I use a Boron + Adafruit GPS feather-wing module to serve as a security system for my RV. All entry doors have reed sensors connected to the Boron. Door open/close status and RV GPS location are transmitted back to a Home Assistant server at a fixed location. This way I can tell if anyone breaks into the trailer while we are away or in the worst case, tries to steal the whole thing. This configuration allows me to get a loud phone notification if any door opens without my knowledge.
Additionally, there are several Bluetooth LE sensors in the RV to monitor things like refrigerator temperatures and propane tank levels. The Boron processed those BLE advertisements and sends the data back to the same Home Assistant instance. This way I can see important RV data from the same Home Assistant page as the door and GPS status. Now I have one place to see all data instead of having to use several different, proprietary apps.
Future plans include having the Boron read the various Victron solar and battery management devices to monitor the RV battery status when camping off grid.
Which sensors did you use and do they use predefined services or did you create custom ones?
I am looking for a generic analog value characteristic. I toyed with the health thermometer, but the
formatting takes a bit of labor.
Both sensors have custom manufacturer data for their advertisements.
Temp sensors were from amazon. I had to reverse engineer the BLE advertising data format by decompiling their Android app and wading through the source code.
Propane sensors were from Amazon also. This companies tech support was nice enough to provide me their “IoT integrators” document that has the BLE data format.
The Boron sends different messages via Particle.publish. I have a Photon stationed at home that does a Particle.subscribe for those messages. The Photon then rebroadcasts them to my local MQTT server.
I could have opened up my MQTT server to the Internet and had the Boron connect directly to that, but I decided this was an extra security risk I did not want. Nor did I want to manage SSL certificates and valid authentication checking.
Unfortunately, no I don’t have video. My job keeps me rather busy so what little time I have left over I focus on the development of the project instead of documenting what I’m doing.
I have various particle photons or argons around the house connected my Home Assistant instance:
2 Somfy blind controllers (photon performs button presses on an Somfy RF remote)
2 selectblinds.com controllers (photon does button press on local blind wand)
2 ceiling fan controllers (photon does button presses on RF remote to control fans)
2 wifi light switchs (OEM wifi module deleted and photon inserted in it’s place)
photon solar powered pool temperature probe
photon pool controller
6.a) LED controller (pool LED colors controlled through multiple power toggles withing 3 seconds)
6.b) RS-485 control of pool pump to control speeds.
6.c) relay control of pool valve. Allows for smartphone control to turn on waterfall feature of pool
photon simple relay control of Peristaltic pump to inject muriatic acid into pool to keep PH levels in check
I used to have the same particle photon controlling all pool features, but the state machine got so complicated, I had to offload some features (PH and ORP probe reading, pump status fetching and salt level indication) to a raspberry pi python script.
Each remote button end up connecting ground to a RF chip input when pressed. Thus I have the photon I/O pin wired to the button pin that goes to the RF chip. The photon drives a 0 on the pin, directly emulating what happens when a human presses a button.