• 5 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 20th, 2023

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  • I have two thoughts on the pellet level - both measuring from the top. I have a few OpenGarage devices and a SaltSentry. Both essentially do the same thing, measure the distance between the sensor and the next object it encounters, but they are different methods - the SaltSentry uses a time of flight sensor, and from what I can tell from the pictures, it’s just that small little thing at the point of the device. The OpenGarage uses a larger ultrasonic sensor.

    Look how small and cheap those time of flight sensors are on a small breadboard (I literally just found those). Mount that on the underside of the top of the hopper, run some wires to an esp32 or similar, config it, and boom, I think.

    Our detached garage has a propane furnace (one of those that hangs in the corner of the room). I just recently put a Shelly 1 into the thermostat circuit to control it, then I tried to attach a temperature sensor to it, so it can act as a thermostat…then I found that you need the Shelly Add-on to actually attach a sensor to it… So I got the Shelly Plus Add-On…but that’s for a later generation of Shelly 1 than I currently have…so my next purchase will be a newer generation Shelly 1 to replace the Shelly 1 I already…yeah, this has been a frustrating experience. And I’m not a huge fan of Shelly after they took an order and my money and never delivered the product in 2023. So, if I buy Shelly, it’s only via Amazon now.


  • We should start a “home automation pellet stove” community, now that there are at least two of us.

    Mine has all electronic controls. I use a power monitoring plug to detect if it’s running and turn on a nearby ceiling fan if so. It also counts how long it has been running to let me know when to clean it (~150 hours of run time). I have a Shelly 1 connected to the thermostat wires, and a temperature sensor elsewhere the room tied together in HA to make a thermostat to control the stove. I have a fairly complex script that sets the pellet stove’s temperature based on various factors like time of day, outdoor temperature, etc. If the thermostat doesn’t call for heat for half an hour, the pellet stove automatically shuts down and will restart if heat is called for (this functionality is built into the stove).

    I’d like to monitor the level of pellets, and I’d like to have control of the level - it can run on levels 1-5, controlled by a push button. I normally keep it on 2, but on a really cold morning, jacking it up to 4 or 5 would be helpful - and make it even more critical I monitor the level of pellets.


  • Hmmm that is really odd. Since I addressed the interference issue, the only major issue I’ve had with any Aqara device (including door sensors, temperature sensors, one vibration sensor, one water presence sensor, and a few wall switches) is the vibration sensor, which I damaged the battery cover, so it doesn’t close properly and keep the battery in place correctly. So that one is my fault. I have had a door sensor and water presence sensor drop off the network occasionally, but that’s rare.

    Heck I even have a second network set up in my RV (sensors only) and it seems to be reliable as well. But the metal shell keeps much of the signal contained, I’m sure.

    I wonder if there’s something else in your area that’s interfering with it.





  • The fan just turns on low when the pellet stove is running, nothing so fancy as changing the speeds based on the stove setting. But that could be accomplished indirectly by just looking at the temperature in the area - if it’s a few degrees higher than, say, the living room, turn up the fan speed.

    In an ideal world I’d be able to control the setting on the stove remotely - there’s a button to change the setting, which a switchbot could theoretically do. Of course to do that reliably, HA should know what the current setting is. I haven’t really looked into this much.

    But, yeah, I do wish I had a way to track the pellet level to alert me when it’s getting low. I have a Salt Sentry to monitor the salt in the water softener, with a gauge in HA, and it warns me when it’s getting low. Which is great (when it works, sometimes it stops responding). I’m not sure if it would work as well for the pellets - the pellets would be right up against the sensor when it’s full. Another option might be a weight sensor under a leg - I have no idea if this is even feasible, but if is, it should be able to detect the 40 lbs change (noting that there’s some ash left in the stove, so the 40 lbs doesn’t completely disappear).

    I use the power monitoring plug for a lamp in the living room that is dumb, but it has a 433 mhz remote. The power monitoring detects whether it is on or not. I have one of those Sonoff 433 mhz transmitters, so with the power monitoring plug I can control the light. This also means it can be part of my “vacation” mode where it perhaps turns on at some point in the evening, then turns back off. Also, it turns on when first connected to power, so I can do an automation that sends the “off” command at night if the house is in Vacation mode and the light is on.

    I don’t really have it set up yet, but in theory the power monitoring plugs could warn me if the freezer stops working (or is running constantly), the sump pump stops working, etc. I have the power monitoring in place, but not the automations to detect issues.


  • Yes to all of that, except for the comparison to the gas furnace: I don’t know how much electricity they use (I know some, because our previous house had one, but it’s not a ton - electronics, igniter, and blower fan).

    Yes, I do have to buy pellets and load them into the stove; I like to say the stove warms me up multiple times: Loading the pellets into our pickup, unloading them and stacking them in the garage, moving the bags from the garage to the stove (okay, this is not that hard and doesn’t warm me very much), and then when the pellets finally get burned. They’re 40 lb bags, not terrible but some work to move. (On reddit, at this point, I’m sure someone would jump in and call me a wimp or whatever, but having stacked a ton of them alone multiple times, it definitely adds up.)

    The stove has two motors in it, I believe: an auger to lift the pellets from the hopper and drop them into the burn pot, and a blower fan for the draft for the fire. There may be a third fan to circulate warm air across the heat exchanger tubes as well, but I don’t remember for certain. There’s also an electronic board to control on/off, heat level, when to run the auger, etc.

    My comment above was noticing that the power it consumes isn’t very different on different levels - which isn’t surprising, the fan runs a bit faster and the auger has to turn a bit more often, but it wasn’t an obvious difference over a few hours. I have it on a power monitoring plug to detect if it’s running (for automations like turning on a ceiling fan to help circulate the warm air, and keeping track of run time so I know when I need to clean it). I’ll have to test different levels to see if I can find a way to detect which level it’s set on.






  • I haven’t gone to this extent, but I use HA for a lot of timers - pellet stove run time, days since water filter change (we have several of those), pretty water bowl cleaning, flea and tick treatment for the pets, run the generator to keep the carb from gumming up, and probably a few others. As those get to the point where I need to take action, they appear on my to do list. Then I check them off as I finish them, and an automation removes the checked items overnight.

    It helps. I have gauge cards for those timers, but the to do list doesn’t require checking all of the gauges and setting what needs to be done - it’s in the list.




  • This is a tough one. The problem with local only backups is, what if there’s a fire?

    I use Amazon Glacier to store my pictures. It’s $0.0036 / GB per month, so I pay less than $2/month for ~535 GB of storage that I’m using right now. There is also a cost for downloading, but if I need it, I’m going to be happy to pay it (and the costs aren’t crazy). Uploads are free.

    (The other problem with Glacier is that it’s not really an end-user-friendly experience, nor is it something easily automated. I use SimpleAmazonGlacierUploader, a Java program someone wrote, to do it. You can also upload to S3 and have it archive things to Glacier automatically - I’ve never tried this but it should work.)

    I considered getting my brother or a friend to build two storage servers (with RAID5 or something) that we’d each keep at home, and just sync to each other. Good if you have a friend or family member willing to do it (or at least host your offsite box). Down sides: Cost to build it, time to build and maintain it, cost to replace things that break, plus cost for electricity. I’ve been using Glacier for many years, so by now maybe I would have spent less on that theoretical backup system, but I also did not have to worry about it.