Well, every modern person has at least once wondered: for how much longer can you pay such huge utility bills?! I am no exception. Electricity, gas, heating, water, rent, elevator, removal of solid waste, etc. etc.
One of the reasons (far from the last) of creating the BARY application was the ability to collect statistics, analyze and reduce energy consumption. Europe has long passed into the regime of total economy; I think this fate will not bypass us. Therefore, to prepare for this in advance definitely will not be superfluous.
I now propose that we examine how we managed to optimize the cost of electricity along with BARY: Smart Home.
Smart furniture, which keeps your house in order, is a must for almost any futuristic set. In fact, an auto-regulating climate, automatic lights and voice control over household devices — all this can be done and configured now. But it will take a little experience, basic knowledge of technology and sometimes programming, as well as a whole sea of fantasy. In my case, I did in the way that just fantasy will be enough, but first things first…
There are quite a few reviews and videos on the Internet about building smart houses. There is an opinion that all this is quite expensive and troublesome in the organization, that is, in general, the fate of geeks. But progress is not standing still. Devices are becoming cheaper and more functional, and design and installation are quite simple. However, the reviews mainly focus on 1-2 examples of use, practically not covering nuances and not creating a complete picture. Therefore, in this article I want to make an overview of the finished project, demonstrate the use cases and pitfalls encountered in building a smart home with Xiaomi devices on the example of a sauna. The described ideas with small variations can also be applied to the automation of the apartment.
Background or why all of this is necessary
For starters, a little background so that the context can be understood. In the early autumn of 2018, the sauna was finished and put into operation. The sauna is an autonomous capital structure with year-round heating and water supply.
If you have no idea about the development architecture and mechanical/electrical design behind IoT solutions, they could seem like "having seemingly supernatural qualities or powers". For example, if you show a working IoT system to 18th century people, they'd think it's magic.This article is sort of busting such myth. Or, to put it more technically, about hints for fine-tuning the IoT development for an awesome project in solar energy management area.
Winter has arrived, and so I had to check the thermal insulation of my out of town residence dacha. And it just turned out a famous Chinese marketplace started to sell cheap thermal camera modules. So I decided to DIY it up and build a rather exotic and useful thing — a heat visor for the home. Why not? Especially since I had a Raspberry Pi lying around anyway… The result is down below.
Today I’d like to speak about Smart homes and IoT devices. But it is no ordinary article. You won’t find description of hardware, links to manufacturers, batches of code or repositories. Today we’ll discuss something of a higher level — principles that are used to organize “smart” systems.
Smart home is a system that can do some everyday routines instead of a person. It leads us to the first and the main principle:
