Meet Phoebe my hassio installation

By Tim Naylor -
This post is about my hass.io installation that I have named phoebe and a little bit about what I am learning about.

So what is hass.io?  

A few years ago a home automation tool called Home Assistant appeared on the scene (December 14 2014) and started a home automation revolution.  It is an open source, full featured project that allows one to control and manage a number of smart devices for your home. I installed my first attempt about 6 months ago and didn't love it.  It took a lot for me to understand what it was doing and this YAML thing was horrible...so I let it stagnate for a while.  About 3 weeks ago I stumbled on one of Rob's videos (check out one below) where he was singing its praises so I thought I would try again. and this time I found Hass.io, which I am going to call a Home Assistant plugin that makes working with HA much better.

I burned an image on to an SD card, threw it into my Raspberry Pi 3+ and I was off.  What a difference. First I am working on a project that uses YAML so it is not quite as scary now. Second Hass.io allows me to install Add-ons painlessly so I can integrate with other services, spin up new servers and everything!


First a big thanks 

to the vlog and blog community that lowers the barrier to entry for this type of technology. If you have not checked out their work yet, you should go see some of these videos:
Ben from BRUH automation: 

DRzzz: 

Rob from http://www.thesmarthomehookup.com:

These guys have guided me through my introduction to Home Automation and introduced me to hass.io so I have to give credit where it is due.

The journey continues

After about 2 weeks and reading a ton on the forums I decided that my pi wasn't going to be quite enough, and I needed to dedicate a little better hardware to this if I wanted it to be really successful, so I purchased a second hand mac mini, Installed Ubuntu Mate and created PHOEBE my Personal Home or Office Event Based Executrix.

I will have several posts over the next little while about things I am doing with PHOEBE, and how I have integrated Sonoff switches, ESP8266 NodeMCU chips, PIR sensors, and capacitive buttons to implement some home automation "on the cheap"  Lets be clear, I have spent a fair bit too.  Between Phillips hue lights, Lifx lights, Tuya lights and smart plugs, iris sensors, countless resistors, breadboards, et cetera this has not been a cheap hobby, but I didn't just go buy a bunch of $55.00 Lutron light switches (man they are sweeeeeet though!) instead I decided to learn a little bit and see what I could accomplish without breaking the bank.  

Following my mentor's examples I have signed up to become an Amazon Affiliate and have started documenting my journey here. hopefully with vlog posts in addition to the blog posts soon.

Upcoming segments:
  • Smart light comparison lifex, hue, merkury, and yeelight
  • Garage opener update - NodeMCU flashed with tasmota, using MQTT
  • Sonoff to PHonoff hack capacitave smart switches with motion detection
  • Smart light switches without the Sonoff for smart lights.
  • Hassio in docker on a Mac - Can it be done?
  • My take on any holiday lights

Here are some Amazon affiliate links that help support my ability to buy and test new devices

The NodeMCU board that I am using for my projects (V2): https://amzn.to/2SoLbGK
The power supply I bought for my holiday lights: https://amzn.to/2U5ehg0
The battery backup I use with my Raspberry Pi: https://amzn.to/2Q3O17v


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