People had a habit of leaving the basement lights on here. Now they turn themselves off after a timer expires, and also whenever nobody's home. Using HA and a cheap Shelly relay (chosen for form factor), I was able to do this while retaining the existing lighting circuits, light switch, and the lights themselves.
It works perfectly, is completely local, and the end-user UI is completely natural. Toggle the same plain-Jane light switch that has always been there at the top of the basement stairs and the lights change state. (UI doesn't get more intuitive than that.)
Or: Fans. This house has a good furnace and central aircon, but the ductwork doesn't really extend upstairs. By default, this makes the upstairs-parts very hot in the summer and cooler than I'd like in the winter -- even though it's nice downstairs during all seasons.
I fixed that to my satisfaction by putting a fan on the landing that is controlled by an inexpensive smart switch, just to improve circulation. HA runs this show; the fan runs when the HVAC is doing something, and whenever people are home and it is either too hot or too cold upstairs (based on a temperature sensor). It's not a perfect solution, but it's kept the temperatures sane (and provided logging to prove it), it was cheap to implement, and it is cheap to run.
I already had the parts kicking around; it just took software and time.
(The best option for efficiency and comfort is probably installing mini-splits up there, but... sheesh, that's into the realm of orders-of-magnitude more expensive. Maybe some day.)
Ultrasonic tank & river level monitors, with temperature compensation and a battery fuel gauge - managing to make a 3000mAh battery stretch almost a year. Some of the river monitors use LoRa.
Remote control to stop/start the previously pull-start generator
Gas bottle level monitors
Made the coffee machine dangerous
And my current project is seeing if I can make solar/battery powered LED bulbs that I can hang on trees and use BLE to make them automatically turn on some distance ahead of you as you walk down the long path through the forest, and turn off once you’ve passed.
I only really got started a few months ago, and my approach is far more breadboards, DuPont cables and superglue, because I know damned well that the moment I go “ok I’m done let’s get a PCB” I’ll decide on a modification.
Anyway. I don’t have enough good things to say about ESPHome. I get to save thousands of euros, and have fun at the same time. What’s not to like.
I'm just hoping it stays cheap as a hobby
At home my eyebrows went halfway on my forehead seeing that there is a remote and the remote is supposed to be my mobile! Need to download the app for it, connect the fan to the Wifi, but it also had bluetooth for some reason. No way Jose!
Yet, it was so incredibly stupid like 4K zoom camera in a hammer that I had to try. Carefully. Data collection notice in the app shop is not promising, not at all. Location data, ID, I do not remember in full but perhaps contacts too? Unsure, but a lot. Anyway, will not enable access to most, airplane mode on, no bluetooth device in sight, so went ahead and installed the app, router disconnected from the internet, then run it.
First thing: refusing access to location. App: sorry, you cannot use me if I cannot access your location, network, and my mothership. And it stops. Big laugh, delete the whole thing. Leaving feedback for other customers about this incredibly stupid intrusion.
Then I got answer from Phillips! Something along the line: "This is for the best interest of our customers, we need your precise location so we can share personalized pollen and climate data and whatnot, we absolutely must insist this!"
For a fan!
Meanwhile the fan has physical buttons on it, can adjust speed, timer, and the cycle. Not completely useless. However some buttons need two press to register the action once. Beeps twice, does thing once. Likely some interference with The App, need to make sure that I am in the same room with the fan with a warning press and then the real press, or whothef knows what was in the head of these guys when they put this piece of thing together!? But really, are they nuts? Ruining use along pollen data?!
Are we already living the movie Idiocracy when it is about the Phillips product design department?! Did they loose all sense with reality? I am sure they already pushing through some new AI function for this very fan and are sad that mine cannot connect to the mother ship through satellite or something just so the update can be pushed to it learning my breath patterns for optimal fan speed. They are nuts! They are nuts!
Bluetooth could be there for initial setup.
To connect the fan to WiFi you have to somehow get the WiFi credentials to the fan. There are a few ways to do that.
One of the most common is for the device when it has not yet been set up to make itself available over Bluetooth. The app can then connect to it and give it the WiFi credentials.
Another common way is for the device to create its own WiFi network with a name that the app can somehow recognize. The app can then find that network, connect to it, and use it to talk to the device.
I don't think this is as popular as the Bluetooth method, probably because it used to require that the user go to their network settings and connect to the device's WiFi network. Plus, when they are connected to the device they are not connected to their "real" WiFi which could disrupt other apps.
However, newer Apple and Android mobile operating systems provide ways for applications to change the network connection in the background or with minimal interaction, which makes this method more friendly so maybe it will become more popular.
