You are a kindred spirit. I have: 2 pi NTP servers - one running a GPS hat + PPS wired up, one using a USB gps receiver. a "workhorse" pi - 2 wired ds18b20 temperature sensors, cron jobs, email generators, weather page generator, connectivity monitor. One pi running piubos + nextcloud. One pi running as a clock. One pi running as a wireless temperature receiver. a few floating pis running media center or retropie or other things... just swap in the right USB stick and run.

Good souls. I took the time to setup a highly accurate stratum-1 not server only to find my ISP permanently blocks udp 123.

Can a VPN pass that, further loading up the Pi?

A vpn won’t help you with inbound, since any packets marked as destination port 123 are simply dropped. That time server is simply for my own purposes now and can’t contribute to the pools.

I was meaning a remote VPN that the Pi connects to. Possibly a bit overkill.

Could use a pi to automate emailing isp staff every day nagging them about the blocked port.

Just curious, what kind of cron jobs are you running?

I just went to look at my crontab again. Some highlights (lowlights?):

- Turning lights on/off around the house, because I found cron to be a more reliable scheduling agent that the one built-into my Wave software when I first set it up.

- Testing network performance (ping times to various locations)

- Fetching a mail account and processing the messages for an automation I have setup for some things.

- Updating online weather services with data from my weather station.

- Kicking off data gathering/update jobs.

You know, cron is simple... but so directly useful.

I moved some stuff out of cron into systemd and although it worked, it was over-complicated in an infuriating way.

I realize systemd is useful, but the implementation is like trying to navigate through a teenager's bedroom trying to find something.

He told it: random ones.

Maybe there should be a help group for people like us?

We need help. Possibly ways to acquire new models pis early, or get volume discounts.

Just curious, what kind of firewalls are you running?

pfSense [on Netgate appliance] for me.

>2 for weather monitoring (one directly attached to sensors, one that aggregates the data from a few sources and provides reporting)

So, I hear people doing this alot. However what exactly does this help with? Like, is the extra information really more useful than just the standard old TV weather forecast?

I do this primarily because I'm a weather geek. I don't _need_ this at all.

I do find it interesting to see the differences in temperature (and humidity, etc.) in the microclimate around my house compared to the city and greater metro area.

I also use the data to measure the performance of my home's HVAC system. Doing this _does_ require real-time local temperature and humidity data. But again, this is all for fun.

I just enjoy it.

What sort of sensors are available? Just the stuff off the pi site?

For temperature only I prefer the 18B20 sensor. They’re very easy to interface with and they can be at the end of very long wires.

Adafruit has a bunch of sensors that work over the i2c bus; they’ve included python code for accessing the data as well, which makes it easy to get started.

There are sensors out there for everything. Absolutely everything.

https://www.adafruit.com/product/1782

You can integrate just about any sensor into a Pi depending on your knowledge. (any sensor you find on sparkfun would work for someone with a little determination)

>I just enjoy it.

That is as good a reason as any!

How does the data benchmark the HVAC? Or are you actually combining weather + HVAC data to benchmark the home envelope (e.g. insulation)?

Good question.

I'm really benchmarking the system against itself, year on year, by comparing the weather outside vs. performance (output temperature of the HVAC unit, average temperature inside the house).

I'm not trying to find an objective efficiency rating so much as monitor performance over time to see if it's changing.

I see, I guess I didn't even consider the performance might meaningfully fluctuate.

It can be really useful for determining the microclimate. The landscaping & gardens in your yard can live or die from it.

> Z-Wave home automation via ZWay:

Whats your success with this? I am not referring so much to the Raspberry Pi part - but the actual ZWave protocol and whatever mesh network it creates. Is it reliable? Or do your lights flicker on and off randomly?

I have used mostly light switches, dimmers, and a few isolated relays, plus home power monitoring.

My experience is that it has all been rock solid. I’m using most GE branded in-wall light switches and they’ve been very reliable for me. Misc other brands for the other modules.

I’d recommend it.

What sort of equipment are you using for monitoring your HVAC system performance?

Just temperature monitoring, really. I have sensors measuring temperature right at HVAC input, output, attic temperature, as well as home interior temp and outside temp and humidity.

be interesting in weather monitoring, could you describe it more detail

I have a Pi connected to a BME280 breakout board that I got from Adafruit (https://www.adafruit.com/product/2652). It's also connected to a Dallas 18B20 temperature sensor. The sensors are outdoors in a small actively-ventilated enclosure I made. The Pi is indoors, and the wires run through the wall.

Why 2 temperature sensors? Turns out the BME280 runs about 2°F hot, and the 18B20 is right on, so I end up using the 18B20 as my primary temp sensor.

Every minute a cronjob runs and the Pi takes readings from the sensors and stores them locally.

Then, I have another Pi that, every minute, reads those values and stores them in a long-term database (I have about 5 years of weather data at this point). The long-term database is running a custom Rails app I wrote to report on the data and show graphs, compare weather over years, etc.

In theory this could all live in a single Pi, but for various legacy reasons I ended up with a dedicated Pi for data processing, and a dedicated Pi for data gathering.

Seems like a Pi is overkill for a few of these, why not a micro?

Absolutely overkill for most of these things, but I've been managing linux servers for 20 years now and find it really easy and fast to get a Pi up and running to do what I want.

There's also some efficiencies from having everything on the same hardware platform.

But mostly it's just comfortable for me.