Re:Ask HN: What do you automate in your life and work?
by acidburnNSA on Monday October 28, 2019 @11:17AM
(#21377720)
Hardware:
* Raspberry Pi (I've since moved to a Ubuntu server, but Pi was perfectly capable on this entire setup)
* Aeotech Z-wave z-stick (for controlling the wireless sensors)
* Lots of z-wave sensors (door, motion, temperature, humidity, flood, one that listens for my smoke alarms going off, a whole house power sensor in the circuit breaker box, ...)
* Lots of z-wave switches (some where I replaced light switches with smart switches, others where I just piggied a z-wave relay between the wall and the thing)
* A few Phillips HUE lights for fun color BS
* an old 433 MHz temperature sensor that the previous tenant left without the weather station (read through a $5 USB TV receiver)
* Another Raspberry pi sitting on my stereo hooked to Snapcast to pipe synchronized wifi audio throughout the house from a single source.
* Mopidy as the central music server to pipe stuff through Snapcast
* OpenWRT router running some scripts for presence detection
* Cellphones via web interface for control
* Also a fun little LED dot-matrix display for fun displays
* A few Amcrest IP cameras (with cloud crap disabled)
Software is very Home Assistant heavy, with lots of little auxiliary scripts, some home-built, many others from other enthusiasts. The central community is the Home Assistant crew. But also:
* MQTT on a remote MQTT broker ($5 VPS) for communicating with external devices (like my mom's house and my cellphone when off-site)
* Owntracks for GPS-driven automations
* Self-hosted e-mail (totally unnecessary, just a hobby)
I think that's about it.
For getting started, yeah just start small. Get a z-wave usb stick and a pi and a few little sensors. Hook it up to your stereo and wifi and start fiddling based on the examples from home-assistants forum and docs. Then it just slowly bootstraps up to something elaborate, if you're enjoying it.
* Raspberry Pi (I've since moved to a Ubuntu server, but Pi was perfectly capable on this entire setup)
* Aeotech Z-wave z-stick (for controlling the wireless sensors)
* Lots of z-wave sensors (door, motion, temperature, humidity, flood, one that listens for my smoke alarms going off, a whole house power sensor in the circuit breaker box, ...)
* Lots of z-wave switches (some where I replaced light switches with smart switches, others where I just piggied a z-wave relay between the wall and the thing)
* A few Phillips HUE lights for fun color BS
* an old 433 MHz temperature sensor that the previous tenant left without the weather station (read through a $5 USB TV receiver)
* Another Raspberry pi sitting on my stereo hooked to Snapcast to pipe synchronized wifi audio throughout the house from a single source.
* Mopidy as the central music server to pipe stuff through Snapcast
* OpenWRT router running some scripts for presence detection
* Cellphones via web interface for control
* Also a fun little LED dot-matrix display for fun displays
* A few Amcrest IP cameras (with cloud crap disabled)
Software is very Home Assistant heavy, with lots of little auxiliary scripts, some home-built, many others from other enthusiasts. The central community is the Home Assistant crew. But also:
* MQTT on a remote MQTT broker ($5 VPS) for communicating with external devices (like my mom's house and my cellphone when off-site)
* Owntracks for GPS-driven automations
* Self-hosted e-mail (totally unnecessary, just a hobby)
I think that's about it.
For getting started, yeah just start small. Get a z-wave usb stick and a pi and a few little sensors. Hook it up to your stereo and wifi and start fiddling based on the examples from home-assistants forum and docs. Then it just slowly bootstraps up to something elaborate, if you're enjoying it.