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#1 2017-12-26 21:26:42

cromer
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From: internet land
Registered: 2017-12-26
Posts: 89
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IoT home monitoring platform

For a long time I've been meaning to make an IoT home monitor video. Right around the time I started IKW I used a platform called EasyIoT but just around that time they moved to a cloud based platform which meant sending all of my home statistical data to an unknown server somewhere and I'm just not really thrilled with that. So up until the past couple months I've been using an extremely outdated version of that... Recently though I found a great locally installed platform called Thingsboard (https://thingsboard.io/). It seems really well thought out (for the most part) and has more or less all the features I'd like to see except for some of the control aspects possibly. Those seem to be less integrated than the monitoring parts. It's also quite easy to setup, I just reconfigured a whole new version of it in a couple hours last night from nothing to a full dashboard (see screenshot here https://www.dropbox.com/s/8aooke4oqulr6 … M.png?dl=0).

Anyways it's been working well so far and I think it might be a good platform to use for a video. My focus would be ease of setup and use. There are tons of IoT platforms out there but so many of them are either a pain in the ass to setup/customize or are cloud hosted so I've avoided things like openHAB and the current version of EasyIoT.

What do you guys think? Is there another (free) home monitoring platform that I should be looking into a testing out?


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#2 2018-01-22 13:21:16

name_zoogii
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Registered: 2018-01-22
Posts: 1

Re: IoT home monitoring platform

did you try home assistant?

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#3 2018-01-22 14:26:07

cromer
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From: internet land
Registered: 2017-12-26
Posts: 89
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Re: IoT home monitoring platform

I have tried home assistant (in fact I used it as a platform in one of my home automation at home videos) but I always found myself bashing my head on my desk trying to get it to work consistently with my various devices that I already had in place. I'm sure it's quite powerful with all of the scripting that can be done but given how easy thingsboard has been to get up and running I've been very happy so far.

Maybe before I dive head-first into a thingsboard video I should take another look at Home Assistant again. I just remember it never being happy with the way I formatted my MQTT data and I prefer not to have to change the way that I do everything just for HA since most of my control is being done through HomeKit anyways so I really just need a solid datalogger with good visualization tools and a front end geared towards IoT.


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#4 2018-01-22 17:09:31

foxvalleypcgeek
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Registered: 2018-01-06
Posts: 34

Re: IoT home monitoring platform

I got home assistant doing a bunch of stuff. Garage door opening and closing when coming home and leaving. Closing if it's open too long. Controlling all the lights in the house as they are hue bulbs. Turning on outside lights and lights leading a path into the kitchen when coming home after sunset. Controlling the furnace. Cooler when we leave and at night. Warmer in the day. Flashing all the lights in the entire house when my Alexa timers go off. Controlling the outside led lights. Even change colors to dominoes when an order is marked as out for delivery. Should do a lightening effect when their are thunderstorms but I'll have to wait until spring haha. Even linking up with ESPN to change colors when football game starts and scores happen.

Bathroom light goes into nightlight mode at 10% as long as one of us is home and it goes past sunset, and turns off at sunrise. Controls my new 3d printer I just got. Controls my iguana room heat, lights, and humidity.

And another cool one is a IR and RF board I put together that controls the electronics in the bedroom, and living room soon just haven't put that one together yet. Now I tell Alexa to set the 1 hour sleep timer and you can see the IR commands going through the menu options to set sleep timer. It's just like creating a macro.

Living room tv and receiver also have home assistant support and now we say Alexa turn on good night. The tv turns off and the living room lights turn on a 1 minute timer and all the other lights through our path to bed turn on for 5 minutes. They all then shut off except for the bedroom which I left for us to turn off. Once I have RF in their I'll be able to do some more stuff but for now it's limited to power and volume.

And if you know what Plex is it dims the light like a theater when we play something, and brightens when stopped or paused.

