Smarthome Cremerboulevard
This repository contains the set-up of my smart home, featured by the open-source project Home Assistant.
The full configuration till what it is today, took around one year of hobby time. This is mainly because we increased the number of devices over time. I feel it is a steady situation and I expect that not much devices will be added in foreseeable future. Hence, it is a good time to put the code on Github and do some version control.
If you have any questions about my set-up or smarthomes in general, feel free to contact or use the issue functionality!
The house
The house is situated in Utrecht in a district called New-England, Utrecht. More specifically, we live at the Cremerstraat, a beautiful street with sights over the most busy railroad track in the Netherlands and only a ten-minute walk from the city center. The house was built around 1910 and had originally a ground level and one floor. Over the years, toilets, bathroom, second floor (2017), a roof terrace (2020) and a bike shed (2020) were added to the house.
Aerial photo of Utrecht around 1930. The arrow marks our street. On the right, we observe the Dom tower, which can be seen from the house as well. Het Utrechts Archief.
Devices
The following table provides the devices used by the home automation. When buying new devices, I try to keep the following matters into consideration:
- Limit the number of different manufacturers. This helps when later replacing devices and to get more reproducible readings.
- Money. I am not willing to spend too much extra money for just little value.
- Protocol, I try to stick to Zigbee as much as possible. Zigbee provides good coverage while not interfering with the WiFi and hence internet via laptops/ mobile phones.
Hence, most devices come from the IKEA :) Also, since I try to limit spending, there is no smart climate, smart keys, or fancy displays.
| Device | Manufacturer | Model | Protocol | Price | Pcs | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Control outlet | IKEA | TRÅDFRI | Zigbee | €10 | 1 | ikea.com |
| Control outlet | IKEA | Askvader | Zigbee | €10 | 3 | ikea.com |
| Dimmer | Philips | Hue | Zigbee | €20 | 1 | mediamarkt.nl |
| Door sensor | Aqara | Zigbee | €53 | 6 | aliexpress.com | |
| Doorbell + Antenna | KIKA | ACDB-6600AC | RTL-SDR, MQTT (via https://github.com/pbkhrv/rtl_433-hass-addons) | €25 | 1 | gamma.nl |
| ESP32 | Espressif | ESP32-WROOM-32D | Bluetooth & WiFi | €5 | 1 | aliexpress.com |
| Flower sensor | Vegtrug | Bluetooth (via ESP32) | €19 | 1 | aliexpress.com | |
| Heater | EUROM | CK2003 Turbo 2000W | via outlet | (€29) | 1 | hornbach.nl |
| LED + 200W power | 24V RGB/ White spectrum 19W/m IP67 960lmn/m | via driver | €188 | 10m | led-gigant.nl | |
| LED + 50W power | 24V LED 12W IP65 1260lmn/m 2700K | via shelly | €41 | 2.5m | led-gigant.nl | |
| LED driver | GLEDOPTO | GL-C-007 | Zigbee | €29 | 1 | gledopto.eu |
| Light bulb | IKEA | TRÅDFRI GU10 400lmn 2700K | Zigbee | €14 | 2 | ikea.com |
| Light bulb | IKEA | TRÅDFRI GU10 White spectrum | Zigbee | €80 | 5 | ikea.com |
| Light bulb | Philips | Hue E14 Ambiance White spectrum | Zigbee | €45 | 2 | mediamarkt.nl |
| Light bulb | Philips | Hue E27 Ambiance White spectrum | Zigbee | €130 | 3 | mediamarkt.nl |
| Light bulb | Philips | Hue E27 Filament Dimmable 7W | Zigbee | €20 | 1 | gamma.nl |
| Motion sensor | IKEA | TRÅDFRI | Zigbee | €39 | 3 | ikea.com |
| Motion sensor | Philips | Hue, w/ thermometer | Zigbee | €40 | 1 | mediamarkt.nl |
| NAS | Synology | DS216play | API | (€250) | 1 | tweakers.net |
| Printer | Canon | MG3650S | IPP (WLAN) | (€74) | 1 | Canon.nl |
| RTL-SDR | RTL Cube | 820T2 | Zigbee | €12 | 1 | aliexpress.com |
| Relay | Shelly | 1PM | Zigbee | €25 | 2 | shelly.cloud |
| Relay | Shelly | 2.5 | Zigbee | €17 | 1 | shelly.cloud |
| Remote control | IKEA | TRÅDFRI | Zigbee | €15 | 1 | ikea.com |
| Router | ZTE | H369A / Experia Box v10 | SNMP, UPnP | - | 1 | hardware.info |
| Router | TP-Link | Archer AX55 | - | (€100) | 1 | mediamarkt.nl |
| Solar | Growatt | ShineLan-X | LAN, MQTT (via Grott), PVOutput | - | 1 | |
| Switch | TP-Link | TL-SG108S | - | (€37) | 1 | mediamarkt.nl |
| Thermometer | Aqara | w/ humidity, pressure | Zigbee | €43 | 5 | aliexpress.com |
| Thermometer | TuYa | TS0201, w/ humidity and display | Zigbee | €16 | 1 | aliexpress.com |
| Wireless dimmer | IKEA | TRÅDFRI | Zigbee | €14 | 2 | ikea.com |
| Zigbee controller | Texas Instruments | CC2531 | ZHA | €10 | 1 | tweakers.net |
- Total costs (ignoring prices in brackets): €925
Hardware experiences
LED
We bought a LED strip + power supply + driver for both the bike shed and roof terrace at led-gigant.nl. The LED at the bike shed was easy to install since we only had to cut but not to join any strips. The controlling of this light strip is done by a Shelly, which are great drivers as they are easy to install and just work out-of-box on WiFi.
The installation of the LED at the roof terrace was harder and took us several weeks! Since our roof terrace is 4*2 meters, we needed 10m of LED strips (4+2+4 for three sides). The LED strips were delivered as two 5m long strips, so we had to cut and reconnect them. We did not expect that this would be so hard. Since these strips are RGBWW, 5 strands needed to be connected at each joint. We bought some non-solder connections from Led-gigant.nl but we did not get them to work on all five strands simultaneously. Hence, we need to solder the connections, which is hard given that the strands are only 1-2mm apart.
IKEA
The IKEA devices are all good quality, especially for the low price they are sold. Lights are good and the remotes all work very well. The motion sensor reports motion fast, maybe even a bit too fast; especially on warmer days (>20 degrees Celsius), it triggers sometimes at random. Major drawback is the difficulty to pair them; the only thing which works for the lights is by manually powercycle them. As the IKEA manual is not very accurate on how to this, I used the instructions from IKEA Switzerland (especially see the comment of Jon B.).
Vegtrug
I like the idea of a flower sensor very much, so that is the reason I paid this relatively expensive gadget. I will use it to monitor a citrus plant that is not doing so well :) It works via Bluetooth Low-Energy so I monitor this device with an ESP32 using ESPHome. An open-source database for the Vegtrug can be found at https://open.plantbook.io/.
TuYa temperature sensor
Nice thermometer with a display that shows the temperature and humidity. Updates very fast (over Zigbee) when temperature changes. Major drawback: very limited battery-life of 1-2 weeks.
Aqara
Both the temperature sensors and door sensors work very well on Zigbee with either Zigbee2MQTT or ZHA. Battery life is around 6-12 months.
Others
Feel free to ask more experiences by opening an issue!
Screenshots
See the img/ directory!
