Home Automation

I'm looking to get some smart light switches/dimmers (zigbee or matter if that's relevant), and one of the requirements for me is that if the switches aren't connected to the network, they would behave like regular dumb switches/dimmers. No one ever advertises anything except the "ideal" behaviour when it's connected with a hub and their proprietary app and everything, so I haven't been able to find any information on this.

So my question: is this the default behaviour for most switches? Are there any that don't do this? What should I look out for given this requirement?

I'd like to make our front entryway lights motion sensing. However the wiring is a little complicated. And I'd like the lights to be operable normally if the automation doesn't work for some reason.

There are three light switches: one by the front door, one up the staircase at the landing, and one at the back of the entryway at another interior door. My favorite switch is the CloudFree motion sense switch, running Tasmota, but I don't see it or a similar switch available for three-way wiring.

There are two light fixtures: One hanging lamp, and one track light. The bulb in the hanging lamp is hidden, so although I could swap it out with something smart, it wouldn't be easy to just put a motion sensing bulb in there. And the bulbs in the track light are some small/unusual base, not something I can upgrade.

How would you automate the lights? Grateful for any ideas!

Here, we provide the way to add any Philips Hue devices on Google Home app for smart Home Automation.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/20112075

I have two type-k thermocouples with breakouts from Adafruit, attached to a ESP8266 (Huzzah I believe). My oven was very old and didn't come with a temperature readout or any kind of preheating status (but thankfully also no builtin WiFi). The Tasmota device reports to HomeAssistant, which stores data in InfluxDb, which I can then chart in Grafana.

Here you can see the internal temperature got to 151F, and I was surprised to see how much the oven's temperature rebounded after I took the cakes out, despite being off.

The recipe is "Chocolate Lava Cakes For Two" from NYT Cooking. It's one I make semi-regularly, pretty quick on a weeknight and delicious. I have small ramekins so the recipe makes three and they cook a little faster than the recipe's would.

SwitchBot has released a new firmware update (V1.4-2.3) for the Hub 2. The previous version was V1.4-2.2.

Key improvements:

1. Resolved some known issues (unspecified)

The new spec ... allows manufacturers to connect devices directly to the internet.

Enshittification comes for all.

Hello peoples,

We've had a Canary home security system since its crowdfunding days. They never did much to improve the experience, chances of connecting during critical moments (and/or recording similar) seemed to go down and down, sensors were unhelpful ("air quality is bad" Okay, HOW is it bad?) and all of the ads in the free version makes me feel like they're always looking for a way to monetize me and my data. I finally canceled my subscription this month and am looking for a replacement solution.

Here are my requirements:

• Wide-angle camera with night vision and audio via a hardwired network port. I can connect from camera to network/NAS/etc

• Self-hosted. I have a NAS that could help with recording and can deploy a raspberry pi† – but also I could get a turnkey box if that's better. No cloud solutions unless I'm hosting the cloud and can do end-to-end encryption.

• Viewable live footage from my mobile device, even when not in my home wifi network

• Motion sensing and recording for up to 24 hours' worth of motion instances

Here are the nice-to-haves:

• No systems built by a Chinese company that is prrrrobably a front for their government and/or could contain their own backdoor code

• Extendable to bring in future cameras

Any advice from you Thunderbirds would be f-a-b. Thank you!

† I am not a complete newbie when it comes to assembling/flashing a raspberry pi – I have set up easy things like a Magic Mirror and an Octoprint – but I'm also not a Linux guru. I'd like something that's mostly deploy & forget

SwitchBot has released a new firmware update (V1.4-2.2) for the Hub 2. The current version was V1.2-2.0.

Key improvements:

1. Resolved some known issues (unspecified)
2. Improved Wi-Fi connection stability

Personal experience: After updating, I encountered a temporary issue with the Matter implementation. Temperature and humidity sensors were reporting 0.0 values in the Apple Home app for about an hour post-update. However, this resolved itself without any intervention after approximately an hour.

