More Smart Home

Tonight (12/13), I'll again be bringing my Smart Home Demo Board to CDL. I'm still fighting with getting Ethernet 0 to lease an IP address (and fall back if it doesn't). Also the Bluetooth serial is driving me crazy! The raspi-config doesn't turn it off. It just enables the 'serial' port (which is Bluetooth). I'm now trying to decide if I can use the Bluetooth port as a serial port. I'll also bring the Sonoff ZigBee to WiFi bridge in hopes of installing the Tasmota firmware. And if I can find the dremel I might be able to cut some crude traces into a spare copper board for my EPS32 touch sensors. I have some on order but I'm interesting in how hard it is to make my won also. I do know about using chemical etch but I'm playing around with the dremel for quick and dirty prototyping. Just a learning experience. Let's face it it's almost as quick to order ready made or DIY a proto board and have it made by a PCB maker. Still good to know the levels of difficulty.

Step by step

In our exciting previous episode of The Never Ending Adventures of Rusted Rin Tin Tin Cup our intrepid hero ... Okay so this isn't a 1930's radio soap series. But last week I did bring the updated Smart Home Demo Board to CDL. Unfortunately all the previous week's work was for naught as I forgot to add the default fallback IP address to the DHCPCD setup. I also forgot to enable the serial port on the Raspberry Pi. So there was no accessing it. Everything was working but I couldn't access anything. :-(

I've now added the default fallback IP and enabled the serial port. So I should be able to demo that on Monday night (yea!). I'll try to get HASS loaded as I will eventually need to demonstrate that at TCF. So far HASS eludes me and I'm finding it very frustrating to get started with.

I now have the correct WiFi information for the Pi to the AP. I still need to work on the DHCPCD for the Etherenet and the WiFi. The Ethernet doesn't start up like I hoped. Once that's done I can connect my laptop and the Pi to the Demo board's AP and really do a proper demonstration. I do have access to the Pi via the Demo board AP and the serial console. So all is not lost. :-)

Some future projects are:

• More work on the Demo and the presentation
• Talkie Toaster - which will be used during the TCF presentation
• Jetson Nano AI - I've not quite figured this one out yet so it's for learning now
• Z-Wave Thermostat - This will actually be installed in the CDL building
• ESP32 Touch switches - WiFi to MQTT to Node-Red. Basically WiFi wall switches

Rough start

So I took the demo board to Computer Deconstruction Lab (the CDL makerspace). While setting up the demo board my laptop had forgotten all it's WiFi settings. Which made the connectivity to the board difficult. I didn't have the default DHCP fallback address on the Ethernet yet. Also the serial console was still on Bluetooth and I've not tried that yet. So I have a little more work to do before my Trenton Computer Festival presentation. Of course that's one of the reasons I'm bringing it to CDL, so I can work the bugs out before the presentation. I didn't attempt to reprogram the Sonoff ZigBee Bridge. Seems I forgot about it. I'll try that at home some time this week.