Running HA in a vehicle?

Configuration
1

How would you accomplish the following capabilities for a car?

  • The ability to record video in HD to SSD from one of many possible camera sources throughout the vehicle.
  • The ability to automatically connect to WIFI when in range of the house to automatically transfer all media to the server in the house.
  • Automatically shut down the system in the car upon completion of upload.
  • Display live video feed to the driver of the baby car-seat while driving.
  • Display live video back to the baby of the driver while driving.

How would you go about tackling this type of project from a hardware standpoint?
Would it make sense to run an entirely different instance of HA on a Pi running in the car to handle things, or would it make sense to just hard-code some ESPHome devices? Etc.

2

Sounds pretty awesome…would we then call it “Car Assistant” ?

3

I would imagine so…just like I’d like the instance I’m running at the office to be the “Office Assistant.”

4

Frankly I don’t think I’d use home assistant at all!

5

There are various solutions available which would allow you to record and handle videos (e.g., https://kerberos.io/ or https://zoneminder.com/).

This sounds not so much like an automation problem which is the primary domain of Home Automation.

6

Sounds about right. The automation portion would be in how the files are transferred to and from the car to the server when returning home.

7

That could be done via your home’s home assistant machine, no need to add a separate HA instance in the car.

I had a computer based audio in a vehicle. When it got home it used rsync to the home audio server to keep them in sync. I cannot recall exactly how I detected connection to the home wifi. Wasn’t hard though.

8

I once found a module that would allow safe shut down of a Raspberry Pi but never actually got around to testing it. I think as far as the process goes, youve got your ignition and constant wire connected to the module, when it detects that power has been lost from the ignition it flicks to constant and then runs a script to safely shut down the device.

I bought the device from the following website.

You’d like run Home Assistant off a Raspberry Pi so this could be a solution.

9

Yes but you wouldn’t want the raspberry to shut down until the file transfers had happened. I see the standard script has a delay parameter. You also may need to modify the script for Hassos (although I prefer raspberry OS + supervised)

10

Oh for sure, would definitely need some modifying to get exactly what you’re after… is a good starting point though.

On another note, I’ve always wondered about incorporating home assistant into a cars ECU along with a network dongle. I could only imagine the possibilities… an endless topic for another day I think.