6 ms·

Home automation with Raspberry Pi, Node and React

171 points by deepsy 9y ago

Animats 9y ago
The total absence of fault detection and shutdown is kind of scary. Fortunately it doesn't have the authority to do anything important. The worst it can do is turn the heat all the way up, down, or off.
- kevan 9y ago
  > Fortunately it doesn't have the authority to do anything important. Anyone who lives in a northern climate might disagree with that.
- plandis 9y ago
  Yeah is is the reason the only IOT product I own are light bulbs. If they fail it's not that bad. I definitely wouldn't trust a smart fridge, lock, thermostat, etc...
  - slg 9y ago
    With maybe the exception of a lock, I wonder if that fear is justified without knowing the catastrophic failure rate of the "smart" functionality. There are plenty of ways that these devices can save you from the failure of "dumb" devices by keeping you aware of the status of your home. For example which scenario is more common: -A smart thermostat mistakenly turns off your heat in the dead of winter while you are on vacation causing your pipes to burst. -A smart thermostat lets you know that the heat is not working in the dead of winter while you are on vacation because the furnace died which allows you to fix the problem before your pipes burst. I don't know the answer to that, but I am not sure why we should assume the first scenario is more common without any real evidence.
    - bluGill 9y ago
      > A smart thermostat mistakenly I disagree with your use of the word mistakenly here. With IoT we need to worry about intentional remote attacks. This is not a mistake. If we are not dealing with a malicious attacks then I would suspect that the second problem (system failure) is more likely.
      - slg 9y ago
        Hacking of IoT devices in another fear that has questionable justification (don't get me wrong, many IoT manufactures are verging on negligent with the level of security on their devices). Most hackers aren't chaotic evil caricatures raining down destruction just for the lolz. They are usually trying to gain money or power. What is the goal of taking over my smart thermostat and turning off the heat? What is the likelihood of that actually happening?
        bluGill 9y ago
        > What is the goal of taking over my smart thermostat and turning off the heat? There are several 1: Look what I can do. If it is easy enough expect some kids (think 13 years old) doing it and laughing at the possible chaos they have caused. 2: lets rain chaos on those evil [insert any other country that you are at war with]. If I were to do this I'd change things so the average temperature was about right, but the heat and cooling would take turns changing the temperature by half a degree. Most people won't even notice right away, but their utility bill will be more than their monthly income and on a national scale the country is forced to dip into energy reserves. > What is the likelihood of that actually happening? 1: Very high. For any individual kid it is low, and like for an individual thermostat, but if you are the exception it doesn't matter that only 10 people were hit worldwide, what matters is you have to replace all your plumbing 2: somewhat unlikely, but if anyone can pull it off they can cause a lot of problems for the target country.
        slg 9y ago
        Are we really at the stage that a country declaring cyber war on my thermostat has a higher likelihood than my furnace breaking? I am not saying that your example aren't possible. I am saying it is a game of odds. I have no reason to believe the odds of a catastrophic failure are increased by the introduction of a smart appliance to a greater extent than other catastrophic failures are decreased by said appliance.
    - cjCamel 9y ago
      It's still easier to break a window or kick in a door than to hack a smart lock. (I don't have one though)
      - cwilkes 9y ago
        It is easier to break one physical door. You want to break millions of virtual doors you need IoT devices.
    - post_break 9y ago
      I got too comfortable with my smart lock and got locked out of my apartment once. It was not fun.
      - ghaff 9y ago
        Definitely take the same precautions with respect to having a spare key somewhere that you'd presumably take with a dumb lock. (Not that I haven't burned myself a couple of times in the past, pre-smart lock, by locking myself out without a spare.)
    - ghaff 9y ago
      Which is why I have a dumb thermostat (well, not totally dumb, but an old Honeywell manually programmable thing) plus a little homebrew Raspberry Pi project that tweets some basic information and will send me an email alert if the temperature drops below a certain threshold. I'd rather have the IoT device just be a sensor while the thermostat itself is more or less as dumb/reliable as possible. As you suggest, there are still failure modes but at least the thermostat isn't adding to them any more than necessary.
