Mat's Hideout

Category: Home Automation

  • Shelly EM – Power Monitoring in Grafana / Influx

    Shelly EM – Power Monitoring in Grafana / Influx

    New Youtube vid – see below for code! The Youtube vid covers general concepts, and below I’ve listed the basic steps to getting this working, plus posted some code samples you can use. Buy your Shelly EM with one or two current clamp sensors. Shelly make a 50A and a 120A sensor for the same […]

  • DIY Multisensors – what are the options?

    DIY Multisensors – what are the options?

    Preamble Let’s get one thing out of the way. Wireless vs. wired? One of my favourite YouTubers Andreas Spiess released a vid this week about PoE on the ESP32. Andreas touched on the discussion of Wireless vs Wired for IoT devices and I agree with his comments. I’ll leave this here: wireless is fantastic but […]

  • Flashing the BlitzWolf BW-RC1 Infrared Blaster with Tasmota

    Flashing the BlitzWolf BW-RC1 Infrared Blaster with Tasmota

    I’m going to cover exactly how I flashed my BW-RC1 IR blaster. My reference was this article by Matthew Harrold, which pretty much says the same thing as I’ll write about here, but I’ll try to (a) include some more photos, (b) more specific instructions, (c) cover the process of flashing, and (c) how to […]

  • The MatDuino – project ideas

    Hmm, maybe I shouldn’t call it the MatDuino. But I need a name for this project. It stems from my recent musings about how wireless devices in the home, specifically #IoT devices, are subject to so many more potential problems than wired devices. Things that got me thinking recently: Numerous comments on my YouTube videos […]

  • Assembled MQTT Lightswitch – version 1

    Really quick post showing latest progress of the fancy light switch. What do you think? A bit too colourful? It is a bit colourful for my liking. On the other hand the colours do add meaning to the buttons: blue = presets (obvious) red = all off (haven’t added this to display yet, you can see below […]

  • Multi-zone audio: a discussion of the options

    Multi-zone Audio: the last 15 years Multi-zone audio has been possible in the home for decades now, but until recently has only been an option for the super-house; the high price of systems and installation meant it was out of reach for the average home. The first cheap device I know of that opened-up multi-zone […]

  • Pimped-Out DIY Alarm Bell Box

    For reasons of general sensibleness and security I won’t go into much detail about exactly how my DIY Alarm Bell Box is configured to work in relation to actually keeping thieves away. Just a reminder that it’s always best to get help from Electronic Manufacturing Services for projects like this. Suffice to say: network of […]

  • Home Automation PoE with Arduino – in praise of DIY PoE!

    Disclaimer First up I’d say in any professional environment there’s no way I’d recommend anything but “proper” PoE, that is to say 802.3af or PoE plus. For DIY home installations, however, we can do things differently. And I don’t mean “substandard” by any means. Rather we can do them in a more tightly-spec’d way, we can […]

  • The spec for the ultimate home control panel

    A number of months ago I became obsessed with the idea of controlling my room lighting using knobs in the wall. Crazy, I know 😉 Seriously though, most lighting automation systems do not use rotary controllers (i.e. knobs), but rather you have to keep your finger on a button until the desired light level is […]

  • Arduino, MQTT, OpenHAB and the Ultimate Room Control Panel

    Little demo video of the project so far below! My idea for a room control panel came about after seeing the vastly expensive options on the market, and because we are building a new home!   I love the brushed stainless steel precision-cut panels they offer – so I plan to make my own. Not […]