I picked up a couple of these fans for my home, and after some initial setup quirks, they're working reliably with Matter and HomeKit. HomeKit lets you adjust fan speed and oscillation; you cannot adjust the oscillation angles. These fans can push a lot of air if you want, and on lower settings they're totally silent while still providing a pleasant breeze.

Folks are discussing it on that other site, but since I don't use it, I wanted to post some things here. Hopefully so DDG/Google/Bing can still find useful results. Someone can link Redditors to here if they want:

• Pairing and control (when not responsive): Any HomeKit pairing and control issues could be because the Govee app cannot be open or running at the same time. I have to force quit the Govee app on my phone in order to get it to relinquish control to HomeKit. I hope Govee figures out how to remove this limitation, but I don't use their app so I don't care too much.
• Hard reset instructions: The Reddit thread (and Govee website!) have it wrong. To reset the device, you have to hold the Mode and Timer buttons for 5 seconds. This is mentioned on a little paper insert they included with the fan.

I recently got a touch screen panel, 1280X800, and the screen is on 24/7 (which is fine). The only problem is it's in my peripheral vision when I'm at my desk and it by default cycles through some stock images when not in use. The image changing catches my eye easily, and it's just a little annoying. So I decided to put a single static image on it.

Does anyone here have any static image you keep on your wall-mounted displays when they aren't in use, or any ideas for such an image?

I was going to fall back on just disabling the image all together and have the actual interface showing, but that's boring.

I was thinking of something related to my home, saying like the {surname} household, or maybe a picture of my cats or something funny, I am not sure either way.

I figured some of you here might have thought about this already and might have some good suggestions.

Hi, moved to Italy and live south in rurale area where I bought house. I want to setup domotics at home using KNX and Openhab. I can't find decent online shop. UK is not an option as I'll end up paying customs. Anyone can recommend a good shop?

I'm looking for door & window contact sensors and motion sensors to replace an old Simon 3 ADT security system. I've read a lot of posts and such and I'm still having a hard time picking out sensors that will work with an existing Smarthings v2 Hub (currently used for lights) and eventually Home Assistant once life calms down a bit more and I have time to go through all the setup. As I understand it, matter/thread support was added in the v3 hub so I don't have this on my ST v2.

I'd like to avoid anything from Amazon and locally functioning sensors are preferred.

Can anyone advise on how to pick good devices? There seems to be tons of info out there, but I'm having trouble sifting through it for the info I need. This is a surprise for a family member who has been considering replacing an older system. I'd like to get it in place before they have the chance to buy a crappy, locked down, spyware riddled system from a company like Amazon so that I can be sure everything will transition smoothly to Home Assistant later.

Are there any individuals or services that will build a custom air quality sensor from individual components for a fee? I am mainly interested parties in a couple humidity+temp+co2 boxes (wifi,zigbee,zwave or cable)

(Airgradient is prob ideal but too expensive)

So, what I want to do is basically to be able to publish some of my own IR remotes at home to some public database, very probably IRDB. Of course I'd also be using the device for automations and so on, which I know it works great at that. But my main goal is to make it possible for people to not have to buy a stupid remote for some old hardware they have.

From the docs, it seems like it is possible.

Do you have any experience on this?

Hi there, i recently got 50 NFC tags and these things are amazing for making shortcuts and the like, so i need any ideas and uses you guys already have for these!

I currently use one for my Bluetooth headphones to connect, one on my work phone for call forwarding, one for my battery charger to set an alarm and one on my washing machine to set a timer for when it's done.

Any ideas are appreciated!

We've heard about multi-sensor ESPHome projects, like a presence sensor using PIR and mmWave Radar, also installing lux meters, temperature/humidity, etc. The GPIO pins are there, so why not?

I'm curious to hear if anyone has tried running a sort of multi-zone system of different sensors. That is, rather than colocate all of the sensor elements in the same housing, mount the sensors in different locations or rooms, connected to the project board over a longer cable run, like maybe old, disused CAT5, CAT3 or CAT1?

