modbusbackup
An alternative approach to connecting unipi units
Posted on November 16, 2021
| 12 minutes
| 2368 words
| Martijn Hemeryck
Another home automation post! Please check out my earlier home automation series first to get an idea what I am talking about.
Recently, I figured to rework some part of it to be able to deal better with certain kind of failures, while at the same time still being able to offer all the automation abilities as before.
Recap First, let’s recap the architecture that was already in place:
inputs: a unipi unit is used to read the digital inputs (e.
[Read More]evok2mqtt ansible
Automating an evok2mqtt install
Posted on August 9, 2021
| 9 minutes
| 1780 words
| Martijn Hemeryck
As part of my home automation series, I did write about a small interfacing library that I did write, called evok2mqtt.
The purpose of this service is to translate between two different protocols: websockets, as exposed by evok and mqtt, which is the primary protocol I did use in communicating with home assistant. If you’d like to get more details about the setup itself, check the blog post series first.
[Read More]Service
Home assistant as the service layer
Posted on August 3, 2021
| 17 minutes
| 3458 words
| Martijn Hemeryck
Up to this point, I did already lay out all of the tidbits concerning the electricity, the I/O hardware units, even some custom software to provide an event-based API to address all of the various components in the overall system. The final fundamental piece to bring everything together is what I call the service layer, and specifically home assistant.
This post is a part of a larger series of posts on my home automation setup.
[Read More]Software
Connecting the pieces together
Posted on July 27, 2021
| 9 minutes
| 1705 words
| Martijn Hemeryck
After connecting everything on the different “physical” layers, it is time to have a look at how to connect all on the software side of things. This post shall describe my current setup, specifically the different software components and the protocols they rely on for the unipi hardware.
This post is a part of a larger series of posts on my home automation setup. See the home automation overview post, to learn about the rationale and a description of the other posts!
[Read More]Hardware
Unipi units
Posted on July 20, 2021
| 6 minutes
| 1195 words
| Martijn Hemeryck
In this post, I will give some more details about the rationale for the hardware that I had chosen for interpreting the input signals and controlling the outputs, specifically the unipi neuron series. Note that I am in no way affiliated with unipi, nor do I intend to do an in-depth description of their hardware. For more details from unipi themselves, have a look at the unipi website.
This post is a part of a larger series of posts on my home automation setup.
[Read More]Electrical cabinet
A quick tour inside
Posted on July 13, 2021
| 8 minutes
| 1541 words
| Martijn Hemeryck
In earlier posts, I did provide an overview of the architecture of my custom-made home automation system. I also did describe some specificities related to a wired home automation setup. For my system, I decide on wiring everything in a star-configuration, meaning all wiring around the house for lights, push buttons, … all converges in a centralized electrical cabinet. The focus of this post is to show you some details of what this cabinet looks like and some pointers for practical issues I had run into.
[Read More]Schematics
One-wire diagram and floor plan
Posted on July 6, 2021
| 5 minutes
| 869 words
| Martijn Hemeryck
In previous posts, I did discuss the importance of planning and design as well as details on the physical wires to be used.
Here, I’d like to focus on two types of schematics which are not only very useful, but also mandatory for doing the electrical wiring for a Belgian house: the one-wire diagram and the floor plan.
This post is a part of a larger series of posts on my home automation setup.
[Read More]Wiring
Groundwork for a wired home automation setup
Posted on June 29, 2021
| 7 minutes
| 1450 words
| Martijn Hemeryck
In this post, I will take a deeper dive into the bottom layer, the wiring. Different kinds of inputs and outputs can be discussed, but for the sake of simplicity, I will focus on a push button operating a lamp. These components will also come back later on in the series.
This post is a part of a larger series of posts on my home automation setup. See the home automation overview post, to learn about the rationale and a description of the other posts!
[Read More]Architecture
My home automation layout
Posted on June 22, 2021
| 8 minutes
| 1558 words
| Martijn Hemeryck
Prior to actually building anything, it is important to think on a higher level what the various components are and how they will interact with each other, i.e. the architecture. Over the process of doing my own setup, I came across a large number of different possible configurations, each with their own benefits and downsides. For the first part of this post, I will focus on the final layout.
While discussing the architecture, it is important to realize there are a number of different layers of abstraction to reason about these.
[Read More]Why
My vision for a modern home automation system
Posted on June 15, 2021
| 4 minutes
| 804 words
| Martijn Hemeryck
This post shall be the first in a series of blog posts where I intend to outline my home automation setup.
For this first post, I want to start by first explaining why I worked on this. Secondly, I want to give some more attention to the vision and guiding principles I will use further on. At the end, there is an overview of all the future posts that I have currently planned for this series.
[Read More]