paulbennett 9y ago
I mentioned this on the previous HN topic, the way the heating temperature is being controlled doesn't look correct to me. In all the boilers I've used the dial the servo is turning adjusts the temperature of the water being sent through the heating loop (to a blower or radiators) - this is not the heating thermostat. Generally you set this once and don't need to adjust it again, the thermostat does the work of turning the boiler on and off depending on when heat is required. Similarly the dial above adjusts the domestic hot water temperature, while the system is running. Again, you rarely need to change it once its set to a temperature you are happy with. Maybe I'm not understanding how this boiler works?
- bluGill 9y ago
  Are you mistaking different for correct? Generally the thermostat just turns the pump on, but is there actually anything wrong with leaving the pump on and changing the temperature?
  - paulbennett 9y ago
    I'm not entirely sure, however running the pump without actually heating the water seems like a waste of energy. Maybe that's how this boiler works though, I'd be interested to know more from the OP.
    - tr1ck5t3r 9y ago
      Heat rises, so during the summer months when you sleep, if you have not got air con would a 2nd best be to circulate cold water around, seeing as water takes 10x the amount of energy to heat up? Maybe thats what is going on.
  - roel_v 9y ago
    Yes: efficiency and keepimg temperature stable at a certain point (ie, with a small hysteresis). Ad 1: the gist is that it takes less fuel to heat a liter of water from 30 to 31 degrees, than it does to heat it from 60 to 61 degrees. Ad 2: with a lower temperature, it becomes easier to control your overshoot. Actually this is related to 1, but what you want in the end is to have a system that runs at as low a temperature as possible, all of the time.
SEJeff 9y ago
There is a really popular project (disclaimer: I'm an occasional contributor) that also has an excellent Raspberry Pi story named Home Assistant: https://home-assistant.io/ https://home-assistant.io/ https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant They also have a full Pi distro named Hassbian: https://home-assistant.io/docs/hassbian/ https://home-assistant.io/docs/hassbian/
- oulipo 9y ago
  This is very cool, and I'm a co-founder of Snips we are building a 100% on-device and private-by-design Voice AI assistant and we bind with HomeAssistant https://medium.com/snips-ai/integrating-snips-with-home-assistant-314723645c77 https://medium.com/snips-ai/integrating-snips-with-home-assi... In 10 lines of code, you can have your own private Voice AI at home!
  - rubenbe 9y ago
    Can you recommend a beam forming microphone to implement a voice assistant on an rpi?
    - jimmcslim 9y ago
      There's maybe a chance that Amazon might make their Amazon Alexa 7-Mic Far Field Dev Kit [1] more broadly available (currently only available to qualified OEMs). There is also the 4-Mic Dev Kit [2] which might be broadly available by the look of it. Or you could consider one of Acousticmagic's [3] solutions. [1] https://developer.amazon.com/alexa-voice-service/dev-kits/amazon-7-mic/ https://developer.amazon.com/alexa-voice-service/dev-kits/am... [2] https://developer.amazon.com/alexa-voice-service/dev-kits/conexant-4-mic/ https://developer.amazon.com/alexa-voice-service/dev-kits/co... [3] https://www.acousticmagic.com/ https://www.acousticmagic.com/
- acidburnNSA 9y ago
  I can vouch that it is freaking amazing too. My whole apartment is automated with it. Jungle noises play when I wake up, a northern loon calls precisely at sundown every night, I have motion- and door-triggered alarms that email me photos of the action and can be deactivated with a repurposed TV remote. I can activate dings when people visit my small website. It can turn on my portable air-conditioner when I leave work if the temperature is high. It can tell me if my mom's house across the country loses power or drops below a threshold temperature. It reminds me to do pushups at 8:30 and puts on a techno pandora station to inspire me. It sends live traffic and weather data to a matrix screen on my fridge to help me plan my commute. It can turn on/off all my lights, stereo, and TV. All self-hosted but accessible remotely through a personal VPN. And it uses 0.01 long-term load on my Raspberry Pi 2. Oh! and when I want to change or add a feature, I can because it's all in Python 3 hosted on github. Man, I love home-assistant.
oulipo 9y ago
This is very cool! You can bind your Raspberry Pi and Node with Snips to add a 100% on-device Voice AI, take a look at our website at https://snips.ai https://snips.ai, and we would love to feature what you build with our platform on the website!
pmarreck 9y ago
Lost me at Javascript
rhcom2 9y ago
Nice, time to buy some perfboard and ditch the breadboard so it stays together.

