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

Thanks :slight_smile:

All lights are using a homematic litght switch and some Sonoff S20
The fans are controlled by a Sonoff S20 and a Sonoff Basic.

For the temperature (sensor and actor) i also use homematic
For some room i only use a a temp sensor from xiaomi

The window sensors are some xiaomi and homematic door/window contacts.

For the shutters i hacked a velux remote controll (iā€™m simulating a button press by a homematic actorā€¦)

The television is controlled by a harmony hub and i also have 2 alexas to controll anything by voice.

Iā€™m also planning to build automatic watering for the garden with arduinos, but iā€™m not finished yet.

@Christopher_Hemmings - honestly, it could be any number of things that are causing your restarts. I have seen some issues with controlling servos using the NodeMCU (e.g. with the crappy servos I had connected, they would oscillate at any point the wifi radio goes active), so I see how the servos could affect the NodeMCU vice versa. I hadnā€™t tried this yet, but maybe a low ESR capacitor between the 5V/GND lines on the servo would help filter out any noise?

Just listing things off the top of my head, Iā€™d look at these:

  1. Make sure your 5V input is remaining steady (if you have a Fluke or a meter with a ā€œMINā€ function, you could put that across the VIN/GND pins and see if youā€™re dropping too low - below ~3.9 v is badā€¦
  2. Use the serial monitor to see what messages the NodeMCU is sending during resets - itā€™ll include the reason for rebooting (wdt, power loss, or any other runtime crash).
  3. Check your code for any obvious problems like dividing by 0 or other common problems.

The RST/D0 diode I put in is for programming only (after I found out thereā€™s issues with getting some boards to go into boot mode with a straight connection).

BTW, we definitely should have a hardware section on this forum - thereā€™s plenty of people who would be interested in having hardware discussions as they relate to their openHAB system (sensors, controllers, etcā€¦) and that information is hard to come by at arduinoi- or other hardware specific forums.

We do: https://community.openhab.org/c/hardware/home-automation

But please guys stay on topic, so open new threads for your problems and discussions.

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Exact, and we need pictures and screen shots :wink:

Ok, Here is a quick and easy one, charging station for various devices.
A button (xiaomi?), Wall switch And a simple timer rule to turn it off and set some notification to get batteries out

Here i made my own switch with MySensors and Arduino, but anything will work basically

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I also was looking for at water valve.
But being the cheapskate I am, would not pay for a Danfoss or the like. But I wonā€™t trust the cheap Ali ones for my main water valve.
But I found this valve actuator on Ali:


Very cheap (below tax limit in Denmark which is about $12), and actually very well made! All metal gear and heavy duty.
It turns 1/4 of a round and has micro switches to automatically stop at the ends.
Plenty of torque for even main valves.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/G1-2-Electric-Automatic-Manipulator-Shut-Off-Valve-High-Pressure-Hydraulic-Valve-for-Alarm-Gas-Water/32846376850.html

Video of it in action

The thing on top of my water meter is a home build reflective sensor. It connected to a 1-wire counter and is read by a small OpenWRT router.
The water value actuator is also connected to the 1-wire bus through a dual 1-wire switch and some relays.

This is probably the most loved HA stuff I have made. It has saved us from countless times where the garden hose has jumped of the couplings, but also has the unplanned side effect of telleing us when a shower has take too long

It sends a notification to our phones if it registers a nonstop use of 100liters of water, or if there have been a consumption nonstop for 6hours (slow leak like a running toilet).

Sorry not controlled by OpenHAB, I like to keep this things separate.
It does integrate with OH though.

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Thatā€™s fine, but I meant more for DIY hardware (Arduinos, NodeMCUs, etcā€¦) - that forum category is a bit vagueā€¦itā€™d be nice to have more distinct subcategories (DIY, Lighting, Sensors, etcā€¦) like the other main sections do. Iā€™ve had plenty of those discussions on here to warrant a dedicated sub. But, to keep this on-topic, Iā€™ll start a new post to ask the moderators to do soā€¦

I guess it wasnā€™t clear why I mentioned we need a more specific forum for these kinds of posts, but that was my point :wink:

Happy to oblige :slight_smile: Iā€™ve had a busy (but fun!) weekend of tinkering. Hereā€™s one of my projects from this weekend.

