I automated a factory in 1980 using S100 computes. (CPM operating system) Then helped with many in the following years.
In 1985 I started home automation using an old "PC" but did not like the 100s of watts burned.
I got a Circuit Celler computer. Used it for years. Did power line communication to get to other small computers.
25 years ago, I moved to a Basic Tiger computer shown here. It has just been retired. It has a BACIS multitasking compiler. I got it (almost) talking on the internet. I pulled off bundles of wires when removing it.

This year I got running a Home Assistant Green computer. It is probably a stripped-down Raspberry Pi. The Green comes with HA loaded.
This picture is a Tasmota-8 relay board in a watertight box. There is a 24Vac transformer hidden under the PCB. There are two boxes like this. Not shown is a SonOff 4-relay version. Two boxes like that. Then another box to measure water flow and pressure.

There are a number of temperature switches from SonOff that run fans and heaters in the barn, chicken house, doghouse, multiple houses, etc.
All outdoor lights are controlled using smart SonOff bulbs.
All the pieces talk to each other over a Mesh WiFi. The compute is not on the internet but will be soon.
Home Assistant is very good at making human interfaces. Here I was checking on the fans in different buildings. Then I asked for the history of the Attic Fan Temperature.

 

I automated a factory in 1980 using S100 computes. (CPM operating system) Then helped with many in the following years.
In 1985 I started home automation using an old "PC" but did not like the 100s of watts burned.
I got a Circuit Celler computer. Used it for years. Did power line communication to get to other small computers.
25 years ago, I moved to a Basic Tiger computer shown here. It has just been retired. It has a BACIS multitasking compiler. I got it (almost) talking on the internet. I pulled off bundles of wires when removing it.
View attachment 351148
This year I got running a Home Assistant Green computer. It is probably a stripped-down Raspberry Pi. The Green comes with HA loaded.
This picture is a Tasmota-8 relay board in a watertight box. There is a 24Vac transformer hidden under the PCB. There are two boxes like this. Not shown is a SonOff 4-relay version. Two boxes like that. Then another box to measure water flow and pressure.
View attachment 351149
There are a number of temperature switches from SonOff that run fans and heaters in the barn, chicken house, doghouse, multiple houses, etc.
All outdoor lights are controlled using smart SonOff bulbs.
All the pieces talk to each other over a Mesh WiFi. The compute is not on the internet but will be soon.
Home Assistant is very good at making human interfaces. Here I was checking on the fans in different buildings. Then I asked for the history of the Attic Fan Temperature.
View attachment 351154

All Hail, HA.

I'm starting my own custom HA branch with some core improvements needed for my home automation process.





MQTT Ethernet remote DAQ for part of the solar monitor.

That box generates these and other sensor signals for the DL energy time-shifting functions.

 

You guys realize you're just going to be Skynet nodes when AI takes over, right?

 

Who cares ... Skynet is going to be toast when the Borg finally arrive ...

 

Who cares ... Skynet is going to be toast when the Borg finally arrive ...

No. It'll just be assimilated.

Resistance it futile.

 

You guys seem to be very proficient writing code.
For the rest of us, mere mortals and software-impaired, what would you recommend for a simple system?
Since I live in a very warm and humid location, my main interest is to control the A/C and ceiling fans. Likewise the sprinkler system, our community utility charges a kidney and an eye for water. I would like to shutdown the sprinklers if rain has been detected.

 

You guys realize you're just going to be Skynet nodes when AI takes over, right?

I am a Skynet node already. Home Assistant is all about local control of your devices. No need for a external internet connection unless that's what YOU want.

 

You guys seem to be very proficient writing code.
For the rest of us, mere mortals and software-impaired, what would you recommend for a simple system?
Since I live in a very warm and humid location, my main interest is to control the A/C and ceiling fans. Likewise the sprinkler system, our community utility charges a kidney and an eye for water. I would like to shutdown the sprinklers if rain has been detected.

Home Assistant can easily do that. For local control of ON/OFF and energy monitoring of utility power I use Eve Energy 20EBU4101 over Matter as the connection mesh. No cheap but very reliable.
https://www.amazon.com/Eve-Energy-Control-Privacy-SmartThings/dp/B0C1CL2MV3


For my plants, I use the GW1100B sensor and wifi gateway
https://shop.ecowitt.com/products/g...YlonxlHJew8Rz72Ax5ycnlgVXmz1JCbAE1va36c1BC1-b
https://shop.ecowitt.com/collections/wifi-sensor

 

You guys seem to be very proficient writing code.
............................ what would you recommend for a simple system?

Human interface is very hard to write. This is why I like HA. All that is done.
I really have not written any code. Most programmers do write code in several different ways, Python, Node Red, YAMEL but I write in Visual Editor. Here is what it looks like.
When I got it up and running, then I plugged in a smart light bulb and in seconds HA asked What name to give it and has some suggestions. "Front Yard Light" Then HA wanted to know what I wanted to do with the new device. Gave the option to "switch if on/off"
Here is how I wrote the 'code'. Under 'When' there is the option of Sun Sets (can add or substrace minutes).
The 'And' option I do not use much.
Under Then Do there is a list of things you can do. At first the list is very short. Turn on, Turn off Front Portch Light.
At first I had "Front Portch Light"+"Back Door Light". Then later I learned to change the lights to be in the "Out Door Lights" area. Now when I do something to Out Door Lights all those 20 bulbs respond as one.