171 points by deepsy 9y ago

The total absence of fault detection and shutdown is kind of scary. Fortunately it doesn't have the authority to do anything important. The worst it can do is turn the heat all the way up, down, or off.

kevan 9y ago
> Fortunately it doesn't have the authority to do anything important. Anyone who lives in a northern climate might disagree with that.
plandis 9y ago
Yeah is is the reason the only IOT product I own are light bulbs. If they fail it's not that bad. I definitely wouldn't trust a smart fridge, lock, thermostat, etc...
- slg 9y ago
  With maybe the exception of a lock, I wonder if that fear is justified without knowing the catastrophic failure rate of the "smart" functionality. There are plenty of ways that these devices can save you from the failure of "dumb" devices by keeping you aware of the status of your home. For example which scenario is more common: -A smart thermostat mistakenly turns off your heat in the dead of winter while you are on vacation causing your pipes to burst. -A smart thermostat lets you know that the heat is not working in the dead of winter while you are on vacation because the furnace died which allows you to fix the problem before your pipes burst. I don't know the answer to that, but I am not sure why we should assume the first scenario is more common without any real evidence.
  - bluGill 9y ago
    > A smart thermostat mistakenly I disagree with your use of the word mistakenly here. With IoT we need to worry about intentional remote attacks. This is not a mistake. If we are not dealing with a malicious attacks then I would suspect that the second problem (system failure) is more likely.
    - slg 9y ago
      Hacking of IoT devices in another fear that has questionable justification (don't get me wrong, many IoT manufactures are verging on negligent with the level of security on their devices). Most hackers aren't chaotic evil caricatures raining down destruction just for the lolz. They are usually trying to gain money or power. What is the goal of taking over my smart thermostat and turning off the heat? What is the likelihood of that actually happening?
      - bluGill 9y ago
        > What is the goal of taking over my smart thermostat and turning off the heat? There are several 1: Look what I can do. If it is easy enough expect some kids (think 13 years old) doing it and laughing at the possible chaos they have caused. 2: lets rain chaos on those evil [insert any other country that you are at war with]. If I were to do this I'd change things so the average temperature was about right, but the heat and cooling would take turns changing the temperature by half a degree. Most people won't even notice right away, but their utility bill will be more than their monthly income and on a national scale the country is forced to dip into energy reserves. > What is the likelihood of that actually happening? 1: Very high. For any individual kid it is low, and like for an individual thermostat, but if you are the exception it doesn't matter that only 10 people were hit worldwide, what matters is you have to replace all your plumbing 2: somewhat unlikely, but if anyone can pull it off they can cause a lot of problems for the target country.
        slg 9y ago
        Are we really at the stage that a country declaring cyber war on my thermostat has a higher likelihood than my furnace breaking? I am not saying that your example aren't possible. I am saying it is a game of odds. I have no reason to believe the odds of a catastrophic failure are increased by the introduction of a smart appliance to a greater extent than other catastrophic failures are decreased by said appliance.
  - cjCamel 9y ago
    It's still easier to break a window or kick in a door than to hack a smart lock. (I don't have one though)
    - cwilkes 9y ago
      It is easier to break one physical door. You want to break millions of virtual doors you need IoT devices.
  - post_break 9y ago
    I got too comfortable with my smart lock and got locked out of my apartment once. It was not fun.
    - ghaff 9y ago
      Definitely take the same precautions with respect to having a spare key somewhere that you'd presumably take with a dumb lock. (Not that I haven't burned myself a couple of times in the past, pre-smart lock, by locking myself out without a spare.)
  - ghaff 9y ago
    Which is why I have a dumb thermostat (well, not totally dumb, but an old Honeywell manually programmable thing) plus a little homebrew Raspberry Pi project that tweets some basic information and will send me an email alert if the temperature drops below a certain threshold. I'd rather have the IoT device just be a sensor while the thermostat itself is more or less as dumb/reliable as possible. As you suggest, there are still failure modes but at least the thermostat isn't adding to them any more than necessary.

