Finally, I installed a smart home system to a friend, well, this is a smart home server based on Orange Pi3 and once a long time ago, six months ago, we discussed with him that there seems to be such a need, you need to manage heating in a smart home, well, this is a dacha in general and I would like to be able to remotely turn on this heating, of course the task is the simplest and seems to be clear to everyone, because the rest are some ways to control a smart home, control lights or some protective functions, for example, for shutting off water or watering, or some other things in the country, they come only later, over time, when you already understand that what it is and how it works in general.

And even the simplest thing is just maintaining the temperature in certain rooms using a temperature sensor using, say, electric heaters, this also does not come immediately, everyone just wants to be able to turn it on or off, well, you can find many ways to solve this problem, you can just buy some smart convector with a wi-fi module for example, well, if there is an Internet connection, then connect it and everything then, this function will be available, even more, you can set the desired temperature on this convector, the target temperature, and it will support it, and many people do this, but in general, just such convectors are quite expensive if you need a lot of rooms in them somehow all separately set up, install, buy such a convector, it will certainly be expensive and quite difficult all.

I have already prepared this server for a very long time, it was in my apartment for about six months, it was connected to a zigbee stick from sonoff, I immediately ordered several sockets, just there were all sorts of sales and you could buy sensors, sockets, and other devices at a big discount, of course some of them had to wait until they arrived from China, but in general, the rest were brought quite quickly.

And of course, when I waited for all these devices and sensors, I connected them via zigbee to this server right away, so that later I didn't have to do it separately, made such a connection between a certain outlet and a temperature sensor, and then I added all these outlets and sensors installed on this server to Home Assistant, wrote special ones scenarios, well, I tried there in various ways how to make it convenient to manage, but the most convenient was to use such a special component generic thermostat in Home Assistant, it allows you to add simply through the configuration file, specify a specific outlet or relay that will be controlled, specify the temperature sensor from which the current values will be indicated, and you can rigidly specify the target values there are several different presets to make, even small settings to make, for example, specify hysteresis, well, then you can already in the Home Assistant application itself it all looks visually good there, such a component is special, and you can already set the desired temperature on it if necessary, and you can also turn on or turn off this thermostat so that it does not react to temperature changes, that is, in principle, you don't need to write any automations, it will all work right away by itself.

And as a result, when I brought this server with all these sensors sockets to this dacha, it's just that there are several buildings there, there is a small house that was old, and I installed this smart one socket in it, installed the sensor, well, right away, in principle, when the server was plugged into the socket in fact there, well, also the Internet is also wired at the dacha, which is good, it is much easier to administer it remotely or somehow connect to different devices that this server serves.

This server immediately started working, the sockets were immediately determined, well, the only temperature sensor it certainly was in sleep mode, it had to be reconnected again, but after that, in principle, everything worked and at night, when I slept there, in principle, the temperature was automatically maintained very comfortable, that is, before that they just had a regular convector, the simplest, it has two modes, there is an 800 W mode and a 1200 W mode, that is, it is essentially 2 kW by itself.

And they just turned it on, usually in one of these modes, and it just worked and heated this room, sometimes it was so hot that it got very hot, you had to turn it off manually, because the thermostat that is on the convector, it is very approximate, it is almost impossible to set it to the desired temperature, that is it is necessary to specifically wait for the temperature to rise, exactly to the desired one, and then turn it back so that it turns off and then it will be in the same mode and maintain, but it is very long, difficult and tedious to set such a temperature.

That's why they don't do it, but just turn it on and that's it.

Here, of course, it became much more convenient, in general, the temperature was maintained perfectly, it was very comfortable and even it turned out that the power of this heater itself, it was not the biggest, the walls of this house are quite well insulated, and in general there is an on / off socket that controls the convector, it practically did not happen there several times in just during the night, it turned on and off forcibly, but it just worked and maintained the desired temperature.

Of course, when you start walking there, open the doors for example, or even opened the window to ventilate if it seemed that it was already stuffy, then of course you also need some additional modes, for example, you can put a window opening sensor, and then react to it, or there is a door opening, well, this is by and large in principle, this is not a mandatory function, because even if in winter, the windows are not left open there, and in summer it is basically necessary, the heaters will most likely be turned off permanently there.

Well, the next day I just took the sockets there, all that I had, five pieces, turned them on in this house there in the next room and also took them to a new big house, it's two-story there and just stuck these smart sockets into ordinary sockets that are on the wall from the side of this house, that is, so that in fact the connection was as good as possible, well, then it turned out so that in principle the connection there is almost maximum, 255 shows on some outlets, well, on others there are about 140 units, this is basically very good, but then if you need to do it already in a large house, you will just have to have sockets additional install, well, you can understand that to install different relays, well, they are worse because they are usually installed in podrozetniki, or if there is a hidden installation, if open, it may not be very nice it will just look like everything, but because of this it turns out that they have a much worse signal, and they have a much worse signal.

sockets, they are essentially located outside, and because of this, of course, the signal is much stronger and better transmitted.

But if you put such an outlet in each room, on each floor, you will get such a perimeter of the Zigbee network, it is quite good, and constant, because the outlets are always on, and then any sensors will also work.

Well, in fact, I made the same mode in another room for the time being, I also put a temperature sensor there, well, these are sensors from Aqara that measure temperature, humidity and pressure, and a convector was also connected to this outlet, which is also quite simple and in principle, constant temperature support also worked normally in this mode.

But in order to manage all this smart home and have access to Home Assistant, of course, it is probably problematic to pay for the Home Assistant cloud now, and quite expensive, because the Keenetic router is used there, and the simplest one is the Start model, it also has the ability to forward through dynamic DNS like other routers.

Kinetik has a special such mode, and then you can go to the Home Assistant page from the outside.

There are some minor difficulties in Home Assistant, if you also use authorization there using a password from the router, then an error will be issued in Home Assistant during operation, and some scenarios cannot be changed there, there are some improvements to be made remotely, but if you just give full access to the server, so that it immediately forwards all traffic on this server, this router, and then just protect it with a password in Home Assistant, then everything works fine, you can fully manage it, and configure scripts there, redo them, get almost full access, and everything works without any problems at all, that is, in order to turn on these thermostats there or turn off, well, in fact, the heaters and smart sockets associated with them, then it is quite possible to work through this page, through this website at Home Assistant.

If you add Home Assistant to the application, I couldn't do it, something doesn't work and it works fine on the local network, but if you specify an external address, then Home Assistant doesn't start in the application, well, it practically opens this page in a separate application in the browser and then only there you can connect and do something.

Well, here we still need to understand, perhaps there is some other mode.

Well, in the simplest way, of course, you can also add it to the Yandex app, throw it, that is, a special integration in Home Assistant, I also pre-installed it, you just need to log in well, and then just these sockets and thermostats they will be available in the Yandex app, and you can use different voice commands to speak, there turn on the thermostat like this-then, either set such a target temperature in such a room, or make it warmer or make it cooler, that is, such different devices will also work immediately, that is, in principle, they will continue to buy a lot of sockets and come up with what else this smart home can be useful for in such a smart home.

Automation in a smart home should be useful and create additional comfort, but sometimes everything goes wrong… The reasons for this, and how to configure everything, see on my channel.