Hi there, i’m using HA for 3 weeks now and its super easy and super cool
But in my opinion, arduino is way better for controlling other devices.
in the last 6 months i have used a lots of “platforms” for home automation and i saw this: http://www.blynk.cc/
Blynk its OK, but it fails when compared with HA. the good thing about blynk its that you can use the full power of arduino.
And i think that HA would be perfect if you can add a lot more support for arduino like:
-Reading sensor from digital pins
-controling devices ( ex rgb strip) from analog pin
-I2C communication between two arduinos
-read DHT from arduino
I know its a lot, but hey, arduino is cheap, sensor are cheap and yeah, you can do almost anything
Two types, mqtt, which I use with my arduinoS to trigger my garage door, and to monitor several sensors.
I also saw there is A USB component for it, which I don’t use.
And to top that all off, HA supports MySensors project; which is entirely based off of Arduino.
Plenty of options - just have to search. Best way is go to the components page and click the ‘All’ category and just go down the list. This way, you will have an idea of what HA can/does support.
Yep. but lets take for example my setup. lm35(temperature sensor) connected to arduino on analog pin 1, and arduino is connected to rpi2 over USB. how u can take the temperature value on HA ?
I’m going to also take another look at MySensors but I have a set up already which is bidirectional (I can trigger a relay, which opens my garage door via an arduino) plus I use a different type of network. I use the RFM69 at 915Mhz, of which I have plenty of already so changing wouldn’t be good. I want to take a look at their power conservation though so perhaps I can run some of this stuff on battery packs that don’t drain after 2 or 3 days.
The mysensors development branch supports local sensors on the gateway. If you setup home assistant on the rpi2 and make the arduino the serial gateway, I think your setup should work.
Right now for me the most reliable solution is to use the esp8266 as a Mysensors gateway with some sensors/actuators attached to it. This works very well as long as you don’t power it through batteries.
MySensors v2.0 allows you to have sensors in the same gateway so basically I’m planning to add multiple esp8266 gateways instead of having multiple nodes with Arduino+RFM.
esp8266 is more or less at the same price than Arduino+Radio+Regulator but for me it is much more reliable.
I too use a esp8266 gateway, I on the other hand haven’t run inte a reliability issue with it and arduino nano nodes connected to it, running it 24/7, all this with their latest release (dev branch now v.2.0.1)
How do you communicate the esp8266 gateway with the arduino? RFM69 or NRF24L01?
I have some “range” problems with the NRF24L01… That’s why I preferred to use the esp8266 as a sensor (I mean gateway+sensor on the same device) when no batteries are needed.
I’m using the nrf24l01 with the esp8266 gateway(modded to be like this: here) and the arduino nano nodes also have the modded nrf24l01.
The range works great, and since the nodes have the repeater feature activated then I have no issues with the range (and I use mysensors for both sensors but also rgb lighting control etc.
Everything is plugged in constantly, so nothing is on batteries.