Iā€™ve redone my LED strips, adding new effects and cleaning up the code for this holiday season. And, in order to make it more of a permanent install (and increase the WAF), Iā€™ve installed aluminum channels in my windows to hold these:

I also completely rewrote my handler rules and sitemaps to improve the readability and UI design:

And the final effect (for one of the windows):

I also updated the write-up with the new rules/sitemaps, in case others want to repeat this: NodeMCU MQTT LED Strip Controller Build & Config How-To Videos


I also received these from the fab shop:

but Iā€™m still waiting for the touchscreen to arrive before I can put this together.

This is what the finished product should look like:

and for anyone interested, the write-up from its creator is here: - it was designed for HA, but it runs on MQTT, so no reason it shouldnā€™t work with openHABā€¦

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I found a very interesting thing on your pictures. Maybe you can tell us more about that. Ther is some tape and wire on a watermeter i guess.

Sure. Itā€™s my watermeter reader.
Got the inspiration from here: http://jasper.sikken.nl/gwemeter/
Just happened to have some CNY70 reflective optocouplers laying around, but I guess you can use many others.

Itā€™s connected to a comparator (basically a high amplification op-amp) and 1wire counter DS2423.
Unfortunately the DS2423 is no longer in productions, but since I already had the 1wire network setup, I managed to find a seller on Aliexpress who still sells them.

The 1wire network is connect to a WT3020 (one of the cheapest routers to run OpenWRT), through a simple serial2usb adapter with a diode and a resistor.
According to Dallas Semiconductors, the serial port approach is preferred ahead of bit banging a GPIO, because the timing puts a bit of stress on the CPU.

The router runs a simple shell script every minute, that reads the value of the counter and set off a IFTTT notification to our phones if without limits.
(IFTTT has a nice simple REST interface, great for sending notifications to phones).

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Wow, something fpr xmas holidays

Thank you

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Thanks, always inspiring to see what others are doingā€¦

Iā€™m dreading to start with Habpanel to increase the WAF, it just seems like a lot of work!

This is my simple panel based on standard Basic UI

then Iā€™m building a touch panel with a 10ā€™ā€™ tablet with HabPanel. Itā€™s very basicā€¦and Iā€™m testing its stability with the fantastic Habpanelviewer and also trying to integrate Grafana dashboard in it

Thereā€™s a lot of work to do but step by step I follow my target :slight_smile:

I have a dedicated thread in this forum. See:

Cheers

Marco

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Hi Morten,

Iā€™m curous about your water meter counter - I think I have a similar one and I wonder how you do the counting. Did you use just a photo resistor? Is it sensitive enough. in my case itā€™s a very small sprocket rotating where the ā€œteethā€ count. Additionally thereā€™s a metal plate rotating much slower, so that could be an option.
So, how did you do it? :slight_smile:

Hi BobMiles,

Look in my former reply:
https://community.openhab.org/t/what-did-you-built-automated-today-with-pictures/55357/89

My meter is a Sensus. Sensus actually makes a ready-made reader to attach to there meters:
Sensus HRI
ā€¦ but as I said: Iā€™m a cheapskate :wink:

Hi Morten,

oh Iā€™m sorry I must have missed that second post! itā€™s all clear now :slight_smile: Makingk my own right away!

Again, thank you so much!

me to , like it a lot ,can we please see some configs ??

item , sitemap rule and so on ,i`m not a coder so have a lot to learn

People, please stay on topic.
This is meant to be a ā€œpresentationā€ thread.
Open new threads or mail an author if youā€™ve got questions unless theyā€™re really of interest to the public.
You can also delete your posts which are unrelated.

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can you share your icons?

Hello all,
how do i generate a Chart like you have???

Thanks

Hi milo,

i generate the charts with Grafana based on InfluxDB and integrated as iframe in BasicUI.

I used this as tutorial:

Greets
Huaba