physical switches that both look like a normal light switch but also function with smart devices. I understand the benefits of some automation, but if there isn't a 'normal' switch that works completely 'as expected' for the family to use, it's not worth the trouble.

I'm in the US so I don't know what's viable for you, but I'm using Lutron Caseta switches for my main lights/fans. I've had zero issues with them and they even work without the hub (which I only have so that I can link it to home assistant).

They aren't a traditional toggle switch, they have two buttons (on and off). Personally I find that to be an acceptable compromise and in terms of looks they are some of the best looking switches on the market smart or not. A lot of generic smart switches look like mass produced cheap junk. Lutron actually put a little bit of effort into the design which is nice.

Re: Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

#256

Post by bmurphy1976 »

ThatPlayer wrote: post #252
mobiuscog wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All my lights have a physical switch or button. Maybe it's just the UK, but I struggle to find any suitable physical switches that both look like a normal light switch but also function with smart devices. I understand the benefits of some automation, but if there isn't a 'normal' switch that works completely 'as expected' for the family to use, it's not worth the trouble.

What do you consider 'as expected'? Personally I want switches that will turn off when flicked down, and turn on when flicked up. On the other hand, 3 way switches have already broken that rule so instead, toggling a switch will always toggle the light regardless of its position. If that toggling is okay with you, I've heard good things about Shelly which you can use to convert a regular switch to be smart. Otherwise…

Lutron Caseta switches (which I use for my mains) have two buttons. One on top for on and one on bottom for off. They also have a little dimple so you can feel which is which without looking. It gets a little more complicated if you have a fan or dimmer control but the user experience is still pretty good. Is it as quick and easy as a physical switch? No, but it's about as close as you can get without having a physical switch that actively toggles when it's triggered remotely. I don't know if anybody makes a switch like that. It would be nice but for me personally the Caseta switches are more than sufficient. I've had zero usability issues and no complaints from the wife.

Re: Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

#257

Post by boringg »

solraph wrote: post #223
boringg wrote: post #161

Am I the only one who still has yet to understand the value proposition of a smart home [outside wifi + sonos]? The trade off isn't a clear win to me for me to automate everything else. If it was I would try a raspberry pi set up.

The starter for me was that my solar inverter (Fronious) wanted $199 per year for more than three days history, but exposed a very readable JSON over http interface. I had low watt PC handy (HP Microserver G7) doing nothing, so installed Home Assistant for long term tracking instead. After that, it kind of just snowballed.

I can't believe they would charge that amount for data. I was was pulling solar data in the past as well - pretty straightforward. To be fair it probably took you more time to set up but now that the work is done and maintenance is probably pretty low it should pay off after a couple of years.

What other projects did you look into?

Re: Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

#258

Post by boringg »

xconverge wrote: post #207
brimble wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's kept me from trying this stuff out is a few interrelated factors: 1) There's no possible way setting up and managing this stuff manually is going to be worth it if it only controls a couple things. 2) Doing enough to overcome point 1 seems to begin with "step 1: spend lots of money and time to replace tons of stuff that already works completely OK" and/or a bunch of research (I've used enough AirBnB IoT "actua…

Your math checks out. For me I came to different sums for each bullet point primarily starting at the place of "I do/did enjoy setting it up as a hobby". I also really liked maturing my solutions from a this is fun to hack together, to things my partner actually has said "wow this is actually pretty nice I like it". I have also been very impressed with some of the infrastructure/solutions that the open source communi…

Thanks for the ideas - I think that's how I would have to approach it as well in that I would really want to further explore the possibilities of IoT. I've done some in the past for home energy systems but past energy I haven't seen a lot of high value opportunities. Certainly some things that could be smoother (like your projects).

Re: Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

#259

Post by hassancf »

tomxor wrote: post #192

Unless it magically cleans and tidies everything I really don't see the appeal of home automation. Pressing a switch is far more convenient to me when walking into a room than fishing out a smartphone - whether it be through a raspberry pi or otherwise. Same with central heating, I rarely need to adjust it and I don't see the appeal of messing around with some integrated interface, i'd rather an old fashioned radiato…

Agree with the radiator dial analogy.

Here is what led me to some home automation (scared of water leak damage)

- I had a home security system using some external monitoring the old way

- wanted to be able to see what’s going on when I’m away (alarm would trigger the security company to call me but not a water leak)

- bought Aqara water leak sensors, camera etc, plugged everything and currently use Apple’s HomeKit (Apple TV) with iCloud (2TB cloud with “secure video”) to get notified when I’m on my cell if something goes wrong

- this basic “infrastructure” gave me the basics for home automation where I can configure a bunch of conditions (if this, then that) and buy additional sensors/camera and just add them if I want to…

Not Raspberry Pi. Not open source.

More like a fire a forget kind of thing

Re: Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

#260

Post by hassancf »

boringg wrote: post #161

Am I the only one who still has yet to understand the value proposition of a smart home [outside wifi + sonos]? The trade off isn't a clear win to me for me to automate everything else. If it was I would try a raspberry pi set up.

I wanted to be able to install water leak sensors in the bathrooms/kitchen and get rid of the external security monitoring company by having direct access to my home (and what’s happening there when I’m away).

I started small with the basic stuff and went into more home automation thingies…

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