Hi
I am extremely new to IoT automation, so please bear with me. I’ve tried searching first but honestly I’m not entirely clear if I know what to search to begin with.
Here’s my use case: I’m looking for a vibration sensor to send me an alert whenever it’s triggered, but I need to be able to customize where to send the alert. Also, I need to manage it without using 3rd party software or websites. I wonder if there’s a sensor with an internal API that can hook up to my own website?
If I’m not making sense, please let me know what other information I need to provide. Thanks in advance!
For this you will use home assistant automations. One option is the Xiaomi vibration sensor, together with DeCONZ it doesn’t use any cloud or 3rd party website, all local.
Sorry I meant my own platform. Basically a sensor that allows me to connect to my own platform without having to go through some sort of hub like Apple Homekit, or have to connect to a cloud belonging to a 3rd party.
This is really promising! I took a look at deconz but I’m too sure what it can do. Specifically, where do I install deconz? If I were to install it on, say, my computer, which is connected to a local network via wifi, will it detect the sensor?
Are there also other ways the sensor can communite with deconz? I ask this because I assume RaspBee is something that can be installed in a Raspberry Pi, and have the sensor communicate directly with the Raspberry Pi.
Normally, deconz gets installed on your home assistant instance (which can be a pi, pc, nas, or whatever). You can install HA on a PC if you want to, but most ppl use a pi to save energy… because HA has to be running all day long to communicate with the devices. When you mention connecting to “your own platform”, I assume you mean that HA would be OK, and you want to be cloud independent, correct? …rather than not using HA and literally building your own platform, which would be quite the project. Yes HA and all of the ideas mentioned here are designed to work without an internet connection. Of course, even without internet, you can still do remote access with a vpn or similar.
You would need a zigbee hub to use those aquara sensors. Just thought I’d mention that as I’m not sure your level of understanding. If you want something cheaper, you might look into a DIY wifi sensor using an esp8266 or similar… together with an accelerometer breakout to sense vibration. ESPhome, tasmota, and others make it easy to program these devices for use with HA.
In the final iteration of my use case, I will need to integrate the vibration sensors with other sensors that are communicating with my platform (which can be localized). Forgive my ignorance, but is this scenario plausible:
Install HA on Raspberry Pi
Connect sensor with HA
Configure/customize HA to send data and alerts from the sensor to another platform
Since HA is opensource, I assume it’s possible programmatically, I just wonder if it’s something already available and can be achieved through configurations.
One final question: I understand that Aqara uses Zigbee and would require a Zigbee hub.
Which Zigbee hub would you recommend? Are there ones specifically suited for my use case?
If I were to use Xiaomi, which presumably connects via local Wifi, do I need any additional equipment?
How can your other platform receive data? Can you use MQTT from this platform? If yes, ZigBee2MQTT would allow you to connect the sensor to the same MQTT broker as your own platform and skip HA as the middleman.
I agree, if your platform can do mqtt you would have a simpler setup using mqtt devices to talk to it directly. Of course this would require adding zb2mqtt to your platform. In that sense, just using a pi and ha may be easier (lot less coding anyways).
On the subject of zb hubs… I use a husbzb-1 adapter with my pi. It also has zwave, but you don’t have to use it if you don’t get zwave devices (ha recognizes the zb and zw radios as 2 separate USB to serial adapters). It is cheap and reliable either way.