I originally posted this under another post I did but I thought it would be more fitting here:
I am planning to make a simple openhab setup (as it’s my first time) and I would love to hear your guys thoughts and if you have any tips for improvement or experiences you might have.
My initial plan is to setup up a simple home-automation for my room (It’s quite big) and then later expand it to other rooms when I had a stable, working and effective setup (I want to make my room the testing ground and have all kinds of cool stuff)
For a start I want to use a Raspberry pi 3 b+ to run my openhab (I have looked at using a Raspberry 0w but I can understand that it’s not worth it in the long run as it is slow at startup(Which might be an inssue when devoloping) and I will at some point have to upgrade for more ram, so I might as well go 3 from start). I will later connect it to a touch-screen with hab-panel.
Locally I will from the Raspberry control my room main lamp via relay, have a temperature-sensor (later I also think I will get a motion-sensor for the light) as well as a LED strip (still working out the best way and product to use with openhab).
Then as I have a NodeMCU board laying around, I thought I could make another station in the other end of my room, from where I can control some relays (Want to connect them to my PC-setup) and some blind controls with the NodeMCU obviously connected to the R-PI 3.
Do you guys see any flaws in this setup? Any ideas for improvement?
Also, as power-outages are a bit common where I live during especially the winter storms (We usually get power outage 3-4 times a year) I also thought I could make a backup setup, using some simple batteries that kick in when a device detects no power coming from the main power supply and then automaticly shut down the Raspberry after sending me a notification. Do you see any flaws in this setup? Do any of you have any experience with any backup systems for the Raspberry in case of power-outage in your home?
I have heard that SD-card corruption have a much increased chance upon uncontrolled shutdowns?(I know they also happen over time due to the writing)
Yes, I use a simple mobile phone power bank!! UPS on the cheap.
The pi runs for about 1/2 on it (It’s a cheap one) but that’s way longer that the power cuts or occasional electrical mishaps… Oooops!
Ahh great, I was planning on getting a backup system but I want to reduce (hopefully avoid all) power-outages as I would prefer not to destroy my SD-cards. But thank you a lot!! - first time I hear about amanda and it seems like a great tool!
Keep in mind that a power outage will not destroy your SD card. It just corrupts the file system and that can be the case for any storage media, not unique to SD cards.
But in this forum we rarely have enough information to assess whether an SD card has failed due to wear out or whether the file system became corrupted due to a power loss. So we usually error on the side of just replace the SD card. SD cards are not that expressive all things considered and I at least put a value on User’s time. So it will be cheaper, if you consider your own time, to just replace the SD card unless you are certain that it is just a file system corruption, in which case you can just replace the card and you are good to go.
As for your plan, +1 to starting small. You might consider hosting the UI on a machine separate from the RPi 3 as even on that platform ram is a bit limited and running X and a browser, let alone a desktop manager, on top of OH, and all the other related services you will want to install eventually will quickly exhaust your ram.
But consider this, should a GUI really be your goal? Why not shot for an automation that just does what it is supposed to based on events and in those rare cases where human interaction is required using voice control or a physical button/remote? Then your GUI becomes probably an adminstration tool you can bring up in a browser on your computer and your home automation in general is easier to use for guests.
Ahh okay, it’s nice to know that it doesn’t have to destroy the sd-card and your are totally correct in the fact that they luckily aren’t the worlds most expensive item. I have also come to the conclusion that I should be able to just connect a power-bank to the power supply, which should be able to keep the raspberry operative for like 30 mins which a power shortage here rarely is longer than.
What goes for GUI, I am definetly aiming for something much more than just the openhab access via my iphone. I am planning on using a motion sensor, lots of rules with timers, and then I am aiming to make a hab-panel at some later point, when my home automation is more extensive (I might also make a sound sensor so I can clap or something to activate devices). But as I am only planning on doing it for my own room I doubt accesibility from other individuals will be the biggest issue.
