Plug Me In Now

The struggle to get Home Automation working the way I want it to

[plugmeinnow]

Ding Dong...

This weekends mission was to connect up a new smart doorbell. The requirements - It was replacing a main powered door bell with an analogue chime. The current doorbell ran from a transformer that gave 8Volts, 1amp. The new door bell should replace this one, use the existing wires, use the existing chime and also allow a new chime elsewhere in the house. The storage should be local and not cloud based. There should be a free phone app to answer and talk back to the visitor. And finally - bonus points if I can cast the picture to a TV when it rings using Home Assistant.

After watching lots of you-tube reviews and reading lots of spec sheets on the hundred of similar looking devices I picked the Eufy 2K battery/wired doorbell : https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B081VD7VVZ It connected to the chime and my phone in minutes. It has a battery and trickle charges it from the 8V supply.

First step - Install the eufy-security integration : https://github.com/nonsleepr/ha-eufy-security and then add on a bridge to carry the eufy updates to mqtt (note there is a separate port about installing and using mqtt): https://github.com/matijse/eufy-ha-mqtt-bridge/

And add some sensors to the configuration.yaml file :

# Doorbell stuff : binary_sensor: - platform: mqtt name: Camera motion detected device_class: motion state_topic: homeassistant/binary_sensor/eufy/T8210PXXXXXXXXXX_motion/state json_attributes_topic: homeassistant/binary_sensor/eufy/T8210PXXXXXXXXXX_motion/attributes payload_on: motion payload_off: clear off_delay: 5 - platform: mqtt name: Doorbell button pressed device_class: motion state_topic: homeassistant/binary_sensor/eufy/T8210PXXXXXXXXXX_doorbell/state json_attributes_topic: homeassistant/binary_sensor/eufy/T8210PXXXXXXXXXX_doorbell/attributes payload_on: motion payload_off: clear off_delay: 5 camera: - platform: mqtt name: Camera - Last event topic: homeassistant/camera/eufy/T8210PXXXXXXXXXX_thumbnail

Add an automation that will trigger when someone rings the doorbell (or you could use 'motion detect') and pass it to a command that will send it out to the TV :

alias: FrontDoor - Motion - LivingRoom TV description: '' trigger: - platform: state entity_id: binary_sensor.front_door_doorbell_pressed attribute: event_time condition: [] action: - service: rest_command.doorbell_tv data: message: Someone at the front door tv: 192.168.0.200 pic: "https://Address-Goes-here{{state_attr("camera.front_door_last_event","entity_picture")}}" mode: single

And here is the command this will run (taken almost directly from https://community.home-assistant.io/t/eufy-camera-integration/ ) rest_command: doorbell_tv: url: "http://{{ tv }}:7979/notify" content_type: 'application/json' verify_ssl: false method: 'post' timeout: 20 payload: > { "duration": 5, "position": 0, "title": "Home Assistant", "titleColor": "#50BFF2", "titleSize": 10, "message": "{{ message }}", "messageColor": "#fbf5f5", "messageSize": 14, "backgroundColor": "#0f0e0e", "media": { "image": { "uri": "{{pic}}","width": 580 }} } This then uses the PIPUP android TV plugin to do a floating (picture in picture) box to show who is walking up. https://github.com/rogro82/PiPup

At this point I ran into trouble. If I put in an image form a public website - it worked. If I tried anything local it would not work. I searched and searched and could fine almost nothing on the subject.

After a few hours of testing, I worked out it was not an issue with remote Vs local addresses. It has HTTPS. Even though the examples show 'http://192.168.x.x/' type addresses this would not work on the two TVs I tested on. You need HTTPS not HTTP and for that you need a valid DNS name and Cert to go with it.

