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...

Periodically, I try to set up some of the devices that I have at home, make them a little smarter, such as a kettle, microwave, washing machine, and dishwasher, and in principle, the simpler and more mechanical the device itself, the easier it is to set up.
For example, I have a hood in my kitchen near the stove, it is quite modern and it has many touch control modes, you can turn on the fan at different capacities, you can turn on the lighting on this hood, but due to the fact that touch control, it is so easy not to connect to this hood, and for example to control the fan using the electronics from the hood, it's necessary to figure out the circuit in this hood, how the electrics are all done, and maybe then I can connect to certain wires to control the fan, or completely redo the entire system, but then it is no longer clear how it will be controlled from the touch buttons that are located on the hoods.
I've been thinking for a long time how to solve the problem of turning on the ...

I plan to set up a new smart home server based on the Orange Pi 3 microcomputer, I will install Home Assistant there, but all other settings will also need to be slightly done, of course I will take an image and will not set up everything from scratch, but quite a lot of changes need to be made, and if such changes occur, then I do as follows. This microcomputer can work both from an SD card, similar to a Raspberry, and it also has an 8 GB built-in memory. By and large, I first configure the entire system on this SD card, that is, I make all the big changes to this card, install libraries, the necessary software, and only after that I transfer it. in the internal memory, there is a special command in the bios, so to speak, of this microcomputer, which allows you to simply transfer all the data from this SD card to the internal memory, the operating system with all the settings is, of course, very convenient and the only limitation there, that if the SD card is used is large, then you ...

To create a typical smart home server based on the Orange Pi 3, I plan to install, in addition to various standard software such as Home Assistant, and also some of my additional interesting things that I often use. I have several utilities that allow you to work with a Telegram bot and, in principle, you can control a smart home through Telegram, that is, some typical commands are output and you can send different commands to Telegram in text and the system, the server, will process them not through the smart home system, but through this utility, it runs in the north, and periodically accesses the Telegram server, but at the same time there is a mode such that it does not make many requests, but there is such a long-polling mode, when he's just waiting for a response and when some command arrives, he executes it very quickly without any delays, and of course various service messages are also sent in Telegram, that is, if you need to send some information, there's some kind of log, o...

I recently bought another Orange Pi 3 microcomputer and I plan to use it to create a universal smart home server, of course, you can install some kind of supervisor on it and then all the problems will be solved, that is, everything will be automatically done, configured, integrated, but of course I won't do that, basically I have I have my own developed solutions and I plan to use them to set up this server. This microcomputer itself is inexpensive, it's actually the microcomputer itself-the board and the case go with it, it was also immediately plastic, and I also have an already purchased stick, also not very expensive, the simplest Zigbee, which, in principle, all together it will cost $40, and in principle, based on this, it will be possible to make a normal server. According to the hardware on this server, there is one gigabyte of memory in total, there is a gigabit Ethernet port, there is an EMMC built-in memory of 8 gigabytes, in principle this is not very much, but in genera...

The operation of a smart home in winter and summer is very different, because it is a different length of daylight, different air temperatures outside and, accordingly, different air draught in the apartment, and the influx of air from the street, too, different humidity outside and humidity inside, and therefore when you come up with a scenario in winter, I just forget a lot of things. to take into account is that, for example, it may be light outside and it starts to get light early, for example, and in winter, of course, I do not take into account and make a scenario like this, for example, lighting that simply turns on and off without taking into account the time of day, of course, there are also different temperatures, it's usually very cold in winter, and therefore you have to think about how to heat the apartment additionally, which radiators to use, how to measure the temperature of central heating radiators, and I don't think at all about how to improve air conditioning or ven...