What do you need a smart water valve for?

There are applications in which it makes sense to be able to control the flow of a water pipe remotely. I myself have such a use case on the terrace: in our garage there is a vacuum-controlled water pump that pumps the collected rainwater from the cistern. We then use this water for watering the garden. On our terrace we have a water tap that is connected to the pump by means of a hose. If we turn on the tap on the terrace, a vacuum is created and the pump pumps. The problem is that the pump would also pump if a hose were to come loose somewhere at night or even burst. Then the pump would pump the contents of the cistern to who knows where and possibly cause water damage. That’s why I turn off the stopcock in the garage every evening. Just to be on the safe side. How cool would it be if you could do that remotely without having to run into the garage every time, right?

But there are other applications where such a smart valve makes sense:

• Switching off the water supply during a holiday
• Automatic detection of leaks with the help of a water sensor on the floor
• Detection of unusually high water withdrawal in the event of a burst pipe
• Closing of a pipe in case of danger of frost
• Measuring the flow rate for statistics
• Remote control of the water tap for lazy people like me

Different models and their advantages

There are actually several smart water valves. However, you have to be careful that you don’t accidentally choose a valve that is actually only intended for controlling the watering of flowers and is already overtaxed with the high water pressure of a normal water pipe.

The small battery-operated valves are the cheapest. There is a model (I won’t name it) that can be integrated into Apple Homekit, for example. This device originally cost €150. Then it received a huge pile of extremely bad reviews, so that you can now buy the device for around 35€. Due to a lack of power and build quality, this device tends to stay in the “open” position and can no longer be closed. It’s bad when you’re on holiday for a few weeks and your house is being filled with water.

This negative example teaches us the following three lessons:

• Do not rely on batteries for water valves
• Do not rely on cheap plastic parts for water valves that fail under high water pressure.
• If you buy cheap, you buy twice and water damage is expensive.

Which smart valve is recommended?

We find a professional valve with the “Grohe Sense Guard” *. The metal connection threads show that this is a completely different league from the plastic versions. The device is supplied with power via an external power supply unit and can be controlled remotely via an app using Wi-Fi, but it can do much more:

• Detects burst pipes, leaks and unusually high water consumption 
• Shut-off function to prevent water damage 
• Detection of flow rate and water pressure
• Measurement of system temperature to detect danger of frost
• Possibility to connect floor water sensors * for shut-off in case of liquid contact of the sensor

GROHE Sense, Smart Home Wassermelder (intelligenter Sensor für frühzeitige Leckerkennung, App-Benachrichtigung, Schutz vor...*

• Für Wireless LAN, Netzanschluss 230 V
• Für Einfamilienhäuser

Amazon

There are three minor points of criticism of the device:

The part is actually quite expensive. On the other hand, what good is a cheap device that doesn’t work and then causes a lot of water damage?

The frost protection function is useless, at least in my application. Just because the unit detects frost temperatures and could then close the valve, I still have water in the pipe outside. Without a drain function, I don’t understand the point of this function.

Much more annoying for me is this point: the device only works with 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi. I’m still dreaming of a world in which I’ll be able to turn off the 2.4GHz in my home network and use the 5GHz network everywhere. Unfortunately, there are always manufacturers who do not implement 5GHz functions even in 2022. There would still be a need for optimisation here in a version 2. By the way, it would be even smarter if the device could be integrated into Apple Homekit, for example. But that is probably a bit too much to ask.

I didn’t want to hide these small points of criticism, maybe Grohe will listen to me. Nevertheless, the “Grohe Sense Guard” * is the best and most reliable solution for my application so far. I now save myself the daily walk to the garage and the opening and closing of the door when turning the main tap open or closed. Charming for me is also the counting of the flow rate. I’m already curious to find out how many litres of rainwater we actually use over the year. Doesn’t do me any good, but it’s just interesting and triggers my nerd heart.

* All links marked with an asterisk are Amazon affiliate links. We receive a percentage of the purchases made through them. Our recommendations are nevertheless honest and sincere.

Der Beitrag Remotely control a smart water valve erschien zuerst auf Pixelfriedhof.

TLDR – Too long didn’t read – The quick summary for lazy readers

Mount the carbon monoxide detector vertically on a wall, keeping a distance of 10 cm between the upper side of the housing and the ceiling. Do not mount the carbon monoxide detector directly above the fireplace. If possible, hang it next to the door or passageway leading to the rest of the living area.

Carbon monoxide detector in the middle, top or bottom of the wall?

Here there are different conditions to consider. On the Internet one often finds the blanket statement that carbon monoxide is lighter than air and would therefore settle up in the room. Accordingly, the carbon monoxide detector should be mounted on the ceiling. That is not completely correct however.

