What did you build/automated today (with pictures)?

dakipro · November 3, 2018, 10:34pm

I found the motors type, they are BOFU ES25/ES16 (one or the other)
You can download manual from this page https://en.m.nu/blinds-awnings/blinds-motor-24v-for-20mm-tubes (direct link https://file.m.nu/pdf/ES25ES16.pdf)
Not sure they are available on ebay, but this looks like their website, maybe you can contact them for local distributor or something…
I think I found before some motors from ebay that might be useful, but the price was about the same so I didn’t investigate more. Anyways, for my combination you need a motor with two wires (motor should change direction base if polarity is reversed) and a flush shutter controller.

I am sure this can be achieved with many other combinations as well

mstormi · November 4, 2018, 9:16am

Now this forum is for home automation enthusiasts and rather the opposite of Instagr*m (where everything’s shiny but all fake) so I guess that’s why most here don’t care or even forget to take pictures at all…

Anyhow, here’s a picture of my motorized TV cover:

See it in operation here.

I’ve also integrated my lawn mower and even built a home for it (silly, eh ?), see it in operation here.

Confectrician · November 4, 2018, 9:39am

Looks very nice Markus.

CDriver · November 4, 2018, 9:57am

The lawnmower house is totally over the top. I need one

mstormi · November 4, 2018, 10:08am

Thanks. It’s homemade to match the house design and pretty skew-whiff, though, so I had to film it from a distance But it was fun to build with those ~ 3 left hands of my son & me.

mstormi · November 4, 2018, 11:18am

Here is another one: our new bathroom to automatically “close” windows on entry.

In case you’re now about to ask “what if your OH fails ?”: the default actually is to have the blind window pane, it only becomes transparent when current is applied.

dakipro · November 5, 2018, 10:44am

bathroom windows are star-trek material… Looks awesome. Any info you can share about the price and general usability (read: is it worth it for you)?

aart · November 5, 2018, 10:56am

WOW, AWESOME!!
I WANT THAT!
What kind of glass/foil is that?
Where can you buy that!

mstormi · November 5, 2018, 12:55pm

Thanks. I was having a hard time finding it. It’s an inside-mounted foil. I’m usually not promoting any sellers but since you asked, I found it at Schaltbare Folie - Elektrischer Sichtschutz | Westerwald Folien. They’re also selling a trial kit for less than 100€ that you get completely refunded on return (hint: keeping it and reusing the power supply is cheaper than to buy theirs).

It’s not 100% transparent if looking from an angle but looks better in reality than I expected. I have been using it without problems for half a year now. It’s fun and useful, so yes it was well worth it.

GeorgJ · November 5, 2018, 3:56pm

Hi Jürgen,
you said there is an API to get/set data on VITOCONNECT - I am Looking since month for this API, but did not find anything.
Could you plese send me some Information on it?
Thanks Georg

opus · November 5, 2018, 4:42pm

See this post, although the actual setting seems not to be working (yet). As I read it the API is launched in a “Work in progress” state.

Sascha_Billian · November 5, 2018, 8:06pm

Ok, TBH I don’t really have nice pictures of the hardware.
Nevertheless i want to tell you about my automation -

Battery/Solar powered soil moisture sensor

Currently i have a raised bed that is being watered automatically depending on the current weather forecast in combination with the soil humidity.

Weather forecast is nothing fance - just Weatherunderground binding.
The “fancier stuff” is the sensor that is constantly measuring the soil moisture.

Hardware for the sensor:

Arduino mini (3.3V)
Capacitive soil moisture sensor (ordered by Ali)
5V/500mA Solar panel
18650 Battery
Battery charging circuit to avoid over/undercharging
433MHz transmitter
3D Printed case

Since I do not want to run into too much battery drain, i’ve decided to remove the power LED and the voltage regulator from the arduino, as described e.g. here: http://www.home-automation-community.com/arduino-low-power-how-to-run-atmega328p-for-a-year-on-coin-cell-battery/

In order to have a constant power supply, i’ve decided to use a 18650NiMh Battery that is being charged via an additional IC that managed the charging current and also has an output where I directly can connect my Arduino.

Most of the time, the arduino is in deep sleep. It wakes up once in a minute, and transmits the sensor readings + battery voltage vie 433MHz

Hardware for the receiver:

An ESP32 (maybe a bit overkill)
433MHz SuperHET receiver

The ESP reads the data from 433MHz and sends them to a MQTT broker.

Openhab checks the soil moisture and depending on some states (uper/lower limit, time of day, season, weather forecast) it will open a Valve that is watering the raised bed.
To avoid turning your garden into a swamp, a few things have to taken care of:

Switch off the valves immediately when the sensor or ESP32 goes offline
Switch off the valves after a maximum time
switch off the valves when a certain moisture level has been reached

This is maintained by a bunch of rules - of course to be more save it also would require to measure the water flow and have a second valve to close if the first one fails for some reason.

