A combination of Raspberry Pi and Arduino: my Domoticz system.
Domoticz is a Home Automation system design to control various devices and receive input from various sensors. Open source and free!
I wanted a local home automation system to see:
- P1 Smartmeter power information
- The Solar Goodwe Inverter controlling the 12 Solar panels on the roof
- Weather information of the sensors around the house and nearby
- RF 433 MHz devices like the KlikAanKlikUit doorbell, weather sensor, switches
- Notification if doorbell pushed on phonoe and PC with camera snaphot
- Weather information of the Bresser 5 in 1 Weatherstation
- control Zigbee devices (Philips Hue)
- control Tasmota (Sonoff and diy) devices via Wifi
- Not being dependent of cloud computing on switching on lamps, local database
- Whatever I may design or build later on
So I did some research and found with Domoticz I could do all this. This page tells how it currently looks like/
Not realized yet is the Zigbee part, and I have not started on converting my Sonoff’s to Tasmota. The other wishes are operational!
The dashboard of Domoticz system is out of the box not very appealing, that will be next.
Hardware
A Home Automation system will be 24/7 running and, with all the sensors attached, quite busy updating the database. So low power, enough computing power, enough and dfast reliable storage and reliability are key.
- A Raspberry 4 with 2 GB is the central CPU. A SSD of 120 GByte with RPi boot supported AMS 51xx IC USB 3 adapter as storage. No SD card!
- A RFLink as sold by Nodo to receive and send via 433 MHz, Arduino Mega2560 via USB serial and an Aurel 433 MHz module
- A P1 Smartmeter cable, serial USB FTDI basedfor my ESRM5 Smartmeter
- Ethernet and Wifi via onboard Raspberry Pi
- In the ‘meterkast’, meter cupboard, close to the Smartmeter and the Internet route/switch
- A CCC2652RB Zigbee USB stick, which are Out of Stock at the moment
- Install ONVIF IP Camera Monitor (Play Store, Android for me)
- Find the camera and make it work with the user and admin of the camera
- Scroll down and see the snapshot image url
- Fill this in Add Camera
- PushSafer (with image, use the camera URL as shown above)
- PushBullet
Domoticz
Domoticz is easy to setup on a Raspberry Pi. Install Raspberry Pi Lite with Raspberry Pi Imager (press CTRL-Shift-X to set the SSH and password!).
Do the usual Raspberry Pi Operating system configurration, with Ethernet connected, with raspi-config with Putty for local time setting (important!) , Wifi settings, hostname, boot order.
Write down the used IP addresses for Ethernet and Wifi!
Reboot!
Just follow the installation guide on the Domoticz wiki for setting up Domoticz, again via SSH and copy the commands from the Wiki into the SSH session.
Place the Raspberry in the meter cupboard and startup, and see Domticz in your browser. Check Ethernet and Wifi access.
Look at settings like Login without password for Local Networks (no username/password), automatic backups etc.
Dutch DSMR smart meter with P1 port
I bought the USB P1 Smartmeter cable for my Smartmeter ESMR5 type from Smartmeterdashboard.
Every Smartmeter seems a bit different (open collector, inversed data), and this cable works for my ESRM5
The USB part is a FTDI based USB serial adapter, the P1 side a RJ11 connector for the Smartmeter.
P1 Smartmeter is supported out of the box in Domoticz and give many devices with the power information. Electicity and Gas usage.
Goodwe Solar Power Inverter readout
My solar panels are connected to a Goodwe inverter. The inverter sends the data collected to the SEMS Portal, which has an API.
So A Goodwe SEMS Portal hardware device is available in Domoticz. Easy to add, and gives all information on the Solar inverter.
Camera’s
I have two cheap Chinese camera’s, good quality, ONVIF support, not much documentation, so what is the snapshot image url required for Domoticz??
After some searching I found the answer on the Domoticz forum, use the ONVIFER application
For my camera’s it was: http://192.168.x.y/web/auto.jpg?-usr=
RFlink for 433 MHz devices
I had to make a choice for a device to receive and transmit RF 433 MHz signal. Two hardware solutionas are available, RFXCOM and RFLink.
The choice became easier when I found out the RFXCOM is perhaps the better solution, but quite expensive and sold out.
So it was RFlink, an Arduino ATmega2560 with a RFlInk shield for the low level 433 MHz transceiver. I bought a DIY kit from Nodo shop and soldered it together, easy job! The package consists of a gateway RFlink PCB (comes with 433 MHz Transceiver Aurel and an I2C connector), an Arduino Mega Compatible, 433Mhz antenna and USB cable. Load (alas closed) RFLInk firmware witht eh Arduino IDe and connect.
So far the RFLink has detected two outdoor temperature/humidity sensors and my KlikAanKlikuit doorbell as devices.
The doorbell has now notifications!
Notifications
I have implemented notifications for pushing the doorbell with:
Buienradar
Buienrader, the ducth weather site has an API for weather information, available in Domoticz.
Easy to add, just make sure you have right Station ID (list here in the forum)
Bresser 5-in-1 weatherstation, Weather Underground
A weatherstation with outdoor and indoor sensors for temperature, humidity, wind direction, wind strength, pressure.
A simple and affordable system, with the ability to upload to Weather Undergroud and Weathercloud. The last has a nice brwoser view of the weather data of your own weatherstation.
Weather Underground has an API and an API key if you have a Personal Weather Station. Add the Hardware and you get several devices with the weatherstation information.
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