Book Image

Building Smart Home Automation Solutions with Home Assistant

By : Marco Carvalho
5 (1)
Book Image

Building Smart Home Automation Solutions with Home Assistant

5 (1)
By: Marco Carvalho

Overview of this book

Picture a home where you can adjust the lighting based on the time of day or when movement is detected. In this same home, you can also detect when a door is unexpectedly opened or an alarm is triggered in response to any suspicious activity. Such automated devices form part of a smart home, and the exciting part is that this book teaches you how to create and manage these devices all by yourself. This book helps you create your own ecosystem to automate your home using Home Assistant software. You’ll begin by understanding the components of a home automation system and learn how to create, hack, and configure them to operate seamlessly. Then, you'll set up Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi to work as a home automation server, build your own IoT sensors based on ESP32/ESP8266, and set up real-life automation use cases using hands-on examples and projects. The chapters will also guide you in using software tools such as Node-RED, InfluxDB, and Grafana to manage, present, and use data collected from your Home Automation devices. Finally, you’ll gain insights into new technologies and trends in the home automation space to help you continue with your learning journey. By the end of this book, you’ll be able to build your own creative, IoT-based home automation system using different hardware and software technologies.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
1
Part 1: Introduction to Home Assistant – Installation and Configuration
4
Part 2: Install, Create, and Hack Sensors and Actuators
7
Part 3: Automations, Customizations, and Integrations Using Home Assistant
10
Part 4: Expanding Home Assistant’s Capabilities
13
Part 5: Learn by Doing and Future Trends

Understanding the five-zone temperature logger system architecture

The temperature logger was born from two main needs I had. The first need was to try to keep the same temperature throughout the entire house, since it has two HVAC systems and the temperatures in the rooms are not the same. The second need (which came later) arose after some research on how to implement a temperature measurement in the rooms, where I saw the opportunity to learn and use different software tools and hardware devices in my projects. Unfortunately, I didn’t succeed in implementing the feedback control performed by the HVAC controller, due to one of the two installed in my house being too old and a modern controller being incompatible. So, I decided to postpone the HVAC control when replacing the old HVAC. So, the project so far helps me verify and monitor the temperature in six locations in my home. The Kids1 and kids2 bedrooms, the kitchen, and the master bedroom temperatures are indoors. The...