I'm running my Home Assistant install using Home Assistant Core on a small Intel NUC machine in my utility closet. The NUC is connected and integrated in my home network and a mix of home automation hardware and software.
- Intel NUC NUC7i3BNK I stuffed this with 16GB of RAM and a 512GB Western Digital NVME drive.
- Conbee II USB stick for Zigbee connectivity
- Aeotec Z-wave stick
- Eneco Toon thermostat
The above devices connect to a number of 'smart' devices in our home:
- Quite a few GreenWave Reality Smart PowerNodes. These are smart z-wave power blocks with 6 EU power plug connectors that each are switchable and measure power consumption. They're not great quality, but they work for now.
- Some single Fibaro Wall Plugs. They switch nice and fast, are stable, small and report power as well.
- Lots of TRÅDFRI Zigbee bulbs. Cheap, work well with the Conbee II stick.
- A few TRÅDFRI switches (on/off and the round multi-button switch) for physically triggering scenes or switching power.
- A Xiaomi 'smart humidifier' (WiFi)
- Bosch fridge/freezer with wifi and door-triggered cameras
- Siemens dishwasher with wifi
- Roku Ultra for media playing
- LG Oled 48CX TV
- Ikea Symfonisk Sonos 'clone'
- Samsung WW80T754ABT washing machine
- Withings Cardio smart scale
- Hue motion sensor as an experiment
- Not really home automation, but the car reports metrics, GPS and status back via Connected Drive
In the house devices are wired where possible, but lots of devices connect via wifi. The network is based all off Ubiquiti equipment:
- Ubiquiti Edgerouter 12 as a router
- Ubiquiti EdgeSwitch 8-150w PoE switch for some additional equipment
- a few Ubiquiti NanoHD access points for wireless connectiviy
I try to keep noisy equipment out of the house, so storage and backups is done off-site.
For Home Assistant, I run Debian Buster, using a btrfs root. Docker was added using the standard docker-ce repositories. I run two container setups outside of home-assistant:
- Portainer for container management
- ELK stack for monitoring and logging This was installed using standard ELK docker-compose files that can be found here
After getting the base infrastructure in place, home-assistant was installed using the standard Docker install instructions.
In home-assistant I do a few things to automate - but there should be much more 'smartness' to it. Partially this is due to lack of sensors (and the inability of most sensors to ignore cats); the other bit that needs to be fixed is proper presence detection.
Things I do do:
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Switch off unneeded power at night. This saves more energy than I thought!
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'Night mode' triggers when I enable my alarm. This works by using the 'sleep cycle' app which can connect to Hue devices. In home-assistant I have a 'fake hue' hub which pretends to be a light. The light connected to that is a virtual light, which triggers some automation in appdaemon. The appdaemon script takes care of the following:
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When I switch off the alarm in the morning, switch on the espresso machine, so it's warmed up when I exit the shower.
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If it's a weekday and not a holiday, and I woke up after a certain time, I'm working from home, so the espresso machine gets switched on at 12 so I have a heated machine after lunch.
On non-weekdays or holidays, the machine gets switched on at around 11 only. The appdaemon scripts and configs are in the apps/ section of this repo.
- Some node-red automation around the lights upstairs. I control these using Ikea wireless switches. I have two lights next to the bed, and one bigger light. These are switched on and off depending on state:
- When the bed lights are off, and that side's button gets pushed, both bed lights and the big light switch on.
- When the bed lights and the big lights are on, and one of the 'off' buttons gets pushed, that side's light switches off, along with the big light.
- When only one light is on, and that side's 'off' button gets pushed, only that light switches off.
This convuluted automation takes care of our before-sleeping routines :)
- Some simple automation using light groups for switching off and on all of the 'media stuff' at the same time.
Todo:
- Proper presence detection
- Proper sensor automation (occupancy / movement)
- More graphs and measurements around humidity and air quality
- Some switches for lights that are not switchable yet. Replacing of physical wall switches by Shelly or the like.