[DudeWithaFiat]

Good job.

This might be a general question, but with a such a deployment of smart devices, have you thought about security - not physical, but the cyber one.

Ports open to the internet, default credentials etc.

[abhi182]

Originally Posted by DudeWithaFiat

Good job.

This might be a general question, but with a such a deployment of smart devices, have you thought about security - not physical, but the cyber one.

Ports open to the internet, default credentials etc.

Of course, which is also the reason why most of the IoT endpoints I use are blocked at the firewall level from external access completely (including all switches and cameras and NVR (hikvision))

Also, most switches are on an opensource firmware (tasmota)

Most of the processing happens locally with the obvious exception of the Echo, google nest and and Homepods
The few other devices that are allowed access are relatively trustworthy (Logitech harmony, Samsung smartthings , Philips Hue and LIFX.

Access to all systems from outside the home network is either through Apple homekit (which I believe is truly secure)

or via an amazon lightsail VPS routed to the Home assistant server through openvpn. (very secure again)

or via a direct VPN to my firewall (this one is only for very specific needs)

[bigron]

Wow, this is impressive.

You surely must like this whole automation stuff to invest so much time and energy into it, not to mention other resources. I was not aware that home automation could be done to this extent today. The only thing I could relate to was that both your AVR's have pre outs in case you want to use power amps in future :P

More power to you !

I guess switching on the bathroom fan or a pantry light from ones phone or a tablet before I enter that room or knowing that my bulb has a life of 66% and luminescence of 53% must have its benefits, but then I am someone who even forgets to put my phone on charge sometimes at night. I will just have to work these switches manually I suppose.

[NerdyMillennial]

So good to know that some of you guys here have been active in the DIY smart home field, this is so exiting! You have done an amazing job with 75+ devices around Home Assistant.

I have been dabbling in the IoT / Home Automation space since 2013 now. It all started when I found out what an Arduino was and within days of getting my hands on one, I also got myself a 4ch 12v relay module to toggle the lights and fan in my room with. It was a fairly simple setup back then with a TSOP1738 IR receiver, a generic remote and an ethernet shield on the Arduino hosting a simple webpage allowing me to control the devices over the local network!

I then updated to OpenHAB running on RPi for a couple of years but didn't find it intuitive to expand and integrate other components and devices with. That's when I moved to Home Assistant which I have been using since 2 years now.

My setup only has about 10 devices, most of which are ESP12F / NodeMCU based nodes hosting sensors and miscellaneous outputs like controlling LED strips or mosquito repellent etc using rules and automations from hassio , these are running ESP Home. I recently got myself some Sonoff Minis with tasmota and have installed them around the house to convert “dumb” switches into smart ones.

I also tried to Tasmotize and get control of the Wipro Smart Batten as it is an ESP8266 based Tuya product but have not been been able to figure how the GPIOs control the LED strip. There seems to be some Chinese IC with a Chinese datasheet which is handling the brightness and colour temperature of the LED strip based on inputs from the 2 GPIOs that it gets from the ESP.

Have installed the following for control of entities in hassio:
- Hue bridge for Amazon Echo
- Home bridge for Apple Home
- Sonoff RF Bridge running tasmota for RF remotes and devices

I have been wanting to install power consumption monitoring for a while now, your post has only motivated me to further keep working on this never ending project of mine!

Originally Posted by ElonSkum

On a side note : I wonder if DrZzs, on Youtube, is still active in the Hassio/Sonoff game. He was the one who gave me the confidence and the exact know-how of flashing Tasmota on a Sonoff. Without Tasmota or such firmware, Sonoff or any such IOT device of is just a toy.

Yes, DrZzs is still very much active in the Hassio and sonoff game. He has started doing a lot more of longer live stream videos instead of his floating head style ones these days.

