home climate V1
In 2018, a colleague mentioned to me that he found a nice CO2 monitor with an undocumented but open USB connection. On Github, vfilimonov wrote a nice python package to decode the USB connection and show the measured data on a website. From this starting point on, I experimented with further sensors and a more complex data acquisition, storage and visualisation. The current state is an experimental setup running on a Raspberry Pi 3B+. Several sensors are connected to test and compare them. Connected sensors are: TFA Dostmann AirCO2ntrol Mini CO2 Monitor Two DHT22 temperature and humidity MH-Z19 IR absorption CO2 sensor 0-5000ppm TSL 2561 light intensity sensor BMP280 digital barometer The monitoring system in the configuration as used in the following. Raspbian Buster runs from an old SSD that also stores programs and databases (black cable with two USB port because the Pi cannot supply enough current). The white…
Homeserver Power Monitoring
As mentioned in the introduction to the homeclimate monitoring project, I run a small unRAID homeserver with a couple of disks to provide some services in my local network. Besides monitoring the server itself with the TIG stack (Telegraf, InfluxDB, Grafana), it is also interesting to monitor power consumption to find out what the server costs aside from the initial cost for the hardware. Self-made solutions operating on mains voltages is always tricky and the potential risks are large. Luckily, there are a number of cheap and easy commercial options. I opted for the “TP-Link Kasa smart plug HS110” which is available online for typically less than 20€. The HS110 can monitor voltage, current, power and turn on/off the integrated outlet remotely. It also has smart home feature (e.g. Alexa skills, Google Assistant, IFTTT) but I don’t need nor want those. Still, it is one of the cheapest and also…