NERDVANA
(I think I just spilled heat sync compound all over myself)
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Excellent. The path has chosen you.
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Ok. I know it seems like I have hijacked this topic with my own foray into home automation, but I have and endgame here and one of those is to do some automation around my Glowforge when I get it set up. I’ll document my progress.
Today’s accomplishment was adding some zigbee devices to Home Assistant. Wow. It’s a slick integration. This is the radio tech that IKEA has given a lot of momentum in. I got some Aqara devices and some Singled color LED bulbs. Wow. Just wow!
Beats all the messing around with rolling my own with MCUs and such, although I have some projects where DIY will pay off.
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Perhaps it would more flexible to create a collection of sensors that communicate via MQTT. People cound mix and match different sensors for their needs.
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The NodeMCU ecosystem is very flexible for rolling your own. I’ve been impressed with how MQTT works. But there is the power supply needed for these.
The Zigbee stuff is great for the low power and the battery, but getting the sensors you need for specific use cases is still a work in progress.
I’m still working out all the details, but it is fun.
And another point: Of course we are always in the room with the Glowforge when it is in use, but let’s just say that you have someone be the physical presence at home since you can operate the Glowforge remotely. It’s a great feature. However, if you rely on some IOT stuff, you need to have remote access to that.
I have gotten to the point in my work with Home Assistant to see that having a VPN is definitely a big plus.
So the question is, what do folks use to access there home system remotely?
I have never had the need to do remote access to my work computers nor vice versa for home stuff.
So the first use case would be to do remote access to my garage door opener. The garage has an entrance door, but it is locked with a padlock! Very inconvenient. Then I have to care my remote with me. And the remote is poorly designed in that if you put it in your pocket, it’s going to get triggered. I clip it on my shirt front pocket so I don’t accidently trigger it. So I haven’t been parking in the garage, once I got it cleaned out enough to fit the car, because it’s such a pain remembering the remote and bringing it with me. No outside keypad and the close button is by the locked door.
I have a phone app for my garage door, its also hooked to my alexa with a 4 digit pin code, as far as my Glowforge, having the internal camera has been GREAT, no buyers remorse there at all, i think a smoke / heat sensor that chokes the GF (power off / close air flow) as a safety would be Fabu – i still think the heat / humidity / smoke density / airflow is top in my book for live data. I installed a manometer into the intake of my fan, to see any air restrictions (vent clogged / etc) so far nothing to really report (as I am still playing with it, setting it up)
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pfsense running on one of Netgate’s lower end router boxes supports OpenVPN nicely:
There are clients for Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android.
It might be too inconvenient for stuff like the garage door but, would be nice for full access to systems on your LAN from elsewhere.
but hey they had great articles…
I use Duck DNS with Home Assistant to connect with the iPhone app.
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I tried Tasmota last week and didn’t have any success with these hiletgo ESP32s. I couldn’t get use any of the board definitions listed. Maybe I missed something.
Today I used the ESPHome integration. Wow. It’s slick. So easy to configure a board with a DHT temp sensor.
Finally getting a feel for the different naming conventions and UI flow. It seems that the hierarchy of functionality isn’t reflected in the UI. There is configuration steps in different places and I can never remember if I go through Supervisor or through Configure.
And I chased a rabbit hole yesterday before I gave up trying to get root access to the OS. You aren’t meant to do it that way and I’m not used to not having easy access to the OS. I understand that one can do it, but it might not be worth it. Specifically I want to get CLI access as a client to Influxdb so I can do some deletions. So understanding the best practices of retention policies and such is a new thing.
Home Assistant is pretty cool. Got an Aqara zigbee smart plug configured and made my first automation to turn a fan on when temp gets over a set point. I may not be able to get people to do what I want, but at least I can control my devices!
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Check out yolink. LORA based, 1000 foot range and 2 year battery life. Its a game changer.
I have been pondering what to do to bridge between my detached garage and the house. Small distance, but I’ll have to check about wifi access. I do have one smart plug that can serve as a repeater for zigbee, but will have to test.
