Sean's projects, musings and general information
As of version 0.80 of Home assistant, there is a new web hook trigger for automations. I already setup the Git Pull add-on to automatically pull the latest config from my gitlab. However, when I’m building stuff, my workflow goes like this: Add + test new gadgets to home assistant on my laptop Commit +… Continue Reading Home Assistant, Git Plugin and Web Hooks
As a part of my home automation, I want to collect data on our Power, Gas and water usage. I already covered the power usage in a previous post, so this will describe my setup to monitor our water usage. Fortunately, our gas meter (Pipersberg G4 RF1 c) and water meter (Sensus 620) both have… Continue Reading ESP8266 + Gas / Water monitoring
I order a lot of electronics from China. It’s not a problem, I’m just in denial. In a previous post, I described how I linked our mailbox up with Home Assistant (at that time, it was OpenHAB but the connections are the same), so I could be notified when we get mail. We recently bought… Continue Reading Home automation: Doorbells!
A central actor in my home automation system is a Smart Node. These small nodes can: Detect motion Sense temperature & humidity Indicate status with an RGB LED IR Receiver (not yet implemented in software) Parts List To build the Smart Node, you will need the following Wemos D1 Mini, or NodeMCU (Any ESP8266-based breakout… Continue Reading Home Automation Smart Node
AWS held an IoT Contest July 13-17 2017, and this describes my entry (which won! Woohoo!). You can see a video description of this project here. You can also see the page on hackster.io here. This project provides integration between Home Assistant, AWS IoT, and low power devices running on the ESP8266. Â The ESP8266 has… Continue Reading AWS IoT Contest
Tl;Dr: You can use these cheap Wifi RGB Modules from AliExpress/Ebay, and with a custom firmware they will speak MQTT and can be updated OTA as well as used for other features as desired. Download a copy of my custom firmware here, connect with the programming pads in the diagram here, configure Arduino to flash to… Continue Reading Hacked ESP8266 RGB LED Controller
Amazon in the US has a deal, where you can get a small button for $5. The marketing behind the button is, you can press it and it connects to amazon, and orders you a new package of something you have pre-selected. As a geek, all I see is a gadget that is simple, has a… Continue Reading Amazon Dash + OpenHAB for mail delivery notifications
A quick little thing I did as a weekend project was to connect our washing machine to the Internet. The washing machine is in the basement, three flights below our apartment. On laundry day, we occasionally try to rotate loads too early and end up going downstairs before the previous load is done. The washing… Continue Reading ESP8266 Internet Enabled Washing Machine