Our neighbors were getting rid of their hot tub, and who could say no to a free hot tub?
As young freshly graduated college students, my roommates and I had yet to experience such luxury as an on-demand bubbly chlorine bath, but it still leaves us wanting more.
Enter, the Vibeyard automation project!
Setting the scene in the backyard is a pain, you’ve gotta plug in the string lights, bring out the bluetooth speaker, turn on the hot tub jets, sync up to the bluetooth floodlight inside the tub and only then after I’m sufficiently out of breath, climbing into the hot tub seems like even more of a chore!
Having never worked with IoT devices, but having been inspired many years ago by things like Plasma2002’s Emergency Party Button and Zack Anderson’s MIDAS project, I knew that just putting together an Alexa or Google Assistant based system wasn’t going to cut it due to the level of customization and fun I’m trying to have.
In an effort to learn effectively, I’ve split up my automation project into a few different phases to allow for maximum fun and functionality early on while building up a solid base to add additional components to the ecosystem later on.
You can check out my in-progress system diagrams here on Lucidchart.
The most challenging component will be the THOT TUB Control Module, which I might end up having a bit more fun with than I would need to. As I’m an electrical engineer by trade, making my own PCB to control the hot tub jets and heater as well as provide diagnostic information about the water temperature and chemistry placed in a custom enclosure is quite enticing.
After getting Home Assistant and MQTT installed on my Raspberry Pi 3 B+ (looked into Pi 4’s, but didn’t think the extra horsepower was necessary for what I wanted to do) the first device I’m trying to wrangle into Home Assistant is this outdoor dimmer plug by Treatlife which I intend to flash with Tasmota tomorrow, this seems pretty straightforward based on the template I’ve found here.
I had some fun taking the device apart and seeing how the dimmer circuit works, it’s seemingly more complicated than I was expecting, the main dimming component is a JST16A triac, but I’ll need to do some more research into dimmer circuits to really understand it.
That’s my introduction for now! If you’re wondering about my username and drawing templates, my other hobbies lie in the opposite end of the house in the garage where I work on some awesome but kinda shitty cars and have a ton of fun sharing that on the @beater_garage Instagram.
The driving goal of this project is for me to learn and have fun, so I’m going to avoid diving too deep into anything that makes me pull my hair out!
Excited to learn more and become a part of the community, see you on the side of the automated road!