Home Assistant configuration

January 4, 2017 / trafex / 5 Comments

I’ve been using Vera Edge for over a year to automate my home.
But it has very limited capabilities for creating automation rules. It does support Lua which enabled me to do most of the automation I needed, but it wasn’t very maintainable.
A while ago I ran into Home Assistant, saw it supports integrating with Vera and started experimenting with it.

Meanwhile, I moved every automation rule from Vera to Home Assistant and I’m use the Vera Edge only for the communicating with my Z-Wave devices.
That appears to be the perfect combination for me.

Devices

In my home I’ve the following devices connected to Home Assistant:

• 1x Fibaro Double switch
• 5x Fibaro Dimmer 1
• 1x Fibaro Dimmer 2 gen5
• 3x Fibaro Smoke Sensor gen5
• 1x Philiotech Double relay gen5
• 3x Aeon Labs Multisensor 6
• 1x Aeon Labs Inline Smart Energy switch
• 1x Aeon Labs 4in1 Multisensor
• 2x Greenwave Powernode-1
• 1x TKB Home Plug-In Switch
• 1x Netatmo Weather Station
• 1x Sonos Play:5
• 2x Google Chromecast
• 4x IP camera’s (Axis, D-Link, Foscam)

Configuration

I’ve shared my Home Assistant configuration on GitHub.
The configuration is constantly updated and includes at this moment the following automation rules;

• When nobody is home, the alarm is activated
• When the alarm is activated and motion is detected, a notification is send over Telegram which includes screenshots of the IP camera’s
• When there’s movement in the hallway and it’s dark, the light automatically turns on. When its past bed time, the light is extra dimmed
• When the washing machine is finished (noticed by monitoring the power usage), a notification is send over Telegram and a TTS message is played on the Sonos
• When the CO2 level (measured with the Netatmo) is getting higher than 1200ppm, the ventilation is enabled
• When the smoke sensors detect smoke, a notification is send and a TTS message is played on the Sonos
• When the TV is turned on, a scene is started to dim the lights in the living
• When sleep mode is enabled, all lights on the ground floor are turned off
• When there’s nobody home at night, ghost mode is enabled which turns on some lights as if we we’re home
• When somebody is coming home, a TTS message is played and lights go on when it’s dark

See the project on GitHub for more automation rules.

Hosting

Home Assistant has many ways to be installed, I choose for the Docker container. I’m running a VPS on Digital Ocean and have a VPN tunnel using OpenVPN between the VPS and my Asus router at home.
I really don’t notice any extra latency despite having Home Assistant outside of my home.
When the lights have to be turned on because motion is detected by one of the sensors, this is what happens;

1. Motion detected by one of the motion sensors
2. Z-Wave signal send to Vera Edge
3. HTTP call send to Home Assistant over VPN tunnel
4. Automation rule triggered in Home Assistant; turning on lights
5. HTTP call send to Vera Edge over VPN tunnel
6. Z-Wave signal send to dimmer or switch to turn on light

This whole roundtrip takes about 1 second, I was pretty surprised by that!

If you haven’t seen Home Assistant yet, go check it out. It’s open source, has a huge community and almost 500 components to use and integrate with other systems!

#domotica#domoticz#github#hass#home assistant#home automation#vera#vera edge#zwave