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Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

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Re: Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

#261

Post by late_groomer »

sam345 wrote: post #238
late_groomer wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Home Assistant has been nothing short of amazing. I started out just wanting to control my Christmas lights back in early December; tried going the HomeKit with HomeBridge route, only to realize I needed an iHub or some other (i) device on my network to have it work remotely. It was a bad experience even while on my network, luckily stumbled upon Home Assistant looking for better options a week or so into the journey…

I've had luck running HA and node red on a pi 3 but with 250gb SSD drive, responsive and reliable. I think that's the bottleneck. You can't use SD card. Also must use AC adapters specifically for pi, usually slightly above 5 volts and 2 amps I think. Also pinhole must be on separate device I agree with that.

Yep, I could have made it a better situation with some extra addition$ (I always put my Pi on a quality AC adapter from the start, those constant command line voltage nag warnings had their intended effect), but the cost of the SSD + another Pi is actually more than a used SFF device with a substantially more powerful Intel processor that comes with a M.2 SSD. It's amazing what you can get for < $50 these days. Great time to be alive for us tinkerers!

Re: Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

#262

Post by brimble »

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…

Yeah, I totally get that it works out differently for different people. Maybe I'm just getting old enough that I can smell when I'm looking at something that's gonna become an excuse to spend money, more than anything else ("well now that I have an X, if I just had an Y...") But if I truly enjoyed it as a hobby, different story.

Re: Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

#263

Post by tomxor »

hassancf wrote: post #259
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 (A…

That seems like a genuine application of the technology. It's adding something uniquely useful that wasn't there before; rather than replacing something simple and reliable with something more complex, equivalently functional and marginally increasing convenience (if at all).

A functional low tech, un-networked equivalent for remote sensor notification to identify a specific event cannot exist. So fair enough.

Re: Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

#264

Post by nomel »

lazide wrote: post #133
antsar wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matter is interesting. But... > The project group was launched and introduced by Amazon, Apple, Google, Comcast and the Zigbee Alliance, now Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA). I'm having a real hard time believing that anything user-beneficial will come of this, unless you're willing to sell out your smarthome and privacy to big tech.

Another way to look at this - maybe this is a way to give a pressure relief valve for all the privacy conscious so they stop harassing them so much for the 90% of consumer case that doesn’t care?

I think people are also very unhappy with latency. The only way to get low latency is to keep things local, and for devices to work together, directly. But, people still want remote access.

Re: Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

#265

Post by acidburnNSA »

bredren wrote: post #95
acidburnNSA wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. I've been a huge Home Assistant fan and minor contributor for many years. My house is among the smartest houses I've ever heard of. HVAC control, security system, air quality monitoring, multi-site IT systems monitoring, lighting controls (including LED strips that update to the right color scheme for the next holiday), whole-house networked audio (including streaming off-site if connected to the VPN), on and o…

Have your written up your implementation? What type of air quality sensors have you used and how are they integrated into the home’s behavior?

I have done a bunch of writeups, in this category [1]

The weather station post in particular with the sensors is here [2]

[1] https://partofthething.com/thoughts/category/electronics-and...

[2] https://partofthething.com/thoughts/weather-and-air-quality-...

Re: Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

#266

Post by acidburnNSA »

lostmsu wrote: post #195
bredren wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have your written up your implementation? What type of air quality sensors have you used and how are they integrated into the home’s behavior?

+1 for the air quality sensors question. I only found 1 for CO2 levels, and it is not connected. And even that one costed $120.

Answered here: https://partofthething.com/thoughts/weather-and-air-quality-...

Re: Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

#267

Post by wyager »

rmi0 wrote: post #233
wyager wrote: post #68

I've been doing a bunch of home automation work recently. Here are some observations I've made: 1. Most extant home automation software is totally unreliable garbage. Buggy, slow, poorly designed. You want to reduce the amount of code you pull in as much as possible. 2. Raspberry pis are totally unreliable garbage. The hardware is just bad. There's no way to make them reliably operate for long periods of time without…

I'm sorry but this is just BS. Raspberry Pi are not garbage. With good software, and by that I don't mean barely tested Java or Nodejs HomeKit wannabe services, Pis are rock solid. I'm into SDR (software defined radio.) I have written software which processes 8MB of samples per second, and runs for months without reboot. It means 90-100% CPU load, 100% of the time. Oh, and the same Pi also hosts AirPlay server and ma…

> With good software... Pis are rock solid.

The hardware is crap. The broadcom chips they use are cheap pieces of crap. The watchdog timer doesn't work. They have a tendency to corrupt microsd cards. Power filtering is bad. Remember this? https://www.theverge.com/2015/2/10/8010457/raspberry-pi-2-cr... There have been any number of issues, over and over again. Maybe they've improved some in the last couple of years but my time is too valuable to continue to waste dealing with these pieces of junk.

> Bad software can make any device useless.

Good software can't turn garbage into gold.

Re: Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

#268

Post by arcbyte »

coder543 wrote: post #220
arcbyte wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They only made 150k in all of 2021, so we're seeing the result of that right now. Good news is they're expecting to make 250k in Q1 2022 with 500k planned for Q2.

Source? That sounds like fun information to track.

Looks like I misremembered the numbers a bit. 250k in all of 2021. 150k in Q1 2022. Still planning for 500k in Q2.

https://mobile.twitter.com/EbenUpton/status/1486107991271260...

Re: Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

#269

Post by alufers »

jve wrote: post #137
alufers wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally just flash everything possible with open-source software. All my light switches and Wi-Fi lightbulbs run Tasmota, which I password protect and semi- regularly update. The one odball is my Gree AC unit, which is on a separate WiFi network and subnet (I just run hostapd on my RPi since it's close-by). But it's more to protect it from the outside, not the other way, because it's controlled with JSON sent ov…

How did you find that out? You mean random UDP packet can destroy AC? /me having a Gree unit that is to be installed

Before I got a Raspberry Pi with home assistant, I was trying to write a simple client for this protocol in C so I could host it on my OpenWRT router. Of course my client bugged and sent some random junk which caused the unit to completely lock up, it displayed 88 on it;s display and didn't respond to the IR remote. After this I had to reset it via the circuit breaker.

If I recall correctly, the data was encrypted using a static AES key, and I think the unit checked if the data decrypted correctly, but don't quote me on that.

Re: Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

#270

Post by alufers »

bliteben wrote: post #51
alufers wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally just flash everything possible with open-source software. All my light switches and Wi-Fi lightbulbs run Tasmota, which I password protect and semi- regularly update. The one odball is my Gree AC unit, which is on a separate WiFi network and subnet (I just run hostapd on my RPi since it's close-by). But it's more to protect it from the outside, not the other way, because it's controlled with JSON sent ov…

What lightbulbs do you find are best for running tasmota? I'd prefer not to have to setup a zigbee setup in addition to my zwave.

Smart lightbulbs are crappy, since If you turn them off using a light switch, you can't turn them back on via Wi-Fi. I've installed smart relays (Sonoff mini) behind light switches, which means I can control them localy and remotely at the same time.

That being said, anything that can be flashed using tuya-convert will be good. But beware, because not all Tuya lightbulbs hava an ESP chip inside and they have patched the exploit tuya-convert uses in newer firmwares. So check your model on google.

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