home automation – Rõika 15

A gate opener

Already for a while I had had my eye on a gate opener. After watching a lot of YouTube videos I ordered one from AliExpress. I also ordered a separate Zigbee gate operator.

Putting it together in the living room and testing it worked like a charm. Then I had a weld some bolts to the gate, as the bolts that where there, where for a different brand of gear rack.

The welding is going better every time and the bolts got connected nicely.

Next was pulling electricity to the gate. It was easy to tap in on my office wiring, so I added an outside socket as well, where I put up a light string on an Ikea smart plug, which will also act as a Zigbee repeater, for the dark days.

After I had put the gate opener in place, it did not want to work, then back in the living room it worked like a charm. Could it be Zigbee range or what was the issue. I had a Zigbee repeater within 5 meter (and without walls), so that could hardly be it.

Long story short due to the temperatures, I decided to leave it for now and look at it after spring.

Train roof improvements and cam

For year it had annoyed me that when the train roofs where build the left almost half a meter of space between the garage and the roofed space, and therefore everything near the wall gets wet when it rains.. As I had some left over materials from the roofing of the house, I decided to use that to cover the gap. The metal works easy, so I could make it fit around the profile of the sheeting used on the wall of the garage.
I got some rebar and practiced my welding again. Some spots look half way decent yet other spots would earn me a failing grade if I would have done this for a welding course. But the most important thing was that everything was baked together, ready to have the roof sheets connected to it.
All in all it did seem to do the trick and the space underneath stayed dry.

The next week I started cleaning up under the roof. The container was full pretty quickly and there where a few piles for the next weeks. After that I started cleaning some dirt and 13 wheel barrels later it turned out there was a pretty nice concrete floor under it.
From some materials I had found during earlier cleanups under the roof I build a little side wall and besides that I put in a few pallets where I put the outdoor carpet roles and the big metal storage boxes. I nice start of cleaning up this area. Next I need to get rid of a lot more crap, so I can build a workbench and some shelves there so I can temporarily store stuff there when I am working under the roof.

On the marketplace at work someone offered a branch shredder for a nice price, it turned out to be the same one I had rented last year. As I noticed that with all these trees in the garden we very often have branches that are to small to actually put in the sauna oven, I figured it would be a good idea to get this, so we can make mulch for under the berry bushes and around the garden. A very useful way to get rid of your cuttings and reuse them around the garden.

Another one of those little projects that I did not get to was install some security cameras. In the mean time the integration for Home Assistant was way better and I also saw that Frigate has a nice local video analyzer that could help with alerting. The camera in the back yard was the first one. I improved the electricity wiring that I had set up for the first backyard light and extended a cable to provide the camera with power as POE was not supported. All in all it gives a good overview of the back yard. On to the next part.

Work at home and a long trip

The roof ladder and platform where ready to be picked up, so I put them in place. It seems very convenient to sweep the chimney now. So I did it while I was up there.
I had ordered a shelf for my 19″ rack in the meter closet and the NAS and ProxMox server fit nice on it. It really is one of those finishing touches.

Then we had a trip to Scotland and after that I found out my dad had a 50 year work anniversary. I wanted to go there, but tickets where very unfriendly priced. While talking to Jan I found out he had the same problem. So we made a plan to combine four trips in one. The Volvo of Toon that was still stored in my back yard, had been sold to the Netherlands and had to be transported there. I still had my RX-7 in the Netherlands, so we decided to drive there with the Volvo to drop it off, pick up the RX-7 and drive back.
It was a great surprise for my dad and I am glad I got there. Minor detail I had an RX-7 in Estonia a bit ahead of plan. Luckily Mo’s mother has a garage where it could be stored for the winter.

Roof and network upgrade

August started wet when one of the boys went to the toilet and while opening the faucet broke it. They went to look for the main valve, while I put in local valves with every faucet, which now payed of, as we could close them and keep using water in the rest of the house.
Next was putting a roof on the porch and next replace the roof of the bathroom part of the house and the veranda. Here was a new challenge, as I had gotten a Velux window for some extra air and light in my future office. This was a fun project, but it was very warm during the building, with the last part Mattias got the IR thermometer and measured temperatures over 70* C on the black roof.
The end result was amazing! Some time in the future a roof stairs and a chimney sweep platform need to be installed, but for now it already looked very finished!
I finished the wood around the veranda. Nice to see how the wood I put in a month before already yellowed a lot.
With the electricity done, I decided to upgrade my internet router as well. It should be able to be connected to the optical cable directly, but after trying that I found out the would need some adjustment on the side of Telia and the first support agent I called had no clue what I was talking about and did not want to put me through to someone who would understand. So for now, I run it over copper.
The meter closet looks very organized now with the router, the home assistant blue, a Pine64 and a Raspberry Pi.

