Sharing enlightening moments of home automation
IKEA is selling their air quality sensor VINDRIKTNING for some time now and it finally arrived here in Australia. I bought my own device a couple of months ago with the plan to modify and integrate it into Home Assistant. Some clever people have already done all the heavy lifting and there is a thread in the Home Assistant forum where people share what they have done.
Continue reading “Yet Another Vindriktning Modification Tale”
With many of my neighbours putting up their decorative light shows for Christmas I was wondering if there would be something new on the market to replace the old solar powered fairy lights on our terrace which were cheap but kept dying every other year or so.
So, I found a WS2812B based fairy string light which promised to be IP65 rated at a reasonable price.
Continue reading “Sparkling Lights – WS2812B fairy light with WLED”
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.
Continue reading “Smarter Swimming Pool 5: Under the Surface”
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.
Continue reading “Hold your Breath for this Air Quality Sensor”
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.
Continue reading “Smarter Swimming Pool 4: Liquid Chlorine 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).
Continue reading “Smarter Swimming Pool 3: Water Level”
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.
Continue reading “Smarter Swimming Pool 2: Water Temperature”