What Weird and Wonderful Automations Have Improved Your Home?

The data centre I managed back in Adelaide, 15 years ago, had a closed loop, chilled water cooling system, and conventional refrigeration cooling as a backup.

It was the latter system that gave me the idea, as it had a misting system to increase efficiency. When it was 42c for 2 weeks straight, it did an amazing job.

3 Likes

How does your misting system work? Does the vertical black tube have holes and that mists the air above and around the unit? Or does the vertical black tube direct water into the unit somehow?

If you look closely at the top of the unit, you'll see I've threaded the misting hose through the grille and zip-tied it in place. Each Brass nozzle puts out a fine mist at about 2 litres per hour.

It's just one of these cheap kits with a set of extra nozzles from my local hardware store:

https://www.bunnings.com.au/holman-7m-misting-kit-with-swaplock-fittings_p0544771

3 Likes

The idea is good, however be aware that calcium can start building up in the coil and it can be nearly impossible to remove. It gets like concrete. I have seen it. Did HVAC my whole life.

9 Likes

Maybe add one of those water filters (DA Filter?) that purifies water?

I have an inline filter, plus I take the top off once a year and clean the coil from the inside out.

4 Likes

Out of curiosity, I checked to see what the water is like in my area of Melbourne, and thankfully it’s extremely low in calcium (soft water).

1 Like

I have an automation that is still in Vera as I worked with a developer (rigpapa) to make an integration from Emby (like plex) to Vera. The purposed of this automation is when playing loud movie in media room client and motion is detected at any entrance then:
Bookmark the movie
Raise light to a dim value
Stop movie
Play camera feed where motions is detected on media room Emby client
Once camera feed is stopped by the remote control then
Turn off lights
Resume movie from bookmarked position
I would love to move this function into Hubitat if any devs are willing to take a look I can find the GitHub repo

3 Likes

This one isn't too exciting but I was looking for a way to monitor the status of a hub.

I have a problematic C7 hub that would lockup every couple of months. Then it was every few weeks. I started rebooting it weekly. Then every few days when the lockups became more frequent. Now it reboots everyday and still it will sometimes lockup.

I'm in the process of decommissioning this hub and the last holdout is the custom code for my exterior lights. This app turns on dusk to dawn lights, set colors for the holidays, and turns on all the lights if a motion sensor is triggered or gate opened, I'm rewriting the app so the old hub is still in production.

This afternoon I noticed the dusk to dawn lights were still on so I knew the hub had locked up again. So I tossed together a quick bit of Rule Machine action to notify me if the hub took a nap.

The first rule on the faulty hub runs once a minute and increments a hub variable by one. If the counter goes over 1000 it resets to 0. This is an arbitrary number so that I don't have to worry about it going out of bounds.

This variable is shared via Hub Mesh with a C8p that runs an equally simple rule.

This rule runs every ten minutes. It compares the mesh variable with the last know value. If they are not the same it sets the last value to the current value. If they are the same then it send a TTS message to a Sonos speaker.

It is a pretty simple script but it makes me happy. It should allow me to know much more quickly when the hub goes down. Now I just need to get that last app off of it so I can retire the hub.

Have you considered having the other hub reboot the C-7 when it crashes? This can easily be done via an endpoint, and I think it would work even if the hub’s UI is non-responsive. Might be worth a try!

The endpoint is: « http://hupip/hub/reboot ».

This is how I’ve done it, though less elegant than your solution, it does initiate a reboot:

1 Like

So, I have a Green Egg smoker/grill and Fireboard 2 Pro Wifi Temperature setup with blower control. Digging around, found an obscure post to an app written by @snell that works perfectly to bring voice notifications using RM and a few Variables.

The RM Rule monitors the grill and notifies me, via HE app AND voice notifications in the house, when:
-The Grill is at the target temperature for my cook
-During the cook when the food (meat) temperature indicates time to flip if applicable
-During the cook when the food is at final temperature
-During the cook if the grill temp goes too high or too low

RM Rule - Grill Temps

RM Rule - Meat Temps

This way, I can do prep while the grill warms up without having to stand over the grill, as well as do other things while running a low and slow cook.

Using a dashboard and variables, I input the grill target temp, high and low alerts for the grill, meat target temp (with a default flip temp that is caclulated based on one half of the temp change required to get from where it is at start of cook and target temp)

Dashboard - Note, the values stay static at whatever the temperatures indicated the last time the fireboard was used.

2 Likes

I have but I didn't lookup the command last night. I was more interested if the heartbeat would work. I only spent about five minutes on it. It worked well for a test reboot (5 and 12 second intervals). Now I need to see if it works the next time the hub dies.

I don't know if it would. It isn't just the UI that is non-responsive. Apps and the util page also do not work. I have to pull power to get it working again. I'll wait and see if this alert functions as planned. Then if all goes well I can add the remote reboot.

