Home Automation - Smartkit

[xrapidx]

Before moving all my stuff onto the microserver, can anyone recommend a MicroSD card for my Pi? I 'd like to try that first, eliminate the SD card as the problem.

 

[ghostbuster]

This KIT seems to be able to integrate with Homeassistant or OPEN HAB


http://www.thediyshop.co.za/189-paradox-zx8-hardwired-zone-expander.html (Link text is wrong its the ip module for paradox systems.)
http://www.thediyshop.co.za/diy-alarm-kits/155-magellan-diy-town-house-kit-1.html
http://www.thediyshop.co.za/alarm-security-accessories/124-iparadox-software.html

The ip module can send email alerts, the diy kit can send gsm alerts. surely it can be intergrated?

 

[xrapidx]

AFAIK - there are issues with the IP150 running newer firmware versions, using the earlier version is already discussed in this thread.

 

[Tinuva]

I tried this for 3 lights and I have come to the conclusion that this house had a ****ty electrician. Even the hulk wouldnt be able to pull any of the wires thorugh the conduit. Fishtape cant go though, all dead corner, figure of eights, who know.

My only solution appears be the unused ground wire to each light. If i taped each one of them black could it become a magic neutral? Allowed legally?

Ouch. So the cable doesn't want to move at all.

 

[spiff]

I tried this for 3 lights and I have come to the conclusion that this house had a ****ty electrician. Even the hulk wouldnt be able to pull any of the wires thorugh the conduit. Fishtape cant go though, all dead corner, figure of eights, who know.

My only solution appears be the unused ground wire to each light. If i taped each one of them black could it become a magic neutral? Allowed legally?

try my method:

first take 1 existing old wire - unscrew it from the electrical wall switch

use tape to secure some heavy duty weed eater nylon gut to it (2.5mm - 3mm)

now pull old wire back up into the roof with the nylon gut tied to it

tape the new neutral wire to the old wire & nylon gut, rub some oil or Q20 on it first before pulling all 3 back down through the conduit again.

I ended up wiring my own braairoom cause all the electricians I hired refused to waste time pulling wire through my "in the wall conduits" they all said I was mad to use conduit - should have just cemented in twin & earth! the one wanted R3k for the job said it would take him all day!

In the end I did myself - all it took was some parcel string / weed eater gut and a vacuum cleaner. sucked the string through the conduit with the vacuum cleaner - tied weed eater gut to the string - pulled gut through -then tied 3 wires to gut - sprayed with Q20 and pulled that through.

took less than 1hrs to complete all the wall plugs & light switches!!

 

[Tinuva]

Maybe if I take some photos it would make sense on how I pulled the cables through. Whatever you use, need to be strong, I pulled pretty hard on my drop cable to get it through both ways.

 

[calypso]

I pulled pretty hard, was worried that more might break the cable.

Seems that no cable lube was used, if thats even a thing in this part of the world.

 

[Tinuva]

I would be impressed if the cable breaks, they use pretty tough cables from the DB board to the plugs/switches. Or rather, they should have...

How long is the run of the cable from the switch the light. My longest one is 4.5m I think, maybe that also makes it easier the shorter it is.

 

[AlmightyBender]

Maybe if I take some photos it would make sense on how I pulled the cables through. Whatever you use, need to be strong, I pulled pretty hard on my drop cable to get it through both ways.

I'm 100% that a lot of people here would greatly appreciate that... As a total noob I'm struggling to understand exactly what you mean by the whole explanation, though I could just be overthinking it.

 

[SauRoNZA]

Anyone running Home-Assistant on Windows? Thinking of moving my whole setup to HP Gen8 server that only does downloading and occasional media player...

Why would you waste a Gen8 on Windows?

UnRAID for the win.

 

[xrapidx]

Why would you waste a Gen8 on Windows?

UnRAID for the win.

Because its stable AF? Been up for hundreds of days.

 

[SauRoNZA]

Because its stable AF? Been up for hundreds of days.

I guess but it requires so much manual intervention to keep things up to date etc.

UnRAID just chugs along all by itself and of course provides full redundancy and parity to what is a nice chassis.

Also don't sacrifice one drive to the OS.

I've been thinking of upgrading my N36L to a Gen8 for the 4K factor but it's probably still not potent enough.

 

[Sinbad]

I guess but it requires so much manual intervention to keep things up to date etc.

UnRAID just chugs along all by itself and of course provides full redundancy and parity to what is a nice chassis.

Also don't sacrifice one drive to the OS.

I've been thinking of upgrading my N36L to a Gen8 for the 4K factor but it's probably still not potent enough.

You can get low profile gfx cards that can do h265 in hardware...
Though I think the OS/Drivers might be an issue

 

[rorz0r]

I've been thinking of upgrading my N36L to a Gen8 for the 4K factor but it's probably still not potent enough.

Nope it's not. Struggling with HEVC/4k and Plex.

 

[xrapidx]

I guess but it requires so much manual intervention to keep things up to date etc.

UnRAID just chugs along all by itself and of course provides full redundancy and parity to what is a nice chassis.

Also don't sacrifice one drive to the OS.

I've been thinking of upgrading my N36L to a Gen8 for the 4K factor but it's probably still not potent enough.

But unRaid is mostly a storage solution isn't it? Haven't looked at it in ages.

I have a dedicated NAS with 32Tb...

 

[SukkaFoo]

Anyone got a guide to monitor my tumble dryer and my washing machine on home assistant? Flashed a Sonoff POW R2 with tasmota, got a few in reserve I need to flash as well. Ideally looking for a way to get notifications for complete cycles.

 

[rorz0r]

But unRaid is mostly a storage solution isn't it? Haven't looked at it in ages.

I have a dedicated NAS with 32Tb...

It's mainly storage/sharing but plenty of docker apps available for it. Basically a one click install for most open source stuffs. Can run VM's as well, but you can only do a "pass through" of a graphics card if you have the xeon cpu (in case you want to use it as a media player as well).

 

[xrapidx]

Anyone got a guide to monitor my tumble dryer and my washing machine on home assistant? Flashed a Sonoff POW R2 with tasmota, got a few in reserve I need to flash as well. Ideally looking for a way to get notifications for complete cycles.

Just off my head - based on my pool, I'd do the following:
1.) Setup a sensor for Current Draw (MQTT/JSON)
2.) When Current Draw > xxx = Machine is running
3.) When Current Draw drops to Zero = machine not running.
4.) When Current Draw has been greater than 0 for a specific period (say 15min) - send a notification when it returns back to zero (I'd do this to avoid "false" notifications, or notifications if I turn the machine on, forget something, turn it off, etc.

 

[SauRoNZA]

Nope it's not. Struggling with HEVC/4k and Plex.

Sorry I didn’t mean that it should natively decode.

Mine is just a wee bit too pap to direct stream some things.

If your source can’t Direct Play you are getting 1080p from Plex anyway which is why it murders just about any system.

And make sure your subtitles are text based and not image otherwise it forces burning them in which also means transcoding.

 

[SauRoNZA]

But unRaid is mostly a storage solution isn't it? Haven't looked at it in ages.

I have a dedicated NAS with 32Tb...

Nah it’s become a lot more than that.

It’s now a full hypervisor and runs Dockers so you can plug just about anything into it.

Makes for a lot less pain than a headless Windows box.

But yeah if you have a dedicated NAS it probably doesn’t make much sense.

I like the one box nature of it.

However I’m convinced Home Assistant is what is killing my box at random and then I struggle to connect to it. When I turn that off all is happiness.

So I would actually prefer to keep HA on a Pi or other stand alone setup.