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

You’re probably right and it’s fine outdoors. I only have one, but keep it indoors
How do you figure out what values are acceptable for humidity, conductivity, etc… per plant?
Did you “cantenna” your bluetooth dongle, each of the flower cares, or both?

I used the app to pair each device. That gives a frame for each plant, although I’m not sure how accurate the advice is!

I’m using raspberry pi zero w so no dongle but stuck the pi zero w in the can…

Remember this thread is with pictures :wink:

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Ya we wont to see hh :smile:

It’s literally a raspberry pi zero w in a dog food can… :grin:

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now this is why we are all here man :slight_smile:

Ok, some photos.
I ordered some printable stickers (adhesive foil?) to use on my curtains controllers, as it is very confusing which way they go up or down, especially when switches get out of sync when curtains are controlled by phone or google or automatic.

Stickers worked surprisingly well on my samsung laser printer, so I ordered bunch more for different other projects. (if you consider them, order just a few for testing first, some people/printers have more some less success)

You can see on closeup that they are not that easy to stick on uneven surfaces, but they are ok.
Text is printed on 30% transparency, I do not want text to be too visible if you are not close to the buttons.

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good idea i have some 433 switches i want to label

So, if it’s on the pi zero, what direction does the can point to? Does it cover a big enough angle to pick up all your Floras?

can

Literally just a Rpi Zero W in a can of dog food. It’s pointed in the general direction of four Mifloras. There’s another in the front room that points toward the three front garden Mifloras. A third sits in a position that doesn’t require a can for range. :smile:

The cables you can see coming out are the power lead and a usb to Zigbee dongle as I also use this one for Zigbee2MQTT for some Xiaomi T/H sensors as well. I should probably drill some holes in the base and have them go in that way, but it’s working so why meddle? This way also allows me to orient the Pi0W internal antenna toward the direction of the BLE signal.

I haven’t tested whether it limits angles for BLE reception, but it certainly increases range. Am also aware that the can dimensions might not be perfect for the wavelength required, but it’s working so, again, why meddle? :wink:

I actually modified a Pi0W to add an external antenna but didn’t make much difference so went back to just sticking the pi in a can :wink:

IMG_20190601_085050

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Hi

I’m working on a PAR16 style fully addressable RGBW lamp, which can be used with Jan’s fabulous DMX binding.

Each lamp contains 3 pairs of RGBW chips, so you can have as few as 2 White pixels, right up to all 6 pixels running all RGBW elements.

The resulting effects are totally tunable.

From Cool White to moon light, day light, waining sun light etc.

As is my nature, these lamps are fully wired, from the LAN controller to each lamp.

Each controller can easily drive 42 lamps (with the correct power supplies), with options to drive up to 168 lamps.

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Is that 24V?

Now there’s a question.

The lamps and controller are actually 5v, each with a voltage dropping buck, so our Bus voltage was going to be ~12v.

In theory, the bucks can cope with 24v, BUT that becomes a big ask for the bucks to drop, which will mean there would be quite a bit of heat, which would be a terrible waste.

The only reason we’re suggesting a bus voltage of 12v is because of the potential for volt drop across the cable run, but keep the amperage down.

You ‘could’ run them at 9v ?

what us the other cable for? can you dazy chain this lights?

That’s exactly the idea :slight_smile:

Up to 42 of them :slight_smile: or 168 if you’re happy to use 4 DMX universes :slight_smile:

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Continuing my esp8266 journey I build a simple mqtt infrared remote with integrated touch button for my decentralized ventilation system. The remote has three mqtt topics which are connected to the channels of an openhab generic mqtt thing. One for the fan unit mode, one for the fan level and one for the button. The button can discern short and long presses.


I know my soldering is not pretty :see_no_evil:

The button is under the grey part. On a short touch it turns the kitchen light on and off and if you hold it for a second the fan unit is beeing switched to exhaust mode. Together with the nodemcu/dht22 humidity sensor value of my last project it also switches the fan mode depending on the humidity, presence of somebody home or into night mode.
Best regards Johannes

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Pretty nifty.
While there is a massive array of things one can buy off the shelf and plug in to home automation, it’s these DIY things I truly enjoy.

Solder not pretty? Can’t argue if it works :smile:

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  1. automated doorbell based on motion sensor at front door ‘knocks door’ in xiaomi gateway in kitchen and sends a screen grab from the webcam at the front door via pushover - thus appearing on my Apple Watch

  2. Scrape weather data from accuweather at regular intervals, if rain / snow is forecast in the next 10 minutes and any windows (controlled by a simple group), Alexa announces which ones are open and what sort of weather is expected and for how long. A push notification is also sent to my phone. Given I have several Velux windows that are manual, this has saved me from coming home to soggy floors several tiles (my neighbours have keys to my house, sometimes I’m tempted to send them a push notification)

  3. when motion is detected in key areas around the house that don’t normally get traffic, Alexa announces the motion and the wall mounted screen in the kitchen switches to a web feed of that camera for 30 seconds

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I bet the community would love a tutorial on this. For some areas, Accuweather is more accurate than OpenWeatherMap or DarkSky and Wunderground has closed their free API.

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To be honest, it’s literally as ugly as can be.
I just curl the minutecast page targeting my home address and drop some old school regex on top of it. (2 lookups - one for alert, one for don’t alert) My rule then simply checks if either my alert or no alert regex is matched. If neither does - it pings me a push notification saying the current forecast xyz is unknown - allowing me to fine tune it a little more.
If one of the known patterns are met, it does whatever I expect it to do (like send a note to Alexa)

I’ll dig out what I have when I have some time.

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