Montana Meet-up?

Social
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I’m jealous of the communities meeting up (or at least seeming to) elsewhere in the country/world.

I’m in Bozeman Montana and seem to be the sole automator in my town/state.

Prove me wrong? Anyone else out here in mountain country? I’d love to see that someone with a similar passion lives near.

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Kalispell MT here, my home is automated and working on automating my 5th wheel as well

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Nice! What kind of things are you doing with your 5th wheel? Is it running on a separate instance of home assistant?
Glad to see I’m not the only Montanan using HA.
How long have you been using it?

A little over a year here.
I used Insteon for light switches with the ISY first until I found HA. still using the ISY but only as a bridge and some default brightness based on time. Otherwise all automations run by HA. Zigbee plugs and bulbs and z-wave sensors.

Mostly lighting and energy monitoring and I’m just starting to toy around with esp8266 modules and wled for some strips.

Here in Bozeman there’s an old restored downtown hotel (the Baxter) that has a blue strobe on the roof that flashes when it’s snowing at Bridger Bowl. I’d love to figure out a way to have a light inside or outside the house that does the same.

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My House and 5th wheel have their own Home assistant though I may tie the 5thwheel into my home later on
list of stuff that Home assistant that controls in my 5th wheel

  1. all the inside lights the trick was that they are 12v powered, 15 switches to do it
  2. my Air conditioning circuit was able to be toggled between A/C or electric heaters so now home assistant controls that function, involved a wireless light switch and a 40 amp contactor
  3. I have a outside plug in the water closet for heat tape that is now controlled
  4. both TVs both my KODIs and my AV recieiver is controlled
  5. all my kitchen appliances are controlled as well, mainly they toggle the Heat/air conditioner circuit to take the load off the 30 amp service so I don’t trip the breaker I am connected to when I use them.
  6. currently working on my holding tank valves to automate them as well so they automatically open and dump when full

my 120v switch, outlet, plugin switches, outlet, and power strip are wireless by KASA by TPlink

my house is on Zwave using jasco stuff and some homeseer sensors almost 50 zwave devices currently

I have a good friend that lives in Belgrade since the late 80s so I somewhat familiar with the area

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Nice! I’m sure the 5th wheel power source throws a bit if a wrench into things. Just makes things a bit trickier being 12v. What switches did you use?

Do you use z-wave motion sensors on that big network? I have a relatively small network (12 devices) and mostly mains powered. I was seeing a small lag in motion sensor triggers but nothing I couldn’t live with. Everything was basically 1 jump to the z-wave controller. Then I added an aeotec Home Energy monitor and now many of my devices are using that as a secondary hop to the controller. Since then, the lag is sometimes over a second or two. Not great for motion triggered lights. I know I need to configure that energy monitor to not transmit all the sensors that it has. I think it’s clogging the network a bit.
Anyway if you have motion sensors, do they use multiple hops to controller and do you notice a lot of lag?

How are you doing your holding tank valves? 12v relay and solenoid? I’m curious of the method.

Yea Belgrade is certainly coming up. If your busy has been around since the 80s, I’m sure they’ve been witnessing some major changes since then.

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currently have three z wave motion sensors a jasco dimmer/motion for my kitchen area https://amzn.to/39DRVJI and 2 homeseer outdoor flood light sensors that cover by my garage and my house https://shop.homeseer.com/collections/z-wave-sensors/products/z-wave-floodlight-sensor-2-pk?variant=12519531511892 I don’t notice any lag as they also directly control the lights they are connected to and I also use the outside ones as repeaters to expand my zwave range as my garage is a seperate building and I control the lights and heater out there.

the 12v switches I used this wireless relay with a 3d printed housing with a button to local control it as well Relay here is more pictures of what i did for the housing housing

my tank valves are electric motor controlled so basically couple a relays to forward or reverse the motor and a 4 channel wireless relay board to control my reversing relays

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Sounds cool.

Yea I’m guessing if the motion sensors are directly paired with the lights, it would be quicker. I have conditions when I want the lights to be turned on with motion, so it has to go to HA, process logic and send back to lights.

Looks pretty cool. Any other plans in the pipeline?

I’m working on jumping into WLED strips with esp8266 boards. Possible future outdoor lighting for Christmas and other Holiday Lighting. In the winter I own a Christmas lighting business and may add permanent installs to the business offerings. Gotta see how it goes first on my own house… Haha

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my motion sensors are directly wired to the lights they control so when movement happens they turn on just like a normal motion light but with the Z wave it reports the movement and allows me to control the light through home assistant

current plans for the house is water main shut off I have the valve just have to plumb it in some water sensors, a automatic gate opener, some cameras

for your esp8266 stuff that is controlled by ewelink I have gone through a couple of things on home assistant so far the best I have found is this one https://github.com/AlexxIT/SonoffLAN