The density, thus the weight of carbon monoxide is only completely slightly lighter than air. And these weight data mentioned always refer to a reference air pressure, which might prevail with the fewest of us in the living room. However, we must not ignore the fact that in most cases carbon monoxide is produced by burning processes, which usually release heat and the carbon monoxide will therefore rise to the ceiling simply because of its temperature. So yes, the carbon monoxide detector should rather be hung up in the upper area, but where exactly?

For the sensors of the carbon monoxide detectors to work, it is important that the carbon monoxide flows well through the housings. This is not so much the case under the ceiling as if the device were mounted vertically on a wall. In order to allow a little more flow from bottom to top through the case, we should keep a distance of 10 cm between the top of the case and the ceiling.

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Hanging the carbon monoxide detector by the fireplace?

The carbon monoxide detector should be hung in the room where carbon monoxide can be produced. In my case, this is the living room, because that is where our fireplace is. It is also important to note that the acoustic alarm signal extends from the detector’s place of installation to the bedroom and that in the event of an alarm you will still be awake. This is the case in our apartment with the detector I used, but the part is also brutally loud.

Now the question arose whether I should hang the carbon monoxide detector directly above or next to the fireplace. Answer: No, because possibly small quantities of carbon monoxide escape when refilling wood when the stove is in operation and thus cause false alarms.

It makes more sense to install it on a wall opposite the fireplace or near the door leading to the living room. If the carbon monoxide produced leaves the room in which it was produced and wants to move towards the hallway, dining room or bedroom, the alarm is triggered before the gas arrives in other rooms.

My brutally loud carbon monoxide detector

I myself use the “Kidde CO-Alarm X10-D.2“. The manufacturer belongs to the United Technologies Group, which in turn also includes well-known brands such as the “Gloria” fire-fighting professionals. This is one of the reasons why I chose this device. Another reason is the discreet appearance of the detector and the overall good ratings on the Internet. After the installation I found out another plus point. The device is awfully loud. Although the device is hanging in the living room and the alarm signal first has to pass through the dining room and hallway until it arrives in the bedroom, I’ll easily wake up if the device is triggered at night.

Another tip to prevent carbon monoxide from leaking

If your fireplace is burning, use the extractor hood in the kitchen with extreme caution. When the cooker hood is used, a vacuum is created in the house which causes air to be drawn in from outside when the windows are closed. It can now happen that, due to the negative pressure, fresh air tries to draw in through your chimney, badly only if it is not air but carbon monoxide. Therefore, if you turn on the extractor hood while your fireplace is burning, you should always open a window in the kitchen.

All the links in this text are Amazon Affiliate Links, and by clicking on an affiliate link I will earn a percentage of your subsequent Amazon purchases. However, this circumstance does not influence the background of my product recommendation. This product recommendation is independent, honest and sincere. 

Bei allen genannten Links handelt es sich um Amazon-Affiliate-Links. Durch einen Klick auf einen Affiliate-Link werde ich prozentual an Euren darauf folgenden Amazon-Einkäufen beteiligt. Dieser Umstand beeinflusst aber nicht die Hintergründe meiner Produktempfehlung. Diese Produktempfehlung erfolgt unabhängig, ehrlich und aufrichtig.

Der Beitrag How to: Where to mount carbon monoxide detector? Ceiling, wall or floor? erschien zuerst auf Pixelfriedhof.

How to make “stupid” LED lighting “smart”…

In 2015, I bought new living room cabinets from Hülsta whose glass shelves were equipped with RGB LED lighting. Unfortunately, I quickly realized that the furniture was, as expected, of high quality, but that the control system for the integrated LEDs could at best be described as cheap and rudimentary. Here, the simplest RF remote controls from the Far East were used as standard, each of which could only operate one cabinet. So there were four remote controls for four cabinets in the house. The mini colour wheel of these scrap remote controls made everything possible, but no exact colour selection: In the end, each cabinet had its own color, even if you had been trying for minutes to set all cabinets the same.

I started looking for a system where I could control all four cabinets at the same time, but independently if I wanted to. So it had to be a system with a kind of control center, which then passed on the control commands to the RGB controllers of the individual cabinets. Even then, there were various systems to choose from: Philips Hue or Osram Lightify were in their infancy and some competing and alternative products from China were already on the market: Yeelight, miLight and all the other names

Cheap solutions are often big garbage…

First I tried yeelight, miLight and Co. out. I cut the original RGB controllers and wired the LED segments to these supposedly smart controllers instead. The result: The cabinets could be controlled centrally from a mobile phone with color controls, but interaction with other Smarthome components such as Homematic, ioBroker and Alexa was, if at all, limited and unreliable. In addition, the systems were often affected by failures. Especially after power failures I had to struggle more often with configuration loss or with the loss of the coupling between controller and control center. In addition, only a maximum of 4 controllers could be addressed with a central unit, which severely limited the expandability. In addition, these Chinese control centers caused strange data traffic in the network. One day, for example, I experienced that I could control my miLight lamps from the outside even without a WLAN connection to the home network. Sounds like a comfort function at first, but if you haven’t actually given any permissions to the outside for this control center, then it’s quite frightening. Living my own life in Chinese IoT devices is really the last thing I want.

