44 January & February 2021 http://www.elektormagazine.com
About one year ago, I decided to have a go at home automation.
My first milestone was the automation of the thermostat in our
living room. I did this by replacing the existing wall thermostat by
the Wi-Fi Desktop Thermostat (Elektor project 160269, published
in Elektor, January/February 2018 [1][2]) that I had reprogrammed
with ESPHome-based firmware. The new firmware exposed all the
controls of the desktop thermostat (i.e., one relay, two pushbuttons
and three LEDs), allowing them to be automated by a home automa-
tion controller like Home Assistant.
In this setup, Home Assistant — running on a Raspberry Pi — plays
the role of thermostat, meaning that it decides when to turn on or
off the heater. The desktop thermostat itself has become a simple
remote-controlled relay with some LEDs.Nice, But...
The system worked fine and helped us comfortably through the winter
of 2019-2020. However, it had a few inconveniences:Connect Your Thermostat
with ESPHome
An Attempt at Doing Home Automation the Right Way
By Clemens Valens (Elektor)
Home automation done properly is like an invisible hand that gently pushes you up a
hill. When it’s there, it makes life a bit more comfortable; when it isn’t, you can still climb
that hill. This article is about designing a thermostat for such a home automation system.
Automated or not, its traditional user interface always keeps you in control of the room’s
temperature.
homelab project