Good day folks. I am currently in the process of replacing my current Home Assistant Yellow based system with a multiple unit system Codenamed Bruticus. This is a layered approach to my smart home that separates the system into parts that merge to form a strong core. It is comprised of the following pieces at this time and will evolve as needed.
Tower One: a HP Z440 running ProxMox hosting 14 containers, among which are an OpenWebUI container, Mealie, and Grocy.
Bruticus: a GMKtec Nucbox running ProxMox with HAOS and voice containers.
SMHUB: an Smlight SMHUB Essential with the PoE and Z-wave modules options installed for Zigbee, Thread, and Z-wave.
I will be running ZenOS-AI in Home Assistant once I have completed selection of the appropriate voice containers and implemented it.
Voice interaction points will be as follows:
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Multiple FutureProofHomes Satellite1 units scattered throughout the home.
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View Assist devices in the Kitchen and Living Room.
Location tracking will be done via Bluetooth Proxies guided by the Bermuda Triangulation integration.
As my home is entirely Solar Powered, I will be integrating power monitoring via ESPHome for both power generated by my solar panels and power usage; once fully working, Bruticus will be on 24/7/365 battery backup in case there are brief power interruptions.
As an update:
There are going to be two separate solar systems on the property. The current one is being replaced with a pair of EG4 6000XP’s and 314Ah batteries and being moved into the garage on the property. I am also going to add more solar panels for both systems.
Very similar to my new build I have been running a NUC i3 for over six years. I am still trying to consume zenos to understand what and how. I have already started my own middleware project and taking a different direction to Zenos. I am a CTO in my day job with a very strong systems engineering bent.
I’ve been running a Home Assistant Yellow for a while, but was really wanting something capable of handling higher quality voice, so I started building this. I also knew I wanted the ability to have Thread and Matter in addition to Zigbee and Z-wave, so I found something that did them all. I’d been following the Friday’s Party thread, so I used it, but it’s not the only way to do things.
I have a BAU Proxmox server for all my day to dày apps. And a new HA Proxmox server built on a minisforum AI X1Pro 470. HAOS running as a VM and Lemonade running on an LXC with an NPU and GPU AI engine. Like everyone else found HA Intents bogging down any LLM use so have written a HA app and component to trim the token grab. My middleware layer sits between my (HA and Frigate) sensor layer and my AI Engine. It currently runs voice as well as Alexa does, building out the rest. Ramageddon trimmed my RAM/VRAM layer to 64GB which is managing ok.
Today I spent about 6 hours installing and wiring a new inverter for home power. The reason it took that long is that the new inverter requires communication with a battery’s BMS (a circuit installed in Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries that monitors and manages cell voltage) whereas the old one didn’t. I finally had to tell the inverter that I was using lead-acid batteries before it would recognize that there were batteries connected. Once I get the inverter’s Wi-Fi module connected to the network I will be importing the data from it to Home Assistant and letting Bruticus know about it.
For those that are interested, I am starting with one EG4 6000XP inverter and two Wiren 100Ah batteries, with plans to add another EG4 6000XP and 4 more Wiren batteries over the next few months.