Internet Of Things / IoT / Connected Home / Smart Houses

Aaaand reading more on various subreddits, it looks like it was a bollocks device as well., unless you sank a lot of time into it.

Found this: https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2022/12/20/year-of-voice/

Which led to this: https://rhasspy.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

Will need to now find the time to play with this.

We have a freezer in an outbuilding plugged into a wall socket. Recently the power is being tripped to the building. When this happens there is no impact to my house or the home Internet. Sometimes it trips the fuse for the out building circuit in the house fuse box, sometimes in the fuse box for the outbuilding.

I want to be alerted when there is no power to the freezer. I don't want any sort of subscription plan.

What do I need?

Google seems to thow too many ads to be useful.

If it makes a difference I have a Google Home Mini and we have android phones. I don't have tonnes of free time, but I do have a spare raspberry pi zero if there is a simple solution there.

If the Pi has network (could be cable or WiFi in range if it's actually a Pi Zero W) then configure it as a web server, create a port forward on your router so the web server is publicly accessible, maybe on an odd port, and set UptimeRobot to monitor it - you will get an email when it goes away.

Also get the source of the tripping investigated before something terribad happens.

Home Assistant.

Move your Google Home Mini into the room with the freezer and put it on the same circuit, and set up an Automation that triggers on the state moving to "Unavailable".

The only potential hard bit is figuring out how you want it to notify you. Most of the built-in ways assume notifying some other device, i.e. play media, flash lights, etc.

If you want it to do something like "send me a text message" or "page me", then you'd need to add things like a Prometheus export to Grafana Cloud (free tier) and then use Grafana Alerting to notify yourself, or to trigger Grafana On-Call so that you actually get paged when the power in your outbuilding has been tripped.

I would probably go the overkill way as I like Grafana (and work for them)... but hey, you can achieve the basics with just Home Assistant.

Also get the source of the tripping investigated before something terribad happens.

Also this.

If it's tripping, it's tripping for a reason.

Cheers.

The home mini is quite useful in the kitchen, but I guess I can give it up for a bit.

As for trouble shooting - I agree. But it's a bit tricky at the moment there is tonnes of stuff in there at the moment, what with my stuff and the builders stuff.

I was almost wondering about a super low tech solution - the extension cable for the freezer has a spare socket, so if I could get a low energy light with a really thin flex, then I could feed that into the kitchen window .

Edit: rough layout added.

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FFS I've also just realised that we'll be out all day and a couple of nights soon while builders are inside the house. So will definitely have no way of knowing if anything goes then. Although at least they'll be working inside, and have access to the internal CU.

Home Assistant

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but when putting Home Assistant on a pi - am I right in understanding that the whole pi needs a dedicated Home Assistant OS and that it will be exclusively operate as a Home Assistant?

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It's a Zero W set up as a pi hole, but now surplus to requirements.

When you say:

If the Pi has network

You just mean if it's setup to connect to my Internet, right? (in this case via WiFi).

You don't have to, but it's much much easier to do so. Then it basically manages the entire operating system too (ensures all dependencies are present but that it is as stripped down as possible).

You just mean if it's setup to connect to my Internet, right? (in this case via WiFi).

Yup.

Suddenly wondered if my Deco had a feature to alert me...

Plan is to move a CC Audio into to the outdoor freezer room plugged into the multiplug the freezer is on, then pray it picks up a WiFi signal as it's got a lot of brick corners in the way. Worse case I'll pop it in a tupperwear and tape it outside.

🙏

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This seems like a far too straightforward solution with a disappointing lack of raspberry pis involved.

Ha! I know.

Put a raspberry pie in the freezer to restore balance

The only potential hard bit is figuring out how you want it to notify you

Nah easy - if you have the Home Assistant app on your phone you can receive a notification triggered by the automation.

Also a Zero W will struggle to run Hassio just for the record.

Nah easy - if you have the Home Assistant app on your phone you can receive a notification triggered by the automation

Oh nice, I did not know.

If you want it to do something like "send me a text message" or "page me", then you'd need to add things like a Prometheus export to Grafana Cloud (free tier) and then use Grafana Alerting to notify yourself, or to trigger Grafana On-Call so that you actually get paged when the power in your outbuilding has been tripped.

I used to use Pushbullet for this which was pretty nice.

Home Assistant app can also do it but obviously you need a bit more setup if you want it to work away from home.

Now I need to work out why my Zigbee has packed up on my Home Assistant. Something to do with mqtt stopping working I think but I don't have a clue how zigbee and mqtt and whatever the other thing it is interact.

So I disabled all the mqtt and zigbee shit and installed ZHA instead. Way easier to use, added stuff with no problem and it is nice and clear what is going on. Definitely the route I'd take if you don't need the extra stuff that the MQTT route gives (I don't really know what that is to be honest).

What's the forum approved wired smoke detector? Google Nest Protect? - although I've read that it doesn't have a heat detector, so doesn't comply with UK building regs?

I have Nest Protects... and yet I would recommend FireAngel https://www.fireangel.co.uk/pro-connected/

They do heat detectors, and smoke detectors, and carbon monoxide detectors... and honestly, I trust theirs more than the Nest products, and the connected smart stuff is done in a far more boring way that I believe will be supported for longer.