My home automation story starts with an RFXTRX433e transceiver and a set of Cresta TX320 temperature sensors that needed a longer antenna just to reach it, all hooked up to Domoticz. That was around 2015, and I’ve been measuring and automating my home ever since. The 433 Mhz has moved out of my house long ago.
I don’t give a shit about automatic light scenes and voice control. I care about the stuff that’s hard to do by humans. Like, not forgetting to close your car in front of your house and start charging your car without swiping the RFID card to your charger, but knowing for sure it’s your own car.
That’s home automation for me. Automating the stuff that’s hard for humans.
What keeps me in it is not the gadgets themselves. It’s that the house quietly does things on its own, and that it all runs locally on hardware I own — no cloud dashboards, nothing phoning home. Sensors report temperature, humidity, and energy use; the system reacts; I don’t have to think about it.
One thing I’m building right now: an alternative to Home Assistant (HASS). It’s not ready yet — I’ll write about it here once it is…or earlier.
Questions that are trending for me
- Are cloud IOT services at the end of their upward trend? I guess it’s dependent on other people coming to a level of realization.
- Should I care about switching from Zigbee to Thread? What are the implication for my MikroTik IP space? Am I ready to embrace IPv6 and how to prevent phone home.
- When is my Home Assistant alternative ready?
Articles
- It has finally arrived! — my Raspberry Pi Zero
- Windows 10 IoT Core — Fail for now — trying (and failing) with Windows IoT
- EzTemp&RH crowdfunding project — backing a temperature/humidity sensor for Raspberry Pi
- Cresta TX320 longer antenna — greater range for 433MHz sensors
Related topics
- Self-hosting & Open Source — the infrastructure behind home automation
- Privacy & Digital Sovereignty — IoT and surveillance