Internet Of Things / IoT / Connected Home / Smart Houses

Might look into it to double up using the new person entity but really wifi detection has been working fine for the past week, and unfortunately the missus has an iPhone.

We've also gotten rid of alexa and I'm looking into trying mycroft on the last spare pi I have.

Balls, this random hue bulb is still turning itself on. Seems to turn on at 1230pm which seems unlikely to be one of my routines and seems a bit exact to be a random error.

Next step is to see if this reset procedure works ... https://github.com/mozilla-iot/wiki/wiki/HOWTO:-Factory-reset-a-Hue-bulb

devices will only be made smart/automated if there is a genuine benefit to it

shows the state of the front door

Does Not Compute

Lives in a mansion and the butler doesn't always close the door.

Ah, so the door state can control the butler's electro-shock neck collar? Clever.

If the door opens when neither of us home we know to panic, or else the dog has learned to open it. In which case we panic.

Or more likely the sensor is buggered.

note to self, go on the rob through windows

Lol I think the benefit to state sensors is just to satisfy myself that I have in fact closed the door on my way out, while I'm sat on the train and awake from morning autopilot. And also to make sure they are still working and ready to trigger automations.

Got any geo-location triggers? I had a bulb turn itself on randomly and it seemed to be triggered by a return home turn on the lights automation. Took days to find that as I did the turn off one thing at a time and see if it’s fixed approach.

I suppose another option could be to consolidate automation bits to something like IFTTT as much as possible, which does log triggers. Anyone jumped on a half price google home max?

I started my IT career at what was then called the Census Office now ONS. The ‘coder’ would mark their program on coding sheets and a typist would enter into a card punch terminal and the cards would be punched with the code. We had decks of 1500 cards to load into the reader. They were numbered and they were loaded into a hopper. You were VERY careful not to drop them.
Also did quite a lot of work with paper tape. That was hilarious and made great Christmas decs around the office.

Habit has done that for me for the last 30-odd years. Same as training myself to always turn off lights.

Don't get me wrong, if I had more time to play with this stuff I'd go bezerk with sensors and my phone would let me know the state of everything in the house. But for now I'm happy to get up and switch lights on/off :)

I still prefer to switch lights on and off with a wall switch when I need them, hence getting rid of hue. I've committed to not automating lights again until there is a good method of doing so while keeping standard switches. I'm hoping the wifi relay in the light crown will be the solution.

I've considered basic sensor lights before but can't be bothered with them.

No geo-location triggers and nothing on ifttt activity (the only other automation should be on the Hue app so far as I'm aware).

A lot of my lights were already on a timer (used to be home at irregular hours and travel a lot so it was convenient to have them on a schedule all the time) and Hue makes that much more convenient. It makes it easy to flick them back on again if I'm still up when they go off either with a physical switch (all rooms with Hue have the switch), remote control, voice or phone (phone is barely ever used). Add to that the motion sensors in the hallway to just flick the lights on for a couple of minutes as I walk through (and they have the real switches covered by the Hue switches, although they're rarely used).

Has anyone got any power monitoring stuff working (something like this https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00JIMQP6Y ) through home assistant or similar? I feel I should look into it at some point.

Would be really neat to have something like that which you could supplement with power meters on individual plugs.

There's also meant to be technology that identifies appliances by what appears to be their power signature.

Looks like there are options for this such as https://halfforked.wordpress.com/2018/05/18/low-cost-house-power-monitoring-with-pzem-004-for-home-assistant/ but no nice plug and play options available in the UK.

I interviewed at a company doing this back in 2010 but didn't want to move to Cambridge to didn't take it any further. Probably wouldn't have got it anyway...

Free Google home mini if you have a Spotify family account. I've just applied for it. Will a smart speaker revolutionise my life?
http://www.techadvisor.co.uk/new-product/mobile-phone/spotify-premium-family-free-google-home-mini-3693733/%3famp

Today I spent some time questioning my smart speaker on whether there is a term for a female cow. It will revolutionise your life.

Will a smart speaker monetise my life?

Yes.

#youaretheproduct

I don't know. I hadn't really wanted one until I saw the fact it was free.

Here's to talking about anything important in the shed from now on...

Has anyone got any power monitoring stuff working .. through home assistant or similar?

Yeah, I have a similar Efergy power monitor hooked up to HA. Or I did - it seems to have fallen off.

This kind of thing? https://www.amazon.co.uk/Efergy-Technologies-ELITE-CLASSIC-4-0/dp/B001Q1G4WK/

A quick google seems inconclusive as to whether it still works with HA or not. Will be interested to hear if you can get yours working again.

I also saw this which does electricity and gas and should work with HA
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Loop-Energy-Electricity-monitors-tracker/dp/B00YNCJB3S