And let's not forget the whole house energy monitor haha. Currently making cases for all the circuit boards around the house with the 3d printer. Home Assistant has endless possibilities.

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#5 2018-01-22 17:32:50

cromer
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From: internet land
Registered: 2017-12-26
Posts: 89
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Re: IoT home monitoring platform

Do you have any tutorials for how you got all of that working? I vaguely remember being able to get lights to work but once I started trying to do anything fancy (as in watching/controlling my custom thermostat) it all started breaking down and I could never get it to parse the data I would send.


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#6 2018-01-22 22:29:41

Wally
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Registered: 2018-01-22
Posts: 2

Re: IoT home monitoring platform

I have played around with Thingsboard a little and I am fairly impressed with its data monitoring capabilities and ease of setup.  I have installed local instance on a Ubuntu system and I am a little confused as to how to access it on other computers on my home network.  Have you installed it locally, and if so do you have any tips on how to access it on other machines?

Kent

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#7 2018-01-22 22:47:45

cromer
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From: internet land
Registered: 2017-12-26
Posts: 89
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Re: IoT home monitoring platform

Hi Kent, I do have thingsboard installed locally on a VM on the network. I didnt have to do anything special (I dont think) to access it locally on my network - I just go to its IP address on port 8080 and I am prompted with the login screen. so something like http://192.168.1.105:8080 except insert the IP address of the ubuntu machine you have running instead of 192.168.1.105.


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#8 2018-01-23 02:16:23

foxvalleypcgeek
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Registered: 2018-01-06
Posts: 34

Re: IoT home monitoring platform

I don't have anything really to show how it all works, just keep adding more here and there. I thought about doing some videos. One thing is a lot of things need static ip's or things don't work for long. Yaml files can be weird if you don't have the spacing exactly right.

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#9 2018-01-23 03:06:34

agengler11
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Registered: 2018-01-23
Posts: 21

Re: IoT home monitoring platform

I'd be interested in seeing how you did the Dominoes pizza thing. Sounds awesome

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#10 2018-02-07 03:54:49

gandsnut
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From: U.P. Michigan
Registered: 2018-02-07
Posts: 4
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Re: IoT home monitoring platform

(New sub here, and working through various IKW videos on YT.)

I'm here to ask if MQTT (broker) would be viable to work with a "higher intelligence" running on Linux.  By higher intelligence, I mean home-grown software of my own design, to take received MQTT transactions, decide what actions are needed, then send messages out through MQTT to clients.

Said another way, a DIY alternative to HA or Thingsboard.  The MQTT website doesn't seem to have documentation on such.

Thx.

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#11 2018-02-07 03:57:58

gandsnut
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From: U.P. Michigan
Registered: 2018-02-07
Posts: 4
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Re: IoT home monitoring platform

+FoxValleyPCGeek:

Pardon my asking, might your locale have I88 / Naperville nearby?  I lived in Wheaton for 13+ years and know that region well.  Best.

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#12 2018-02-07 04:10:57

foxvalleypcgeek
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Registered: 2018-01-06
Posts: 34

Re: IoT home monitoring platform

gandsnut wrote:

+FoxValleyPCGeek:

Pardon my asking, might your locale have I88 / Naperville nearby?  I lived in Wheaton for 13+ years and know that region well.  Best.

I'm guessing your thinking fox valley in illinois. Wrong one, wisconsin.

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#13 2018-02-07 21:53:43

gandsnut
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From: U.P. Michigan
Registered: 2018-02-07
Posts: 4
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Re: IoT home monitoring platform

foxvalleypcgeek wrote:
gandsnut wrote:

+FoxValleyPCGeek:

Pardon my asking, might your locale have I88 / Naperville nearby?  I lived in Wheaton for 13+ years and know that region well.  Best.

I'm guessing your thinking fox valley in illinois. Wrong one, wisconsin.

Got it.  No doubt the USA has a fair number of Fox Valley locations.  Best...

