Home-Automation on karl

#TwoMinuteTeardown: Panel Mount Liquid Level Indicator

Sat, 15 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Generic liquid level meter teardown

I ordered this part years ago for a project I eventually canceled.

I can’t use it for anything, and it’s just taking up space, so I’m going to open it up before I recycle it.

The Ali Express listing is a 404 so I don’t have a link to share or really any information about it.

The main thing to take away is that it’s meant to interface with a liquid level sensor. It will display the level of liquid in a tank and - optionally - trigger a few relays based on the level.

#TwoMinuteTeardown: Home Assistant Voice - Preview Edition

Sat, 01 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Home Assistant Voice: Preview Edition teardown

This is a quick #TwoMinuteTeardown post for the recently released Home Assistant Voice Node - Preview edition.

Normally, I’d be doing a full teardown, but this is a little different; the Home Assistant team has done a lot of the work out in the open. With just a quick Google, you can find official:

teardown instructions here.
source code here.
3D printable case files.
Instructions for adding custom devices here.

I am grateful for such a well-documented and open project. Truly, by hackers for hackers!

Monitoring HVAC system with ESPHome

Sat, 02 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Using ESPHome to Monitor HVAC System

Here’s a quick “show-and-tell” about a recent project I completed.

The concept

I’m not sure how I first came across the idea of measuring air pressure drop across a filter to gauge its remaining life, but I remember thinking it was a great idea.

Conceptual diagram for the project.

The idea has been lurking in the back of my mind for a while, but I never got around to implementing it… until now.

Using ESPHome to Automatically restart frozen cable modem

Sun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Part of the reason for developing my SB8200 monitor was to get to the bottom of some infrequent but regular outages.

To make a long story short, the LAG implementation on the modem seems to have some issues. A quick google will return many complaint threads detailing issues with the modem regularly locking up all traffic stopping. More annoyingly, these reports date back years and allege that later revisions of the firmware might fix the issue for good.

Integrating a dumb coffee maker with Home Assistant via ESPHome

Sat, 21 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

My beloved coffee maker of 10 years has finally died 😢. Parts are no longer available from either the manufacturer or the second-hand market.

Taking advantage of a (slight) holiday sale discount, I pulled the trigger on a coffee maker that’s designed to be repairable forever. The perpetual serviceability is a side effect of an ultra-simple design; this coffee maker has zero intelligent features which means there’s next to no remote control or customizability.

Using ESPHome with the Treatlife DS03

Thu, 09 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Post depreciation notice

This is an update to the Fixing Home Assistant discovery with Tasmota on the Treatlife DS03 post.

Tasmota reliability

A few months ago, I started to notice some bizarre behavior with the DS03 ceiling fan controllers that I had previously flashed with Tasmota. Very regularly, the devices would crash and reboot! I almost never noticed unless I was explicitly looking at the uptime / boot count graphs for the devices but every once in a while, the device would reboot right as I was trying to control it remotely.

Fixing Home Assistant discovery with Tasmota on the Treatlife DS03

Wed, 12 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Update

This post is now deprecated. It has been superseded by Using ESPHome with the Treatlife DS03 from 2022-06.

UPDATE: (2021-10-22): Tasmota 9.5.0 has been superseded by the new Tasmota 10.0.0 release. This release works perfectly with the rules/automation outlined below; you no longer need to avoid the problematic 9.5 release with the DS03. I am extremely grateful to every one of the people that contributes to the Tasmota project to keep it improving!

Two Tasmota rules

Fri, 20 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Tasmota is an incredibly powerful alternative/open source firmware for the ever popular Espressif family of WiFi equipped microcontrollers. This does not need to be another post espousing it’s many awesome qualities, so just trust me on this; Tasmota is AWESOME.

Tasmota supports user configurable rules which are simple commands wired into various device triggers. In short; a device running Tasmota gains some autonomy to react to events without needing to report the event to, and wait for commands from, a remote server.

Two quick tricks for better HomeAssistant automations

Wed, 23 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

It’s hard to believe, but the venerable Home Assistant project has just celebrated it’s 7th birthday with release .115! While HA does get better with each new release, it is by no means perfect :D. This post came about because of a new feature in release .115 and the subsequent limitations of that feature!

In the course of trying to integrate Home Assistant with all the things, everybody eventually hits some major limitation or bug and is forced to find some sort of workaround. Below are a few techniques that I’ve collected over the years to simplify some of my Home Assistant configuration and work around some of the platforms various limitations.

PoE at a distance caused terrible cat5 speeds

Wed, 01 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This is a quick post for made in the hopes that some poor soul in the future will find it and save themselves some time.

Background

I’ve been experimenting with a few different ways to surface various home automation controls in the appropriate place and at a good time. One prototype host is deployed behind a small LCD under some cabinets in a high traffic area. This host is a raspberry pi 4 with a PoE hat. It boots a very stripped down version of Raspberry Pi OS into a web browser running in Kiosk mode.