Internet Of Things / IoT / Connected Home / Smart Houses

A bitch?

It's on / off -> s'on off -> Sonoff.

It's like the GPS company Fugawi: Where the fuck/fug are we? -> Fugawi

Can you not just use a WiFi/ZigBee button that initiates a home assistant based preprogrammed timer. Or does it need to be variable?

I'm getting something tomorrow to experiment with. I think I can add the light and remote to hue, but not use the control to control any lights other than the Living Colors (sic) one. Which is precisely what I had hoped to do. Ah well

Hive disconnected again yesterday, after 18 months of being solid it seems the connection is flakey for some reason. Was considering moving the hub but might get a booster instead.

Do I need a hive branded booster or smart plug, or can I use a generic zigbee one?

It needs to be variable. Really due to Alexa no longer having ifttt integration.

Couldn't spot anything from sonoff (or anyone else). I could probably lash something together but I'd prefer something ready made

Is there any way of doing 'smart' zonal control on a central heating system, on a per-room basis, without having the TRV being the smart bit? I'm thinking a binary on/off valve with regular analogue TRV type function.

I tried tado valves for a bit but the constant modulation pressed me off a bit. It's rare that I needed to have one room slightly hotter than the other, rather just totally on our totally off.

You could have a zone valve for each radiator but it would be hard to fit to an existing system since you would need lots of floor lifting and cable running.

Which 'smart' system you run is then a slightly different issue. You can have multiple zone valves with Tado and maybe others but it gets expensive even faster than smart TRVs and there might be a lower limit per system. You could roll your own with things like Homeassitant if that is your thing.

Nice one, yeah I couldn't see any product like I describe but will carry on hunting. I think noise + frequent battery changes was my main gripe with the tado system but maybe a less leaky house will fix the latter a bit, or fork out for a zonal system upgrade.

Woke up to a cold house this morning to discover that the internet went down overnight and as such tado didnt activate the heating. Seems like an enormous oversight for Tado to be designed to be entirely dependent on access to the internet to just switch your boiler on?

The tado forums have lots of people complaining. I think the v3 bridge has the capability for some autonomy but the older ones don't and they don't want different feature sets for different user groups.

Pedantically I think a TRV can call for heat, and so switch your boiler on, without Internet connectivity but a TRV can only get a new target temperature from the Internet or by turning it locally.

You can have local control of TRV target temperature using the Webkit integration. Presumably from Apple things, I've tested it from Home Assistant.

Anyone using an ESP32 as a Bluetooth proxy for HA?

Guess they are all much of a muchness, no?

Need to add Bluetooth to my HA Green that has just arrived.

Finally got around to flashing my Airgradient CO2 monitors (one internal, one external) so they can export the metrics via OpenMetrics.

I can now mount the external one (hopefully I can find a shady spot for it next to a drainpipe - nicely situated next to the existing hole in the wall from the old Sky cables so I run its USB cable easily) and have reliable inside/outside temp/humid/co2/etc.

The indoor one has nice LEDs to indicate various things at glance, plus a little display with the various values on. Makes it nice and easy to spot when CO2 has gone over 800ppm and I should open the window to get some air circulating.

Now have a bit of data. Haven't had a chance to mount the external Airgradient monitor yet, the downpipe I thought was there isn't, so I need to come up with something to mount it somewhere that won't be in direct sunlight.

1 Attachment

Is this Matter stuff worth it? In particular, is it worth upgrading Home Assistant to a new device as it requires 64bit and Pi3 is 32 bit (I do have a spareish Pi4 so could do it without any cost).

Is this Matter stuff worth it?

The entire smart home sector has been asking the same question for the past three years.

The jury is still out, would be my summary. All the key players remain involved, but like all standardisation efforts, it's taking a long time and a lot of trade-offs have been made.

.

I want a device that I can plug into my TV and watch iPlayer etc on. I need to be able to run a VPN on it. I want it to be super simple and quick to use. it's for my son to watch kids shows on BBC basically. And love island.

I don't really want to run a permanent vpn on my router as my internet isn't the fastest and I don't want to permanently throttle everything though a VPN.

What should I do?

Whatever your favourite telly streaming thing is (Apple TV/Google Chromecast/native TV apps) but instead of connecting it to your regular network connect it to something like a GL-MT300N on a different SSID (or even cable). That can then connect to your regular network and run a VPN for the client.

Whatever your favourite telly streaming thing is (Apple TV/Google Chromecast/native TV apps)

I guess that's what I need, I don't have one. Plus the GL-MT300N you speak of.

Thanks will look into it

I guess that's what I need, I don't have one.

There is a lot of personal preference and at the same time it doesn't really matter... We are an Android house so have Chromecast. Roku starts really cheap if you don't want to spend much. I assume iPhone owners splurge on Apple TV but it seems a bit expensive to me, perhaps I'm missing the USP.

I'd get an android one. Chromecast with Google TV (my preference) or Firestick. You can run a VPN on those so long as it has an android app.

I am not sure it's a good idea to buy a Chromecast - they are discontinued so quite likely to be unsupported before long.

There is a replacement 'Google TV Streamer' device - £100 though.

They're still selling them on the Google website so I reckon for £30 you'll still get a fair few years of use. Plus you can easily sideload stuff if something isn't supported.

I want a device that I can plug into my TV and watch iPlayer etc on. I need to be able to run a VPN on it.

I have a firestick with nord vpn on it for exactly this, whenever the kids want to watch cbeebies I just bang it on. VPN is running all the time so I don't have to think about it. Great to have for the few things I can't find in France, like cricket and Julia Donaldson stuff.