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Friday, September 7, 2018

HA #1 - Making Changes to the Network for Home Automation

On a lark, I started changing out my Experimental vlan to add some Home Automation components.  I took my Plex server and changed it out to run Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, now called the HA-IOT server, added Docker, and spun up around 12 containers to support what I wanted to do.  I also added an Aeotec Z-Wave USB stick to interface to a number of Z-Wave components.  So far I have added three multi-sensors (temp, movement, humidity, etc.), three Z-Wave dimmable wall switches, two Z-Wave toggle wall switches, one plug in Z-Wave dimmer, one plug in Z-Wave switch, one Z-Wave door lock, and one Z-Wave door open switch.  In addition I have added one wifi multicolor LED bulb and have started adding dimmable LED bulbs in various lamps.

I have also started a project using a Raspberry Pi Zero W which interfaces to a LinkMaster 850LM so that I can press the buttons on my Subaru to activate some automations via a MQTT message.  The containers include home-assistant which interfaces to the Z-Wave USB stick, node-red which sets up automations, and pertainer which is used to manage containers in Docker.  I originally set-up the containers using a docker-compose script that I found on the home-assistant blog.  I will be changing those docker-compose scripts as I go.

Right now I am attempting to understand how to control lights via triggers so that I will be able to set-up automations that will work pretty much the first time.  I am also exploring a couple of different dashboard layouts.  All of this is actually controllable via web interfaces, so I am able to push the ports through a router (Netgear FVS318N) to my media vlan so that I am able to get to the web interfaces easily.