So I changed my picture from : http://192.168.0.50{{state_attr("camera.front_door_last_event","entity_picture")}}"

to :

https://Address-Goes-here{{state_attr("camera.front_door_last_event","entity_picture")}}"

I registered the DNS address with a Free DNS service and registered an SSL cert with letsEncrypt. and installed it using the following HACS plugins : https://github.com/home-assistant/hassio-addons/tree/master/letsencrypt https://github.com/home-assistant/hassio-addons/tree/master/duckdns and finally got the HTTPS service running using : https://github.com/home-assistant/hassio-addons/tree/master/nginx_proxy This last bit may be optional. try your tv first to see if it displays the picture with the local address of your HA box. If it gives the text but no picture you need to do the above.

[plugmeinnow]

A bad day with the wires

Todays tasks - Install new fancy switches on two lights.  That should be simple, right ?

The first one was to change the switches top and bottom of the stairs.  My plan was to use a single switch at both ends and to use automations to turn off the other switch if needed. 

FAIL.

The only connection into the two switch boxes is the three way wire. L1, L2 and COMMON.  So there is no power for the smart switches.  I do have some ‘live only’ switches, where they draw current off the return from the bulb.  But I cannot think of a way to wire this using the three wires.  Any suggestions would be welcome here.  I’m thinking of leaving them as is and finding the Neutral wire in the roof and doing a relay switch embedded in the roof.

The next task was to swap a single roof light switch.  This one will be far easier.  Single switch, single bulb.  What could go wrong ?

FAIL.

The bulb is a colour changing LED and does not have a return voltage that will back power the switch.  Again we hit the issue of European wiring where there is no Neutral at the switch.  So options here.  I get a capacitor to wire across the bulb or again I swap to a relay switch in the roof.

Not a good day for my wiring skills.  I think I will have another go tomorrow with fresh eyes.

[plugmeinnow]

Notify me !!!

Home Assistant is great for turning things on and off, but now and then it is nice to know these things are happening.  How about when a light is left on, when a temperature sensor falls below a set temperature, or when someone (or rather their phone) comes or goes from the area ? This is where notifications come in handy.

I have decided to set up notifications in slack.  This way multiple people know when the event has happened and can even leave a message saying they are checking on it.

The first step is to create a family space in slack, and create a room inside that space for the messages to go.  There are lots of pages that already explain this so I’m not going to repeat that.  I already had my space, so lets skip on to linking it together with my home-assistant.

After your slack area has been created and you are all logged in, visit : https://api.slack.com/apps and create a new app. This bit would not work for me on my desktop browser, so I had to do it on my phone on the slack app and then continue after I had created it on the desktop.

 Create a ‘bot’ and add the following oauth powers to it : channels:join chat:write chat:write.customize chat:write.public incoming-webhook

Copy the api token.  It should start with ‘xoxb-’ for example : xoxb-123456789123-9876543219876-ABCdeFgHIJklmNOpqrSTUvwXYz

This goes into your configuration.yaml file like this :

# Slack Notify notify:  - name: slack    platform: slack    api_key: xoxb-123456789123-9876543219876-ABCdeFgHIJklmNOpqrSTUvwXYz    default_channel: "#home"    username: "Home-Assistant"    icon: ":house:"

Restart and test by adding something like this :

[plugmeinnow]

IKEA Smart Devices

On my last trip to Ikea I purchased a smart bulb and a shortcut button (I cannot find a link to this. It is a single click button about 4cm square).

The good news - They both work with ZigBee and after a few issues getting set up they both work really well with Home Assistant

The bulb has to be held about 5cm from the aerial - no really that close.  I assumed it was an exaggeration but it did not see it until it was that close.  The other items can be meters away.  All of them work 20Meters away in my house after they have been paired.

I had a bit of a fight with the shortcut switch. While I was playing I managed to pair it directly with the bulb. To get it unpaired so I could attach it to my HomeAssistant ZigBee controller, I eventually found a YouTube video from Ikea showing you press the rest button 4 times in a row.

One finding since I got them working - the bulb seems to be a very strong zigbee router and quite a few of my zigbee sensors and switches have moved over to it as their route to get back to the main controller.