That’s where the LoRa solution might be necessary. Still favoring rolling my own with MCUs and sensors, but the YoLink gives me some ideas. thanks.
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Ok. I think I encountered an issue that I knew was possible, but wasn’t really taking it seriously. I had meant to backup my configuration and ensure all was safe. Just kept adding more stuff. My SD card is not reading correctly. I have a USB SSD to boot but my initial install was just a test platform. And then I just kept adding stuff. It grew so fast!
Only about 30 devices. But the big loss is the Node Red flows and influxdb setup. At least now I’ll be a bit more consistent about naming conventions. We’ll see how much is recoverable.
I should know better, but such it is when nothing is mission critical.
Whew. Dodged a bullet. Not sure why home assistant was not starting correctly, but kept trying and it finally finished the boot. Backing up first.
Problem with Home Assistant is the support topics all address different install bases and methods and it’s hard to figure out what applies to my install. And not having full control over a Linux OS and hardware is strange. Still getting used to that.
But it is amazing as it works.
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A lot of the reason behind the glowforge cover I sewed was to integrate IoT with it. I have worked IoT into a lot of the dresses I have designed and the sky has been the limit. It is especially true in the times where you can lay your own traces and design a network around you GF. I just ordered in stuff from adafruit to all to the GF setup. There are lots of cool ideas this thread 
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I spent most of the day fighting with a thermocouple in ESPHome. Lots that I learned.
- I needed to take the MAX31856 off of the MCU to get the sketch to load. It was driving me nuts as to why it kept timing out. Finally searched with the right error terms and realized it what the problem was. These little errors are such a pain. Last night I spent a half an hour trying to connect to a database and couldn’t. Didn’t make sense. Realized that in my copy and past of the password, I included a trailing blank space. Ugh.
- Then trying to make the connection to the MCU with the ADAfruit board. The MCU has a pinout labeled different from the ESPhome reference and then the short names for the pins are different labels. And the colors all blend into one and I can’t make five wires go to the right places. How do electrical engineers every figure this stuff out.
- Finally got a loaded sketch and a working sensor entity in home assistant. But it’s reading funky, negative values. Looking at some troubleshooting there for connecting a k type thermocouple. My thermocouple is stainless braided and is good to 500C. I have the female sockets for the male yellow terminals. polarity is right. It is going up and down. This is all to see if my oven is accurate. I took the self-cleaning lever microswitch off and wrapped the wires in electrical tape. Short term to see if it works. I should just get a new oven.
Yeah. this doesn’t look right. I did a formula on the lambda but it’s still wonky. I had it in boiling water and it was 100F! and then I put it back in a 400 degree oven and it went down negative. I read about using ferrite chokes and such. Maybe there is something wonky interfering with the lead. So much to learn.
This was why I abandoned all attempts at home brew thermocouple probes. They’re a nightmare to calibrate, especially with the relatively low quality stuff that’s readily available to DIYers.
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I am beginning to understand that. With the time and money I have put into MCUs and sensors, I’d be much better off buying. The Aqara stuff works perfectly and they are well built. A bit more expensive, but $20 for an out of box experience is worth it. Though I do love the challenge of stuff like this.
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Yeah I did too. I got it working on a breadboard and then said “nope” when I realized that the next probe would need to go through the same process.
I ended up thinking the same way you did: the cash was worth the time savings going forward.
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@bwente, now that I have the infrastructure set up in Home Assistant, it’s all about the tweaks and automations. But, as I have discovered, it is as much making the dashboards pretty as anything else.
So that leads me to the icon use. This is a deep dive into some important lore. So a basic thing would be to get that Glowforge bug into Home Assistant. I have a smart plug dedicated now that I’m tracking consumption and control. I need that Glowforge bug into Home Assistant. So off to the customization hole.
Not sure if you have done the legwork on this in HA, but if you have, could you give me some tips? Thanks.
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