It is very often suggested to use a phone to control a smart home system, of course, this is a universal and convenient solution, it can either be some kind of application installed in the phone from the manufacturer, for example, there are such offers from Xiaomi, Tuya, and, accordingly, you can use these applications to control devices and configure scenarios, enable-turning off sockets and switches and different relays, watching different sensors, and in principle it is also quite convenient, but the limitation is that for each device, for each ecosystem, you will need to use your own application., which usually, of course, not friendly, you can use any aggregators, for this you can use either Yandex, or Apple, or Google, of course, it is possible to connect different devices in different ecosystems and to try to do something. Well, for example, in my opinion, the most developed, of course, Yandex turns out that it is possible to write a script quite conveniently, and in principle t...

At first, I tried to make a device that works online, powered by 5 volts, but it quickly became clear that it was much more convenient to use battery-powered devices, of course there were quite a few devices on the market that could be bought, or they were very expensive, and I had to study what could be used to make these devices alternatively, in particular basically, I ended up using the attiny 85 microcontroller, there is a special version, which allows you to work with low consumption in sleep mode, this is the 20u version and on this version the sleep consumption of this microcontroller is only 4 microamps, so in the operating mode of this microcontroller there are about 4 milliamps and this is of course, for example, if I use a CR2450 battery, I chose it because it is bigger, it has a higher rated current, which it can give out, and this microcontroller can work in standby mode for 17 years, and if it works in continuous mode, it will certainly work for about 6 days, based on th...

I use several different webcams at home, multiple cameras. I originally bought an ESP32-based camera, called the ESP32-CAM, which is the simplest camera. It was very cheap and allowed you to connect to a smart home normally. That is, it was possible to take a video stream from it, and it was possible to take pictures with this camera, save them to a smart home. Of course, the resolution of this camera is not good enough in principle. It allows you to shoot almost FullHD. There's just a 4 by 3 resolution. But mostly, of course, I've set it to the minimum resolution. At first I tried to make 320 by 200, which is quite small, then 480 is, of course, better, but also not large enough detail to be fully used for viewing, but visually looking with the eyes is, of course, in principle enough, everything is visible well, and initially I used a video stream.. I used a special program on the smart home server that allows you to record a video stream, motion is evaluated, you can record if there ...

Very often in different forums, in different articles and comments, there is an opinion that automation or, more precisely, a smart home is only automation, all other solutions such as remote control, control via a phone, this is not considered a smart home. Of course, I personally disagree with this approach, because there are, of course, options related to automation and scenario development, but I, for example, started making smart homes just for scenarios, such as simply turning off the lights if someone is not in the room for a long time, or so that I could remotely pressing a button in another room and turning off the light is convenient, and it doesn't seem quite right to consider it non-automation, so I think it's a smart home after all. — it is more correct to use the term smart or, if in Russian, flexible, for example, allowing you to more universally configure and switch the interaction, that is, if it is an ordinary switch physically, it is connected to an ordinary physical...

The main problem in the house is that it is impossible to ensure the reliability of its operation normally, there are always some problems, these may be problems related to sensors, they may be related to devices, they may be related to the connection, and, for example, if this is some kind of cloud solution, then it may not be the right moment. fall off or, if, for example, not at home, then remote access to the smart home may disappear, and then it is not clear how to turn something off or check when I do, for example, some sensors, for example, temperature and humidity sensors., in order to set up the operation of heaters or some other devices, a fan, for example, I have practically several sensors of the same kind in every room. That is, this is the temperature and humidity sensor from Xiaomi I use, and there is also a homemade sensor and humidity temperature, which I have built on the basis of attiny85, powered by a battery and can also measure the parameters in the room, but the ...

I practically don't use any smart relays in my smart home, it's clear that smart sockets are the same relays, and I have quite a lot of them, but I stopped using smart relays a long time ago for several reasons.
But in the beginning, when I started building a smart home, I used smart relays a lot, and generally different relays, for example, when I was still starting to make and experiment on Arduino, making different sensors and different devices, then of course there are classic examples when you need to take a very simple relay, the relay module itself, connect it to Arduino, and use it to control some kind of load, turn it on or off.
These relays are sold in many places and they can be 10-amp, mostly they were found for such homemade devices, or 16-amp, if you buy a little more expensive, these relays work on the principle of dry contact, that is, they simply close or open some kind of load, there are also solid-state relays, these are in fact, a relay module is made on the basis...