Hacker News Reader

Comment by georgeburdell | Hacker News Reader

Are you doing any hand-rolled home automation? I just finished building a house and I had power over ethernet (PoE) put throughout before I discovered that security items using this command a hefty price premium over simple wireless / battery operated. I've toyed with the idea of just buying a Raspberry Pi with a PoE module and a decent camera module and seeing if I can replicate the functionality for half the price or less (and obviously not valuing my time at anything).

View on HN

I've made some done some stuff with ESP8266 boards - remote controllers for our A/C minisplits[1], motors for our shades[2], and a humidity sensor (DHT11) for our crawlspace.

Most devices are connected to HomeKit through a Pi running Homebridge. I wanted voice control and Apple is the company I distrust the least since they at least pretend to care about privacy.

I have only messed around a little with HomeAssistant, but that's what I would recommend if you want entirely locally controlled home automation. They even have a voice assistant[1] but for now it's worse than Siri, which is really saying something.

1: https://github.com/SwiCago/HeatPump 2: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2392856 3: https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2019/11/20/privacy-focuse...

Just a heads-up that DHT11 has ridiculously lousy humidity accuracy, I recommend going at least for DHT22.

You can buy splitters that convert the PoE into standard network + barrel power plug. Cost 20ish dollars and a roughly raspberry pi sized device in physical space.

One such example (Though I haven't used it personally): https://www.amazon.com/Amcrest-Splitter-Adapter-802-3af-comp...

I have used various PoE splitters over the years. They're very handy. The older generation had barrel plugs, but newer ones have various USB connectivity options too. If you're able to run cable PoE is pretty sweet. It's particularly nice to be able to put a single UPS in place to power a bunch of devices during power outages.

Check out the cube by pine64. Not available yet. But I bet it is exactly what you are looking for.

https://www.pine64.org/cube/

I wouldn't do my security stuff wirelessly if I was serious about it. A simple $2 esp8266 deauther is enough to disrupt WiFi and for the other protocols there's the option of jamming.

Our neighbor had his truck stolen and had a wireless camera in his front house. Last footage shows a car pull up across the street, a few minutes later the camera goes out, then when it comes back online the truck and car is gone. I guess the investigation decided it was jammed. So yeah, stick with wired systems.

Can't speak to PoE but Raspberry Pi works fine as a camera. I just have it shoot a still every hour that I can see on a web page. Also have a temperature sensor. Obviously I could password protect, add a motion sensor, save video, email, etc. if I wanted to get fancier.

IIRC the amcrest indoor cameras I use are POE compatible and they were like $50. Is that what you meant about a hefty price premium?

Check Ubiquiti's catalog - reasonably priced and plenty of PoE support.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com