There also are supposedly some IoT devices that use WPS (WiFi Protected Setup), where you bring the device near your router, press the WPS button on the router, then press the WPS button on the device, and magic happens to add the devide to your network. I've never actually had any device I've bought support this so it is either uncommon or I've just been unlucky.
Anyway, from what I've read Philips has used both the bluetooth method and the access point method on their WiFi products.
Premium oscillation package, only $9.99 a month.
Plus, this is more complicated than just doing PWM.
>Everything joined up via a 2-pin and 5-pin connector on the PCB. From there, it was a straightforward matter of measuring voltages and continuity to work out what connected to what: the 2-pin connector was offering 24V DC. The 5-pin connector was what went off to the motor itself. Two of its pins were passing through the 24V DC and ground directly. Two more pins were connected to the potentiometer. The fifth pin was not connected.
And it would have been great if that arbitrary assumption had been tested by the OP and the results were documented in the article so that they wouldn't come off as somewhat clueless as to the limitations of their design.. oh well.
But I also have time-of-day energy pricing, and it would be nice to automatically turn off (or at least slow) my air filters during the 5pm-8pm window. This project inspires me to at least look into the feasibility of adding that functionality myself.
So now I just have them plugged into a few smart plugs with automations in homeassistant
Ten bucks, and completely hacker-proof: https://www.acehardware.com/departments/lighting-and-electri...
$16 if you need a remote control: https://www.acehardware.com/departments/lighting-and-electri...
Or $17 if you want to get all digital and fancy: https://www.acehardware.com/p/3001323
It's been working so well I was actually surprised one night when the dehumidifier in the bedroom turned itself on from the automation (which I have set to do after dark if humidity is higher then 70%).
It had been within tolerance for ages and I just hadn't had to even think about it.
Then there is the series bits x R resistors. The output of each 2R resistor is connected in-between the two resistors that straddle its bit position. So:
Out
|
R
+-2R-bit0
R
+-2R-bit1
...
R
+-2R-bitN
These are relatively uncommon because they are highly sensitive to the resistor (and trace) tolerance, but this circuit is my Euler's identity of electronics: it very literally bridges the digital and analog worlds.
It seems like actual digipot ICs use the "2^n discrete resistors" approach. The IC used in this project is a MCP4141 which explicitly states in section 5.1 of its datasheet that for 7-bit (8-bit) devices there are 128 (256) resistors in a string between the terminals.
I'm a bit surprised this seems to be the best approach, but with IC manufacturing the joint problems of "a bunch of identical components" and "wiring it all up" are much less of a problem than if you were to wire this up by hand.
very expensive, you are committed! :)
you should have gone Full Giertz and added a badd little robot arm that turn the pot.
esp32 are really nice: hundreds of code examples that do what you want without having to read too many pages. did you use ARDUINO IDE or idf.py SDK?
I set ESPHome to use IDF under the hood, you can check out my full ESPHome config for this: https://git.ellis.codes/e/esphome-configs/src/branch/main/vo...
rp2040:
board: rpipico2w
framework:
platform_version: https://github.com/maxgerhardt/platform-raspberrypi.git#develop
version: dev
esphome:
platformio_options:
build_flags:
- -DPICO_VSYS_PIN=29
One caveat about this most people don't know is that most basic fans with a fully mechanical switch always order the speeds from High to Low, so that if you for instance want to turn it on to Low you have to briefly go through High (and Medium). This is on purpose, to briefly supply higher current to the motor for it to start spinning. Some fans might not like it if you start them from an external switch in low, especially larger ones with heavier blades. This also applies to the one in the article, but you can sequence things in software if you have full control of the fan speed, too.
I then recreated the remote control in the browser and had the system both send the right codes when pressed, and also receive any other valid signals (ex. if I used the actual remote) to sync the web ui with the ACs current state.
Personally I'd just use breadboard, it's just a 8 pin IC and a ESP module, for a one-off hack..
I hate soldering but breadboards are limiting.
I have a Vornado fan that I would love to automate with a simple wifi-enabled plug, but due to the digital on/off/speed button, when you cut-off and restore power to the device, it stays off. If it had a dumb analog dial or switch, it would both be fine for normal use, and could be easily, cheaply made "smart."
They do sell wifi-enabled fans; none of them are in a form factor that would fit in my window.
I'm not even alone in this gripe, lots of other maniacs have done the hard work of conversions. Unfortunately I'm not confident enough in my soldering skills to try :\ https://www.reddit.com/r/electrical/comments/vaiskf/bypass_p...