The Arduinos shouldn’t be placed in the wall (if I understand what you mean.). I will normally say they be placed within the ceiling void in the location they will be used. You will need to provide power in the ceiling, which will be used to get power to the receiving units.
I don’t know the make of your ceiling, plaster board, wood (its definitely not grid being a home), but normally as long as there is an assess point into it, you can have a power socket at some point in that room’s ceiling.
if the ceiling is not possible, they can he “hidden” behind some other device, like the TV screen. Then you can run your cable from there, to the location of where you want to control of sense within the room.
This also allows for a neater way of managing things.
it really takes a lot of planning to get stuffs like this installed and working well
Sorry guys I have everything messed up. My idea was slightly different than reality. After making some reseach I’ve found that my wiring method will not work the way I’ve planned. But after some brainstorming I will use modified @willis106 idea (Ethernet shield over Arduino, but not inside each room. I will use 4 arduinos and connect them to Pachpanel, then I will send my FTP cable for each room. I will draw a skech tomorrow.
Only one think I don’t know is - how to transfer data via MQTT using shield (I need some examples of this), or maybe use MySensors? What is your opinnion on this (this looks cool https://www.home-assistant.io/components/mysensors , but I think I need to connect Arduino with Rpi - I stil don’t have experence on this)?
I haven’t read every post in this thread, but it appears to me that you are WAYYYY overcomplicating the project. Back up about 300 yards and take another look at what you want to accomplish.
Remember that in 10 to 20-years you will likely be selling the house and all your smart-home wiring will probably not be appreciated by the buyer. Don’t overdesign it in a way that paints your buyer into a corner. Worse yet, if this is a retirement move, you may go first and your wife may not have the expertise nor desire to maintain your installations when you aren’t around.
I am planning to move in five years when my wife retires, and I am taking all my Sonoff basics, ESP8266 sensor nodes, and Z-Wave switches with me. The buyer will move into a dumb home with conventional lighting wall switches. Our plan is to have our new home custom built and I plan to have a lot of CAT6 cable runs that I’ll probably never use because it’s rare that I can’t do something wirelessly.
Hi everyone, i see this post, and i am building a new house for smart house.
The ideas are here, but let me give an example.
You run power cables from each light to your server room and wire them up with sonoff or ethernet esp with tasmota on it and configured it in home-assistant.
When sensors and all that use cat 5/cat6 cables all around the house and when goes to your patch panel.
When from the patch panel to an Arduino mega with Ethernet Shield, so its wired, no wifi crap here.
When publish push button from Arduino mega with MQTT to your broker, and catch that on Home-assistant
You still need to have a switch at your outlet. Think of a toaster or electric frypan that bursts into flames, or your kid sticks a knife in an outlet. Hopefully the fuse/circuit breaker trips, but really you should be able to turn it off at the outlet rather than run to the server room.
Hm? Other than outlets that control lights, and are thus located close to the floor in only select location, no other outlets have switches, so why is that a requirement?
The only issue I would have is GFCIs, but GFCI (or RDCs depending on locality) can be installed at the outlets themselves, and still be fed switched power by a relay in a central location.
There is alot of maintenance at each room if i have the switch there.
The server room is centralised in the house, and there is alot of security for fire aswell.
Of course different jurisdictions have different requirements. All power outlets in my house have switches, and I have seen other mentions on this forum of a ‘requirement’ for local isolation.
Hi. Still in “Work in progress” phase but you can see what I did in the Video below: https://www.facebook.com/100000842923252/videos/2565056433532429/
I’ve tested all sensors, reed switches, temp/humidity sensors, motion sensors and SSR relays (light) and everything works fine. I still need to find some time to finish this… I will try to write some post / blog / info about this idea because this is a very secure way to build DYI Smart Home…
and another think please consider this as a testing phase. All wires will be cut / hide (right now this mess is because I still need to connect reed switches and other sensors on each room.
@Michal_Nowakowski, how you getting on, I’m considering the same approach an Arduino in each room to run a plethora of sensors temp/presence/light-level and control the heating/lighting in each room.
Hi guys.
The project is going quite good but I have plenty of other things to do … This approach is great and secure. Everything works fine but I haven’t had enough time to finish everything. Right now every FTP cal5 cable is connected with 4 - 24ports patch panels (about 96 UTP wires). I uses 6x Arduino connected with USB Hub, that is connected to Raspberry. Important is to have a good Power supply to be sure every sensor / switch etc. is powered (my power supply is 5V / 10A). All the coding and behavior is made with Arduino’s MySensors Library. HA is an amazing tool to control each sensor / switch etc. I’ve tested some lights (SSR relays) and Window / Door sensors (reed switches) so far. Today I’ve installed HA in SSD drive, because my SD card have significant signs of dying… Everything is going well so far…
In the making, I’ve discovered that I could do everything with less cabling (about 10-15 UTP wires less). I try to apply some photos. I plan to run first 3 rooms in the middle of this year. Of course - if you plan to do the same approach, be sure to make a good documentation (what cable goes where and what will do etc and store it in cloud / other places…
I’ve created an album here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/qZVyD4EscBhZx3mp6 I will upload more photos but unfortunately not so frequently (lack of time)…
Looks good! Have you run into any issues with the long wire runs and resistance? I’m thinking about using a 10 turn pot to measure garage door position but am wondering if the current will drop too much with the distance.
Is your connection to the PI using one of the mega boards as a mysensors serial gateway, or did you learn how to connect more than 4 arduino to home assistant at 1 time?
No, I haven’t notice any issues. It all depends on a good power supply. I have 5V, 10A of current max. I’ve seen one guy that used 5V, 8A without any problems.
My Adruinos and Rpi are connected to one USB hub. This is important to have everything connected with the same GND wiring. With this method you can connect as much Adruinos you want (USB hub is the bottleneck here. Of course yu can use more USB hubs, but they need to be connected to the same GND as well). When you use MySensors, Home Assistant creates .json files that represents each sensors. Naturally - each Arduino can work separately without HA (but then you are not able to change PIN states over the Net or LAN)…
Hello @Michal_Nowakowski, first congratulations on your project. I have a house that I also made like yours with pre automation to be fully wired I use two mega Arduinos to control 70 relays and sensors. I’m starting the deployment of Home Assistant and I’m having difficulties communicating between Arduino and Home Assistant. In my case it can be via LAN or via USB. I would be very grateful to know how you or someone in the community did the Arduino programming and how it works in the Home Assistant.
When I finish I will try to post my sketches