[abhi182]

Originally Posted by NerdyMillennial

I also tried to Tasmotize and get control of the Wipro Smart Batten as it is an ESP8266 based Tuya product but have not been been able to figure how the GPIOs control the LED strip. There seems to be some Chinese IC with a Chinese datasheet which is handling the brightness and colour temperature of the LED strip based on inputs from the 2 GPIOs that it gets from the ESP.

Regarding your tasmota issue, you need to figure out the GPIO connections in order to create a new template. And that is actually pretty easy to do.

https://tasmota.github.io/docs/Confi...r-New-Devices/

Regarding power consumption, I initially used SCT013 with arduino but the readings were not very accurate. Now I am using PZEM-004T with esp8266 and the power and consumption readings are well within +/- 2% of the MSEB utility meter.

[maven]

@Abhi182: this is some serious effort in terms of time & money that's gone in to the setup. DIY's once in momentum are very satisfying. that feeling of having created something is difficult to express.


i took some baby steps few months ago, using IFTTT integration for Arlo Pro 2 home security cameras & Ring video Doorbell 2. These turned out to be quite glitch free. Not using Alexa app/Google assistant/Amazon echo tower for either.

Apparently Arlo pro works with HomeKit but after trying several times using the provided literature, the Arlo hub just don't "show up" in HomeKit. Anyway HomeKit seems too fussy to bother + my understanding is that one would need an idle iPad to be kept at home plugged in and connected at all times for HomeKit to work.

Few days ago got a SYSKA smart bulb as a trial knowing they don't work with IFTTT. Wasn't looking for integrating lighting/future smart plugs with Arlo or Ring in terms of an IFTTT recipe.
The setup and automation for the SYSKA bulb was a quite easy 2 minute job. i chose SYSKA because they also make smart plugs so at least would need to open only one app for both purposes.
Come evening the light switched on at the preset time. And here is where the story takes a turn.

I am quite disappointed with the smart bulb in terms of the Lumens and the Colour temperature, which are the fundamentals of lighting.

It is noticeably less bright than the standard LED bulb of an even lower wattage (5W standard LED Vs 7W SYSKA smart). i used the same shade mount/time of night to see the difference. The smart bulb has few million or so colours claimed and it doesn't have a 3000K colour temperature. Complete hogwash. The colour palette & brightness/tone options just don't give the same light output. There is only a normal "white" option which is close to 4500K. Apparently Philips WiZ has "warm white" which would probably translate to 3000K and slider based settings for the "white" tones apart from an unnecessary 16 million colours. i had done a lot of trials for getting the "right lighting" scenes in terms of lumens & colour temperature, including taking the LED bulbs i had and then asking the shops to mount them on their chandeliers / lamp shades in the evenings before making the purchases.

The smart bulb experiment having gone awry, would therefore go with the smart plug route wherever possible for at least few lighting areas since then can continue with currently in use LED's. Smart plugs though are little more expensive but would require no change in existing hardware.

[abhi182]

Originally Posted by maven

@Abhi182: this is some serious effort in terms of time & money that's gone in to the setup. DIY's once in momentum are very satisfying. that feeling of having created something is difficult to express.


i took some baby steps few months ago, using IFTTT integration for Arlo Pro 2 home security cameras & Ring video Doorbell 2. These turned out to be quite glitch free. Not using Alexa app/Google assistant/Amazon echo tower for either.

Apparently Arlo pro works with HomeKit but after trying several times using the provided literature, the Arlo hub just don't "show up" in HomeKit. Anyway HomeKit seems too fussy to bother + my understanding is that one would need an idle iPad to be kept at home plugged in and connected at all times for HomeKit to work.

Few days ago got a SYSKA smart bulb as a trial knowing they don't work with IFTTT. Wasn't looking for integrating lighting/future smart plugs with Arlo or Ring in terms of an IFTTT recipe.
The setup and automation for the SYSKA bulb was a quite easy 2 minute job. i chose SYSKA because they also make smart plugs so at least would need to open only one app for both purposes.
Come evening the light switched on at the preset time. And here is where the story takes a turn.

