A couple of years ago I built a terrarium and fully automated it using dinrail components. I used Node-Red at first, but recently switched to HA with Node-Red add-on. Played around with building a new dashboard in HA and am happy with how it turned out. The HA side is still work in progress, just started playing with it a few days ago.
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That is amazing! And so tidy!
If it’s not your day job already - I reckon a second career beckons 
And here I am wondering if I should try a jarrarium!
I would leave the door open, so both geeky and non-geeky visitors can fully enjoy the tidiness of this setup.
Hi,
Real tidy build mate congrats, I’m planning a new vivarium build after 11 years and would like to fully automate it this time around with lights, humidity, water filtration and temperatures all managed by an automation. Would you mind sharing more details about your build? I’m really interested in the dinrail components you ended up using, it looks really professional, I was only thinking about setting up 2 RPI (one as a backup for the heating) but then was thinking what was the reason behind your approach with all the dinrail components.
Cheers
Sure, here is some information. I’ll mark all the components on this image. You have to understand though that this is way overkill “because I could”. This system primarily runs on an RPI with HA and Node-Red, but it has a full backup system using regular timers. I was able to do this because I got the timers for free. Company I knew bought the wrong timers and these were about to be thrown out. Otherwise I would probably have used a second RPI. I wanted backup because I know RPIs fail, and in it’s current lifetime I’ve had 2 failures that caused me to switch to backup. Backup means I flip the switches on 2 to the other position. It also gives me peace of mind when Im not home (sometimes for months, my wife is american and we spend quite a bit of time there). I can just tell a house sitter to flip the switches.
- simple ikea led bar switch that turns on a light in the cabinet when I open the door
- these allow me to switch between RPI and Timers for each individual component.
- RPI in dinrail case
- 8 port high voltage relay that allows me to control Lights/Heating/Etc using RPI or Timers control pins.
- 5V power supply for RPI
- Timers
- This is another backup device. It sits between the control for my mister and the timers. This turns off the mister after 20s of being on no matter what the input does. This is a failsafe so I dont dump my full water reservoir into the terrarium due to some input error.
- Distribution for high voltage power
- 24V power supply for my mister pump
The terrarium has the following components:
4 x TL Lights all controllable. I stagger them on/off to simulate sunset/sunrise.
2 x HEAT lamps, high output lights that also give off heat
1 x heater for the water area
1 x pump for the water area
1 x pump for the misters.
