Internet Of Things / IoT / Connected Home / Smart Houses

I have it in a virtual machine in proxmox, running on an old desktop my wife’s parents were throwing out of their office

Cool.

I've just spend too long working out which version / installation to use, that would also give me Supervisor.

I've ended up with a Virtualbox VM, running on an old laptop - Running on a Pi was just too flakey.

The current struggle is trying to get this to work with Vagrant as the manager, which would make it easier to run as a system service, and to make backups easier.

Put a sonoff zigbee temperature and humidity sensor in every room (€11 per sensor, €66 all in)

Ooh, I've been meaning to do temp/humidity monitoring in my flat and those look perfect. The original plan was to roll my own wired solution using a Raspberry Pi and DHT22 sensors but this looks much less faff.

I'm going to order a bunch (plus the bridge) to try them out in various rooms, along with a PIR sensor, door sensor and a switch (not sure why but it might be useful to play with).

I will still need one wired DS18B20 temp sensor connected to an RPi but that's to go on a single radiator pipe so I can keep track of when the heating has been on, plus the RPi can be used to host the data capture and logging/graphing stuff (no prizes for guessing what).

Is there a Zigbee (or wifi) CO2 monitor that plays nicely with this stuff?

I got two of the pir sensors and love them. I have them set up to control ikea tradfri outlets with lamps plugged into them, one in my living room and one in the nursery, both with identical automations:

When we’re both home they switch the lamp on when motion is detected from 1 hour before sunset to 1 hour after sunrise, and switch them off 10 minutes after last motion is detected.

When home is in away mode however I just have the floor lamps to come on an hour before sunset and switch off at 11pm.

I set up a history tracker and left the heating automation running since Friday afternoon to understand what it was doing, and once the room is up to temperature the boiler switches on very little, approximately half an hour at a time every few hours. I made minor tweaks to the automation and since then temperature has been incredibly stable at 19 degrees with a programmed variance of +/- 0.2 degrees to prevent the boiler switching on and off too much. So far pretty impressed with my diy smart heating for under €100, with loads of scope for increasing the granularity in the future.

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What temperature/motion/contact sensors are people using in their home assistant setups? I picked up a handful of sonoff zigbee sensors and after a couple of weeks of running steadily I had one motion sensor and one temperature sensor drop out last week, and concerned any other drops might cause complications with some automations (particularly a temperature sensor linked to my central heating switch).

Preference is for an off the shelf solution as the diy esp based sensors can be a bit unsightly without access to a 3d printer. Not too tied to protocol, open to WiFi, zigbee or rf.

For this you could use Eufy, that's what we have. No subscription, i comes with a chime that is also local storage. I get a notification when the doorbell is rung which means I can be in the shed and answer it. It will record people coming into our front yard which I can access from phone.

IKEA motion sensor has been ok for me

I find the Hue motion sensors are best out of the ones I've tried (but the price matches that). Temperature sensors in the ones I had were both a couple of degrees out which I had to correct in HA.

I have some Zigbee xiaomi temperature sensors which were ok once set up but required lots of resetting and messing around to get recognised. Nice and neat though, these ones

Yeah I was snooping around for some hue motion sensors but nowhere has them in stock which leads me to believe they’ve been discontinued.

I dug out the tasmotised rf bridge I had from a few years ago and have it communicating with home assistant, so ordered a kerui motion and contact sensor (as they transmit both open and close codes) to see if they’re any more reliable.

I guess temperature is the one I’d like to be sure is rock solid, and maybe a Shelly h&t is the way to go.

As an update to this, sonoff now have a no neutral zigbee module that doesn’t need a bypass in the ceiling rose, will order a couple and see how I go!

Yeah I was snooping around for some hue motion sensors but nowhere has them in stock which leads me to believe they’ve been discontinued.

Can confirm that they have not been discontinued. I'm working with somebody from Hue at the moment and asked them when I couldn't find one a few weeks ago. Well, I found a couple, but at crazy markups. They aren't able to share any more info though. Reading between the lines I suspect they are having difficulty sourcing a component.

