Internet Of Things / IoT / Connected Home / Smart Houses

I've seen mention of this elsewhere but couldn't figure out if it worked as a USB interface to zigbee or was for something else. Is it just a matter of plugging it in and adding zigbee2mqtt or something else. If the former I'd certainly be interested if you're willing to post (obviously I'm happy to send over some cash to cover that).

It's a while since i done it but don't recall it being too difficult. Had philips and innr bulbs, and a raft of xiaomi sensors and buttons working nicely with it

The hue bulbs and Xiaomi sensors will probably be the main use. I'll drop you a pm

Started having a play with Home Assistant again in the past few days. Managed, pretty easily albeit clumsily, to get my hue lamp to show a different colour depending on the temperature in the flat.

Last time I played with it I never really got a dashboard I was happy with, will have to look into that a bit more.

I still need to get these things in the post for you, apologies for the delay!

No worries. My post is shocking at the moment anyway, some stuff turns up in a few days, some stuff is delayed by weeks.

Continuing my efforts to modernise my air conditioning controls, I used a NodeMCU + DHT22 combo to make a remote temperature & humidity sensor. I set up docker, and an InfluxDB container on a Raspberry Pi and I'm now sending readings to it every 5s. I also just spun up a Grafana container to visualise the data.

Setting up InfluxDB & Grafana was a total breeze compared to getting the ESP8266 talking with the DHT22.

I'll probably just throw all this away eventually and set up Home Assistant, but it's been fun.

I'm quite enjoying playing with home assistant. It seems much easier than when I previously used it with most stuff being done through the GUI rather than loads of text config files. Yesterday I set one up for instance where the fan comes on at 11.30 but only if the temperature is above 19 degrees. Took about two minutes to do.

It doesn't seem to be updating my location properly though. I suspect the app probably isn't updating when it's in the background but it's a bit difficult to test.

It doesn't seem to be updating my location properly though. I suspect the app probably isn't updating when it's in the background but it's a bit difficult to test.

Your homeassistant location, or your (mobile etc... device) location?

Mobile device location. It reports it correctly when I'm at home but the test stuff that I have set to be triggered when I leave the house doesn't work.

I can't check what is happening without using my phone though, which will probably cause the location to update.

Which platform are you using for tracking? I've had qualified success with gpslogger, nmap_tracker and unifi

One thing that I have found is that the logging is fairly good in HA

It's device_tracker from the HomeAssistant app. The battery life info doesn't update either so I suspect the process is being killed on my phone.

I've never used the home assistant app - gpslogger can use a number of different GPS loggers, and nmap_tracker and unifi are all based on router / wifi controller.

Looking at it quickly, it's because I've not updated in quite a while - they seem to be calling everything integrations, not components now. How confusing.

I've installed it now though to have a look.

Have you added logging for it to logger.yaml?

Turning off the battery optimisation on my phone for that app seems to have resolved it, although not sure what impact that will have on battery life.

GPS isn't too power hungry, is it?

I'm looking forward to trying the app.

Once I've fixed everything that just broke after upgrading just now.

It shouldn't be but my battery is already pretty crap.

However, it didn't solve the problem so I'll need to look into it a bit further. Can get it working via wifi connection state but I think what I'll eventually look at is the bayesian sensor that evaluates multiple conditions.

Looking at Eero routers as they have HomeKit support... which I think is good. Anyone have any experience with a similar set up?
Will need more ethernet ports than they have so will need a switch thing, I'm lost with those...

In my experience perfectly basic £25 switches seem to be fine for home use. I have a few and none have ever been the cause of a network problem.

Only issue with them that I have had was one that was managed (had a web page admin and you could ssh into it as well IIRC) with various settings.

Problem was that, due to this ^, it needed its own IP address that defaulted to the same static IP as my router and DHCP server. Totally killed DHCP on the network making it hard to actually login to the switch and change its IP address to being a DHCP assigned one.

It also kept forgetting that it was now a DHCP client and reverted to the bad IP. Very irritating.

Will need more ethernet ports than they have so will need a switch thing, I'm lost with those...

as @aggi said, just get something bog standard
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Linksys-Business-Desktop-Gigabit-Unmanaged/dp/B00GQAT07W

8 port gigabit unmanaged switch. Linksys are owned by Cisco. Fit and forget

You could get any of the usual suspects too. Netgear, TP-Link etc.

@aggi @mashton cheers for the replies chaps... sounds like I need an unmanaged switch as I don't even now what DCHP is, let alone what to do with it.

Added to basket, cheers!

yep, unmanaged definitely. you just want something to add the number of ports, you're not fussed about traffic routing, throttling etc. unless you have a specific need

Yeah, thats exactly what I need - just more ports. All traffic will be managed by the Eero hopefully and my Virgin router will have WiFi turned off and just be in modem mode. Thanks again!

I spent 20 minutes last night trying to get one of those connected Ikea bulbs linked to homeassistant with the turning it on and off half a dozen times to reset it technique.

I ended up googling the model number to make sure it didn't require a different setup and discovered that it was just a normal lightbulb and the connected one must be in another drawer somewhere.