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#14 2018-02-08 02:44:57

gandsnut
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From: U.P. Michigan
Registered: 2018-02-07
Posts: 4
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Re: IoT home monitoring platform

gandsnut wrote:

I'm here to ask if MQTT (broker) would be viable to work with a "higher intelligence" running on Linux.  By higher intelligence, I mean home-grown software of my own design, to take received MQTT transactions, decide what actions are needed, then send messages out through MQTT to clients.
Thx.

After some hours of research on my own question, here's what I've got...

By using, say, the Mosquitto MQTT broker, two options appear available to author a DIY "higher intelligence" for processing MQTT traffic.  Option 1 is using Mosquitto command-line calls, option 2 is to write a controller in 'C' and link in function calls via the Mosquitto API.  Opt. 1 appears a bit kludgy;  Opt. 2 is decidedly more involved, as one has to learn the API functions calls & parameters.

At least for what I saw in the API documentation, Mosquitto's API is quite comprehensive and varied.  I did NOT see any code examples, which really throws the programmer into deep end.

I did review Home Assistant documentation, and compared to 'C' + Mosquitto API, HA becomes very appealing - almost unavoidable for non-programmers.

My $0.02, thx.

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#15 2018-02-12 17:57:23

cromer
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From: internet land
Registered: 2017-12-26
Posts: 89
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Re: IoT home monitoring platform

Depending on what you want to do in terms of "higher intelligence" I would think that scripting/manually programming would work fairly well. I personally have my HVAC run off of a python script that monitors the temps throughout the house and triggers a separate module that runs the furnace when needed. I also run a good chunk of my home security (mainly monitoring) though python with the mqtt library.

If you want a whole lot of heavily integrated stuff then something like HA works well from the sound of it. I personally use Apple Homekit at the moment because it completely integrates with my phone so I can run a single "scene" and have it trigger all sorts of different protocoled devices from a single swipe on the screen. Obviously this isn't everyone's cup of tea which is part of the reason for searching for an alternative to discuss in videos but from my own home's standpoint between python scripting and homekit things are pretty solid.

Like I noted in the top of this thread the only other thing that is missing from the python/homekit is monitoring which is where I use thingsboard. But at that point we're now into 3 separate systems so again... Home Assistance may be worth another look.


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#16 2018-03-07 16:27:59

proddy
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Registered: 2018-03-07
Posts: 1

Re: IoT home monitoring platform

I used a mix of ESP8266's and ESP32's around the house for my IoT, all running ESPHelper (modified) and managed via Home Assistant running on Raspberry PI3 along with Mosquitto MQTT broker. It's all out of the box when you install HA. Also there's an iOS app for Home Assistant too. I have circuits for doorbells, to lights to a home-made thermostat. If anyone needs any guidance let me know

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#17 2018-03-26 13:05:08

pinky8yu
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From: Serbia, Subotica
Registered: 2018-03-26
Posts: 1

Re: IoT home monitoring platform

I use RP3 + MQTT + Node Red in My local network. I'm not that good at writing my own code, so as home automation enthusiast and beginner I find Node Red very useful. In time I would like to integrate google home mini into node red to voice control devices with ESP8266's running ESPHelper.

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#18 2018-07-26 00:43:03

mjf55
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Registered: 2018-07-26
Posts: 2

Re: IoT home monitoring platform

Late to the party, but I currently have Home assistant running on a RPi3B+ , Mosquitto MQTT, Node Red running.  I have a few Tasmota-ized Sonoff's and need to finish a 'Bruh' multisensor (Temp, Humidity, Presence detection and Light level, no LEDs).  Next up is your Router Booter (sorry, I will put it on a sonoff ) and add mqtt to let HA know and track outages,  then some presence detected led night lighting. 
You should re-look at Home Assistant.  It has come a long way.

Last edited by mjf55 (2018-07-26 01:08:51)

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