paulbennett 9y ago

I mentioned this on the previous HN topic, the way the heating temperature is being controlled doesn't look correct to me. In all the boilers I've used the dial the servo is turning adjusts the temperature of the water being sent through the heating loop (to a blower or radiators) - this is not the heating thermostat. Generally you set this once and don't need to adjust it again, the thermostat does the work of turning the boiler on and off depending on when heat is required. Similarly the dial above adjusts the domestic hot water temperature, while the system is running. Again, you rarely need to change it once its set to a temperature you are happy with. Maybe I'm not understanding how this boiler works?

bluGill 9y ago
Are you mistaking different for correct? Generally the thermostat just turns the pump on, but is there actually anything wrong with leaving the pump on and changing the temperature?
- paulbennett 9y ago
  I'm not entirely sure, however running the pump without actually heating the water seems like a waste of energy. Maybe that's how this boiler works though, I'd be interested to know more from the OP.
  - tr1ck5t3r 9y ago
    Heat rises, so during the summer months when you sleep, if you have not got air con would a 2nd best be to circulate cold water around, seeing as water takes 10x the amount of energy to heat up? Maybe thats what is going on.
- roel_v 9y ago
  Yes: efficiency and keepimg temperature stable at a certain point (ie, with a small hysteresis). Ad 1: the gist is that it takes less fuel to heat a liter of water from 30 to 31 degrees, than it does to heat it from 60 to 61 degrees. Ad 2: with a lower temperature, it becomes easier to control your overshoot. Actually this is related to 1, but what you want in the end is to have a system that runs at as low a temperature as possible, all of the time.

SEJeff 9y ago

There is a really popular project (disclaimer: I'm an occasional contributor) that also has an excellent Raspberry Pi story named Home Assistant: https://home-assistant.io/ https://home-assistant.io/ https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant They also have a full Pi distro named Hassbian: https://home-assistant.io/docs/hassbian/ https://home-assistant.io/docs/hassbian/

oulipo 9y ago
This is very cool, and I'm a co-founder of Snips we are building a 100% on-device and private-by-design Voice AI assistant and we bind with HomeAssistant https://medium.com/snips-ai/integrating-snips-with-home-assistant-314723645c77 https://medium.com/snips-ai/integrating-snips-with-home-assi... In 10 lines of code, you can have your own private Voice AI at home!
- rubenbe 9y ago
  Can you recommend a beam forming microphone to implement a voice assistant on an rpi?
  - jimmcslim 9y ago
    There's maybe a chance that Amazon might make their Amazon Alexa 7-Mic Far Field Dev Kit [1] more broadly available (currently only available to qualified OEMs). There is also the 4-Mic Dev Kit [2] which might be broadly available by the look of it. Or you could consider one of Acousticmagic's [3] solutions. [1] https://developer.amazon.com/alexa-voice-service/dev-kits/amazon-7-mic/ https://developer.amazon.com/alexa-voice-service/dev-kits/am... [2] https://developer.amazon.com/alexa-voice-service/dev-kits/conexant-4-mic/ https://developer.amazon.com/alexa-voice-service/dev-kits/co... [3] https://www.acousticmagic.com/ https://www.acousticmagic.com/
acidburnNSA 9y ago
I can vouch that it is freaking amazing too. My whole apartment is automated with it. Jungle noises play when I wake up, a northern loon calls precisely at sundown every night, I have motion- and door-triggered alarms that email me photos of the action and can be deactivated with a repurposed TV remote. I can activate dings when people visit my small website. It can turn on my portable air-conditioner when I leave work if the temperature is high. It can tell me if my mom's house across the country loses power or drops below a threshold temperature. It reminds me to do pushups at 8:30 and puts on a techno pandora station to inspire me. It sends live traffic and weather data to a matrix screen on my fridge to help me plan my commute. It can turn on/off all my lights, stereo, and TV. All self-hosted but accessible remotely through a personal VPN. And it uses 0.01 long-term load on my Raspberry Pi 2. Oh! and when I want to change or add a feature, I can because it's all in Python 3 hosted on github. Man, I love home-assistant.

oulipo 9y ago

This is very cool! You can bind your Raspberry Pi and Node with Snips to add a 100% on-device Voice AI, take a look at our website at https://snips.ai https://snips.ai, and we would love to feature what you build with our platform on the website!

pmarreck 9y ago

Lost me at Javascript

rhcom2 9y ago

Nice, time to buy some perfboard and ditch the breadboard so it stays together.