Sensors for home automation.

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Discussion

BGARK

Original Poster:

5,532 posts

252 months

Thursday 6th April 2023
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Example.

A humidity sensor, that could be wired into a kitchen.

Programmed via Alexa, eg over 65% turn on

Then activates an extractor with an on/off switch also controlled by Alexa.

I might have simplified this but hopefully, you get my point.

Where can I buy the best devices to do this home automation?

Thanks

wombleh

1,884 posts

128 months

Thursday 6th April 2023
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You can get humidity sensor extractor fans, would be the cheapest way of doing it.

One way would be to get a wireless humidity sensor and use SDR to pick it up. I use RTL433 to grab the signals from newentor weather station sensors which run for years on a couple of AA batteries. There are smart extractor fans from the likes of ventaxia that you might be able to control via something like IFTTT.

I tend to get cheap sensors from eBay or Amazon, or if putting them together myself then somewhere like the pi hut or RS for components. PI hut has a lot of good project kits.

Edited by wombleh on Thursday 6th April 20:48

Griffith4ever

4,580 posts

41 months

Friday 7th April 2023
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I've done this in my bathroom with Home Assistant.

Battery humidity sensor, and then a zwave switch unit wired in behind the bathroom wall switches.

I suspect you are asking too much if alexa. The automation side is fairly limited. I could be wrong though.

rewild

3,021 posts

145 months

Friday 7th April 2023
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https://shellystore.co.uk/

Take a look at Shelly products. They have simple wifi humidity sensors (Shelly Plus H&T) and wifi mains voltage switches (e.g. (
Shelly 1), they can be Alexa controlled for your voice on-off requirement too. That's a good chunk of your requirements done quite easily.

You'll probably manage your simple automation rule (turn off when humidity is high, off when low) with Shelly's own apps, but if not, take a look at IFTTT.

There are a million other ways to do this, but I've tried to pick one that would suit a beginner. i.e. commercial products and existing apps, wifi not zigbee (which would require a hub of some sort), no reliance on Home Assistant (which is very powerful, but a shambles of a project). There are cheaper ways, but you'd get your hands a lot dirtier with the coding, and that would take more time to learn, and time isn't free.