The result of all is logged into influx and I have a chart for displaying it:

Sorry for not having pictures yet. If you want i can post some later. I’m taking the sensor inside during winter

Kim_Andersen · November 5, 2018, 10:27pm

Thats pretty awesome…
But how does it look is it´s dark outside and light inside?

dakipro · November 5, 2018, 10:53pm

Please do, this is after all an exhibitionist topic

You reminded me of my previous built of a water leakage sensor, using arduino and MySensors library, a quick’n’dirty sensor made using 2m long thin ribbon cable from ebay/aliexpress ($2-3) as a leakage sensor to monitor thumble dryer. Sometimes baby would take out the rubber on the doors, or I would not connect the condenser properly after cleaning and it would leak quite a lot of water on the floor.

Almost invisible under the appliance

For the sensor/contact itself I “polished” out the insulation on the ribbon using dremel polishing bit every feww centimeters (it is very easy to damage the copper line, so if you plan to reproduce this one, test with few bits). It looks ugly as hell but it is under the dryer so… functionality beats aesthetics here by far.

I connected every second line with one contact, and every second with second contact, which gave me a sensor that would detect smallest drop of water (probably not needed but…).
It has been working reliably almost a year now, with batteries holding almost one year.
Then made same for water heater

Similar commercial sensor costs around 150e here, I built this for about 7e. Saved quite some money, just never got it back from the administration (wife)

adtwomey · November 5, 2018, 11:49pm

Yes I like to do an project like this can I see. Would like to know if you got a wright up on it too. I’m just learning so would need to follow something.

TasteIT · November 6, 2018, 3:08pm

Hi Dakipro,
nice looking. What sensors are behind the water tape? I have a camera too an use the stream url from this, but my is not viewing on chrome and android on 8zoll tab. Which Element you use for the View, or is it just a Screen? Thx

bartus · November 7, 2018, 1:35am

Finished(?) working on a new revision of my breakout board today:

This has been on my todo list for a while, but this post/my response to @rlkoshak above motivated me to take care of some issues I’d been wanting to fix for a while, e.g.:

Added Shottky diode between RST/D0 pins to fix some deepsleep/upload issues
Replaced slow I2C level shifter with the faster 74AHCT125N, which is known to work well with addressable LEDs (stepping up 3.3v to 5V output)
Rerouted some of the GPIO pins to avoid using “bad” (GPIO 0,2,15) boot pins, and to use the “proper” I2C pins (D1,D2).
Added an I2C header (I’m going to modify the enclosure models to open this up to external output, as well) for some future sensor ideas I have (e.g. HVAC differential pressure using I2C ADC, weight/strain gauges with HX711, etc…)

Kind of hesitating on hitting “send” to the fab, wondering if I’m missing something else (it’s hard to work around the different requirements for GPIO pins on these NodeMCUs)…

Happy to get any feedback before I lock it down

adtwomey · November 7, 2018, 3:29am

Ok So far I got
Weather (don)
Solar Panels info (don)
Google Home & Chromecast (don)
Broadlink MQTT Bridge (Don)
MK Sprinkler System (Don)
Lights (Don)

Left to do
Charts for Solar info and Cloudiness (in weather info)
Charts for Rainfall
Rules to look at Rainfall and to water or not to water with MK Sprinkler System.

BK @bartus think you can do and video on charts.

bartus · November 7, 2018, 3:41am

@adtwomey - Charts are pretty simple (at least the basic charts). just look at this example:

Items file:

Group Temp_Chart (All)
Number Temp_Chart_Period "Temp Chart Period"
Number Temperature_Basement "Bsmt Temp [%.1f F]" <temperature> (gBsmt,Temp_Chart)

Sitemap:

Switch item=Temp_Chart_Period label="Temp Chart Period" mappings=[0="Hour", 1="Day", 2="Week", 3="Off"] icon="line"
Chart item=Temp_Chart period=h refresh=6000 service="rrd4j" visibility=[Temp_Chart_Period==0, Temp_Chart_Period=="Uninitialized"]
Chart item=Temp_Chart period=D refresh=30000 service="rrd4j" visibility=[Temp_Chart_Period==1]
Chart item=Temp_Chart period=W refresh=30000 service="rrd4j" visibility=[Temp_Chart_Period==2]

That should get you started

I could do a video on that, but I’d like to wait until I learn Grafana and can do one on the pretty charts you can do with it

adtwomey · November 7, 2018, 3:55am

That’s the open I was talking about.

I may walk 1st