Category: Smart_home

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Solar panels for sensor nodes

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Intro For a while now, I started replacing the dead AA(A) batteries in my sensor nodes with rechargeable NiMH ones. So, since these batteries are rechargeable, I thought, why not trying adding small solar panels for sensor nodes, where light is abundant. Node 27: outside sensor Purpose: outside temperature, humidity, light, pressure sensor. Powered by 2 x AAA 500mAh from Ikea. The solar cell is rated 3V, 125mA and is pointing vertically south and costs… Continue reading

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Simple LED strip UPS – closed.

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Update after 3 months The UPS is functioning as it should, and I think the solution is viable as a simple, low cost UPS where it is needed. It was a good mind and build exercise, but there are two reasons why I am not keeping it: First – realistically speaking, electricity fails way too seldom to actually use it.  Second, unless I build one of these for each room, I will always have to… Continue reading

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Too much sleep power

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Intro Plenty of devices are running on power all the time, even when we are not using them. Sometimes all they do is monitor for the user to press a button or interact with the devices, but many modern devices maintain network connectivity. This allows them to wait for some user interaction which may come through a network connection from a computer, phone or other device. Some of these devices are doing so with low… Continue reading

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Stop it with the coin cells!

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Hey companies making sensors and remotes! (for smart home/home automation and the likes). If you can make a sensor microscopic – fine If it needs to be portable – fine But if it is rather small, but still visible you are not doing anyone any favor by making it as small as possible with a coin cell battery that runs just a few months or even less. If your sensor can run for years and… Continue reading

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NAS to NUC

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Intro Tired of plugging in USB HDDs for backup and data storage and looking for improving quality of life, I thought about getting a network attached storage (NAS). It became clear very quickly that I wanted NAS from one of the few big manufacturers like Synology or Qnap because I wanted this to work well and get it up and running fast without issues. Basically I wanted to pay a bit more for a solution that… Continue reading

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Wet sensors (or humidity sensor troubles)

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Intro Well there is no surprise: i went through a lot of temperature and humidity sensors. Some I already reported on, and some more i tried afterwards. And none seem to survive the exterior readout very well. The defects are mostly related to humidity, but not temperature. What happens when they fail: mostly the humidity saturates to 100%. Here is my most recently replaced one from outside, a BME280: After a while, the sensor reads… Continue reading

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Step up from 1 AA cell – again

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Intro A while ago I have evaluated the powering options for my smart home sensor nodes. One thing was really clear: I would try to avoid small batteries and using anything else besides the common AA(A) sizes. This makes nodes last a long time on a battery that is easy and cheap to find. And I was right about this – the plethora of commercial remotes and sensors that I also used (like the ikea ones)… Continue reading

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10002 The hidden database

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A long due update A while back I setup influx DB to store the sensor and activity data on my smart home system. And i thought the raspberry pi 3 was not enough to run the server anymore. And moved to a NUC and all was fine. But recently I wanted to upgrade from Ubuntu 18 to 20 and thought about making an image of the SSD first, as a quick and easy way to… Continue reading

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ESP-NOW

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Intro The wireless sensor modules I built for my smart home are doing fine in terms of battery life without much effort. Typical life is 1-1.5 years for AAA powered and more than double that for AA powered nodes. So I thought I would have a better look at ESP-NOW. That’s because an ideea popped up during discussion with a friend: can he build a simple sensor network, quick and easy, with off the shelf… Continue reading

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driving a string of anti parallel LEDs

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Intro I have quite a few strings of LEDs with clips for photos. Never thought it was much more than a gimmick when i got the first one, but they do make for nice and personal decor with the photos attached. So naturally the next step is to control them through the home automation system. The first one was easy, there were all LEDs in parallel and an ESP8266 module and a tranzistor was all… Continue reading