FYI: searching about AC efficiency, I found this project:
That is cool (pun not intended). Will it be relevant to a situation where the occupants (and their habits) change regularly?
Probably not. But for a regular house seems like it should work. Also I like the fact that this guy also has instructions on how to build and setup the sensors.
For the purposes of maintaining the optimal temperature set in terms of comfort and energy efficiency, there are many research papers published about using machine learning to achieve that. (like what Ambi Climate does). It would be way cooler (pun intended) to have that functionality inside HomeAssistance thought.
Finally, I received my raspberry pi today and I have hass.io installed and running.
I will need all the possible help from everyone on how to start to build this automatizations. Where do I start?
Thanks!
Look at the top of the forum page. Click “Docs”. Proceed.
Brilliant advise. You forgot to mention google. Thanks!
@Petrica I wish I listened to you before ordering my stuff.
The smarthing sensors look great and also provide temperature, but the multisensor I’ve been testing dropped battery level to 96% in just a couple of days.
I’m convinced now that getting sonoff sensors + rf bride would’ve been a better option.
I ended up ordering the nodemcu + sensors on amazon, I’m wating for them to arrive and will build my own blaster with Tasmota-IR on them.
The Emporia VUE Monitor energy meter works great and was really good value (I cant seem to match that price building my own sensors), but unfortunately there’s no public API to integrate it to home assistant (although they said they plan to do it eventually).
I tried sniffing the http traffic of the mobile app but I only see login/registration details and not power meter data at all. The traffic reported by asus for the device is mainly NTP and “other”. I will try to sniff all the packets when I have time and try to reverse engineer the protocol.
I don’t have any ST item, however, I think this might be a problem of polling (for temperature reporting probably once per hour or when delta is above a certain threshold should be enough for a CR2450 battery to last for year or so); other users with the particular model you have might provide some feedback.
I also have the Emporia Vue and look forward to an API. Please let us know if you are able to reverse engineer. thanks!
I also have the Emporia Vue and look forward to an API. Please let us know if you are able to reverse engineer. thanks!
I asked them about it and it seems they did listen. I received this email today:
Our Roadmap – We Hear You!
Thank you for all of your feedback and suggestions! We’re a small team who are working very hard to get to all of them. Here are the important features we’ll be working on in the coming months:
- Ability to reset data to zero, by channel and/or circuit
- Ability to combine multiple circuits as one
- Ability to combine multiple Vues as one
- Add 3 hours of stored 1-second data to CSV export
- APIs for third-party connected devices
- Custom date and circuit select for CSV export
- Download main and circuits simultaneously in CSV export
- Improve the graph scrolling
- Improve the Savings Page
- New Home Page that simultaneously displays each circuit’s usage
- Push Notifications and analytics
- Schedule automated CSV exports
- Set the start of the month to match utility bill cycle
- Show both load and net metering simultaneously when generating energy
- Support global time zones and daylight savings
So In my quest to find the optimal solution, I decided to try to return the zigbee sensors and receiver stick and go the cheaper 433mhz route. It shouldn’t require a local raspberry PI with a zigbee stick and could be replaced with just a sonoff rf bridge with tTasmota.
The main problem is that it’s impossible to find good sensors at the moment. For example, from what I found, the only door sensors worth buying are Digoo d026 and GS-WDS07 but they are out of stock everywhere.
I found a few cheap 433 sensors available on amazon but for windows/doors they send just one signal when open and not when close. Battery life doesn’t seem to be great either and there are many complains about cheap sensors sending random codes or not reaching the bridge/hub at all if the windows/doors have metal frames.
Do you know where can I find good sensors available now?
Although cost for a sensor node with NodeMCU is quite low (~2 USD for the board and another 3-4 USD for the sensors such as DHT22, BME280 or PIR, IR blaster, etc), it isn’t really too much to learn as the Arduino IDE/Platformio sketches are already setup with very little to modify (things such as board name, wifi & mqtt connection details). As long as you have general IT knowledge (not necessarily programming experience; I think that a large part of the users of this project are not working in IT or electrical engineering) it is quite easy to setup such a board (one of the important factors is that it requires little to no soldering).
I ended up returning the Broadlink mini and building this sensors: Tasmota MQTT IRHVAC Controler - #49 by gh0s7
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Although D026 have good range, their 12 V battery is less than ideal (for me they worked for 3-4 months).
I already have the new Digoo sensor - not the Digoo D026 (see the affiliate links 433Mhz DIGOO NEW DOOR & WINDOW Sensor versus Golden Security GS-WDS07 comparison - Compatible devices - Theengs and OpenMQTTGateway) and the range is fine for a 100 sqm apartment (Florian mentioned that the range of new Digoo is below the one for GS-WDS07 but I didn’t found any problem).
One issue I had with nearly all open door sensors is that they only come in white and they don’t match the doors&windows frame color 
However, there’s nothing a can of dark brown spray paint can’t solve (I’m unsure how and if the paint affected the range as I don’t have a spectrum analyzer, but the signal is still picked up fine by the RF gateway).
