In this post I’m continuing my Home Automation and Home-Assistant journey. I already have an Xbox-One with a kinect so routinely say “Xbox on” which turns on the TV, SoundBar and Foxtel (cable) box. This also accepts volume up/down, change of channel, record, Netflix and games. So I’m moving to a completely voice driven household with using Alexa or Siri to operate the lights. But how do I go further? What else is there in the house that I can’t talk to, what remote controls do I still use? There are several things in my apartment that cannot be controlled via wifi, I live in a typical late 90s midcity Australian apartment and have the ubiquitous through house aircon/heating unit with buttons on a wall and a remote control in the living room and vents to each room in the apartment. So since my apartment reaches dizzying temps in the…Continue reading Controlling Infa-Red IR devices with Home-Assistant & AlexaPi on a Raspberry Pi (Non smart, Dumb devices)
Tag: HomeAutomation
Using IFTTT and Alexa Voice Service AVS on a RaspberryPi to control HomeAssistant
This is the next post in my multipost of using a Raspberry-Pi 3 as the center of my Home Automation world. Firstly I set a Raspberry-Pi 3 up in headless mode, then installed Pi-Hole to block adverts at local DNS level, so saving you much needed bandwidth. Next, I installed Home-Assistant, and then Homebridge, which allowed me to use Siri to access my various bulbs in the house. Lastly I installed Amazon AVS but all it does is tell me the time, weather, flash forcast, todo lists etc. Here’s the previous posts: Part 1, Headless Pi Part 2, Pi-Hole, HomeAssistant, LimitlessLED Part 3, Homebridge, Siri, Apple Home Part 4, Alexa AVS on a Pi Config files Using IFTTT Now due to it’s limitation, I can’t simply say “Alexa, find my devices” to find the lights that I can control in my home. So I need IFTTT. If you’ve never used…Continue reading Using IFTTT and Alexa Voice Service AVS on a RaspberryPi to control HomeAssistant
Setting up a Raspberry-Pi, Home-Assistant, Homebridge, Siri and Alexa. Part 4: Installing Alexa-Pi, Amazon’s Alexa Voice Service
Welcome to Part 4 of my multipart blog of setting up a Raspberry-Pi to be the center of your homeautomation world. To recap what I’ve done so far: Set the Pi in headless mode, ie it’s never going to be connected to a monitor Installed HomeAssistant so I can control lights in my apartment, set automation like lights on at sunset if i’m home. Installed Pi-Hole for network wide advert blocking. Setup Homebridge, to link HomeAssistant to Apple Home on my IOS devices, so Siri can control my lights, show me temperatures in the apartment etc. Here are the previous posts: Setting up a Raspberry-Pi, with Pi-Hole, Home-Assistant, Homebridge, Siri and Alexa. Part 1, Setting up a headless (monitorless) Pi http://www.pukit.com/2017/04/05/setting-up-a-raspberry-pi-with-pi-hole-home-assistant-homebridge-siri-and-alexa-part-2-installing-pi-hole-and-home-assistant-using-limitless-led-lamps/ http://www.pukit.com/2017/04/07/setting-up-a-raspberry-pi-with-pi-hole-home-assistant-homebridge-siri-and-alexa-part-3-installing-homebridge-and-using-siri-and-apple-home/ And now for making my Pi into a cheap Amazon Echo. Now know from the outset, that a RaspberryPi with Alexa cant do all the things an Echo…Continue reading Setting up a Raspberry-Pi, Home-Assistant, Homebridge, Siri and Alexa. Part 4: Installing Alexa-Pi, Amazon’s Alexa Voice Service
Setting up a Raspberry-Pi, with Pi-Hole, Home-Assistant, Homebridge, Siri and Alexa. Part 2: Installing Pi-Hole and Home-Assistant, using Limitless-LED lamps
Welcome to Part two of my home automation/raspberry-pi blog posts. If you missed setting up the headless Pi, here’s part one. So I’ve got my Pi quite happily working away in headless mode, slimmed down installation and on the network. Time to put it to use! The first thing I install is Pi-Hole. This enables network wide ad blocking via DNS. It’s superb, literally superb. Read up on it at https://pi-hole.net/. Here’s how to install it: Open a terminal, ssh into your Pi. ssh pi@192.168.0.24 Run the installer: curl -L https://install.pi-hole.net | bash The installer will ask for your password at somepoint, then load a graphical interface for your setup. Select both IPv4 and IPv6 ad blocking. You can edit your static ip address here, if you didn’t in my previous blog post. Make a note of your password it presents you, although you can edit it later. See if…Continue reading Setting up a Raspberry-Pi, with Pi-Hole, Home-Assistant, Homebridge, Siri and Alexa. Part 2: Installing Pi-Hole and Home-Assistant, using Limitless-LED lamps