I am quite disappointed with the smart bulb in terms of the Lumens and the Colour temperature, which are the fundamentals of lighting.

It is noticeably less bright than the standard LED bulb of an even lower wattage (5W standard LED Vs 7W SYSKA smart). i used the same shade mount/time of night to see the difference. The smart bulb has few million or so colours claimed and it doesn't have a 3000K colour temperature. Complete hogwash. The colour palette & brightness/tone options just don't give the same light output. There is only a normal "white" option which is close to 4500K. Apparently Philips WiZ has "warm white" which would probably translate to 3000K and slider based settings for the "white" tones apart from an unnecessary 16 million colours. i had done a lot of trials for getting the "right lighting" scenes in terms of lumens & colour temperature, including taking the LED bulbs i had and then asking the shops to mount them on their chandeliers / lamp shades in the evenings before making the purchases.

The smart bulb experiment having gone awry, would therefore go with the smart plug route wherever possible for at least few lighting areas since then can continue with currently in use LED's. Smart plugs though are little more expensive but would require no change in existing hardware.

Just a couple of thoughts..
While IFTTT is good for testing the waters (easy to setup and use), the response times make it a bit annoying for daily use.le

As for homekit, IMO, homekit has two things that make it one of the better platforms to use (esp if you prefer the Apple computing ecosystem)
One, If you prefer controlling devices from your phone- the tight integration of homekit with iOS makes it very convenient to use on an iphone. This also solves for the issue of firing up an app (or 2 or 3) each time you want to control something as the homekit pop-out is integrated within the control center dropdown on iOS.

Two - In terms of voice control, Siri on the homepod is a lot more reliable / responsive than Alexa although Alexa isn't particularly bad either . Google is a very distant third...

Also, the hub requirement is only for remote (out-of-home ) control of accessories- But any Apple TV/ homepod also works as a hub and not necessarily an ipad only.

As for smart bulbs, i have listed out a bunch of options that I have tried (and no, I wouldn't bother with Syska). My recommendation for a cheap smart bulb would be Solimo without a doubt

[ElonSkum]

Originally Posted by abhi182

In any case, the metadata something like this would generate would be order of magnitude lower than what our smartphones generate and share - so shutting this down while continuing to use my phone would be like leaving my frontdoor open while bolting down the windows

+1 to that. And, it isn't just limited to the smartphone. We will also need to close our google accounts and make sure we are logged out every time we do a Google , or go Duck Duck Go.

Originally Posted by abhi182

PS: The core of this setup is designed to process data locally i.e. if I switch on a light from my app/ something switches on based on another - the entire back to front data flow is on my LAN

This was the very bugbear that made me start looking for alternate firmwares for Sonoff. I found Tasmota. Tasmota took me to Hassio and I was hooked.

Originally Posted by abhi182

In the case of voice triggers, If I use Alexa or homepod to trigger an event, the voice interpretation happens in the cloud (as expected) but the subsequent trigger happens on the LAN - instead of the regular flow

I am so out of this game right now. But, I wonder isn't there some way to download the whole, localized, voice interpreted data locally; might be in highly indexed and hashed format. And, you have the interpretation and look up running locally as well. Let's say the path that Google Maps on phones took.

[maven]

Originally Posted by abhi182

Just a couple of thoughts..
While IFTTT is good for testing the waters (easy to setup and use), the response times make it a bit annoying for daily use.le

As for homekit, IMO, homekit has two things that make it one of the better platforms to use (esp if you prefer the Apple computing ecosystem)
One, If you prefer controlling devices from your phone- the tight integration of homekit with iOS makes it very convenient to use on an iphone. This also solves for the issue of firing up an app (or 2 or 3) each time you want to control something as the homekit pop-out is integrated within the control center dropdown on iOS.

Two - In terms of voice control, Siri on the homepod is a lot more reliable / responsive than Alexa although Alexa isn't particularly bad either . Google is a very distant third...

