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My fan worked fine, so I gave it WiFi

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Re: My fan worked fine, so I gave it WiFi

#71

Post by bluGill »

overfeed wrote: post #63
bluGill wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My only fear is my HA box will fail and now nothing works. Most likely because I move and forget to tear everything out. Still something I'm interetsed in

You can run HA in a Docker container and set it to generate backups periodically. If your virtual box (or the host) dies, spinning up a replacement will take up a few minutes, as long as you still have you have a computer capable of running Docker or Podman.

That is no use if my boss says move to different city - there is a lot to deal with in a short time which leaves no time to tear that stuff out. if the house doesn't work for the new owners the courts will make me pay an electrition to make it work.

HA failing is annoying but not nearly as stressful.

Re: My fan worked fine, so I gave it WiFi

#72

Post by [deleted] »

IvyMike wrote: post #56
NegativeLatency wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on your air filter you might be able to just use a smart plug, I went down a similar route this summer before realizing that mine would remember their power state and settings when powered off. So now I just have them plugged into a few smart plugs with automations in homeassistant

I would need a device with a physical switch rather than a touch control. Sadly many devices, mine included, have "power was cycled = device is off" logic.

[deleted]

Re: My fan worked fine, so I gave it WiFi

#73

Post by 05 »

hnuser123456 wrote: post #5

I actually like this idea. Makes more sense than smart fridges. Would be cool if this ESPHome thing worked with RP2350/Rpi Pico 2.

It's there, but you have to configure a custom platform due to politics between PIO and RPI.

    rp2040:
      board: rpipico2w
      framework:
        platform_version: https://github.com/maxgerhardt/platform-raspberrypi.git#develop
        version: dev
    esphome:
      platformio_options:
        build_flags:
          - -DPICO_VSYS_PIN=29
[0] https://github.com/esphome/feature-requests/issues/2837#issu...

Re: My fan worked fine, so I gave it WiFi

#74

Post by regularfry »

gh02t wrote: post #39
dnautics wrote: post #34

This is a very fun project with a corsi-rosenthal filter (a box fan taped to a bunch of normal house filters). To control the fan, you'll have to have some fun with a relay connected to MAINS voltage -- if you dare. The salon power relay hat is a reasonable solution (just remember to get voltage up/on for fail-dead). It's possible to squeeze everything inside of those cheap lasko fans you can get, too, if you want a…

Slightly easier/less mains electrical work required is to just use a smart plug of some sort, and there are multiple options you can put your own firmware on (e.g., Sonoff supports ESPHome). One caveat about this most people don't know is that most basic fans with a fully mechanical switch always order the speeds from High to Low, so that if you for instance want to turn it on to Low you have to briefly go through Hi…

What's odd is that while what you describe is true for fans with a rotary mechanical switch, where you have to physically turn the contacts through "High" to get to "Low", it's also very common for fans with independent speed buttons to put the "High" button next to "Off", with "Low" furthest away. I don't know if that's just a hold-over from rotary switches because people are used to the sequence, or if there's something else mechanical going on inside the switch unit which has the same effect. And on this occasion I'm not taking mine apart to find out.

Re: My fan worked fine, so I gave it WiFi

#75

Post by Ruthalas »

ssl-3 wrote: post #32
NegativeLatency wrote: post #7

ESPHome and homeassistant have been really great, just like a nice breath of fresh air in a world of cloud saas stuff.

Home Assistant does great at tying all kinds of things together. People had a habit of leaving the basement lights on here. Now they turn themselves off after a timer expires, and also whenever nobody's home. Using HA and a cheap Shelly relay (chosen for form factor), I was able to do this while retaining the existing lighting circuits, light switch, and the lights themselves. It works perfectly, is completely local,…

What are you using as your temperature sensors, if you don't mind?

Re: My fan worked fine, so I gave it WiFi

#76

Post by amelius »

NegativeLatency wrote: post #7

ESPHome and homeassistant have been really great, just like a nice breath of fresh air in a world of cloud saas stuff.

Just wait until Espressif gets some greedy shareholders/or some manager that needs a raise and then suddenly you're paying 30% to get your app into the ESP Store.

Re: My fan worked fine, so I gave it WiFi

#77

Post by 05 »

brcmthrowaway wrote: post #54

How much does it cost to get a pcb made with all the components? I hate soldering but breadboards are limiting.

As low as $10 if you all components are from JLCPCB's basic component library. For this board, more since there are some through-hole components and neither MCP4141 nor ESP32 (nor the buck modules used) are in the basic library.

Re: My fan worked fine, so I gave it WiFi

#78

Post by 05 »

amelius wrote: post #76
NegativeLatency wrote: post #7

ESPHome and homeassistant have been really great, just like a nice breath of fresh air in a world of cloud saas stuff.

Just wait until Espressif gets some greedy shareholders/or some manager that needs a raise and then suddenly you're paying 30% to get your app into the ESP Store.

ESPHome isn't really Espressif exclusive, there's Beken support already, which most cheap Chinese IoT gadgets use nowadays. And there are 'made for esphome' products which is a safer bet than buying Sonoff and praying the ESP32 inside doesn't have its secure boot bits fused.

Re: My fan worked fine, so I gave it WiFi

#79

Post by moffkalast »

madaxe_again wrote: post #69
moffkalast wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could tie it to a thermometer and turn it on automatically on hot days. Very cool.

Ideal for a beer fridge. Is today a beer in the sun day? If so, chill those bad boys. Otherwise, save the energy.

Ah yes, buying tens of dollars worth of hardware to save cents worth of power. What being a hardware hobbyist is all about!

Re: My fan worked fine, so I gave it WiFi

#80

Post by pxx »

zamalek wrote: post #46

The digipot is vaguely similar to how a R2R ladder DAC works. There are two resistor values used: R and 2R. The "interesting part" of the circuit has bits x 2R resistors in parallel. One end of each resistor (let's call it input) is connected directly to the digital bit from the PWM sample. Then there is the series bits x R resistors. The output of each 2R resistor is connected in-between the two resistors that strad…

I saw the diagram in the original blogpost, laughed, but after a bit of sketching it out I think we're both wrong. R/2R ladders are useful in DACs (and are really cool there) but don't look like they're used in digipot applications.

It seems like actual digipot ICs use the "2^n discrete resistors" approach. The IC used in this project is a MCP4141 which explicitly states in section 5.1 of its datasheet that for 7-bit (8-bit) devices there are 128 (256) resistors in a string between the terminals.

I'm a bit surprised this seems to be the best approach, but with IC manufacturing the joint problems of "a bunch of identical components" and "wiring it all up" are much less of a problem than if you were to wire this up by hand.

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