[plugmeinnow]

Home Automation - 3 way plugs

The lizard got an upgrade.  Originally I plugged in the tank to 2 different timer switches, including a splitter to split one of these to two different plugs.  There are 3 power plugs for the tank.  One of them is on at night and powers a hat mat to keep the temperature up.  During the day, this one goes off and is replaced by a heat bulb and a UV light.

Todays great find - a way extension cable by TP-Link which has three sockets and each one can be addressed individually. This means each one can have its own time.  Super handy.

https://amzn.to/3qQJAL0

[plugmeinnow]

A new card for Plex

I found a fun new card to add to my HomeAssistant today.  It shows what you have recently added to your plex media server.

The repo ( https://github.com/custom-components/sensor.plex_recently_added ) has instructions to add it on manually but I added it through the HACS plugin - this does the same thing just easier.

(picture taken from upcoming-media-card repo)

Now add on a card to your configuration.yaml file : sensor:    - platform: plex_recently_added      name: Recently added Movies      token: h------------------Y      host: 192.168.1.234      port: 32400      section_types:        - Movies    - platform: plex_recently_added      name: Recently added TV      token: h------------------Y      host: 192.168.1.234      port: 32400      section_types:        - TV

Then download this file : https://github.com/custom-cards/upcoming-media-card/blob/master/upcoming-media-card.js and place it in : /config/www/custom-lovelace/upcoming-media-card/ You will have to make this folder first.

Add this new card type into your setup by going to CONFIGURATIONS / LOVELACE DASHBOARDS / RESOURCES in the web tool If you do not see ‘resources’ you need to edit your profile and turn on advanced. Add in a new record : url = /local/custom-lovelace/upcoming-media-card/upcoming-media-card.js type = JavaScript Module

and do a full reboot to catch all these changes.

And the final step, add a card (or two) : type: 'custom:upcoming-media-card' entity: sensor.recently_added_movies title: Recently Added Movies and a second one :

type: 'custom:upcoming-media-card' entity: sensor.recently_added_tv title: Recently Added TV

[plugmeinnow]

Running a command from HA

Home Assistant is great. It can do so much.

But now and then - you need to do more. Like run a command on the command line.

In this case I need to run a command on another box (to restart a remote control service on a TV box that is failing at the moment)

In the configuration.yaml file I have created a button :

switch:

- platform: command_line

switches:

fix_remote_control:

command_on: '/usr/bin/ssh -v -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -i /config/tv-2021 192.168.1.20 cec-check.sh

command_off: '/usr/bin/ssh -v -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -i /config/tv-2021 192.168.1.20 cec-check.sh

friendly_name: Fix Remote

This creates a new button (or sets one up that I can then add to a page) and then runs it when I click on the command.

[plugmeinnow]

Home-Assistant - Three way lights in the bedroom

I wanted automation on the lights.  My family wanted all the lights to work with old light switches just like they did before.  here is how I updated the lights in the bedroom.

Before - A single light switch as you come in through the door operated the lights on the ceiling.  Then two bed side lamps were turned on either side of the bed using a switch on the power cord for each one.

During - The plan was to make all lights controllable by the home assistant box (and then by voice or timers etc), but at the same time make it as user firendly (simple) for the rest of my family.  This rules out plugs at floor level on the bedside table lamps.  Another problem that had to be worked out was (as documented in other posts) there is no Neutral wire in the light switch on the wall as this is Ireland, and like the UK we only have live wires in those switches.

And after -  The final solution.  The two bedside lamps had inline switches in the wires.  These were swapped out for these ones : https://amzn.to/3s9hBb3. This allowed for automation, but still allowed the lights to be turned on and off inline. The main roof light had one of these Sonoff relays added : https://amzn.to/2WS6y7C.  This means the old light switch would still turn the lights on and off, but they were also linked to the automation now. The final step was to add a 3 way light switch : https://amzn.to/2LjfUau in the middle of the bed over the head board.  I rotated it 90 degrees so it looks like 3 mains switches and set the left and right ones to be on and off for the bedside lamps and the middle one to be the main light.  This switch is great as it needs no wiring at all.  It is battery powered and attaches to the HA system by Zigbee.

