Home Automation Sonoff Alexa Node-red MQTT esp8266 nodemcu = Happiness....

Forums › Gadgets, robotics, home automation, electronics (including wearables) › Home Automation Sonoff Alexa Node-red MQTT esp8266 nodemcu = Happiness....

macjones

106 posts

Master Geek

#237964 27-Jun-2018 00:05

Here's my home automation using node-red and my future ideas....

I have a bunch of SONOFF's in use for home automation .... (aliexpress).... no fires as yet. Will keep you posted.

All SONOFF's re-flashed with easyesp (https://www.letscontrolit.com/wiki/index.php/ESPEasy)

All using MQTT across the LAN (no IFTTT)

Orchestration done by node-red (drag and drop flows - no coding required).... i.e. (if the water tank is low, turn on the kitchen light).

Node-red offers lots of plugins.... i.e. I use a bluetooth ping to my iphone BT mac address to turn on the heater in the office when it "sees" my phone arrive AND if the temperature is too low.

When the BT ping "see's" me get home, it checks the home water tank level and if it's below 30% sends me a telegram message. All done by drag and drop, no code.

Alexa node-red plugin lets me turn anything on or off. "Alexa turn on the heater" sends MQTT ON to the heater sonoff.

An ESP8266 running esp-easy counts pulses from the LED on my smart meters to give kW/h readings over MQTT.

The node-red json/http function gets etherium mining rates from nanopool as json for display on node-red dashboard.

The node-red dashboard URL runs on an old android tabled on the wall that gives us all the information in a nice format.

Other / Next ideas...

If node-red can ping my wife's phone on the LAN then open the garage door if the time is between 3pm and 4pm and the door is currently closed and the car is absent. (this is the open the garage automatically for my wife flow)

If the car is not charging and the time is past 9pm and the car is in the garage then send me a telegram to plug it in before I wake up to a grumpy wife.

If the time is past 7pm and I'm home the set the spa pool 2 degrees warmer than the kids like it 'cause it's grown up spa time. Send me a telegram when it's up to temperature.

If the garage door is open and it's past 9pm and the car is in the garage then close the garage door.

If node-red can't ping my AWS server and it can ping 8.8.8.8 then send me a telegram.

SONOFF + ESP8266 + MQTT + Alexa + Telegram + Node-Red = Home Automation Bliss.

davidcole

6011 posts

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#2044512 27-Jun-2018 06:51

So you only have node red installed and no other interface like Home Assistant or OpenHAB for interacting with your items?

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russelo

328 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2044533 27-Jun-2018 08:01

I have been running Home Assistant great for 2 years now and have just recently setup node-red to see how it compares.

Watching this space for ideas and discussions.

davidcole

6011 posts

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#2044540 27-Jun-2018 08:26

russelo:

I have been running Home Assistant great for 2 years now and have just recently setup node-red to see how it compares.

Watching this space for ideas and discussions.

I just like the idea of externalising all rules from the platform....so it doesn't matter if I'm HA or OH.

macjones

106 posts

Master Geek

#2044575 27-Jun-2018 09:02

davidcole

Correct, just node-red and node-red-dashboard, played with HA, but it does not bring enough benefit over node-red-dashboard for me to want to fight with the yaml.

:-)

Mac

davidcole

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#2044590 27-Jun-2018 09:19

macjones: davidcole

Correct, just node-red and node-red-dashboard, played with HA, but it does not bring enough benefit over node-red-dashboard for me to want to fight with the yaml.

:-)

Mac

I didn't know node red had much of a ui....but then again anything I've seen on it, has been driving from the HA/OH side, so they were still expecting to use their own UIs for display and interaction elements.

jurgensp99

67 posts

Master Geek

#2049874 5-Jul-2018 15:23

Two things on your list that I'm currently investigating myself.

What device do you use to measure water tank level?

and

How do you (or intend to) interface with and control your spa pool?

mentalinc

3169 posts

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#2049879 5-Jul-2018 15:26

I also use node-red its ideal for simply workflows!

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irongarment

280 posts

Ultimate Geek
Inactive user

#2049946 5-Jul-2018 16:38

I'm using Domoticz and ESPEasy. Just replying so I get updates from this thread.

kryptonjohn

2523 posts

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#2049970 5-Jul-2018 16:43

This is all very cool, watching with interest...

Not sure I agree with a non human triggered garage door close due to potential risk of injury to person or object in it's way. For that one I'd just send myself a message to remind me to close the door (which you could confirm with a pushbutton on your phone app?)

hio77

'That VDSL Cat'
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Lizard Networks

Subscriber

#2050113 5-Jul-2018 20:55

How have you found node-red dashboard?

i was using it, but found for larger datasets the graph plugin simply draws every single point in a single call (so mobile devices peal over)

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Any comments made are personal opinion and do not reflect directly on the position my current or past employers may have.

Ge0rge

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#2050130 5-Jul-2018 21:30

jurgensp99:
Hi

What device do you use to measure water tank level?

Very interested in this part myself too, @macjones

irongarment

280 posts

Ultimate Geek
Inactive user

#2050256 6-Jul-2018 08:42

Ge0rge:
jurgensp99:
Hi

What device do you use to measure water tank level?

Very interested in this part myself too, @macjones

A good candidate would be an HC-SR04 ultrasonic sensor looking down at the top surface of the water in the tank. They're very easy to get data from, and supported by ESPEasy.

https://www.letscontrolit.com/wiki/index.php/HC-SR04

Other options: a float switch, several float switches, a float arm with a potentiometer, capacitive sensing, a balanced float and weight over a potentiometer or rotary encoder.

russelo

328 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2056993 16-Jul-2018 11:39

russelo:

I have been running Home Assistant great for 2 years now and have just recently setup node-red to see how it compares.

Watching this space for ideas and discussions.

I finally had some time over the weekend to play with Node-Red. Man, I should have used node-red for the automation part since the beginning.

Automations that takes me a half day figuring out how to implement in yaml now takes only a few minutes. Very easy to edit and arrange connections between entities. Visualization greatly helps.

What I'm going to do is move my whole automation.yaml to node-red. UI and device connections stays with HA.

As others say, Home Assistant and Node-red is a match made in heaven.

chevrolux

4962 posts

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#2057977 17-Jul-2018 19:01

Just throwing in another shout out for Node-Red and ESP Easy. Dam it makes things easy!!

Started building a couple of ESP8266 based relay units to control the gate and garage door. Esp-Easy took ALL the programming out of it, bloody brilliant. I have no interest in mucking around with the finer details and want to just work on an end product.

Nest step will be to install either Openhab or Home Assistant for prettier dashboards and data collection for the sensors. Although the Node-Red dashboard does just about everything I need, just don't know how to store that data, whereas it can be stuck in to SQL with Openhab.

davidcole

6011 posts

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#2057992 17-Jul-2018 20:02

chevrolux:
Just throwing in another shout out for Node-Red and ESP Easy. Dam it makes things easy!!

Started building a couple of ESP8266 based relay units to control the gate and garage door. Esp-Easy took ALL the programming out of it, bloody brilliant. I have no interest in mucking around with the finer details and want to just work on an end product.

Nest step will be to install either Openhab or Home Assistant for prettier dashboards and data collection for the sensors. Although the Node-Red dashboard does just about everything I need, just don't know how to store that data, whereas it can be stuck in to SQL with Openhab.

What sort of data? I think HA uses it’s own data store. I use influxdb which can be set as a persistence option for openHAB, or anything really. Then use Grafana for viewing it (which can be exposed as a page or image for viewing in openHAB or home assistant)