Also, the hub requirement is only for remote (out-of-home ) control of accessories- But any Apple TV/ homepod also works as a hub and not necessarily an ipad only.

As for smart bulbs, i have listed out a bunch of options that I have tried (and no, I wouldn't bother with Syska). My recommendation for a cheap smart bulb would be Solimo without a doubt

For smart bulbs - i had also read about LIFX. will need to source from US and they are very expensive. Hue isn't cheap either. i want to avoid Amazon. i don't use the echo plus (or whatever its called) at all. it has been lying unplugged for an year now. have some trust issues!

my primary use case is charging points or plugs being switched on and then people at home forget to switch them off. For instance just last night daughter had the iPad plugged in to charge in the afternoon and today morning i saw the charging switch was still on merrily wasting electricity. It's more of an annoyance. I will have to add fans as well to this list soon. As a solution thought i get something where i can remotely switch these off. If you can share thoughts on which smart plugs would make the grade. WEMO is the best option as you listed but i didn't find them on sale in the country.

Ability to control while being outside the house is quite important in my case. We had once forgotten to switch off the geyser last winter and came back 4 days later from a trip to find the deed.

[abhi182]

Originally Posted by ElonSkum

+1 to that. And, it isn't just limited to the smartphone. We will also need to close our google accounts and make sure we are logged out every time we do a Google , or go Duck Duck Go.



This was the very bugbear that made me start looking for alternate firmwares for Sonoff. I found Tasmota. Tasmota took me to Hassio and I was hooked.


I am so out of this game right now. But, I wonder isn't there some way to download the whole, localized, voice interpreted data locally; might be in highly indexed and hashed format. And, you have the interpretation and look up running locally as well. Let's say the path that Google Maps on phones took.

Theoretically possible but would it be worth it?
Personally i am not too concerned about the (worst case) scenario of an amazon or apple using some anonymized recording from my device for feeding into their machine learning database

Esp given that I am neither Lion (the archetypal villain from the 80s) nor a high profile politician

Also, a local interpreter will get dated quickly.
I am more concerned about the speed of the response .. e.g. if I ask alexa to switch on the living room TV and if it takes a second (or two) to do it, Great

But if the wait stretches beyond a few seconds , one starts wondering if the command worked

In my experience:

A) 1-2 seconds: Command on alexa / siri -> cloud interpretation -> Echo/ Homepod -> Local trigger

B) 2-3 seconds (but can vary at times) Command on alexa / siri -> cloud interpretation -> Device cloud API -> Cloud based trigger on device


C) 2-30 seconds Command on alexa / siri -> cloud interpretation -> IFTTT trigger -> Device cloud API -> Cloud based trigger on device

BTW if you use home asst and are on tasmota, you should also look at esphome firmware

Originally Posted by maven

For smart bulbs - i had also read about LIFX. will need to source from US and they are very expensive. Hue isn't cheap either. i want to avoid Amazon. i don't use the echo plus (or whatever its called) at all. it has been lying unplugged for an year now. have some trust issues!

my primary use case is charging points or plugs being switched on and then people at home forget to switch them off. For instance just last night daughter had the iPad plugged in to charge in the afternoon and today morning i saw the charging switch was still on merrily wasting electricity. It's more of an annoyance. I will have to add fans as well to this list soon. As a solution thought i get something where i can remotely switch these off. If you can share thoughts on which smart plugs would make the grade. WEMO is the best option as you listed but i didn't find them on sale in the country.

Ability to control while being outside the house is quite important in my case. We had once forgotten to switch off the geyser last winter and came back 4 days later from a trip to find the deed.

If you read the github link or the OP, I have detailed my experience with the LIFX.
I have 5 of them and The bulbs are really bright . Unfortunately their is something off with their wi-fi stack and it’s a bit of a luck of the draw if you will get a reliable one or not.

If you are OK with a one time expense then Hue without a question.. a little less bright than LIFX but 100% reliable for years!

