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Transcript

Please excuse any grammatical errors. I used a tool to generate the transcript and haven’t had a chance to read through it yet.

So, last month I bought a lamp. It has a switch on it. Turns on and off. I did put a dimmable bulb in it, but the switch does not support dimming. So, unfortunately, it’s either off or full brightness. I did start looking into some options on how to make it dimmable without actually changing the switch on the lamp. I found some plugs that you can manually adjust that essentially limit the current going to the actual bulb or to the outlet, which then makes the lamp dimmer. If you turn it up, it makes it brighter. But fiddling around with something like that and then having it statically set did not seem ideal.

Up until this point, I don’t have any home automation. I don’t have any smart bulbs. I don’t have any smart thermostats. But after I started looking into my options with this lamp, it started leading me towards home automation options. Given all the other content on my channel, I obviously don’t want to use something that’s cloud-controlled by someone else. I wanted something I could self-host, control on my own, yet could still have full automation.

And then the more I looked into it, the more I thought it’d be nice to have something where the lights could start turning on at dusk. They could then ramp up in brightness as the night went on. Once it started getting towards the time I wanted to go to sleep, the lights would start to dim down until they turned off. I also thought it’d be nice to have something where it could turn on and off on a schedule when I am not home or on vacation. Whether or not this actually would deter a potential robber into thinking someone’s home, I don’t know, but it seemed like a nice feature to have.

And so what I settled on was using Home Assistant with Z-Wave. Z-Wave is a wireless protocol that lets you control different smart devices if they support Z-Wave. There’s alternatives like Zigbee, which I also looked into. But what I found is that Z-Wave has been around for a while, and they seem to have better security, which was extremely important to me. Regardless of the security, though, I’ll be placing it on a separate VLAN on my switch. This will let me keep an eye just on the Home Assistant traffic and the Z-Wave traffic, along with keeping it separate from my actual LAN traffic.

But what this boils down to is I purchased a lamp, and that gave me an excuse to now look at some more self-hosting home automation that I can explore. And this is where we’re at. But before we get into it, I do want to mention that I truly believe that, given enough time, anyone can pretty much figure out anything. But if you are someone that prefers to spend money in order to save time, I do offer paid consultations. You can head on over to sideburritos.com and then click on the Schedule Consultation button. Whether that’s GrapheneOS, or you’re looking to get into self-hosting, or maybe you’re a business looking to improve your overall security and privacy, I’m happy to help. So again, sideburritos.com, and then click on the Schedule Consultation button.

So, I don’t have an actual top-down camera setup, but I did find out I could clip a tripod to my monitor stand, and it looks pretty good. So, let’s see how this goes.

So, here’s the hardware I mentioned. It’s the Home Assistant Connect ZWA-2. Thank you, Jeff Geerling, for posting a video on this. It kind of led me down that path instead of going with a third-party option.

So, inside the box, it’s pretty straightforward. We have the base. On the back, there’s a single USB-C port along with a reset button. We then have the rather large antenna, a small instruction booklet, and then lastly, a USB-A to USB-C cable, which is cloth braided. Pretty nice, and that’s convenient since Raspberry Pis all have USB-A on them, and that’s what I’ll be using.

And then, speaking of Raspberry Pis, I have this one here. This is just a standard, I think it’s a 4B. It has a janky heatsink on the bottom, along with a PoE hat on it. If you’ve never heard of the PoE hat before for the Raspberry Pi, basically what this allows is you install this on the top of the board, and now that turns this Ethernet port into a port that accepts PoE. So that means you no longer need to use a wall adapter to power the Raspberry Pi. As long as you have a PoE switch, you plug in the Ethernet cable that provides network connectivity along with power, and you can save yourself a cable.

For the actual operating system, I have a microSD card here. I’d prefer to use one of the hard drives I have lying around, but I don’t have an external hard drive enclosure. So, SD card it is.

As far as the smart home devices that I’ll be using with this, I have two smart plugs I purchased. This is a Zooz smart plug, and this is a Minoston smart plug. The reason I got two different ones is the Zooz comes highly recommended. Thanks again, Jeff Geerling, for that one. But this only supports on-and-off functionality, which is not what I’m looking for with my lamp. But this one, the Minoston, does support dimming, so I’ll be using this for my lamp. This one I’ll be using with my Christmas tree for testing. But long-term, I do have a device that I want to be able to turn on and off remotely, and that’s what I’ll be using this for.