If you can fill out the above form you can control most things.
If you want to write YAML code here is the lights on code from the Visual Form Editor.
I do not know but I think any line without black writing could be removed. I think other people would write lines 1,4,5,9,13,14.

Look at the human interface. nsaspook has beautiful pages. I have not tried any of that yet. At some point HA asks if you want a "card" for your new device. Just say yes and pick where you want it. In this example there is a page "House" with 4 smart light bulbs. Yard Light burned out and needs to be replaced. Just click on the light and click on. That simple.
There are options for the size and look of these buttons. You can make them sing and danse and change colors etc. I have not yet.

I do not really program. I cannot do Python or C. But I have a 20 zone water irrigation controller running. It has a web page interface. It shows me the history of when and how much time and water is used. I did no writing of code.

 

Likewise the sprinkler system

Not centralized control, but I installed a WiFi connected sprinkler controller from Orbit (below) several years ago.
It has a phone app that allows control of the all the sprinkler valves' on-duration, date, frequency, and rain delay.
It also has manual control, which is handy for remote operation when you are adjusting/repairing sprinkler heads.

 

If you do code and build custom hardware, the YAML interface is fairly straight forward to interface with one of the many integration methods you can choose for the device.

A MQTT example of using data from a remote source with custom C coded sensor data using JSON and MQTT.
Three remote, wired Ethernet devices all sending data to the central MQTT server.

BMC1 is a testing dev device used for writting new code, BMC2 and BMC3 are online sensor hosts for solar panel voltage monitoring.

I want to collect the data from adc0 and adc1 from each sensor host.

Using the internal code Studio editor, you then modify the main configuration file to look at the selected MQTT topic and then parse the needed JSON header for the adc data and put that data in the HA variable name for display and/or processing.



Sys Patio PV Voltage label using the sys_pv_voltage_1 data collected per the configuration file. Display and display card setup.


Sys Patio PV Voltage History graphs.

 

After over 40 years of operation, my Toro irrigation controller was starting to go. Among other old-plastic issues, the synchronous motor was getting grouchy, with zero hope of replacement. I shotgunned the entire system and went with a Hunter wifi controller. I'm not a big fan of wifi-everything, but this thing has proved to be pretty handy.

The system has two master valves (front yard / back yard), but f you connect both to the controller's only MV output, it is right on the edge of an overcurrent fault. After too many abandoned cycles, I had to do something. Hunter had a solution for this, coming in at just under $300 - ouch! I dug around and found a small relay with a 24 Vac coil and 10 A contacts, plus a matching socket. Problem solved, and it fits inside the controller housing.

The relay is lower-left. The irrigation guys clearly were not wiring wizards, but the system has been very reliable.

ak

 

Thanks for all the suggestions.
There is a lot for me to read about, but at first glance, it appears that at least for me, Home Assistant could be the best bet.

 

Home Assistant could be the best bet.

HA works on the PC, or Pi. Then it can be controlled by any computer or phone that has a web browser.

I have played with eWeLink. It only works with certain products. It is very simple. Only works on the phone. I did many things with that but there is no clean human interface.

 

Not centralized control, but I installed a WiFi connected sprinkler controller from Orbit (below) several years ago.
It has a phone app that allows control of the all the sprinkler valves' on-duration, date, frequency, and rain delay.
It also has manual control, which is handy for remote operation when you are adjusting/repairing sprinkler heads.

View attachment 351234

Cruts;
After much reading I have decided to purchase this same unit. However I do have a question: How does this unit adjusts the watering during rainy days? The brochures mention something related to "Smart Weather Sense", which sounds to me like advertising jargon. Is it really something useful?

 

My Hunter controller has a wireless rain gauge clipped to one of the gutters, plus a link to local weather conditions and rain history through the mothership. It also has an option for a ground moisture sensor which I don't have. Since all of this is 7 years old, I have to believe that many other controllers have similar features, accessories, etc.

ak

 

I also have a 20 year old Hunter controller, and therefore that was the first brand I looked for. But it is expensive!
Since Cruts mentioned this particular Orbit controller, I gave it consideration. It is also significantly less expensive.
However, this doesn’t have the rain sensor cup, nor the moisture sensor.
Yet it boasts that it will obtain the required data from the web.
I am a little skeptical, that is why I asked Crutschow, to determine if he has used the function.

 

The part that gets rain data from the web works, if If, IF that rain data is accurate *for where you live*. In my case it is not. The airport (and main NWS reporting station) is about 10 miles away, in a direction that means that the airport gets more rain than I do. So the function works, but the details matter.

ak

 

The part that gets rain data from the web works, if If, IF that rain data is accurate *for where you live*. In my case it is not. The airport (and main NWS reporting station) is about 10 miles away, in a direction that means that the airport gets more rain than I do. So the function works, but the details matter.

ak

+1
Weather data is nearly useless in micro-climates. I'm 10 miles away from my NWS reporting station and they are usually clear, cold and dry in winter, when there are clouds, blowing snow and ice here for days. You need local data for accurate weather data.

 

Ok, got it.
My local NWS is also located at the airport, like 15 miles from here.
Being so close to the Gulf coast, the winds seem to scatter individual rain clouds, and isolated showers are pretty much the norm.

As a fact I flew into town yesterday, and as we were descending one could easily see the scattered cloud formations and the thick isolated rain columns.
Quite a sight, should have taken a photo.