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[219.90 --> 221.98] Home Assistant is the new gateway drug, don't you think? |
[221.98 --> 223.56] I think it is. |
[223.80 --> 228.60] And it's literally the hub of the entire experience in our RV. |
[229.26 --> 232.82] It is even when we're consuming media, I've got Plex plugged into Home Assistant. |
[233.26 --> 237.02] And so it really is that kind of entrance point for me. |
[237.40 --> 247.44] But I think it's becoming so accessible and so easy to get up and running with that it's just attracting more and more people to this kind of lifestyle and this hobby. |
[248.04 --> 249.64] Well, I have a ton of questions for you, Matt. |
[249.64 --> 252.58] And in fact, I want to get into some of the details about your system. |
[252.66 --> 255.22] But I want to mention this episode is brought to you by a Cloud Guru. |
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[265.56 --> 274.80] Matt, something you said there was that it was what struck you was, well, we could use some of this technology to make life more comfortable in our tiny home. |
[275.36 --> 276.92] That's kind of how I got into it, too. |
[276.92 --> 279.60] And I'm curious, what was some of your very first automations? |
[279.76 --> 281.74] Was it around enabling boondocking? |
[281.94 --> 282.64] Was it around heating? |
[282.78 --> 283.40] Where did you start? |
[283.84 --> 283.98] Yeah. |
[284.06 --> 288.04] So for us, the scarcity of resources was one of our biggest challenges. |
[288.94 --> 291.80] Much like you, we have battle-borne lithium batteries. |
[292.10 --> 292.96] We have solar. |
[293.66 --> 294.82] But they're still finite. |
[295.38 --> 298.90] In three years on the road, we do not and have never owned a generator. |
[299.52 --> 302.74] So one of my big first priorities was how do I get power? |
[302.74 --> 306.82] We prefer to boondock rather than stay in RV parks. |
[307.46 --> 310.82] I think start of last year, we did 100 days in a row of boondocking. |
[311.18 --> 312.26] Just totally off-grid. |
[312.64 --> 312.96] Wow. |
[313.24 --> 313.90] 100 days. |
[313.96 --> 314.70] That's impressive. |
[314.86 --> 315.52] Very nice. |
[315.60 --> 315.70] Yeah. |
[315.76 --> 316.00] Wow. |
[316.08 --> 322.60] So when the pandemic first hit, we were just every 10 to 14 days, we would run into town to go and dump our tanks and fill up again. |
[322.60 --> 325.86] And then back out into the middle of nowhere and carry on. |
[326.16 --> 326.72] Oh, look at you. |
[326.78 --> 327.52] You big show-off. |
[327.52 --> 334.24] So one of the priorities with the home automation was how do I make this more achievable? |
[335.28 --> 343.62] And for me, I've never got into the scripts so much, just the trigger a thing and then things happen all at once. |
[343.84 --> 350.78] I was always into the how can I make the RV smarter in the first place so I don't have to interact with it at all. |
[350.78 --> 357.28] So one of my favorites, I call it the auto dump feature and has nothing to do with dumping tanks. |
[358.06 --> 359.54] This is all about electricity. |
[360.14 --> 364.28] And the idea is to say, let's say it's a sunny day outside. |
[365.12 --> 366.16] It's spring. |
[366.42 --> 367.02] I'm in the desert. |
[367.28 --> 369.32] I've got plenty of solar coming in. |
[370.04 --> 371.78] At some point, my battery is going to fill up. |
[372.22 --> 374.02] So what do I do with that excess? |
[374.28 --> 375.28] How can I use it? |
[375.28 --> 385.80] So I set up an automation that as the batteries reached higher and higher voltage levels and higher and higher percent charge, it would begin to turn on or enable certain devices. |
[386.72 --> 392.04] So as you've probably noticed, the Victron inverter has a fairly high background power draw. |
[392.30 --> 394.96] And so we keep it turned off most of the time. |
[395.62 --> 399.52] Once the batteries reach 80%, I would turn the inverter on automatically. |
[399.52 --> 406.20] Once the batteries reach 90%, it would switch the fridge over from propane to AC electric. |
