Office Company Installation

Installation
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Greetings!
I’m currently on internship as an mechanical engineer in a company, i got tasked for an interesting project of creating a smart workplace for which i’ve decided HomeAssistant is the best choice pricewise, compatibility etc.

Issues that i’m faced with currenlty & would like to know if there’s any possible fixes/ideas:

  • In the workplace we use Mitsubishi roof panels (MODEL: PLFY-P15VFM-E1R1.TH MITSUBISHI) there is no internet module installed… what would be the next cheap version, some kind of external module etc.? The air con’s do have remotes in every office (14 Rooms)

  • Smart TRV’s, not sure how reliable the batteries are on these & would it be possible to wire them directly, the number of TRV’s would be 20+ but the main line is right next to the radiators.

  • We also have a large solar production, the inverter we have is Inverter “SolarEdge 100kW, on-grid, 3-phase, 1 mppt, no display, wifi”, the boss would like to be able to switch the solar panels off remotely & possibly automate it according to the regional price per day/next day of solar energy.

  • We do not have a battery as of right now.

  • He’d like the main gate of property to be opened by a LPR camera (license plate recognition), i looked thru some options and cheapest solution might be ReoLink with the LPR integration, does anybody have experience with that whether it’s reliable?

  • Next/close to the main gate which is about 30m away from building we have a main water flowmeter & it’s bit underground. Would an ESP32Cam be able to transfer the data/picture at that range.

  • The blinds will be upgraded, but i’d need to automate the blinds tilt according to the Lux inside of office. This would also help with saving costs on heating.

  • He would like to also read the amount of air used & warm water which goes thru a “ZENNER zelsius® C5 IUF”, with research i found it transmits 868Mhz LoraWan, would that be readable with a normal LoraWan adapter on any PC?

I’ve never worked with HA before, i’ve done KNX and have decent experience with ETS programming. Would such a project be viable to do with HA and i’d appriceate any tips & tricks.

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Wow, only a tiny list of things to do!!!
How long is your internahip? If only a few weeks, ask where the striped paint is kept…

If you pull all these projects off, I would venture the skills you have acquired would put you in a apecial class of consultant that people would pay good money to engage. Is your boss offering to pay good money for this too?

Suggestion: Walk before you run.
Pick one sub-project and get that running. Then move on to the next.

Warning: HomeAssistant does not do layered security well. How do you prevent the janitor from turning all the lights and security off at 10pm, or a visitor with false cardboard number plates from parking in the CEO parking spot? There is no graduated access levels, or partitioning of access, a requirement quite necessary at a corporate level.

The keyword in HomeAssistant is ‘Home’ and you should carefully consider if it is suitable for the task of tying everything together in a corporate environment.

Having 50 people impatiently waiting at the premises front gate because the roller mechanism had an overnight update that crashed, and you got caught in traffic so couldn’t reboot the Raspberry Pi in your desk drawer is not going to look good. That bug in the numberplate recognition software that the vendor promises will be fixed in their next monthly update, only 26 days away - you have now graduated to manual gatekeeper controller, complete with stool and umbrella, situated just inside the gate! A power surge and your breadboarded ESP32 airconditioning controller in that box on the roof cannot be accessed because somebody borrowed the ladder for a cross city job and won’t be back till 4pm - do you send all the staff home for the day? Who pays for lost productivity? The intern? Oh, they are working for free!

Yes, each of the challenges you present as a list can be suitably automated, but you need a ‘puppeteer’ package to tie it all together, and I am not confident that HomeAssistant is robust enough or supported enough to deploy it in a corporate environment.

Support and service are critical in a corporate environment. When things go wrong you need answers straight away, over the phone or onsite, from an experienced person. Coming to these forums and asking global anonymous contributors for suggestions may not elicit instant or suitable solutions you expect.

Your boss is being a penny pincher, getting expert advice for free, and if everything goes well, will be delightfully happy. Something for nothing. Wait till something goes wrong - who to call? Who to lynch? Make sure to always CYA (Cover Your A$$ - which may be by far the most important thing you learn from your internship) Are you sure you want to become indispensible, supporting a ecosystem strung together with open source software built by unpaid individuals in different time zones, reverse engineering protocols by guesswork? On call 24/7 unpaid? Naah, me neither!

Final suggestion. Write it all down, so the next intern can stand on your shoulders and look a little further down the track. Stand on the shoulders of giants.

Best wishes. Your contract may not permit you to document your progress here, but keep us posted how you go.

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That was my first thought as well. I am retired and have been hobbying with Home Assistant for at least five years, and I would find your list of to-do’s daunting. Not that Home Assistant can’t do them, it probably can with some hardware tinkering. You are looking at weeks to get even one of the tasks working (“I’ve never worked with HA before”), then as your experience with Home Assistant (and ESPHome) grows, subsequent tasks might take progressively less time. I would say, optimistically, a year.

If you really want to proceed, pick ONE task and dive in. See if an integration for the hardware already exists. We can help, but you have to take a few steps first.

Home Assistant is not and probably never will be a plug and play appliance. There are almost a half-million active Home Assistant installations worldwide and I would bet lunch that there are no two alike. It is a DIY tinkerer’s platform.

I don’t want to discourage you- I would love to be paid to learn Home Assistant, but no employer is that stupid. Or are they? As I said, if you are going to proceed, set reasonable expectations. Pick a task, find an existing integration and dive in.

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What is the “main line”?

Some people find TRVs working well.
I didn’t like them much. They where loud and eat batteries.
My suggestion would be thermal actuators, they are cheaper than TRVs but need a separate temperature sensor and relay to control the actuator.

Whichever path you go, make sure you start small and test.
Buying 20 of everything and it failing or being loud or whatever is not a great feeling.