If you are comfortable with tinkering, Solimo smart LED would be a good pick , else Mi (they have LAN control)

As for smart switch, again, if you are comfortable tinkering, ESP8266 based switches like Sonoff or Tuya flashed to esphome or tasmota else the only viable choice in India would any of the Tuya smart life products on Amazon ( Wipro/ Syska / Hoteon etc)

[ElonSkum]

Originally Posted by abhi182

Theoretically possible but would it be worth it?
=======
I am more concerned about the speed of the response .. e.g. if I ask alexa to switch on the living room TV and if it takes a second (or two) to do it, Great

With respect to voice processing, I am not too concerned about security either. When compared to what people willfully share on FB, Insta, Linkedln and what not, voice commands are nothing.

I am just thinking about it as an engineering challenge. The next frontier! And I have a solid hunch that the big daddies would be already working upon it. With so much processing power in billions of dirt cheap consumer goods, all on super-fast connection, the mesh model I imagine to be the next logical step.

Originally Posted by abhi182

But if the wait stretches beyond a few seconds , one starts wondering if the command worked

And imagine one was showing it all off or justify it to one's mom or wife, who are super fed up with one's tinkering. You bring them in, give some fancy voice command..... 1 sec nothing... 2 sec nothing... nothing... lol that egg on the face moment.

Originally Posted by abhi182

BTW if you use home asst and are on tasmota, you should also look at esphome firmware

I am totally out of that rabbit hole for now. Desperate to dig back soon. I wish the day were 100 hours!

Originally Posted by NerdyMillennial

I have been wanting to install power consumption monitoring for a while now, your post has only motivated me to further keep working on this never ending project of mine!

If you really want to get down and dirty, have time, have a solid DMM, know your way around high voltages, I would highly recommend that you take apart a digital electricity meter, those provided by the electricity discoms. These can be had for literally next to nothing at the scrappers. These meters have optical ports and the data can be easily gleaned by some reverse engineering. Besides, these are highly calibrated and rated for high current. I see you are located in Pune. Juna Bazaar should be your regular haunt . God! I so much miss Juna Bazaar!

Originally Posted by NerdyMillennial

Yes, DrZzs is still very much active in the Hassio and sonoff game. He has started doing a lot more of longer live stream videos instead of his floating head style ones these days.

Is he still taklu? The hair's come back?

[14000rpm]

Smart home Gurus: Elementary question for you - how to connect 2 motion sensors to a LED Strip light?

use case -
I intend to install LED light strip on the Handrail of my 5 mtr long stairs which needs to be triggered by a motion Sensor on the top of the stairs and the bottom.

I can find several LED light strips for the length I need but on enquiry, they say I can't fix a motion sensor to the same.
eg:
https://www.nettilamppu.fi/paulmann-...valkoinen.html
https://en.paulmann.com/p/park-light...4w-black/94556

Somehow I am not convinced I have the right guidance yet.

I don't intend to go full hog on a smart home concept and have it talk to Google Assistant etc. just motion triggered light.

Thanks in advance.

note: I can't program even if my life depended on it.

[NerdyMillennial]

Originally Posted by 14000rpm

Smart home Gurus: Elementary question for you - how to connect 2 motion sensors to a LED Strip light?

use case -
I intend to install LED light strip on the Handrail of my 5 mtr long stairs which needs to be triggered by a motion Sensor on the top of the stairs and the bottom.

I can find several LED light strips for the length I need but on enquiry, they say I can't fix a motion sensor to the same.
eg:
https://www.nettilamppu.fi/paulmann-...valkoinen.html
https://en.paulmann.com/p/park-light...4w-black/94556

Somehow I am not convinced I have the right guidance yet.

I don't intend to go full hog on a smart home concept and have it talk to Google Assistant etc. just motion triggered light.

Thanks in advance.

note: I can't program even if my life depended on it.

Purely based on the products you have linked above, the light strip seems to use an adapter to convert mains 240VAC to 24VDC for the actual light strips at 21W of consumption for a strip of 150cm. The motion sensor however can only work with 12VDC even though it supports 24W of maximum power consumption. So those two cannot work together.