Now everyone is happy and the lights can be flipped on and off as needed.

[plugmeinnow]

Home-Assistant - Adding Zigbee

Zigbee is a control system for things like light bulbs and switches that allow them to talk.  Normally you would have a hub and that would control what happens when it hits a certain time or you press a switch (normally something like turning on a light).

But... you can add Zigbee control to home assistant and take control of those devices directly.

https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/zha/

The first step is to get a device to broadcast and receive the signals. I purchased a CC2531 Zigbee2MQTT.

Next step - set it up.  This is far more simple than I was expecting.  I plugged the board into my PI into one of the USB sockets and rebooted.  I then clicked on Configuration and Integrations and clicked on ‘Add Integration’ and selected Zigbee.

It found it and configured it.  Nothing else to do.

Now you press the items ‘configure / pair’ button and search for a new device in HASS at the same time.   So far I have paired an Aqara Opple battery light switch, and an IKEA tradfri light bulb.  (The Ikea buld has to be held about 5cm from the aerial - no really that close.  I assumed it was an exaggeration but it did not see it until it was that close.  The other items can be meters away.  All of them work 20Meters away in my house after they have been paired.)

Once you have them added as ‘entities’ which happens when you find them using the zigbee integration above, you will need to set them up in the usual way to turn on and off as needed.

One thing that didn’t work (yet) is an Ikea shortcut button.  This does not seem to pair at all.  I’ll carry on investigating and update if I get it working.

[plugmeinnow]

Home Automation - Keeping the Lizard happy

Today’s add on to my home automation setup is a thermometer for the new lizard tank.

This thermometer gives you a constant feed of the temperature and also the air humidity in the vivarium (the tank).

 Here is the link for the one I purchased : https://amzn.to/37ZSI9Q

This one uses Zigbee protocol V3 so needed a bit more setup (I’ll do a separate post on how to make all that work)

and here is the first look at the results on the dashboard :

[plugmeinnow]

Back to the future?

Where (and when) did my love of home automation begin ? Believe it or not the idea goes back nearly 40 years to the early 80s.

At the time I had a Vic-20 and was saving up for the upgraded Commodore-64. The monthly magazines with the games you had to type in by hand (and they then often didn’t work due to the printers swapping characters like ‘1’ with ‘l’ or ‘I’) started to carry adverts for a new company called X10-ltd.

This new technology was *amazing* (to me at least). The power to turn on your lights, or cooker or open your curtains from your computer - wow.

So why have you never heard of this company? It just did not catch on. The hardware was expensive. People didn’t see the need for it when they already had light switches, and worst of all, it was too far ahead of its time. Two pieces of technology had not been invented yet -

- The smart phone - where you carry the remote control unit in your pocket (or later still on your wrist) instead of turning on your computer.

- Always on internet. The old system was available outside the house so you could start the oven and turn on the lights on the way home, but this involved stopping at a phone box, dialing your home and pressing a beeping remote control into the phone.

So where did it all go? The company went out of business in Europe. The protocol they invented (X10) was updated and reinvented by other companies into technologies that we know today like zeeBee and zwave. If the X10 company (from Scotland) was about 10 years later they might still be here today.

Some more background: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/X10_(industry_standard)

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Why is it so hard to automate Irish/UK ceiling lights ?

In Ireland (and the UK) we do our indoor roof lights a bit differently. This makes them harder to automate - but spoiler alert - I have a fix.

In lots of countries the power goes to the light switch and then onto the light on the roof.  Easy to automate - you just put a switch with wifi control on the wall. My lights are a little different.  The power goes up to the light first and into a thing called a rose box.  We have two main wires - Live and Neutral. The Neutral goes onto one side of the bulb.  The live wire then goes down to the switch and back up to the other side of the bulb. (who designed it like this ?)

