MyHomeAssistantConfig

My Home Automation Setup

Version below is not always accurate, this is updated manually.
Last Update:3/19/2020

TL;DR: Home Assistant, Node-Red, MQTT, Homeseer (Z-Wave) with mcsMQTT plugin based home automation configuration.

My journey with home automation started back in the Insteon days playing with a simple switch but I found it rather immature at the time. About 5 years ago I implemented Z-wave and Vera in my home automating lights, switches and my garage door using a Fortezza Mimo Light contact switch before Wifi solutions were readily available. I always found Vera rather clunky, software upgrades were prone to failure and automations were not very straighforward. About 3 years ago I switched to Homeseer, and while the interface is clunky and it's made on top of a pretty legacy code base it was much more powerful (and expensive) than Vera. Things got interesting once Homeseer started to play with Google Assistant, then automation wasn't simply about turning lights on at night or basic motion type automations.

I've long held that voice is the key to "seemless" home automation - what's the point in pulling out your phone to turn on a light, when you can just speak it? I quickly integrated cameras with Homeseer, Google Assistant, Hue Lights (my outside light switches don't have the depth for ZWave switches), Nest Thermostats, etc etc. In the last few weeks I moved to Home Assistant to get a more modern platform, however having played with Home Assistant's Z-Wave implementation it left a GREAT DEAL to be desired. I've also used Smartthings and Vera and Homeseer seems to have the best implementation in my opinion. Where homeseer lacks is user interface, plugins cost extra, and the 3rd party integration pales in comparison to Home Assistant. So I implemented a HomeSeer plugin called mcsMQTT so that I can use Homeseer for what it's REALLLY good at (Z-Wave) and Home Assistant aand Node-Red for what they are good at.

Automated Testing using Github and TravisCI

I use Visual Studio Code as my IDE as it does a wonderul job with Yaml and integrates seamlessly with git. Commits and Pushes are done from VS Code - TravisCI then does a test by running "hass -c myconfig check_config" against my configuration Yaml files - I have a travisci sensor in Home Assistant and when this sensor becomes "Passed" Home Assistant then executes a simple Shell Script (gitpull.sh) to do a pull request to my live system and resart docker. Theh shell script that does the restart also notifies me about the restart in Slack.

I run Watch Tower https://hub.docker.com/r/v2tec/watchtower to monitor each Docker container and pull the latest version automatically and notifiy me an update happened in slack. This pulls the newest version of Home Assistant, MariaDB, Mosquitto MQTT, and node-red. THis is the only place something isn't tested before it's changed and I'll eventually fix that but I'm not running a critical service here.

My Current Home Automation Components

The Brains aka Software

• HomeSeer - For Purely Z-Wave with mcsMQTT Plugin
• Home Assistant - For modern code base, integration with 3rd party devices and services, modern front end (Lovelace) etc.
• Node-Red - For automation
• Mosquitto MQTT - for passing topics between Homeseer, HA, Node-Red and my ESP2866 based blinds
• MariaDB - For HA Recorder History

Hardware Platform

• Homeseer Hometroller ZeeS2 (Homeseer on a Raspberry Pi)
• Hass.io on QNap NAS on "Container Station" aka Docker. Originally ran Hassio on Pi 3b.
• Mosquitto and Maria run in Docker Containers on my QNAP NAS

Moved to Docker on 05/03/2019 by creating a branch of my configuration and automating a git pull to my QNap once happy I will merge back to master. Best thing? Family didn't notice as it was trasparent to them.

Automation Hardware

• Z-Wave (Homeseer)

  • 20+ Homeseer WD-100 & Evolve dimmers
  • 5+ Aeon Labs and Dome smart switches
  • 1 Aeon Labs heavy duty smart switch (pool pump)
  • 3 Aeotec multi sensor 5
  • 1 Fortezza Mimo Lite (garage door)
  • 1 Ecolink Motorized Z-wave switch (for switches that don't have neutral wire)
  • 2 Schlage Connect dead bolts
  • various other sensors I'm forgetting about.

• Nest (Home Assistant)

  • 2 Nest Thermostats
  • 3 Nest CO2/Smoke Detectors

• Ring (Home Assistant)

  • 1 Ring Pro Doorbell
  • 1 Ring Floodlight Camera

• Sonos (Home Assistant)

  • 2 Play:1
  • 1 Play:5

• Google Home (via Home Assistant Cloud)

  • 1 Google Home (original) with Rechargable battery base
  • 4 Google Home Mini

• Blind Control (Home Assistant)

  • MK Smart House ESP8266 Based Blind tilt - https://www.mksmarthouse.com/shop/Blinds-Control-p93393095

• Presence Detection

  • 4 * Raspberry Pi W running Monitor https://github.com/andrewjfreyer/monitor/ for Bluetooth and BTLE presence detection
  • Node-Red Unifi integration for WiFi detection

• Harmony Remote (Home Assistant)

• I'm sure I'm missing some other things.

Home Network

• Ubiquiti Unifi

  • 3 * UNifi AP Lite 2 * Unifi AP Mesh 1 * Cloud Key Controller (moving to a docker container) 1 * 8 Port POE Switch 1 * Unifi Security Gateway

• Internet Connection

  • Bell Fibe Gigabit Fiber (1Gb Up, 100Mb down)
  • Rogers Cable (30Mb backup)