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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • thehatfox@lemmy.worldtohomeassistant@lemmy.worldHA Doorbell
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    1 month ago

    I have the G4 Doorbell, it’s worked well as doorbell and camera in both UniFi and Home Assistant.

    I had no luck at all getting it to work with a chime though. I tried several different chimes and transformers and the chime would never work.

    I ended up setting up automations to trigger device notifications and a bell sound on smart speakers to act as the chime instead.





  • Some Zigbee smart plugs and sockets have configurable calibration settings. I have some SmartThings smart plugs that have calibration settings, and I think the new IKEA smart plugs with power monitoring have calibration settings too.

    There are some resellers providing generic Wi-Fi smart plugs pre flashed with Tasmota and calibrated correctly. Not sure where you are located but in the UK I can recommend Local Bytes.

    I’ve also seen people recommend Shelly devices for power monitoring for accuracy. The Powercalc integration developer used to recommend Shelly devices for measuring power use of new devices to create Powercalc profiles.

    I wouldn’t expect too much from accuracy from any of these smart devices though. They are intended for general consumer use to provide general ideas about energy use - they are not scientific instruments and probably shouldn’t be treated as such.

    If you are looking to monitor homelab devices specifically perhaps you should look at a more professional/enterprise PDU instead.

    Remember that to properly calibrate any of these devices you will also need an accurate reference device to calibrate against.





  • I haven’t done any channel optimisation so far, I probably should do. I have the P version of the Sonoff Zigbee dongle, I haven’t tried the E version.

    I’ve also been careful with picking router devices. I’ve tried to avoid router devices that have poor reported compatibility with Aqara. There is a page/thread somewhere online where people were compiling lists of devices that do or don’t play nice with Aqara. IKEA devices apparently work very well with Aqara, I’ve been using their smart plugs wherever I can.

    My Zigbee network also improved a lot when I set up some IKEA plugs in the loft. My house also has thick walls, but it seems Zigbee signal can propagate more easily through ceilings/floors.

    Using quality brand batteries also seems to help a bit, at least from a battery life point of view.














  • I always keep Home Assistant as up to date as possible. Home Assistant keeps improving a lot. Month to month each update goes fairly seamlessly if HA is kept up to date, but the further it falls behind the harder it is to catch back up. Recent optimisation improvements have also made the update process faster.

    If you can make the time it’s worth the effort. Even if you have to “start over” somewhat there is probably a lot you have learned since that you can use to improve your setup.





  • Is it common for apartments to have shared extractor ducts? I’ve never heard of a setup like this before, and it sounds like both a pain in the arse and a potential safety issue.

    Controlling the kitchen fan is probably the easier bit. Depending on the design of the hood, you might be able to control it with a smart outlet or relay. Turn the hood’s switch to always on and control it with the relay. The difficult bit would be sensing when to turn it on.

    Cooking will often produce VOCs, and VOC sensors are easy to obtain, but they are also have other sources that are likely in your own apartment. Maybe try using temperature and humidity sensors int the duct to activate the fan when there is elevated temperature and humidity inside the duct?




  • There are some Zigbee dimming relays/modules which should work with your Zigbee stack of choice. I haven’t used them myself as I use Zigbee dimmer switches instead, but I’ve seen others recommend them. There’s a few different brands depending on your country.

    I can also second the recommendation for the Shelly Dimmer 2. Works out of the box with the HA Shelly integration, and can also be flashed with ESPHome or Tasmota if you really want. It can also be used in detached mode to work with smart lights I believe too. My home is mostly Zigbee but I have a few Shelly devices and they have all been solid.


  • I also have an oil boiler, and a tank in the garden. The tank was fitting with an Apollo Ultrasonic oil level sensor, which sends a signal to base station with a very basic LCD display in the house via 433Mhz radio.

    I use an RTL-SDR USB radio dongle, a cheap 433MHz antenna and the rtl_433 software to monitor the signals from the ultrasonic sensor, which transits roughly once an hour. The level measurement transmitted is a fairly accurate centimetre value (I compared it with manual measurements with a dip stick for a few months).

    The base station only showed a vague level indication with 10 bars, but now I have more a more precise smart display of the tank level, without any extra modification to the tank system.