Miflora cheap window and door sensor, water sensor, blind sensor etc

Hardware Home Automation
1

Miflora is a cheap(approx 10usd) small (4x2x1cm) waterproof sensor with a battery life time of 1 year +(??). It has temperature, humidity, water detection and light intensity.

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So this sensor is great to monitor your plants but it can also be used for other things! So I will spread some ideas here :slight_smile:

Water sensor - solder some extra long wires onto the soil measurement pads and place it under your sinks, dishwasher etc to get a warning when there is leakage, hook it up with a solnoid valve on the inlet water pipe and you will get discount of the insurance(at least in Norway).

Fridge temperature - monitor the fridge temperature and get warning if you forget to close the door or the power of fridge goes out. Place the soil moisture pads where the defrosting inlet drain is and you will get notification when its time to defrost the fridge, light intensity will detect when you open the fridge(you can track when your wife grabs food…) and temperature control might also be useful for power shortages warning.

For door/window sensor you can either cut off the the soil pads or modify them. You can place the sensor so that the light intensity sensor will change when open/close or you can solder a switch onto the soil pads and have this switch trigger when door window opens. How expensive are normal windows sensor compare to this solution?

Light sensor in windows/centralized - Cut off the soil pads. MEasure the light so you can control your blinds or adjust the light so that the illumination in the flat is always perfect.

Water tempearture - Strap it on to the water pipes with zipties and you can track when you take shower and for how long… (If you have the solnoid valve you can control how long your wife n kids are allowed to take showers)

Presence detection - It uses bluetooth, and if you have 50 of these around the flat it is probaly possibly to use some triangulation to detection on your phone to find where you are, or use the light sensor to detect motion, but i believe there are better solutions out there for this…

Other usages? Maybe @rlkoshak, @ThomDietrich or someone else have some comments on this…

Best of all it comes configured with openhabian!

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That’s probably a good way for her to become my ex wife. :wink:

Sounds like FIND for Bluetooth. It seems feasible. I’d look at the FIND source code as a place to start.

These sound like some good ideas and I can’t think of anything else. Of course, I’m sitting here with a high temperature and a headache so am not exactly thinking my best. I’ll come back if I think of anything.

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As said I would not use it for this, however if a door opens, fridge opens you can be pretty sure that a human being did it, so in that case it can be used for presence, but if @mstormi would like to look into it could be useful, if people go down this path and ends up having 50 of miflora sensor in their home…

Hope you get well soon

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I’ve known some dogs who can open the fridge. :grin:

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If that sensor complies with the standard GATT specifications, then the new Bluetooth binding can possibly work with this device out of the box:

It is an interesting device (and cheap!), I’ve order one to try it out. I’ll let you know if it is working with the new Bluetooth binding.

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@vkolotov you know how many bluetooth devices you can connect to rpi at any given time? I am waiting for my new rpi0 so I can extend my network of these devices.

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It really depends on your adapter hardware. Each active connection consumes some memory. As far as I know 5-8 simultaneous connections quite possible. However, it is not necessary to keep the devices always connected, especially for this type of sensor (humidity and temperature). It is actually an interesting idea, we could implement a new feature in the new bluetooth binding to connect/disconnect by schedule…

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I like that idea. @ThomDietrich is this implemented in the miflora daemon?

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I’m not 100% an expert on this, but I think I remember reading that the Mifloras simply broadcast their readings using BTLE Beaconing and there is no need to actually make a direct connection. I could be completely wrong of course.