I’ve done it all, or have I?
What’s your most unique or original smart home solution?
e.g. I stitched together six different technologies to charge our EV at off-peak rates on holidays.
Enough HA IoT already!
Get your priorities straight.
Just sit and watch Netflix with a beer.
Kick back. Relax. My goal is to be in your position, where everything just works and I don't have to think about it. I'm at the other end of the continuum, just getting started.
Well, your job should be keeping up on the dishes, so maybe this isn't of use, but it's a good one.
HEMs are great for making dumb appliances smart. I use the other clamp from that HEM for indicating when the microwave is finished and a contact sensor connected to the light of the microwave (via a regular 110v relay) to cancel the reminders and also to remind us if we forget to close the microwave door.
That should be the battle cry of HA. When I start down the path of doing something just because I can, I remind myself that my specific goals are:
- Solve pervasive problems
- Increase comfort
- Make my wife happy - this opens the door to some frivolous stuff.
That said, my most unique solution is fixing the controllers on the fancy Christmas lights (Philips ones that cycle between colors and white). The LEDs were fine, but the control circuits failed within 1-2 seasons. I reverse-engineered the control schemes and added a Vision ZL7432 dual relay to trigger them. Now, these are on 5 trees in our yard. They operate as white lights when triggered by motion, but switch to colors for holidays.
MQTT and Node-RED have not been implemented but I've yet to find a need; RM suffices.
Gas stove monitor linked from the thread above is a great idea.
I have pretty much every light in the house automated, along with various other things.
So, when I went tent camping, I was really having a rough go of it. You know, having to turn lights on and off (I found an electric site--used the heater to stay warm, kept the phone charged, and had a light bulb).
That was so primitive that I had to run out and get a "C by GE" RGBW light bulb and remote along with a BT Speaker (and a manual thermostat for the heater). Next time I go camping, I'll have a Smart Tent--with the phone around, I should be able to say things like "Hey Google, turn on the Tent light to 80%".
lol
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I think you need therapy 
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Who is the "you" you're referring to??? Or should I be scared to ask? lol
I'm wondering who the "you" is that you're referring to??? Or should I be scared to ask? lol
It's hard not knowing what you have in place already...
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building out your network infrastructure for greater control - ubiquiti is nice. Love their WiFi stuff (waiting for more of their WiFi6 products) I have the cloudkey, POE switches and a couple of APs.
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A system such as Node-RED while decent on it's own really shows its power in connecting disparate systems. I have it connected to HomeBridge (I am ALSO using the HE Homebridge app as well) and am experimenting with various devices.
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Set up a NAS
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Personal Weather Station
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Set up various services like a VPN, Cloud System like NextCloud.
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Various Analytical tools - power monitoring, water usage monitoring.
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Further security integration with systems like Konnected etc.
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Streamlining and removing "cruft", a never ending battle..
Lots of stuff..
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If you have a lot of time on your hands you could try taking several of the Inovelli LED strips and create a video messaging board, and then if you really get bored make a huge video monitor out of them. Just think of the challenge of trying to keep all of the controllers in sync - guaranteed to take a few months and give you an excuse to play with some nice toys. 
Done
Currently, no compelling use case
Done
Done
Done
Power = done. Water = city provided smart meter. Are there per valve solutions?
Other analytical tool recommendations?
Forthcoming
If it aint broke, I don't try to fix it.
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Done (nightly)
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I'd like to centralize logging from HE and all the other devices/systems in my home but I've yet to find a decent solution. OSSIM doesn't run on XenServer, Splunk cost money, SolarWinds has no security, etc.
Any suggestions?