Image taken from the very good site for explaining all this : http://wiki.diyfaq.org.uk/index.php/House_Wiring_for_Beginners

Here is where we have the problem.  The two wires only carry one voltage (they are one side of the bulb).  This means the switch is only a simple ‘connect or not connected’ switch.  As there is no Neutral line, the switch cannot be powered and so cannot do fancy things like have a wifi connection.

There are some options. 

I have seen battery powered devices (Hmmm how do you turn on (or off) the lights when the battery is dead ?).  https://amzn.to/34O61bn I have seen generator ones that the movement of the button provides enough power for a little burst of energy to transmit : https://amzn.to/37TBcE9

There is also a trick you can do where you wire a capacitor across the light bulb and this then makes the 2nd wire Neutral instead of Live (well sort of) : https://amzn.to/38CI1Ju - I didn’t go with this idea as almost all of my lights are low power ones and I think this may not work correctly (open to comments if anyone has this working)

These are the ones I went with : https://amzn.to/2WS6y7C

This is a different way of doing it.  The Sonoff mini plug is small (about 3x3x1 cm).  It has 6 screw contacts.  Two of them are Live and Neutral IN, Two of them are Live and Neutral Out, and two of them are for the switch. This is very simple to wire in at the lamp.  The power supply goes in, The output goes to the bulb and the existing 2 wires to the switch go into the switch points.   Job done.

[plugmeinnow]

HomeAutomation reflash plugs to Tasmota

I wrote this post explaining why you might want to reflash your plugs.  Now lets see how you do it.

I purchased a set of generic plugs that work with the Smart-Life app : https://amzn.to/2WNxYLV

The first step is to make a plug reflasher.

For this, I used a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B V1.2 with  Image : 2020-08-20-raspios-buster-armhf-full.img

Connect a network cable (or do this via console on device not on SSH) Turn off WIFI by clicking on wifi symbol and disabling WIFI

git clone https://github.com/ct-Open-Source/tuya-convert cd tuya-convert

Now we install the bits of software it needs with ./install_prereq.sh

And start the reflasher : ./start_flash.sh

It is handy to open another window and see the log files cd tuya-convert tail -f scripts/*.log

Answer the questions to say you are sure you know what you are doing.

To put a plug in the right mode to flash it you normally press the on/off button for about 10 seconds.   When plug is detected pick ‘flash with Tasmota.bin’ Wait 30-40 seconds for plug to be flashed.  When it is finished it will say ‘Do you want to flash another device’

Connect to the new Wifi device form your phone. Tasmota-1234 Enter your Wifi name and password in the top two boxes (AP1 SSID and Password) Click save

Find the new plug on your wifi.  I do this by going to my router and looking at the ‘client list’.  It will be called tasmota-1234 or will be the one that has the shortest DHCP lease time (30 seconds or so).  When you have its IP address, go to that address in your browser.

Click configure Module and pick a plug type.  If you cannot find anything lcose, go for ‘Generic (18)’.  For the plugs I have, I found ‘GoSund SP1 v23 (55)’ works fine. Click save and then Main menu.

Click Configuration and MQTT.  This is how you will link it to Home-Assistant. For Host, enter the IP address of your control server.  Te IP address stays as ‘1883’. For Client, give it a name like ‘Plug-01’. User and Password are for the MQTT user in Home-Assistant.  You should already know this as you set it up (see earlier post on MQTT). For Topic – Give it a unique name.  I didn’t change this at the start and found multiple plugs going on and off each time I clicked on one in Home-Assistant.  Leave the ‘full topic’ as it is and click SAVE and Main menu.