Floor in the office and HA glow

Meanwhile my future office needed to get a floor. Marc and Rika would be coming over and if I wanted to work from home it would be more convenient if I had my own space to sit. With a few square meters of floor it was already turning into a real room. Before I could put in the rest of the floor I had to replace part of a beam, which I had prepared already a few months ago.
It was a fun project and with the help of the high lift jack, I moved the beam back into the right position before I glued the new part in. Another very rewarding project.

The next weekend a part came in that I needed for my Home Assistant Glow project to be able to read the LED-pulses. Putting the right software on an ESP board went pretty straight forward and quick enough I had my first measurements coming in. The next day I adjusted the pot-meter and then precise measurements flowed into Home Assistant. Very nice to see different heavy users like the kettle, hub and oven show their own specific graphs.

Connecting the inverter and repairing the sauna

My goal was to get the solar panels connected to the grid before the end of the year. So still some work to do. Once the new cable to the electricity meter was connected, a project in which the meter was also finally moved to the final position in the meter closet, I could start connecting the inverter also. Fronius has great instruction videos online on how to do it, even though it pretty straight forward to begin with.

Once the inverter was online I set it up, enabled the API and connected it to Home Assistant. The next day it started spitting data which I then displayed as nice graphs.

With that done, I decided it was time to do a bit of service and repair work in the sauna. After three year a few of the stones started to come loose, so I got a different glue. When I started to take of the loose stones from the top, I soon found out it would be a bit more work then the few I thought where loose, around 80% of the stones came loose without any effort, so I took them out and after that glued them back in place. I now also could finally glue the stones in front of the chimney and on the other side of the chimney put the last wood.

In the kitchen I placed the chimney of the extractor hood, I put insulation material in it but it was still much noisier then we had hoped. Let’s see if at some point I can come up with an idea to improve that, as now it is not a nice hood to use.

Start on the hallway and some Zigbee

November passed by quickly towards the end of the month I got back to renovating. It was time for the hallway. I pulled some last pipes to the studio where I can later on put data cable through and then we started by putting the ceiling plates in. Since the hallway only needs 3 of those large plates I didn’t rent the lift, but without it, it sure was more effort. Good thing Hendrik showed up at the right time to lend a helping hand.

The next days I finished the walls, what a different view!

In between I also received a CC2531 Zigbee USB Dongle. Since Ikea uses Zigbee for it’s home automation hardware, this would be a better solution to connect the Ikea stuff to my home assistant. The setup was pretty straight forward. Ik updated the firmware of the stick, installed zigbee2mqtt in my home assistant and started discovering the lamps, switches and other tradfri items. I soon got a nice graphical overview of the mesh network formed by the zigbee units. I created an automation for the lamp in the living room to turn on before sunset and turn off at 23:00. Getting the dimming function working will take some more effort, but that will come later. It is nice to see how home assistant lets an Ikea tradfri switch turn on the WLED installation in the bathroom.

Ceiling and lights

Once all the metal studs where put in, I could put in the vertical parts to create a light cove. When this was done, I could put in the LED strips and connect the power supply and QuinLED. After a quick test run it was time to put in the ceiling plates.

With the help of Mo and Mattias we put in the 4 plates, which went pretty smooth. On to the plastering and painting.

Tiling the bathroom

Sometimes there are weeks where a lot of visible things happen and then there are weeks like these. Little to report. Some parts for the livingroom lights came in quicker then expected. I had ordered a QuinLED controller as I had heard good things about it and also ordered a powersupply and RGBWW LED strips that besides colour also can emit warm white light. I tested the combination and then put them aside until I will get to the living room.

Beside I finally had some time to figure out what was wrong with the cable to the last LED strip in the bedroom. After some measuring I concluded the cable was broken. With a bit of effort I was able to use the old cable to pull a new cable behind the ceiling. Some more effort consisting of cutting, stripping, and soldering and the third LED strip also lid up.

And than it was weekend and finally I could start tiling the bathroom. The first part took a lot of time as I first had to work my way down to make sure the tiles would line up with the window. From there on al the other tiles will be aligned. But a great start!

LED strips for the bedroom

With the new year, the winter also started. In the past weeks there was regular snow and wintery temperatures up or better down to -10.
Nice weather to work inside. Just over a year ago I already made a test setup, so I guess it as about time to actually put this stuff together. After some first trying it was not working stable, but with the help of some forums and my uncle I got the controller stable by adding a so called level shifter. Unfortunately the manual where somewhat unclear on how to connect them, but once I got it connected, the software was running stable and all effects instantly where picked up by the LED strip.

Time to cut the LED strips to length and install them on the beams in the bedroom. The first strip went pretty smooth and also the second strip was connected quick enough, but for some reason the third strip did not work. I need to really look into what is going wrong here some other time.

During the weekend we had a sauna, since the wooden floor parts are almost gone I changed to different wood, which seemed to burn hotter then the floor parts, with the result we had an unplanned new record high in the sauna. Good thing the garden is full of snow, so we could cool down making snow angels.

Tag: home automation