Five years ago this week I started with Smartthings kit and a handful of Z-wave device with a simple goal of automating the outside lights for my driving teenager who worked until 10 and make sure the playroom light was off when nobody was in the room. A habit which my 4 kids could not quit even today.
Now I have “invested” lots of funds and time and am all in with Home Assistant running the standard docker image on a Unraid server on hardware that I got for nothing from my place of work.
I switch to HA first using MQTT and Smarthings bridge. Eventually got a USB Zwave device and moved what I could over.
Like many I journeyed through HA on RPI with Hasio.os image, haspian and python env, before discovering docker. My docker was first on a NUC. Then I switched to Unraid to consolidate with other stuff.
Summary
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Most automation is nodered. I have a few things still done in HA.
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Four camera running Zoneminder unraid docker with object detect.Four outside camera
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Integrated Rainbird with a relay hooked up to the Rain monitor that triggers during rain or average rain threshold
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Raspberry Pi with RTL_433 and a SD antenna to pick up some Acurite sensor (Rain and Temp) and a few home made nano sensor (Dryer and Compost). I use Radio Head for this works with RTL_433. Docker powered.
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5 ESPHome on NodeMCU/Nodecu32: gate monitor, garage door controller for two doors, front landscape relay, back landscape, temp sensors, and a monitor for legacy door sensor and motion sensor that was in the house when I moved in.
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Integration with Alexa via Nabu Casa. I have added Alex action notification for a few things. “The garage door has been left open do you want to close it” and action notification for the HA app on the iphone.
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Raspberry PI connected to a TV running a google calendar, weather radar and camera view . I have 4 kids doing various thing and this was a great way to keep track.
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TP Link plug, one for the washer the other for christmas lights. and 3 bulbs.
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Presence is done with Life360, when the house is empty I change the Thermostats (3 zwave).
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Neato D5 vacuum that I can set start as soon as the house is empty.
Alabama Power sends me a email everyday about usage from the day before. I turned that into a sensor so I can track usage. On a good day when there is work and school I save about $5 a day in the summer its $10 if we are gone a significant part of the day. If you are not doing this automation you should be.
- I graph it all in Grafana with Influxdb
Other stuff
- Piwigo for photo management
- Unif control with some Old N wifi that I got from work.
- KanBoard for managing my work, kids, church stuff, hobby to do list.
- AdGaurd on a RPI , seems to work great.
- All docker running on a home build dual processor unraid server.
my advice
- Learn docker, it will make life easier. And easier to try stuff out.
- Learn linux. Don’t ditch windows but you can get a lot of life out of old computers that people like to give away and use them to create a sandbox to play with a linuxos. That is how I learned just about everything.
I try to browse the forums to answer question but sometime I just don’t have the time. If you have any specific about what I have listed let me know.