Of course, if I finished up my rewrite then I could just decommission the hub. :wink:

1 Like

fwiw, you can do this without any development. I have similar logic running in Rule Machine, though I probably could have done it in simpler tools within HE.

Kindly like to share your rule machine logic?

@dJOS

I used a battery operated camera attached inside the back of my mailbox so when it opens, it gives me a notification and it lets me see who lefr the mail, who took the mail, as well as times.

I also have another one in my rolling tool box. There is a door on the lower portion of the tool box that says please place packages inside. The xamera picks up the exchange and notifies me via pic, video, and time.

Oh, and a please press video doorbell button if the packages will not fit in the container. This alerts me right away so i can get them removed before stolen.

Another automation in my master bath. When you open the door and go inside, as you close the door, the contact sensorcwill turn on the lights and heat. Well, it actualy conteols the heat seperatly. If it is 69, turn on oil heater. If it is 71, turn off oil heater. If the bath door openscand stays that way for 2 min, the light and heater turns off. If you turn off the light, then leVe the bath, close the door, the light comes back on so i added a switch outside the door for a light off override. There is also a presence sensor that looks for no motion for 2.5 min and then shuts off the light but leaves the heat on until it reaches 71.

That is the main house stuff. I also have another hub in my Solar Power House. Temp is monitored, and adjusred vis window air conditioner or the floor heat. Air comes on at 72, and goes off at 69. The heat comes on at 50 and goes off at 65. The lights are motion conteolled. The breakers are zigbee monitoring breakers, there is a automatic changeover for kenergy or 220v genset. Then that is fed into the 4 inverters supplying 220v @ 50a to supply most of my loads. I also have a second 24vdc 300a military generator that will start and run if the kenergy power goes out and the batteries deplete. For a short time, both gensets will run tandem to fully charge the battery pack quickly. Once it is almost charged, the 24vdc genset will shut off and finish topping off via kenergy or thec220v genset. There are also controls for the solar system like a solar panel cutoff contactor to turn off all 4 inverters (power switches) and then bettery connections to the inverters on another contactor. Outside the powerhouse is an emergency stop button and i also put 2 more in the house so if anything is off, i can stop it right away.

My next project is to find a way to control my linier actuators to adjust the angle of the panels automatically once or twice per month for optimal performance.

1 Like

I have lots of fun automations, but my solar pool heater controller is probably the most unique. It runs using a custom driver/app combo. The driver has all the control logic, and the app syncs the sensor and switch data to the driver.

I built a DIY solar heater box with 100' of coiled black irrigation tubing, and buffed that up by adding eight feet of finned baseboard heating pipe on top. Water flows through the eight feet of heating fins, and then through the 100' of black tubing. There are four small fans keeping the air circulating through the fins when it is active. Everything is painted black inside, and the box is covered with clear vinyl on top. It is mounted on my shed roof, angled to the sun.

A water pump for it is in the shed, and it is connected to Hubitat with a switch to turn the heater pump and the fans on and off.

To control it I have an Ecowitt temp sensor with a probe that gives me the internal temperature of the heater box. I also have an illuminance sensor on my Ecowitt weather station that is mounted on the shed. Then I also have the Ecowitt floating pool thermometer. The nice thing about the Ecowitt sensors is they have a long range to reach back to the house across the yard to the Ecowitt gateway, which then pushes data to the hub though the community integration.

The pump will only run to circulate water through the heater given some rules:

Heater Temperature is 10 degrees hotter than the pool temperature
or Illumination is over 20,000 (enough sun to know I am heating, regardless of box temp)

It also will not run if the Pool temperature is over max pool temp (I'm using 90 degrees, but I have never got there. I have hit 88)

I also do a heater "dump" every half-hour, when the heater temperature is less than 10 degrees hotter than the pool, but greater than pool temp. While it is not hot enough for continuous heating, there are several gallons of water in the tubing that is still hotter than the pool. So with that condition true, I run the pump for a couple minutes every half hour to dump the warm water out of the heater, so it does not go to waste on cloudy days when it is still doing some heating.

The cooler pool water circulating through the heater will cool off the box, so the heater stops based on the box temp rules when the water cools it down, until the box heats up enough to run again. On a really hot sunny day, it just runs continuously, but it generally cycles on and off in the mornings and late afternoon.

I should note, this is a small pool, 3 feet deep X 12 feet. These DIY solar heaters do not do much with larger pools, unless you build several of them. It makes a very noticeable difference with our small pool, however. This is in Vermont, so it extends how long we can use the pool for the season, especially in spring when we get a few hot days, but the pool was still too cold to use before adding the heater.

Driver, if interested

3 Likes

waht contact sensor are you using for this?

Samsung Smart things Zigbee sensor covered in a liberal coating of spray sealer (basically spray on rubber).

I prefer to use zwave due to longer range and vastly better battery life, but my last one died due to me forgetting to seal it up. I had this spare sensor lying around and will go back to zwave if it dies.

I'd like the same except for the "BOOOO-ahhhh" fog horn from the Addams Family.

1 Like