Internet Of Things / IoT / Connected Home / Smart Houses

And back on Sonos, I discovered this https://github.com/jishi/node-sonos-http-api which allows you to control them through http

Not sure whether it is much easier than voice control but I'm quite tempted to create a button that will start the radio playing.

create a button that will start the radio playing.

IKEA sells these

They also spin to control volume.

Really quite nice.

You do need an IKEA tradfri hub though, which is a bit sucky.

Can bypass their hub by using any system that operates zigbee

Cheers.. I've got a variety of buttons knocking around that I could use. The hue ones are probably easiest and give lots of options

Finally finished off my Prometheus exports for BT SmartHub and Tasmota flashed Zigbee bridge (trying to do it all without using Home Assistant...). I now have pretty graphs of BroadBand speed/usage and temp/humidity around the flat:

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Any suggestions for an outdoor (e.g. weatherproof) zigbee temperature/humidity sensor? I'd like to be able to collect the stats for the outside world too.

Also is there a Zigbee temperature sensor with an external probe? I'd like to ziptie the sensor to a radiator pipe to allow me to detect when the heating is on (or has been on recently).

(I could do both things myself with various Dallas 1-wire sensors but they'd require me messing with homemade ESPHome modules or RPi's and I'd rather just buy something that works).

Or I could do something like this for the outdoor system: https://community.home-assistant.io/t/sonoff-snzb-02-improving-battery-longevity-for-outdoor-operation/280826

And also move the temp sensor on another SNZB-02 to be external for the radiator pipe...

I bought one of these https://www.fenwick.co.uk/home-and-tech/­home-appliances/fans-and-heaters/stream-­heat-cooling-fan/2530020433895.html and it has a eco hearing mode which turns on full great below 18'c, mild heat below 20'c and turns off totally above that... This turns out to be perfect for my office space and the rest of the house is economical.

does this still hold up as a worthwhile purchase? our gas meter is still a prepay in this rental place and pre price rises we were topping up £50 every 8 days on average while heating the house.

I run colder than my gf so would like to heat my study separate to the heating (we have tado but thanks to some fucked thermostatic valves in the rads we have to heat a few unused rooms every time we turn it on as they dont fully close and I spend all day wfh whereas my gf works in the office a few days a week. my study is also the smallest room in the house which should be the easiest to heat with something like this.

A quick couple of minutes in home assistant and I did an automation that turns off the charger when the speaker gets to 99% charge and turns it back on when it is down to 10%. I'm not sure whether those percentages need to be fine tuned for best battery life.

Yeah I'd make it 80% not 99% presuming that the li-ion batteries in Sonos speakers behave in the same way as mobile phone batteries.

I have an automation using a Tapo plug which switches my wireless phone charging disc thing off at 80% to preserve the battery life of my phone long term.

Yes, I think it's set at 30 and 80 now. Although it kept randomly turning on and due to a motion sensor in another room which was pretty annoying.

Can bypass their hub by using any system that operates zigbee

Possibly ;)

I hoped to use Ikea shortcut buttons with Home Assistant because they're cheap, but trust me when I say that try as you might they just won't connect to Deconz/Phoscon using a ConBee II.

I gather that some of the other Tradfri things are more compatible. E.g. I think @mashton might be talking about the Tradfri remote which I think might work (although I've not tested it).

It's all a bit disappointing because by all accounts the Tradfri hub is bobbins.

Edit: Apparently someone got them working last month by holding the button down for a long time:
https://community.home-assistant.io/t/solved-using-ikea-tradfri-shortcut-button-and-tradfri-on-off-switch/405136/13

Cool. The randomly turning on and off is weird though, why do you think the motion sensor is having that effect?

I was talking about the Symfonisk remote:

https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/p/symfonisk-sound-remote-white-60370480/

Fair enough. I had most bits (lights, switches, motion sensors) I tried working on a rasπ-conbee2-webthings setup before we moved. The new house is a project so I've not reinstated the smarts yet.

Still considering whether to migrate to home assistant when I do.

I have a variety of ikea switches, motion sensors, buttons, sockets and bulbs working flawlessly with HA now using a conbee II stick and zha.

Recently added an aqara e1 blind motor and it’s been working perfectly with a Roman blind for a couple of months now, so I’ve bought one for every blind on the front of the house. We don’t yet have blinds on the back but might try the ikea smart blinds system.

Next step though is to try some smart trv’s (either Shelley or Aqara) to complement my Shelly 1pm boiler controller and make my heating more zoned rather than all on or all off.

My own fault. I set up the Ikea sockets in Hue and assigned a room that was no longer in use (I had a lot more Hue lights in my old place and haven't updated stuff to reflect that most are no longer in use).

I forgot that room had previously been controlled by a motion sensor that turned lights on and off and I'd repurposed that motion sensor for turning a tv on. The confusing part though was that the original routine was in Hue rather than Home Assistant so I wasn't seeing anything when I was looking at the HA logs.

Recently added an aqara e1 blind motor and it’s been working perfectly with a Roman blind for a couple of months now

I've been looking at those recently. Somewhat regret not getting more of our blinds electric when we got them fitted (although it was something upwards of £100 per blind which would have been pretty expensive.

The ones I did get done I discovered could be controlled through a broadlink hub that was a fraction of the price of the official thing. It's very useful for anything that uses RF as a controller.

Oh that’s good! Which blinds did you go for?

I’m trying to narrow the protocols in use in my home to WiFi and zigbee to make everything a bit easier to troubleshoot, and just have one Bluetooth temperature sensor left, which will be switched out as soon as a battery arrives for my Shelley h&t.

They are Powershade. Seem to be more of an option from blinds suppliers rather than smart home suppliers.

I'm going to ask a really stupid question

Just bought a Nest thermostat 2nd Gen for not much money and it didn't occur to me about how to power the display/head unit. Is there an internal battery, or will I have to keep it plugged in via the micro USB cable?

If the internal battery is usable, how often will I expect to be recharging it back up?

You’ll need to plug it in. The internal battery is not a viable option. You can buy a stand for it, which looks nice. Although are you sure there is not power where your existing thermostat is?

@small Fair enough - current one is powered by an AA battery and moves around the house depends on where my SO wants it that day hah.

I'l probably have to have a rethink about where it'll live permanently when we get our kitchen done and try and wire it into the T1 and T2 using some 12V straight into the Heatlink. USB somewhere for now I guess!

Might be worth looking into whether a USB power bank would do the job. Wouldn't need to be anywhere near a socket and less hassle than having to unplug it to move around.

Off topic - is there a way to have web pages spoken to me so that I don't have to read everything on my Windows PC ?

I have tried looking, but found nothing outside of iOS or Android.

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

Android has /settings/accessibility/select to speak?