On a side note, in case you’re wondering where the Qubes OS video is, that’ll be coming shortly. I had to purchase an adapter so I could record the Qubes OS screen from my current laptop. I tried to film it with a camera. It looked terrible. I wouldn’t want to watch a video like that, so I’m not going to make you watch one like that either. But that one will be out shortly.

So, with the SD card installed, let’s go back to Home Assistant’s website. Get started. Home Assistant does have official hardware, which is pretty cool. I did not purchase one of these. I’m going to be using the Raspberry Pi, but if you don’t feel comfortable using a Raspberry Pi, they do have some plug-and-play options.

Let’s get started with the Raspberry Pi. This is a Pi 4, so it should work. MicroSD card. You do need an Ethernet cable required for installation. After that, it can work with Wi-Fi. I will be keeping this on Ethernet, though, plugged into my PoE switch.

First step: download and install Raspberry Pi Imager. Just had to update Raspberry Pi Imager. Quick, let’s go back to the guide. So, I have a Raspberry Pi 4. Next. What OS do I want to use? Looks like other specific-purpose OS. Looks like they actually have Home Assistant in here according to the guide. Home automation. There’s Home Assistant. We’re going with Home Assistant OS. This one. This is the actual kit that you can buy from Home Assistant, but we’re using the Raspberry Pi, so it’s going to be this one.

Storage. That’s the one I plugged into my computer. Next. Writing. Right. You’re about to erase. I understand.

While that finishes up, let’s check on the next step. Eject the SD card and then start up your Raspberry Pi. I think this is almost done verifying. Currently testing out OBS to record these videos, so it seems a little bit easier to see the windows. Looks good. Finish.

So now, for this setup, since my switch is not over here, I’ll show you what I’ll be doing. I’m going to insert the SD card into the Raspberry Pi. That’s good.

Next, we have the antenna. Get the base out of here. Grab the actual antenna. Get the USB cable.

So what I’ll be doing is plugging an Ethernet cable into here. This USB cable goes into one of the ports. The base gets the antenna screwed into it like so. Pretty straightforward. And then the USB-C cable gets plugged into the back of the antenna. So that’s it. I’m going to plug this into my switch now, and I’ll be back.

So, I just plugged that into my switch. Let’s hope it’s booting up and getting an IP address from DHCP. I’ll log into my switch to see what IP address it got. So, it’s been a couple of minutes, and it looks like the Raspberry Pi did get an IP address. So, I guess it’s started up correctly.

Next is to go to the IP address, port 8123, in your browser. So let’s go there. Continue to site. Cool. Preparing Home Assistant. This may take 20 minutes or more. Interesting. So I’m going to make you watch every minute of this. Just kidding. I’ll see you shortly.

So, we are back. That took about five minutes, I’d say. Are you ready to awaken your home, reclaim your privacy, and join a worldwide community of tinkerers? Absolutely, I am.

Looks like you can upload a backup or restore from their cloud. I’m guessing they offer that as a service. So, I’ll create my smart home. Time to create a user. I’m going to blur out this screen because you don’t need to see me doing this.

Looks like you can select your home location. I’m going to skip this one for now. The country you’re in. Share anonymized information from your installation. No, no, no, no. It’s nice that it’s opt-in, not opt-out, so I’ll give them credit on that one.

Found compatible devices on your local network. Z-Wave. Cool. Bluetooth. I’m assuming Z-Wave uses that to pair with.

Finish.

My user, Josh. Let’s see. Settings. Devices and Services. Home Assistant. Connect ZWA-2. That’s it. Looks like it’s discovered. I do want to add it. In a few steps, we’re going to set up your home adapter. Home Assistant can automatically install and configure the recommended Z-Wave setup. Let’s customize it, because why not.

Is your network new, or does it already exist? It is new. Created configuration for Z-Wave JS. Finish.

Failed setup. Failed to connect. Cannot connect to blah blah blah. Okay. Don’t know why that is.

I just reloaded it, and it did find it. So I guess it did work. Or maybe it took a little bit too long to start up, so it couldn’t see it.

LED. If I toggle it, it does turn off. Okay. I will say the device does look pretty cool. I’ll try and include a picture here in the video. It kind of looks like a small airplane tower.

Firmware update available. Okay, let’s just update it because we’re here. I’m always a big fan of a changelog, so it’s nice they include that.

