Aaron Parecki

Adding a couple new sensors tonight. Attempting a sound level sensor (should report roughly how noisy it is inside), and a color temperature sensor, which I'm hoping can tell me how cloudy it is outside and how much sun is coming in the window.

the home automation experiments continue tonight...

now attempting to disable the on-board bluetooth of the raspberry pi and replace it with a USB dongle to see if that improves things

oops didn't realize putting the air conditioner and TV in the "living room" group would mean saying "Alexa, turn on the living room" turns both on!

So far out of all the home automation devices I've connected to this Raspberry Pi, the most reliable ones have been 433mhz transmitters and ESP32s on wifi. I've been getting spotty performance of Bluetooth and Z-wave devices. Could be that the Pi isn't powerful enough, or could be because simpler is just better.

I just installed this neat motor which can drive the chain on my blinds! Now I'm brainstorming various rules to cause the blinds to open and close. So far:

• Close the blinds once the sun is high enough to start shining into the room
• Open the blinds when the sun goes down in the evening
• Close the blinds when the TV turns on
• Close the blinds when I get in bed

Working with people in both Europe and Australia basically means there are zero hours where you don't get emails and slack messages. It's always someone's work day 24 hours around the clock.

Signs you might be traveling too much:

You start measuring streaks not by the number of nights away from home, but by the number of nights you spend *at* home.

Something about Apple's decision to do "OAuth-but-not-quite" rubbed me the wrong way, but this is a great example of how it breaks down very concretely.

https://twitter.com/atomicbird/status/1163478833326108673

Over the past few weekends I've been overhauling my home automation systems. At the core, as I decide what to buy and how to configure it, there are three primary principles:

• Manual override: Everything automated has to still have the ability to be controlled manually
• Keep it at home: No "cloud" services unless absolutely necessary (e.g. push notifications to a phone)
• Open: Avoid vendor lock-in, use open source and open protocols where possible

So far, I've removed my Dropcam (acquired by Google/Nest), removed SmartThings (acquired by Samsung), and replaced everything with the best alternatives I can find, and making a few sensors myself as well.

It's been a fun experience for sure! Not something I would recommend as an "out of the box" solution, but I've learned a lot, and have a lot more ideas still! I'm planning on doing a full writeup once I get a few more things hooked up.

I need to start keeping track of the tail numbers of the planes I've flown in because I'm really curious how many times I've flown in the same plane.

Made some good progress on building my automatic cat feeder today!
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⁣Tore apart a kitchen scale to extract the load sensor and platform. Built a stand out of some MDF board. Attached the scale to the base, mounted the dispenser to the back.
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⁣Tomorrow I get the motor and can mount that to the back as well as wire up all the circuitry!
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⁣In the end, this will be able to drop food into the bowl only if the bowl isn't already full. It'll also track how much is left in the dispenser, as well as hopefully be able to tell when she actually eats by measuring the weight of the bowl!
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⁣#homeautomation #internetofthings #automaticcatfeeder #smartfeeder #diy #arduino