Click on Configuration and ‘Other’ and set a web admin password.  You will need this to get back to this screen. (when you try the login user will be ‘admin’ and the password will be what you set here).  Give it a friendly name like Plug-01 and put a tick in the box that says ‘template’

The firmware version will be 8.1.0.2 (this is what currently comes with the tuya-convert program.  Click on ‘Firmware-Upgrade’ to get to V9.2.x Replace the download path with : http://ota.tasmota.com/tasmota/release/tasmota-sensors.bin And click upgrade. Do not click on ‘Main menu’ – just wait. The plug will go off the network for about 2 minutes while it downloads and upgrades. If this restarts and still have 8.1.0.2 as the version, try downloading the file and upgrading using the other option on the same page to upload a file.

[plugmeinnow]

Home-Automation Reflash your devices

When you buy a device like a plug or lightbulb and it comes with the statement ‘no hub needed’, what this actually means is the company runs a hub (or set of servers) for you so you do not have to.

Why would you not want to stay with a system like this ?

- What if their server goes down ? What if this means you cannot turn on or off your lights or plugs.

- What if they close down ?

- What if they upgrade in a years time and it breaks your old device ?

Then of course there is the other issue... 

- Do you really want a company, maybe in a different country to have full control of your lights ?  They could turn them on and off when they feel like it.  They could monitor when you have your lights on.  They could even use the plug to jump onto your network and look at local files, tvs, or computers !

Reflashing is the process of changing the firmware (the control software) to a new version that you control locally.

I’ll add some guides on how to do this 

[plugmeinnow]

Installing Home-Assistant on a RaspberryPi

Some notes on my first install of Home-Assistant on my Pi : # Setup Pi : # Download the OS file from : https://www.raspberrypi.org/software/operating-systems/2020-08-20-raspios-buster-armhf-full

# On bootup, pick Country / Wifi (if needed) / Keyboard / password etc.

# Enable SSH (and VNC if required)

# Do an update to latest software

# Reboot

# Add on tools you may need : sudo apt-get install mlocate sudo updatedb sudo apt-get install matchbox-keyboard

# Download and run Docker script : curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com -o get-docker.sh sudo sh get-docker.sh # Add pi to docker group : sudo usermod -aG docker pi

# RebootTest Docker is working : docker run hello-world

# And if so remove script : rm get-docker.sh

# If not running, start Docker : sudo service docker start # Now install the software : sudo docker pull homeassistant/raspberrypi3-homeassistant:stable sudo mkdir /home/pi/ha sudo docker run --init -d --name="home-assistant" -e "TZ=Europe/Dublin" -v /home/pi/ha:/config --net=host homeassistant/raspberrypi3-homeassistant:stable

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Time for timers

As a great example of a useful reason to do home automation - here is the new addition to our house. A bearded dragon (Lizard).

This needs 3 plugs. In the day time it runs a heat lamp (the round bulb on the right) and a UV bulb (the tube light on the back wall). At night time both of these go off and a heat pad on the floor comes on.

Do I need to remember these ? Do I need to set manual timer plugs ? Nope. Home Automation to the rescue.

(A big thank-you to Reptile-Haven in Dublin)

[plugmeinnow]

Next step switches - lets turn this on

The next thing we need is switch sockets.  These are plugs that you put on the end of a normal plug like a desk lamp and they then turn on and off.

For this, I will be buying plugs that will work in Ireland or UK, and the automation software I have picked is Home-Assistant (there will be a separate post about that later).

The easiest one to get going is TP-Link plugs as these work straight away with very little configuration. Do a quick search in your favourite store for ‘TP-Link smart plugs’ and you will see a list of them. The KASA ones will connect up straight away.  The TAPO ones will not. You will also see other brands like Teckin - If you buy these you will have other issues connecting them (I’ll cover this in another post). For single plugs, you are looking for the HS-100 (the slightly rounded plug) or the HS-105 (the square plug).  

When you get them, plug them in and connect to the KASA app on your phone.  The Home-Assistant can now take them over and control your lamp. Here are the ones I brought (I got a pack of 3 but they come in other amounts) : https://amzn.to/3aD0kkk