[407.10 --> 412.24] And once the batteries reach 95%, it would switch the electric water heater on. |
[412.86 --> 423.18] So on a good sunny day, without us doing anything at all, we would end the day with full batteries, a full tank of hot water, and having saved some propane from the fridge. |
[423.72 --> 424.40] I love that. |
[424.58 --> 425.36] That's so great. |
[425.48 --> 426.38] And that's really cool. |
[426.38 --> 432.58] You must be then going through and replacing those basic DC switches that came with the RV with something smarter. |
[432.98 --> 437.48] One of the challenges in the RV is nothing is designed for RVs in the smart world. |
[438.02 --> 440.66] So we don't use a lot of 110 volts. |
[441.10 --> 442.48] DC is king. |
[443.04 --> 448.42] And so the Sonoff SV has been my choice for a lot of this and a couple of the other Sonoff devices. |
[448.70 --> 451.26] The 4chan Pro has been another one I've used. |
[451.26 --> 456.58] And then a couple of things are running on Sonoff. |
[456.72 --> 462.00] I think it's the POW R2, the energy monitoring hardwired one, or the Sonoff S31. |
[462.92 --> 465.08] And those have really been the heart of it. |
[465.32 --> 471.60] I started off with TASMOTOR running on those and then switched over to ESP Home a little while later. |
[471.94 --> 473.62] I actually use one of those Sonoff SVs. |
[473.70 --> 475.28] I'm holding it up to the camera for you both. |
[475.28 --> 477.50] For my garage doors. |
[477.78 --> 479.82] And yeah, it's worked absolutely flawlessly. |
[479.92 --> 481.00] It's got a little relay on it. |
[481.24 --> 483.26] It runs on low voltage, like you said, Matt. |
[484.02 --> 484.96] I really like it. |
[485.00 --> 486.84] I put TASMOTOR on mine, of course. |
[487.98 --> 488.94] Fantastic little board. |
[488.94 --> 498.52] And then it sounds like another key piece of insight that's coming into Home Assistant is you are making Home Assistant aware of your electrical system. |
[498.62 --> 502.10] Sounds like battery state, power generation from solar. |
[502.84 --> 506.36] So Home Assistant must be getting a lot of information off of your Victron setup. |
[506.52 --> 508.72] How are you supplying that to Home Assistant? |
[509.08 --> 509.62] Yeah, you're right. |
[509.62 --> 519.36] So we are using the Victron CCGX, the Color Control GX, which is one of their family of products that has a built-in MQTT broker. |
[520.08 --> 529.76] So this is actually one of the original reasons, I guess, that we chose Victron versus some of the other vendors out there that do solar for RVs. |
[530.26 --> 538.62] We basically shlurp up all of that MQTT data, throw it into Home Assistant, and also then collect it all in InfluxDB as well. |
[538.62 --> 544.20] And for me, it was actually the data collection side of things that was really why I started this in the first place. |
[544.60 --> 551.10] We wanted to see the long-term trends of our batteries, of our solar, all these sorts of things. |
[551.84 --> 562.66] And we've now got, I think, almost three years' worth of data at about a one to ten second resolution across dozens and dozens and dozens of data points on the electrical system. |
[562.66 --> 567.88] So you're getting real insights to how the health of your batteries are, if they're still delivering the same way. |
[568.04 --> 573.36] And probably even, like, you could start to see maybe something's wrong with one of our solar panels because of this data. |
[573.76 --> 574.16] Exactly. |
[574.16 --> 582.36] So we've used it ourselves to answer questions like, if we added 200 more watts of solar, what would that do to our system? |
[582.98 --> 586.86] Or how many watts of solar do we need to get through winter at a given latitude? |
[586.86 --> 593.80] Because we can graph the location of the RV versus the amount of power that we bring in during the day. |
[594.44 --> 594.92] I love this. |
[594.98 --> 599.72] You've got to come on board as a road trip consultant for me, you know, running operations. |
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