So, I didn’t see the actual antenna flash at all, but I just noticed that the installed version and latest version now match. So I’m assuming it’s good now. Refresh the page. Up to date. Z-Wave info. Okay.

I’m going to look more into this after. I’m not going to do it right now, but I do want to try and connect one of the outlets that I purchased.

So, overview map. Not in Amsterdam, but that’s the default location. Energy. Okay. Has to-do list overview. Media. Guessing what it can save from devices, or if you have cameras hooked up, which I might try and pair some home security cameras I have to this.

Okay, so just looking so far, I will say it’s a little confusing at first. Okay, here’s the plus button. Want to add a device. Add a Z-Wave device.

Only use your camera to scan QR codes when using a secure connection with the app or over HTTPS. Okay. Well, I’m not going to scan with my camera, so I guess I’ll use the QR code manually.

Let’s get back to the top-down view quick. Every smart device does have a QR code on it. Let me not show these on camera since that would be a security issue. Actually, this one, yeah, on the side here, we do have a QR code, which I’m not going to show you.

But here’s the plug. I think this is a physical power switch. So it’s nice that even though it’s a smart device, you can still use it as a dumb device, which is nice in case my home hosting setup goes down and I can still turn a lamp on and off.

Okay, looks like I need to scan it with my phone so I can get the QR code, since the QR code does not list it. Okay, so I scanned it with my phone. I think this is about 100 characters. I’m just going to send it to myself on Signal quick so I can copy and paste it, because I’m not typing that in.

So I guess long-term, it would be good to put an HTTPS proxy in front of this or use the app so that you don’t need to do this manually every time you want to add a new device. Either way, it’s always a good idea to use HTTPS. So I will be adding that later. I run Nginx Proxy Manager on my home hosting or self-hosting setup, so I’ll just add it to that.

So here’s the code. It’s going to be blurred out on the screen, but it is massive. Next. Indoor smart plug. I guess it detects that from the code. Let me plug this in, though, so it can be on.

So I just plugged in the smart plug. I heard a relay click inside of it. This is a long-range device area. I don’t have any yet. I guess there’s some default ones. Just put living room. Add device.

If your device is already turned on, you might need to turn it off and on again. Okay, it’s searching for the device. I guess I’ll try turning it on and off.

Just turned it on and off. It should be scanning for it. Looks like it did find it. This device is currently being interviewed. It may not be fully operational. Okay, definitely got some stuff to learn about Z-Wave and Home Assistant. This is cool.

The plug looks like it gives some sensor details about it. Let me plug in my phone to this. So, I wish I had something better to visibly show that the outlet is on or off based on the dashboard here, but here’s a phone. I have a power brick plugged into the outlet and then plugged into a USB-C cable. So let’s plug it into the phone. Looks correct. It should be off.

And I’m guessing controls. If I toggle this, then the phone should turn on.

Heard the relay click, and the phone is now booting up. So that did work. We can see some stats here. Electrical consumption: 0.4 amps, 2 watts. The phone is currently charging at 9 watts. Okay, looks like it is working.

And if I turn this off—let me just—okay, there it is. Heard the relay click again in the outlet, and it’s no longer charging.

So one thing I was worried about is the latency from when I toggle something to when the actual device reacts to that action. It seems almost instant. If I click it, I feel like I’m hearing, in real time, the outlet going on and off. So it does seem near instant that this is working.

I’ve seen some complaints—maybe it’s some other protocols or other devices—where there is some latency, which can be kind of annoying because you’re wondering, did the actual action work? Is your setup not working? Is the device not working? But with this being instant, you can tell pretty quickly.

So overall, I think that setup was pretty straightforward. It’s always pretty iffy when you’re dealing with hardware and software how things are going to work, but it seems like the Home Assistant antenna worked very well with Home Assistant, as I would hope.

So I’m going to go and play with this some more, work on some configurations, and I’ll come back in the future with another video on what I have set up and some good things and maybe bad things I find out about it.

So if you do want to set this up yourself, I do think it was pretty straightforward. Again, Home Assistant does have some first-party hardware that you can use. So if you’re looking for something that might be a little bit better than a Raspberry Pi or a little more straightforward, then that is an option.

So if you have any questions or comments, or any tips on using Home Assistant or some cool things that you set up, feel free to leave those down below, and I’ll see you next time.