I had an idea where I might make a network of temp/humidity sensors. I have a discarded spool of CAT3 UTP cable. It'd be easy for me to pick a central spot in my home for a hub, and run CAT3 to several rooms through a convenient crawlspace I wonder if i could extend VCC, GND and digital I/O pins to sensors in those other rooms over those hypothetical CAT3 runs? Maybe use a level shifter and common 5V & GND rails off a power cube? I can see analog sensors being an issue because you'd need to figure the voltage drop over the distance, maybe.

It could even use RJ11 or RJ45 terminals in printed housings at each end to keep things neat.

Has anyone tried this? How'd it work out?

I followed this video to make my Home Asssistant accessible from everywhere, and yeah, port 8123 is fully clear to me, I've done it, it works great.

But he also talks about port 443, and when he sets it up in the router instead of choosing 443 on both WAN and LAN he goes for 443 to 8123. Why? And which one is the WAN and the LAN one? His router config has completely different names to mine, and as you can tell I am quite a noob at this.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/12979137

I made an ESPHome external component for the VCNL4010 proximity sensor.

Hopefully it's of use to someone.

Which switches can you recommend?

Can you get them in bulk for a cheaper price?

What's the advantage of the zigbees? I can get both bulbs, wifi and zigbee for ~5 bucks.

I tried reading a lot of articles/ posts. This is all confusing. Some write zigbee is better with battery because wifi lamps need to stay connected with wifi. But the zigbee lamps need to stay connected with zigbee (however they communicate. must be waves as well) as well, does it consume less power? What's the range of these hubs? Wifi is available everywhere. Do I need multiple hubs?

I want to connect them to home assistant, so arguments like zigbee can be better automated should fall short as well, right? I already have one wifi lamp which is automated enough for my taste. What shall I more automate than turn off at x and turn on at y.

And I haven't even read properly into zwave or matter.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Hi. I live in a housing cooperative. Am considering a solution for connecting some Doors and booking function to a central hub. What are your experiences there? For example I have a yale doorman that has the possibility to be controlled via a hub. Thankful for tips and recommendations

Any low power security cameras that would recommend with night vision and decent quality? Ideally non-smart without a cloud option as I would like to connect it directly to an offline server with a cable or wifi (although not having a wifi might be better)

I have a bit of an unusual application for a controllable switch. I have a small accent lamp on my bedside stand that runs on mains power and uses an inline switch on the cord to control a 25W bulb. The lamp is one of those salt lamps that throws a warm, candlelight-like light which is great for nighttime lighting. I use it in the middle of the night as a night light since it doesn't disturb my sleeping spouse, or wake me up so much i can't get back to sleep.

I would like to make control of this light available through Home Assistant so I can include it in automatons and scenes. Adding it to my Z-wave or ZigBee network would be ideal. I have a spare Zigbee receptacle switch that could do the job, but it's not the best solution. With the power control relocated to the receptacle, I would need to leave the lamp switched on full time at the cord switch, and toggle it exclusively through HA. I would forego the convenience of switching the lamp from bedside without my phone where, frankly, I don't need those distractions at night.

Looks like a company named Swiidinter made a product in 2015 that fit my needs. I found a blog post about a drop-in replacement cord switch with onboard Z-wave and a manual switch, and which would integrate into HA natively. It looks ideal, except it's not for sale anymore. At least, I can't find it for sale anywhere. Not a new problem, hey?

https://www.vesternet.com/blogs/smart-home/swiidinter-cord-switch-at-vesternet

Is anyone aware of a similar product still currently on the market, or any projects out there that could fit the bill? I'm considering just adapting a mini smart receptacle to an inline form, but I don't like messing with mains powered DIY when I can avoid it.

Thanks for any leads! If I do end up making a project of this, I'll try to take some notes on it to share here.