Options you can look for are:
1) Find motion activated switch (similar to the ones linked below) that you can plug normal mains appliances into and then plug the above linked strips into the same.
2) Find 12V LED strips that consume less than 24W for your required length and use them with the motion sensor you linked.
3) Find 24V motion sensor to use in series between the adapter and the lights with the above mentioned LED strips for 150cm.

I see that you are not in India, so I am not aware of your local electrical codes etc, but this is a motion sensor that is powered by 240VAC mains and has a switch that turns on when motion is detected to which you can wire the AC-DC power adapter of your LEDs. Note that installing this product involves working with mains voltage which is extremely dangerous (or even illegal depending on your local code) if you don't know what you are doing.

Something like this (but one suited to the mains voltage in your country since this is a 120VAC version) will be a safe plug and play solution that does not require messing with mains wiring and will work with most products that can be plugged into a wall outlet.

You just need to find the right pair of products to piece together to achieve what you want.

[14000rpm]

Originally Posted by NerdyMillennial

You just need to find the right pair of products to piece together to achieve what you want.

thanks for the Elaborate reply. I live in Helsinki and I am now started to scratch the surface on Smart Home solutions. the response on lighting made me think a lot about what I need and how I intend to use them. The Staircase light use-case is half done for now- Installed 5 Mtr long Hue Light Strip without Motion Sensor. Running Automations based on time currently.

as for rest of the use-cases in this thread- simply wow ! you guys have really gone full-hog.

Below are the use-cases I am working towards slowly.

1. Lights - Started with Hue for table light in Living Room and Light Strip for Staircase. There are many lights still to change.
Challenge -
Hue doesn't have a light bulb for every fixture. I am not looking to change all light fixtures just for the heck of it. Eg: Living room Chandelier- It's a very expensive LED unit which I clearly have no Intention to change.
Solution I am researching about - Smart Switches. Essentially to 'Smarten' Dumb Switches for on/off if not Dimmer too. I see many options in US such as Lutron Caseta, Kasa Smart etc. None have European version and hence aren't sold here as yet. Working on the alternatives.

Sauna This is a simple use-case - Need to know Temperature in Sauna (at home) just so I know when it is ready. There is a Sensor called Ruuvi (https://ruuvi.com/) that does the job. I need it to be integrated to Google Assistant. This is WIP.

Windows
I have Venetian Blinds on Tall Windows. While there are some solutions available already to wind the Winder and turn the angle of the slats, I would really like to Automate rising all the slats up/down depending on time of day. I am not looking to Automate the up/down of slats. Just need to make it work via Google Assistant.
Challenge-
There is no retro-fit solution available to motorize the rise up/down of Slats. Also, most of the Windows in Finland are Double-paned which means the blinds are literally in between the 2 panes which makes it challenging to install Motor inside the panes. Search is on.
Most available Solutions are Full Blind replacement (IKEA) or automating already motorized Blinds.

lots to do here.

AC/Heater
Nest seems to be straight forward answer to change temperature when are are not at home. Sensibo seems to be the most prevalent solution I see around.
This is not the most critical one at this point of time.

Given that we are talking smart homes since 5-6 yrs if not more, I hoped there are several retro-fit solutions for all scenarios. Turns out it is not true.
I don't even find good Consultant to guide amongst available solutions.

I am far away from using voice to activate commands. Will cross the bridge when I get there.

[vj_v3]

Hi, Any RGB smart bulbs available in india that are easy to tasmotize?

I got a philips one last year. it did have a esp8266 inside but was difficult to access the gpio to flash. I had to desolder the top board to get to the esp 8266. the tx, rx pins were diffucult to solder. It did seem like i flashed it but it did not boot up for some reason, i probably fried something. i tried a few times, got fed and gave up. Anything easy under 1000 will be useful. I really want to replace my balcony light with rgb and be able to control it locally.