Smart Home mission
Hi,
Before one year, my colleague inspired me to make my home smart (thank you Lyubak! 🙂 ). So I’ve started to experiment and today I can share, that my Smart Home mission is completed.
I want to tell that I did everything myself, and I did not give money to companies that do this service. That’s why I think that anyone with desire and a little experience in Linux can do the same.
I’m using mostly Apple products, but I guess most of this can be done with Android too.
Here are some of the things I can control from my smartphone at home:
- I can turn on and turn off the heaters from my smartphone (just a normal airelec heaters)
- I can turn on and turn off the lights (also normal led lights) from my smartphone
- I can turn on and turn off all TVs (no matter are they smart or not) from my smartphone
- I can turn on and turn off the internet access to some devices from my smartphone
- I can allow and deny access to some websites – tiktok, youtube, facebook from my smartphone 😉
- I can switch from my primary to my backup ISP from my smartphone
- I can control the air conditioners from my smartphone
All of this can be automated – like every night at X pm all heaters will turn on and on Y pm all lights and TVs will turn off, etc.
Of course, these things do not cost thousands of levs, and are made with the help of several devices:
Raspberry Pi is used as server with HomeBridge installed. HomeBridge is used to add not apple certified devices to HomeKit and we can control them from smartphone or Siri.
I use Sonoff plugs and switches (pow r2) for my electric devices (TVs, heaters, etc). Sonoff gives me opportunity to switch divices on/off and look at real time what is the power consumption, and with another plugin for HomeBridge I can see graphics of this consumption – it is very cool!
Why I need apple tv or HomePod?
Apple TV or HomePod are needed, because they expose our smart home to internet. Without them we cannot access our smart home if we are not at home. In my case I have Apple TV and two HomePods all of them are used for hub to the internet.
In my next posts I will share in details how and what is needed for configuration on our Smart Home mission 🙂
That’s it!
