home automation | Brian Dorey.com

Bitmap to Byte array for e-ink display

Posted Saturday 28 April 2018 12:51 Page View Counter 339

Over the past few months Andrew has been working on a new circuit for a custom home alarm system to replace our current hardwired commercial alarm. For the display panel on the new alarm we are going to be using a e-ink display to show the status...

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Mosquitto MQTT and Home Assistant Data Logging

Posted Wednesday 14 March 2018 17:13 Page View Counter 1029

We have removed the Raspberry Pi based data logger from our home and moved the logging hardware and new software to the Gigabit Internet Gateway Network PC which we installed in December 2017. The old Raspberry Pi system was initially designed...

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Nest Thermostat and Smoke API with DotNet

Posted Saturday 10 February 2018 18:46 Page View Counter 844

This code example shows how you can use C# in either a Windows application or asp.net website to retrieve data from the Nest API to show information for your Nest Thermostat or Nest Smoke Alarms. Before starting to write your code, you need to create...

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Gigabit Internet Gateway Network PC

Posted Saturday 16 December 2017 17:12 Page View Counter 1602

Following from our home network upgrade in August 2017 we have been trying to find a way to add global adblocking for the computers, tablets and phones connected to our network and to run additional software. We had tried using Pi-hole® software...

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tp-link LB130 Smart Wi-Fi LED Bulb Python Control

Posted Wednesday 30 August 2017 13:28 Page View Counter 3224

A few weeks ago, we purchased a tp-link LB130 smart bulb to use with the Home Assistant software we had been trying on the Raspberry Pi. The support for the bulb in the Home Assistant software was limited and so Andrew started to decode the data using...

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Home Network Upgrade

Posted Tuesday 22 August 2017 21:37 Page View Counter 2527

The home network installation for our computers was first setup using 10BASE2 coax connections when we only had 2 computers and one was connected to the internet via a modem. Since then we have upgraded to using first network hubs then switches for...

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Home Energy Solar Logger Update

Posted Tuesday 06 September 2016 17:18 Page View Counter 392

Since updating our home solar data logging system to the Raspberry Pi Solar Data Logger Version 2 in November 2015 we planned to add additional indoor and outdoor sensors to the system. We ordered additional temperature sensors from...

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Gas Meter Hall Effect Sensor

Posted Wednesday 13 January 2016 19:22 Page View Counter 907

In a previous blog post we wrote about our new mains energy monitoring system which reads the values from our electric and gas meters and stores them in an online database. The gas reading was done using a reed switch sensor which was supposed...

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ESP8266 Mains Energy Monitor

Posted Friday 01 January 2016 21:09 Page View Counter 3237

In November of last year we finished work on our Raspberry Pi based solar data logger, a part of our ongoing smart home project that we have been working on for several years now. The solar logger monitors all of the energy usage for the solar...

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Nest and Solar Logger Update

Posted Saturday 12 December 2015 19:15 Page View Counter 814

It has now been a week since we installed the Nest 3rd Gen Learning Thermostat and we have been able to try the auto learning and heating / hot water schedules the thermostat offers. First impressions of the thermostat overall had been positive...

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