Sun awning wind sensor (accelerometer battery powered Eolis 3D alternative)

Hardware
1

Hi everyone,

In short I’m looking for an open source alternative for the Somfy Eolis 3D sensor. That would probably be a DIY accelerometer with an ESP that turns on when it detects movement above a certain threshold. Something like this project by @void Reed Door Sensor (battery powered ESP32 with esphome(yaml)). I could definitely use some pointers. Below is the full story and my research so far.

I’ve been tinkering with Home Assistant a bit in the last couple of weeks, connected my smart devices, did a first tuya-convert and got some automations going. I’m really enthused about this project and its community. Now I’m looking at a new project and have been reading up on other’s people’s projects but would like to hear anyone’s thought on this, let me explain. If you don’t need the whole story you can skip to the final paragraphs.

In a few weeks we are getting a new sun awning and before I found out about Home Assistant I was planning to equip it with a Somfy IO motor and an Eolis 3D IO sensor to automate it with regards to the windload. When I found out about Home Assistant I was still planning the same thing till I discovered

  1. that you need a Conexoon or the Tahoma box (at quite the expense),
  2. that the integration’s IoT class is “Cloud Polling” (strongly prefer local),
  3. that the the support for awning’s is not evident and
  4. that lastly a lot of people are strugling to get it to work properly. Somfy Tahoma Official API

This has made me reconsider the Somfy IO devices and instead I am planning to use a Shelly 2.5 to control it and connect it to Home Assistant. From there I can automate in regards to sun and weather conditions that I can get through Buienradar. This thread sure gives some inspiration about how to go about that How to automate my awning (sunscreen)

So that’s a solid setup but my street sometimes seems to work as a wind tunnel, and sometimes when the weather report reports a breeze its actually a lot stronger. To counter that I could employ a local anemometer (quite difficult to find one that’s easy to integrate into HA) but that would report the wind and not necessarily how it impacts my awning.
That’s what I like about Eolis 3D rts or io, it detects the movement of the awning and if it’s above a certain threshold (which can be set) it retracts the screen and works on batteries.

I can’t find any ready-made battery operated accelerometers with a sensor output that I can hook-up to HA (if anyone knows of any please let me know). So that would seam only a DIY solution can offer this functionality. I found this project where Nolan Gilley and in the comments @SpikeyGG use a NodeMCU with a MPU-6050 to monitor his laundry cycles. So I could use this project to make a DIY accelerometer but it runs continuously and battery operation wouldn’t be an option.
To make it viable with a battery it would need to be off unless it detects movement (above a certain configurable threshold), in this project void has found a way to do this with a Reed sensor. As an accelerometer the MPU-6050 could be an option since its included in ESPHome but I also found different ones that seem to be just an accelerometer and battery power optimized like the ADXL345. But I wouldn’t know where to begin to figure out if a setup like that of void is possible with an accelerometer. So that’s where I would be grateful for any pointers.

Looking back that’s an awful lot of text but what it boils down to is the following two questions:

  1. Does anybody know of a battery operated accelerometer that can feed it’s data into HA?
  2. Can someone give me pointers on DIY-ing a battery operated accelerometer that can start to transmit (probably with an ESP) the moment it detects movement above a configurable threshold?

Kind regards,
Stefan

My setup at the moment:
I’m running Home Assistant on a rpi 3 B+, have good Wi-Fi coverage and a Hue bridge. My smart devices are currently limited to some switches and smart lights, my solar converter, my media center (Kodi, Volumio) and my FritzBox.

2

I have a patio shade that uses the somfy rf remote.

I went the route of using and esp8266 to “push the buttons” on the somfy remote.

Inspiration from this project https://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Connect-Your-Somfy-Remote-to-Alexa-With-an-/

Of note the somfy “dry interface” is just one of of their remotes with wires attached and in a different box.

somfy-2
somfy-21600×1200 258 KB
somfy-1
somfy-11600×1200 247 KB

I also can appreciate the need to retract the awning in high winds or in my case raise/close the patio shade.

I have initially addressed this by subscribing to a local feed for my wind information and yes it does have shortcomings. There are times when i will raise it myself because i think it makes sense to do so.

I have evolved to an additional “watchdog” to lower the share when the wind is calm.
https://github.com/beed2112/homeassistant/blob/e6aaf341728403dcd3d09b373316962bd37eb21a/automations/somfy.yaml

I did take a look at the somfy solution, pretty slick, and also a little pricey. I also seems to me a one one button standard rf remote, so it will speak directly to the local receiver, just like the handheld remote.

The somfy stuff is is rolling code 433mhz stuff so it should be something you can “see” with an any of the 433 mhz receiver projects (OpenMQTTGateway is one i have played with) - so there is one way you can update the status of the awning. With some advance prep something you could test during while the return window is still open.

A little bit of off the shelf stuff and some arduinio might be a good alternative than building the entire solution. I would rather blame the somfy sensor for the ruined shade/awning, rather than my home brew solution taking the blame.

Just an opinion.

3

Hey Mike,

Thanks for taking the time to look at my question and for explaining your setup and some alternatives. The Eolis 3D sensor must be some kind of remote but the movement “triggering” part is the challenge.

There sure is wisdom in your final remarks. For now I’ll just install the Shelly 2.5 once the awning is there amd use the general weather conditions to automate retractions (and extensions).

In the meantime I’m gonna experiment with the ESP32, ADXL345 and MPU-6050 I’ve recieved, see if I can make it tick.

4

Stefan - Sounds like a plan. Get something in place and work to make it better. The big struggle with sensors seems to be powering and housing. Luckily there are a lot of people out there doing stuff that can be applied to what we want to do.

Good luck.

5

Hello,

I’m trying to do the same thing as you by connecting my remote to an ESP8266. The up and down buttons work perfectly but I cannot connect the stop button …
Can you tell me how you did it?
(I have exactly the same remote control as you)

Thank you.