Smart Home
Retrofitting the existing home with smart home functions is easier than ever today. However, due to the multitude of standards and available software components, choosing a suitable system is not so easy.
Smart Home Radio Standards Overview - Comparison
Activate light scenes via smartphone, retrofit switches, control the heating, record temperature and humidity data or react to them. If you want to add certain smart home functions to your home, you can choose from a wide variety of manufacturers and technologies. In the absence of a uniform standard, there is plenty of choice: The market in the smart home segment is literally flooded. Some manufacturers rely on open standards, while others cook their own soup, link their devices to their clouds... ... continue reading
Smart-Home-Plattform - ioBroker vs. Home-Assistant
For home automation, there are numerous different standards and a large number of different platforms. Open source platforms often offer the possibility to connect different automation standards with each other. As an example, a small mini-computer, a Raspberry Pi or a NAS equipped with multiple receivers could control different automation solutions via one platform. ... continue reading
Home Assistant Docker Conbee 2 and Zigbee2MQTT / deCONZ
Thanks to numerous integration options, Home Assistant is a simple platform for controlling a wide range of smart home devices. Compared to ioBroker, I found it much easier to get started with Home Assistant. While for ioBroker I was still searching for which frontend I could use for my dashboards, with Home-Assistant I had a ready-made system out of the box. Home Assistant's Lovelance dashboards can be easily clicked together in the GUI and adapted for special customizations in the code edito... ... continue reading
ioBroker install - Docker
With ioBroker different automation solutions or devices can be combined in one system. To address specific gateways or devices, different adapters are used in ioBroker; ... continue reading
MQTT - Broker in Docker
MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetry Transport) is an open network protocol for transmitting messages between devices. An MQTT broker, like the open source Mosquitto server, is a simple solution to receive data from SmartHome devices or to control them .As an example, I use MQTT with an ESP32 microcontroller to have it send values to the MQTT broker, which can be retrieved via the MQTT integration in HomeAssistant. In addition, I use the MQTTBroker to communicate my Zigbee devices via Zigbee2MQT, see... ... continue reading
Zigbee2MQTT vs deCONZ and Phoscon
Both Phoscon and Zigbee2MQTT are programs for controlling a Zigbee gateway, like the Conbee 2. The primary task of a Zigbee gateway is to connect and centrally control Zigbee devices. After initial difficulties with stability, Phoscon worked relatively well for me recently, but after more than a year of deCONZ and Phoscon I switched to Zigbee2MQTT.One reason for the change was a dimmer switch, which I did not get stable under Phoscon until last: Sometimes it worked, sometimes not, see also: Conb... ... continue reading
Home-Assistant Display - Weather Station and more
After integrating more and more switches, lights and temperature sensors into Home Assistant, I had the idea to replace my classic weather station with a display for Home Assistant. I used an old cell phone, the Home Assistant app and a frame from the 3D printer as the display. ... continue reading
Home Assistant + DIY Microcontroller + ESP Home (Docker)
With ESPHome it is very easy to program your own microcontroller for use in HomeAssistant. My first use for a self-programmed microcontroller was to record the water flow and temperature values of my heater, see: www.script-example.com/topic/arduino. Although I was able to program the microcontroller relatively quickly, not least thanks to numerous examples in Arduino, the implementation with ESPHome is even easier. The program code with similar functionality in ESPHome has, compared to my Ardu... ... continue reading
Monitor water meter, record consumption: ESP32-Cam
First of all a big thank you to the creators of the "AI-on-the-edge-device" digitizer. The project allows to digitize the water consumption of an analog water meter with a 10 € cheap ESP32 cam. I describe exactly how this works in this article. ... continue reading
Commissioning Zigbee2MQTT in Docker - step by step
Zigbee2MQTT is an open source Zigbee bridge which can be easily integrated into existing smart home solutions thanks to the MQTT network protocol. As an example, Zigbee2MQTT combined with MQTT broker Mosquitto and Home Assistant can collect, display, record and control data from Zigbee devices. The setup described here uses Docker as a base. Manufacturer's website: https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io ... continue reading
Conbee 2: Phoscon deCONZ - Docker Startup | Review
With the small USB stick Conbee2 I extended my NAS with a Zigbee gateway. Conbee2 can be installed on Raspbian, Ubuntu, Docker or Windows. ... continue reading
Grafana: Docker - visualize data and define alarms
Grafana is a web application for visualizing data. With Grafana you can create nice charts or define alarms in a few minutes. ... continue reading
InfluxDB: Time series database in Docker
An InfluxDB database is a database optimized for time data. For visualization InfluxDB is often used in combination with Grafana. Note: This article refers to InfluxDB version 1, information about version 2 will follow soon. ... continue reading
Monitor systems: Monitoring in HomeAssistant with Glances
For collecting system data from other operating systems, HomeAssistant offers Glances integration, among other things. Glances is a terminal program for monitoring system status such as CPU, memory or disk usage. The additional WebServer mode allows to retrieve the status without SSH. For information about the integration in Home-Assistant, see: Home-Assistant. ... continue reading