Good to know they’re not discontinued! Will keep my eyes peeled for some!

Where the affected temp and motion sensors are within your zigbee network may have an effect on them.

If they are a long way from the hub. We're they using an intermediate (node) device to connect and have you switched that off.

If they themselves are being used as intermediate nodes, is that draining their battery prematurely.

Is HA switching the heating on/ off as a set temperature. On at 18. off at 21.
Or on below 18. Off above 21?

Could you have secondary triggers from the same sensor, or an additional one, a degree either side?

The sensors are an end device and are linked through routers that are never switched off, or at least I’m 100% certain they weren’t when the sensors dropped off.

I currently have the generic thermostat set with 18.8 degrees with a +/- 0.2 degree variance so the heating isn’t clicking on and off too frequently, and it’s working great. It wasn’t actually the temp sensor linked to that which dropped off the network, but I’m now paranoid that it might having had another one drop. I’ve set up an automation to switch off the thermostat if the temperature is below the set point for more than an hour, so worst case my heating just runs for an hour needlessly without draining the oil tank, but I’d like to avoid that if I can.

Good to know they’re not discontinued! Will keep my eyes peeled for some!

I used to think that the Hue motion sensors were way overpriced but it recently dawned on me that I get about three years between battery changes despite having them placed in relatively high traffic areas and they....just....work. Not to mention that they all have temperature sensors built in, which is a weird undocumented feature.

argos had some in stock on 26th but I hadn't been paid yet. feelsbadman.

Selling 8 tado TRVs for £250 posted

Might be missing a couple of the adaptors but these can be had from tado if they're the ones you need. They fit 30mm TRV bodys without adaptors.

@plantasia I think you were interested when I mentioned before.

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Does anyone have recommendations for cheap Alexa-compatible smart plugs? I don’t need anything groundbreaking, just something I can use to flick the kettle on while I’m in the other room, turn a lamp on before I go upstairs, etc.

I have a couple of the Amazon own brand ones which I got when they were on offer. They’re perfect but I don’t really want to pay £25. I’ve flicked through so many of the cheaper ones but don’t want to have to mess about setting up another app or whatever.

Good to know they’re not discontinued!

They've definitely not been discontinued because there's a new version, the new ones have a little switch on the back:
https://hueblog.com/2021/12/01/philips-hue-improves-its-motion-sensor-with-new-technology/

There are some which claim to be the new version for RRP on Amazon but they have the old pictures:
https://smile.amazon.co.uk/Philips-Hue-Wireless-Control-Accessory/dp/B09CV78GV1/?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_w=s0681&pf_rd_p=1fe80900-e3ba-4195-8ead-13e4d1eaae30&pf_rd_r=R1MQCKN8CA254H4M6ZFE&pd_rd_r=122b3de7-379f-4443-81d5-2b7c1835b68f&pd_rd_wg=VDuYW&ref_=pd_gw_ci_mcx_mr_hp_atf_m

I think the low stock/availability are due to the old stock being sold off but the new stock not hitting yet (I could also do with a few!).

sonoff now have a no neutral zigbee module

Interesting. The reviews I read seem to prefer Shelly, partly due to some possible overheating issues with Sonoff relays which may or may not burn your house down, so you might want to look into that!

I can recommend the TP-Link Tapo ones which reckon they work with Alexa, although I'm not an Alexa user (they work well with Google Home and Home Assistant though):
https://smile.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07Z942YWS/ref=pe_27063361_485629781_TE_item

Current Amazon price of £12.49 might seem cheap but I paid £7.99 for my last one in December.

Does anyone have any experience of using WiFi light bulbs in metal enclosures? I'm making some new lights for my living room using polished Strand Part 23 theatre lights. I'd like to use WiFi switched bulbs, but I'm concerned the ali light body will act as a Faraday cage.

TP link/Kasa/Tapo would be my recommendation too. Work fine with Alexa (although you'll probably have to set the app up to get them working with Alexa from what I remember).

FWIW my hue bulbs run flawlessly in Anglepoise lamps where they’re deeply recessed. Aren’t those theatre lights made of aluminium? If so you should be fine