I’ve been in my house for over more than two months now, it has also been a while since I wrote a blog about life in Leiden and school. So this time not much about Home Assistant, although I have spent many hours lately to that (ofcourse 😛 ).
Recently also moved a large piece of furniture: my bed / couch. Can I finally sleep well on a good bed, then on a stretcher or guest bed.
College
I have been very busy with school lately, completing the last few courses for the propaedeutic year. Also an important next step, namely the choice of which specialization I want to do in the coming years for my computer science education. In the past I always wanted to go in the direction of forensics, but now I finally decided to go for interaction technology. In this specialization the end users are central and you can get really creative with hard / software.
Currently we are busy with building an interactive installation for childrens in a museum, sounds simple but we go through a whole process to make it a success.
New hardware in house
The past month I have invested a lot in new hardware for my house, partly as luxury and partly necessary. Can say that my living comfort has been considerably improved by all the devices and that I really enjoy living in Leiden.
Broadlink RM Pro and Google Home
I really wanted to be able to control my TV (without remote control), that’s why I bought the Broadlink RM Pro, which allows me to teach in IR packages and broadcast them in to the room.
By the way, I wrote an article about my broadlink config, read it here.
And I finally replaced my Google home mini for the Google home, it was on sale because of the launch of the Google nest hub and I wanted one that would listen better (2 mics) and produce better sound than the mini.
Xiaomi Curtains
All the craziness on a stick but even my curtains are smart! I opted for the Xiaomi aqara curtains, the track and motor are sold separately. I connected the curtains to Home Assistant via Deconz, but the truck is that you have to add it as a light switch.
Funny of all I still have no curtains that can darken the room 😛
IKEA Tradfri lights
I have bought some extra ikea tradfri lights for the bathroom (yes, it must be smart there too) and for a desk lamp in the room.
More sensors
I have bought a lot of window, door and temperature sensors to better monitor my house. I chose the Xiaomi sensors because they work great with Deconz (Zigbee). Maybe I still want motion sensors from Xiaomi, especially one in the bathroom for switching the lights.
- Xiaomi door/windows sensor
- Xiaomi temperture sensor (with humidity and pressure)
Upgraded my host system
In my student house I started with a raspberry pi as a host for Home Assistant and this is great hardware to start with, but at a later stage you will find that everything starts to run more slowly or that your pi crashes / sd card corrupts etc .
In one week I had to restore a backup to the pi twice to make Home Assistant work again, for me that was a sign that it was time for a hardware upgrade.
Specifications:
- Intel Arches Canyon NUC6CAYH
- 120 GB SSD
- 2x 4GB DDR3L 1866MHz RAM
- Running: Ubuntu server 18.04.2 LTS
Whats upcoming?
For now I have just finished investing in hardware, now it’s mostly nice to enjoy my house and to improve living comfort here and there in Home Assistant. I considered purchasing a vacuum cleaner robot, finally decided not to do this (for the time being 😛 ) and bought a bagless vacuum cleaner from AEG.
It is also almost vacation so I hope to hear soon that I have passed my propaedeutic year and I can finally go on holiday without worry after 2 years!
