Home Automation

30/12/201930/12/2019

Taking the old ceiling fan for a smart spin

I have recently bought a Brilliant Smart WiFi Ceiling Fan Controller for a bedroom ceiling fan in our house. This is a Tuya device but I wanted to avoid signing up to the Tuya cloud service to operate my ceiling fan under all circumstances. In this article I just wanted to share a few learnings and observations.

28/09/201922/11/2019

Illuminated Stairs

This project is a simple IKEA hack that I wanted to share because it just looks great. The lights are integrated into Home Assistant and are fully automated – no light switch necessary.

18/04/201918/04/2019

All Green Lights on Cable Modem Connection Status

While I am still waiting to be connected to the NBN I have had quite a few shorter outages on my existing cable Internet connection, and wanted to improve the way Home Assistant recognises and deals with the loss of connectivity.

12/03/201903/06/2019

Smarter Swimming Pool 5: Under the Surface

My ESP8266 based device that is measuring water temperature, water level and liquid chlorine level is happily running for quite some time now.

However, the eco-system around Home Assistant and ESP has evolved, and I just wanted to quickly share how that has changed the setup of my smart swimming pool.

02/02/201931/03/2019

Fire Danger Rating

Each time I drive past our local fire station I see that fire danger rating sign and take a quick look. Wouldn’t it be great to have this information right in your favourite home automation system?

17/01/201919/11/2019

Hold your Breath for this Air Quality Sensor

Recently I discovered the luftdaten.info project that provides a simple blueprint for measuring particulate matter, and in this post I am sharing how I built and set up my own device and integrated it into Home Assistant.

14/03/201818/03/2019

Smarter Swimming Pool 4: Liquid Chlorine Level

My pool requires a regular influx of liquid chlorine that is stored in a large drum next to the automated chlorinator. Every couple of weeks I have to replenish that drum, otherwise the chlorine concentration in the pool water gets too low, and algae starts growing resulting in green-ish pool water. Needless to say, this has already happened a couple of times in the past and each time I had to pour in more chemicals to clean up the mess and wait a few days until the water was clean again.

10/11/201718/03/2019

Smarter Swimming Pool 3: Water Level

Water disappears from an outdoor swimming pool over time – naturally through evaporation or through a small leak in a pipe that is hard to detect. To some degree rain helps to balance the pool water level, but sometimes you will have to top up manually. If your pool is constructed like mine, then if the water is below a certain level, the pool pump will be unable to pull enough water, and instead you get air into the pipes with unwanted consequences. Filtering water is not working efficiently anymore, the cleaning robot might stop, the pump might be damaged (water cools it down).

30/10/201718/03/2019

Smarter Swimming Pool 2: Water Temperature

Since my pool is purely heated by the sun, I thought knowing the current water temperature might help in choosing the right outfit – boardshorts or wetsuit – or choose to better stay out of the pool altogether.

23/10/201718/04/2019

Smarter Swimming Pool 1: Pool Pump

When I bought my house I also inherited a nice outdoor swimming pool. Little did I know about pool maintenance back then and so during the first couple of months everything that could go wrong did go wrong. Anyway, I am now in a position to go beyond the static pool maintenance and am smartening up the whole thing. This post is the first one in a short series describing various small improvements I have made – starting with making the pool pump a bit smarter.