A couple years ago, water leaked through my hot water tank in the basement. Fortunately I discovered it early thereby avoided some costly water damages. Since that incident, I have been considering investing in a water leak detector. Rather than purchasing one, I hacked together a water detector with a Node-MCU board and some old parts. This project builds upon my post “Integrating ESP8266/ESP32 Micro-controller“. … Continue reading Walter Leak Detector
In Home Assistant, automating tasks is done through a number of form-based screens under Automations, Scenes, Scripts and Helpers. You specify the entities, conditions, triggers and actions that are to be performed in templates. An alternative to this is flow-based automation. I prefer the flow-based approach over the form-based method because it offers flow visualization, and without the verboseness of forms. Node-RED is the tool … Continue reading Automation with Node-RED
HACS is a repository of community-driven custom components that can be installed into Home Assistant. It offers a GUI-driven interface that simplifies the installation process. I have already installed two custom components from HCAS – Meross Cloud IoT and WyzeSense, and they went smoothly. However, instructions on setting up HCAS itself are scatter over a few places, so I consolidated the instructions here for the … Continue reading Home Assistant Community Store (HACS) – Updated Jan 2021
When I purchased my Wyze Cam, I opted for the Starter Kit. The kit includes a Wyze Cam V2, a Motion Detector, two Contact Sensors and a Sensor Bridge. Its a cost-effective way for me to add basic security monitoring to my home. In this previous post, I talked about setting up Wyze Cam video streaming. Although Wyze app allows me to add the Sensor … Continue reading Wyze Sense Integration
This is an update to my previous post on Meross wifi switch. Thanks to the work done by Alberto Geniola, there is now a simpler way to integrate Meross smart devices to Home Assistant. The Meross Custom Component is now available in Home Assistant Community Store (HACS). This custom component is based on the Meross IoT library and thus supports all Meross smart devices. Here … Continue reading Update: Meross Smart Wifi Switch
Video surveillance in my current home automation setup consists of a couple of Vstarcam webcams that support a maximum resolution of 720p. In the post Adding a Web-cam I described how I added them to my Home Assistant Dashboard via http stream. They have been working quite reliably. Recently I read a lot of positive reviews on the Wyze Cam which supports a higher 1080p … Continue reading Wyze Cam
ESP8266 and ESP32 are low-cost micro-controllers by Espressif Systems. They come in various form of development boards and are very popular in the Arduino development environment. The Make Advisor website has reviews on some of the popular ESP8266 and ESP32 boards. Since my home automation system is based on Home Assistant, I started to experiment with custom firmware to enable them to be controlled directly … Continue reading Integrating ESP8266/ESP32 Micro-controller
In the previous post, I talked about integrating Sonoff wi-fi switch into Home Assistant. Since the Sonoff GPIO pins can be used to control its switch status, I modified my porch light switch and connect it up to a Sonoff. Doing so allows me to turn on or off the porch light through Home Assistant dashboard. First create a ESPHome Sonoff device “snf_porch_light” and add … Continue reading Remote Control Porch Light
The Sonoff Basic is an inexpensive wi-fi switch. This post shows how to control the Sonoff with the ESPHome component. The ESPHome firmware also allows me to control a host of other ESP8266/ESP32-based devices, sensors and switches directly from the Home Assistant dashboard. Flashing ESPHome on to the Sonoff requires taking the device out of its plastic casing and connecting it to the PC USB … Continue reading Adding Sonoff Wi-fi Switch
In the post “Adding a Web-cam”, I talked about adding live video feed from a web-cam to the dashboard. In this post, I will secure the video feed with SSL encryption for streaming over the Internet. A certificate and private key pair is required to implement encryption. Please refer to “Secure Connection with ACME” post on how to set up the key pair and configure … Continue reading Encrypting Web-cam
IoT for Smart Home 