What about PIR sensors. Any advise?
For 433 Mhz I would recommend P819 (3xAAA batteries) or P829 (2xAAA batteries). P829 also reports low battery (P819 only warns by short led flashes that the batteries are down).
Both of them have MicroUSB powering option (might not be able to use it if too far away from a power socket but can help uninterrupted functioning of the sensors; if MicroUSB is connected, then the battery is only used when there’s no power from MicroUSB).
P819 lasts about 1-1.5 years but P829 below one year if powering only from battery (depends on the triggering frequency).
P829 are advertised to be pet immune but I can’t comment on that (mechanism for PIR sensors is the same regardless of technology - 433 Mhz, Zigbee, Z-wave, Wifi; some might have some better signal processing but the IR receiver cell is essentially the same).
Haven’t seen any false positive from the PIR sensors except for a surveillance camera that has night vision (if the camera is very close to the PIR sensor then it would trigger the sensor, however no problem if placed at more than 1 meter).
As with most PIR sensors, it depends on the angle of mounting. However, with Home Assistant one can use multiple PIR sensors to trigger a single light (even for the same room case a single sensor cannot cover it).
The PIR sensors I have seen usually have two dip switches:
- for led signaling - on/off (when motion is detected to also flash the led, however, the battery life will be significantly lower); if battery is low, the led will still trigger even if the dip switch is set to off;
- frequency of updates - 5 seconds/5 minutes (if selecting 5 minutes the batteries will last even longer than 1-1.5 years but any motion inside this interval won’t be reported; this might limit usage for presence detection but should still work fine for turning lights on).
These motion sensors should also be supported by the same 433 Mhz gateway as open doors/windows.
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[quote=“Petrica, post:54, topic:160708”]
frequency of updates - 5 seconds/5 minutes (if selecting 5 minutes the batteries will last even longer than 1-1.5 years but any motion inside this interval won’t be reported; this might limit usage for presence detection but should still work fine for turning lights on).[/quote]
If there’s motion between the 5s intervals they won’t be reported either?
I think not, but I use the PIR sensors to trigger the lights immediately during the evening/night/low light with a delay (configurable, based on the time of the day) until light is turned off if no further movement occurred, thus I see no real benefit of sending motion detected signal at less than 5 seconds if only using for lights control. The automation logic I use is as following:
- if motion is detected the lights would turn on (before turning the lights off I always set brightness to 1 so that the turning on will be smoother) and a timer of 15 minutes (after dark) or 5 minutes (after midnight) is set;
- if during those 15 or 5 minutes interval another motion is detected then the timer is reset for another similar period;
- a smart switch pressed will i) turn the lights off (and set brightness to 1) regardless if light was turned on by switch or by PIR or ii) turn the lights on and set a timer (for a longer time than the PIR);
- if the remaining time for switch is below the one for PIR and there’s movement, then PIR controls the lights.
For presence detection (to be used with the alarm) probably might be cases when even shorter than 5 seconds intervals might be needed but once the PIR is triggered, however, I don’t know if it makes any difference if there would be another (undetected) motion inside the 5 seconds interval as the first motion can trigger the alarm. If trying to eliminate false positives then I think two sensors monitoring the same area might do the trick (turn on an input_boolean than would stay on only if the second sensor is triggered as well).
I could think of a pair of PIR sensor placed right above the door on each side and trying to determine room occupancy (but say one persons enters the room then leaves in less than 3 seconds); however, I wouldn’t use this kind of automation because it would be too erratic and I just use the timer to turn off the lights case no further motion is detected.
Hello,
You can find it in stock in the UK warehouse for info:
What about PIR sensors. Any advise?
I’m using Sonoff PIR sensor form one and a half years (RF 433Mhz) and still works very well with the batteries I initially installed …
https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?catId=0&initiative_id=SB_20200205080307&SearchText=sonoff+pir
In addition I’m using the AM312 PIR sensor attached to my multisensor
Now for the door sensor - one life hack can help you achieve almost what you need!
I’m using this cheap Sonoff RF Door sensor from one and a half year too (still with the first battery):
https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?catId=200215434&initiative_id=AS_20200205080310&SearchText=sonoff+door+sensor
The problem, that you will find with this sensor is that it sends signal only when you open the door. And now the life hack (this was just a spontaneous idea, what came while I was reading your comment).
You can use 2 door sensors - one without any modification to detect door opening and one with tiny modification for door closing …
The modification is to put one very small piece rear earth magnet just behind the reed switch inside the door sensor, to maki it from normally closet to normally opened … This way it will send signal when the door is closed.
These are the magnets what I’m talking about.
https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?SearchText=neodymium%20magnet
I recall reading on the forum (can’t seem to find the posting at the moment) that some of the RF door sensors that only send open code already have the header for sending the close code and just need a small soldering point on the pcb to activate it.
Really? How can we recognize if this is posible?