Posted on Camera Home Automation IOT Security Video WiFi

Installing the Nelly Security WiFi Video Doorbell

Ever since Ring released their video doorbell a few years ago, I've been waiting for a WiFi video doorbell that didn't rely on the cloud (and a monthly fee), was powered by hard wire, and still looked decent. I've only had it for a few days, but I think that the Nelly Security doorbell accomplishes this. Unfortunately, it looks like the Nelly version is out of stock at the time of writing, but this doorbell has been rebranded by a bunch of other companies, one of which is Nelly.

Posted on ESP8266 Home Assistant Home Automation Uncategorized Wemos D1 Mini

Using the Home Assistant Alert Component with Telegram Acknowledge

This is an update to my post about the Garage Door Notification which was based on my Wifi Garage Door Controller .About a week after my post about sending a repeating notification through Home Assistant, the developers created a new 'Alert' component that basically made my post obsolete. So I decided to switch over to the Alert component and add some extra features.

Posted on ESP8266 Home Assistant Home Automation Wemos D1 Mini

Current Monitor and Water Sensor for Sump Pump

I have a sump pump in my basement that doesn’t run very often. I wanted to be able to get a notification when it did run and a notification in the event of a water leak, which might indicate that the pump isn’t functioning properly. Detecting water was relatively simple, but trying to figure out when the pump runs was a little more challenging. I looked into a vibration sensor since the pipes would vibrate very lightly when it came one, but the sensor just wasn’t sensitive enough. I also considered measuring the amount of sound, but I thought that might cause some false positives when the kids were in the basement playing.

Posted on Home Assistant Home Automation

Use Home Assistant to Send a Notification at a Specific Interval When the Door is Left Open

This blog post builds on my last post about the Wemos D1 Mini Garage Door Controller.

Sending a notification via Home Assistant is a simple process, and it is mostly well documented. However, I had trouble finding a solution that repeatedly sends a notification about a device state until that state changes. In this case, I wanted something to notify me when my garage door is open for a while, and then continue sending me notifications every 30 minutes until it’s closed.