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If you fancy an iot related giggle, I can wholeheartedly recommend @internetofshit on Twitter
An example, car related to fit in here:
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Well, I went down a rabbit hole, so my thoughts on this are many and diverse.
I noticed that IKEA has started selling window sensors for €10 and thought this might be a good way to automate my “turn the heating off” scene. Who’s got the time to do that manually, eh?
Then I remembered that the Swedes also have physical smart buttons, so I could get one of those for the bedroom and use it to activate “good night”, i.e. lights out and heating down. I’ve decided to try banning my phone from the bedroom again and using the iPad that lives in the bedroom to activate the scene seemed counterproductive.
However, SOMRIG is fugly and wouldn’t work with my TRÅDFRI gateway anyway, so I started looking for alternatives. Flic 2 starter set for €95? Possibly, but are there decent ones for much less?
Of course, I noticed at some point that beyond Thread, there is now Matter, so it might be time for a new Apple TV 4K which supports that and can replace my current one as a hub for Apple Home. Hang on, how much cheaper is this generation in the US than in Germany? Oh, there’s probably going to be a new one before July? Right, let’s check the rumours!
Anyway, what could I do about my windows - see, I hadn’t completely forgotten about those - with Matter that would be more elegant than the IKEA sensors? A smart window handle that is lockable without a key, you say? Lemme just check if I can install one without damaging the frames. And why is it 1:30 in the morning?
To be continued… probably.
Ah yes, the usual
luckily, since setting up home assistant, I no longer care about whether any system, sensor, switch, whatever will talk to any other system. compatibility is no longer a concern. everything talks to home assistant anyway. So I don't have to give a damn about Thread or Matter, either (despite having the apple tv and homepod mini). Because, while the promise sounds good and everything, I still find it way too limited and many implementations are, honestly speaking, hot garbage. Watching youtube videos of actually adding matter devices into apple home, I'm always astonished at how bloody awfully slow that whole spiel works - if it does work. It's insane. also I don't like the apple home app lol*
I've even already replaced some of my automations that were living inside their respective "gated communities" (i.e. not leaving e.g. hue or homematic) with automations running in home assistant - i.e. having to come from outside those systems, simply because it's so much easier to set up, edit, navigate and I have so many more triggers.
Yes, home assistant is more work - but considerung the pains even some of the closed systems are, well worth it imo (everybody has to decide that for themselves ofc).
regarding actual window sensors: I still have a few homematic IP "hidden style" window sensors with an optical sensor that live inside the actual little hollow space between outside-frame and window (see attached pic). Never installed them, though... originally wanted to use them to prevent the rolling shutters from lock us out in the garden when they automatically go down, but never got around to actually doing it. not an issue, since we're in bed at 10 anyway... and also wouldn't work, because the door would probably no actually be wide open. no use for heating either, since the underfloor-heating is too slow for that. I'm still surprised that that kind of idea wasn't adopted by more / other systems - probably because it's much more expensive than a simple magnetic reed switch.
* as posted somewhere else, I'm actually in the process of throwing out my apple homekit secure video camera / floodlight thing, because it keeps disconnecting and being a general pain in the ass. many times, the clips that get stored on icloud (exclusively!), simply won't ever load... and since the camera seems to be offline for long stretches of time anyway, it seems pretty pointless anyway.
edit: I think we may be in the wrong thread for this.
also: is there no smart home shenanigans thread on finalgear???
edit2: actually, there is this thread: https://forums.finalgear.com/threads/iot-and-related-gizmos-honey-i-bricked-the-house.3556522/ which sort of feels like a "Random Smart Home Shenanigans" type of thread, so I'm going to take both of our posts and quote them over to there. And will also link some other more specific threads that are sort of smart home related in there as well, just for fun.
Since we got a new garage door and the wall switch (which runs off a pair of AAAs) they delivered with it is fuck ugly, I decided to browse around and found that there’s a plug and play homematic module that only costs 50€, lets me control the thing from existing hm switches I have (or from my phone), runs completely locally and integrates well with home assistant (no idea what use that’ll be yet). Win win win. Plugged it into the motor (mini USB lol wtf), power cycled the thing, registered in my homematic hub - done. Completely foolproof and painless. Impressed.*
* especially since homematic stuff usually tends to be a bit fiddly…
the ESP32 boards I have just plop up a in HA a few seconds after flashing, since they run off the USB - which the NSPanel does not.
that's the ESP32-based non-pro model - hence why ESPHome is probably as easy as it is. However, that process you see there (uploading the TFT that tells the display what to do / show) failed and it's now only showing me a lovely little error message. Oh well, AGAIN!
about flashing: I was fairly hesitant about my cabling job, but I stuck to the guide (see here) and it actually worked out perfectly. Yes, I just stuck a 5er bar of header pins into the corresponding holes on the PCB and kept a little sideways pressure on the whole thing through the attached wires and did the GND-bridge over (to the second GND-pin of the backpanel-connection because someone somewhere posted about issues otherwise). also: i stuffed a piece of foam behind the PCB to keep the header pins from reaching through to the metal backplate of the display (the guide advises wedging something in between as well, to keep the PCB lifted up).
since I already had so much fun with this, I finally got around to flashing AWTRIX to the ulanzi smart clock (which is basically an ESP+temp/hum/light-sensor with an 8x32 LED matrix display) I've had lying around for a while now. since it now connects to home assistant via MQTT, I can basically have the damn thing show and do anything I want... which should be good fun. The standard setup for the display is a combination of an 8x8 icon (which can be animated) followed by numbers/text.
Ha, I have their water meter reader thing. But don’t use their software at all. Home assistant all the things!
Yeah that’s quite good! We’re at ~130W during the night, or thereabouts.
That was my first reaction to the water meter as well lol - we use a lot! We’re at about 250l/day average since I got the unit. Minus the smelly pubescents, so I’d say that’s a good match
lol and I just ordered two more of those things because the German ulanzi store doesn’t have their coupons in check
Instead of edit5: … no idea why but it doesn’t do that anymore. Maybe that was some weird sun situation thing, I dunno…Edit4: hm… now I gotta figure out how to teach the damn thing to not detect my car in the driveway as a new event every few minutes
