How to use HA to monitor six unit rental property for temp/humidity and flood detection?

Hardware
21

I had looked at this, but not into it too much. Is there a robust integration for this in HA yet? Any experience with or advice on where to start looking at sensors?

22

You would need to go through MQTT locally (prefered) :
Sensors ->LORAWAN GATEWAY with internal LORAWAN SERVER → MQTT broker → HA

or use the things network
Sensors ->LORAWAN GATEWAY → TTN → HA

You will need to decode the payload coming from the sensors (hexadecimal to value)
Once done the integration will be robust, but it requires some time and a learning curve to set up.

Here is a good list of sensors

The advantage with Lorawan is that you can forget your sensors for years.

23

Also mysensors https://www.mysensors.org/ have a good range, but may be a bit more DIY than you want.

24

If you don’t mind diy, you can build your own lora sensors and gateway for a fraction of the price.

25

LoRaWan or LoRa? I’ve looked into LoRaWan over TTN for a project and rejected it because TTN only works one-way. Sensor to Gateway. I can’t send data to the sensor over TTN.

26

Both enables to have low power consumption and bidirectionnal communications.
Lorawan specification have class C devices that can listen continuously for commands.
TTN public network doesn’t support indeed class C devices
A Lorawan gateway with embedded Lorawan server can support class C devices. This would be my preferred suggestion here.

TTN supports class A devices also, they open a reception window after each sending, so if the sensor send a data packet every 15min it will also be able to receive a command every 15min. So it may be OK for some use cases.

Hope this brings some details.

27

Are there any free networks that allow Class C?
The problem I saw with TTN was the remarkably low data count:
10 bytes of payload, this translates to 20 messages per day at SF12.

One thing I am not sure of is- are these limitations regulatory or network imposed?
If regulatory, does that also apply to Amateur Radio licensees on 433 mHz?

28

You can have an embedded LORAWAN server into the gateway.
The gateway will connect to an MQTT broker and you even don’t need internet for your automation to work (if you have a local single-board computer).

You can take a look to duty cycle to have more information about this.
It is a combination of:

  • Government regulation
  • Lorawan spec
  • Network policy when using a third party network
29

I’m using Zigbee with CC2531 dongle and Zigbee2Mqtt. Initial setup gave me some headaches as documentation was not at all up to date. But after initial setup and plugging in some Zigbee range extenders it has been running flawlessly for more than a year.

Here are my devices:

In usage for about 14 months with original batteries, no sign of running out. I here that it is expected for these Zigbee sensors to have the battery replaced after about 2 years or even 3.

30

You can check MClimate’s LoRaWAN products:

All have 10+ years of battery life.

Now that TTN and Helium have so many gateways, you might not even need to install your own. Although as @1technophile has suggested, having your own gateway with local LoRaWAN Network Server and using MQTT is better for your security. But LoRaWAN’s security is pretty good already.

31

I have been doing a lot of reading on Helium and don’t quite understand the user side of it. I think I have an understanding of setting up a node, but let’s say I want to use sensors like the ones you linked to with Helium network and not have my own internet connection on site (we have internet at these duplexes, but they do not have it at some other locations, which makes Helium more scalable).

How does one actually use Helium with sensors?

32

Totally wrong !! TTN or TTS accepts both uplink and downlink so long end node supports it :wink:

33

From TTN:
" If you use The Things Network (free public community LoRaWAN network), the following fair use policy applies:

  • The uplink airtime is limited to 30 seconds per day (24 hours) per node.
  • The downlink messages are limited to 10 messages per day (24 hours) per node.

My project would send 24 bytes every minute. so I can’t use LoRaWan. People have been kicked off LoRaWan for violating Fair Use Policies.