Home Automation

Using Home Assistant and ESPHome for fun projects around the home.

Internet of Things

These days, consumers can buy innumerable smart appliances that promise to make our lives easier. 


As we get more dependent on smart devices and automation it's important to find ways to avoid having to replace our still-functional things with newer manufactured products. Every device saved from the landfill is also one fewer device generating CO2 and other waste byproducts by being made new at a factory. 


Adding these modern features like automation to our existing devices also improves the life of the product by reducing the physical wear and tear on the controls since we're bypassing the buttons and remote controls by controlling these functions programmatically instead of through a physical user input. 


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LaundryBot

Here we'll discover ways to build a smart IoT system that sends alerts about the state of any appliance from a binary sensor. In one example I'm attaching SW-420 vibration sensors to the back of a washer and dryer to enable remote notification based on laundry room activity. In the next example we're going to build on this core functionality of sending a notification based on state but we'll use a Current Transformer (CT) sensor instead of the SW-420.


While this guide talks about washer and dryer units, this concept may be applied more generally to other appliances. 

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ShadeBot

Here we'll discover ways to build a smart system that opens and closes the window shades based on a given condition like when the coffeemaker is ready in the morning or when the sun sets in the evening.


While this guide talks about window treatments, these concepts may be applied more generally to other things around the home.