How do I get a normal LED strip connected to Lightify or Hue?

Again I started looking for an alternative. In the meantime, I had learned that Homematic (my central house control system) was now supporting the Osram Lightify and Philips Hue systems natively. Although I knew that implementing lighting control with these systems would often be more expensive than with Asian products, they simply didn’t work either. But one concern remained: Neither Osram nor Philips offer products for their systems that allow existing LED segments to be controlled via cable. Instead, both manufacturers are trying to sell expensive LED strips with integrated controllers. I can understand this economically at first, but even if I were willing to replace my existing LED strips, I would not have been able to, because the LED strips are permanently installed in the glass shelves of my cabinets.

Meanwhile I knew that the systems Osram Lightify, Philips Hue or Ikea Trådfri all used the so-called Zigbee protocol to control the lights. With this knowledge I started to search for third market controllers that also worked with Zigbee and found some products that also promised to work with Lightify and Hue. I ordered a total of 6 different models from different manufacturers with prices ranging from 9€ to 50€ per controller. I also ordered the Philips Hue Bridge after I (a computer scientist by profession) failed to integrate an Osram Lightify Gateway into my network.

Ihre Daten werden erst beim Abspielen des Youtube-Videos an den Dienst übermittelt. Your data will only be transmitted to the service when you play the Youtube video.

The Zigbee controllers also separate the wheat from the chaff

After I had put the Philips Hue Bridge into operation, I started to set up the 6 different controllers, connect them to the bridge and connect them to the LED strips.

• 3 of 6 controllers could not be connected to the bridge. The devices were not found.
• 2 of 6 controllers could be paired, but switched off completely, as soon as you wanted to control the color temperature in the Philips Hue App, one of the controllers became extremely hot.
• Only one controller did its job with flying colours: Unfortunately, the most expensive one as well.

Apparently there’s still some truth to the saying “Buy cheap, buy twice”. I had to bite the bullet and spend almost 200€ on 4 LED controllers if I wanted a really clean and reliable solution.

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For 50€ per device I get a controller in a solid case, whose cable entries are screwable and which implements all input commands from the Philips Hue App perfectly. The devices are neat and stable, only the cable clamps could be of higher quality and easier to use. Tip to the manufacturer: There are good PCB connection terminals from WAGO, where you don’t have to crush your finger and which also fix narrow conductors well. Unfortunately, the controller is also not necessarily compact, which means that I cannot place it behind the cabinet where it is not noticeable, the housing is simply too thick, or the distance between the cabinet wall and the wall is simply too small. So I have to put the device in the cabinet and drill through the rear wall of the cabinet. But I would have had to do the same with four of the other controllers. Altogether one of the higher quality electrical products “made in China”.

On the inner values: When changing colors between red and blue, the color does not change from blunt to equal, but changes smoothly from color value to color value. The same applies when switching the controller off or on: The light dims up when switching it on and turns it off when switching it off. So the whole thing looks deliberate and of high quality. If I set the light to white, I can regulate the color temperature by increasing or decreasing the yellow or blue color components of the LED controller. Especially with RGB strips this is a big problem with many controllers, but the expensive controller masters this challenge to my complete satisfaction. Reason enough for a positive (german) Amazon review:

And what about the integration into Smarthome?

Philips Hue has a great API for coupling to external systems. My Homematic found the Hue Bridge in the network and I can now address the Hue controllers both from the Hue app and directly from the Homematic. This is especially great if you want to use the lights for optical signalling of events, see more below. The coupling to Amazon’s assistant Alexa was just as simple. Voice commands like “Alexa, cabinets blue” or “Alexa, sideboard to 50%” work perfectly.

Now that I have finally been able to put a networkable and reliable system into operation, I will now devote myself to the following projects:

• Red flashing light at alarm by alarm system
• Optical signalling “Washing machine ready” by three blue flashes (successfully implemented)
• Optical signalling “doorbell” by three green flashes (actually successfully implemented, if the bell sensor would not be defective)
• Integration of the cabinet LED lighting in an advanced Ambilight scenario of the television

Articles in this post:

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All the links in this text are Amazon Affiliate Links, and by clicking on an affiliate link I will earn a percentage of your subsequent Amazon purchases. However, this circumstance does not influence the background of my product recommendation. This product recommendation is independent, honest and sincere. 

Bei allen genannten Links handelt es sich um Amazon-Affiliate-Links. Durch einen Klick auf einen Affiliate-Link werde ich prozentual an Euren darauf folgenden Amazon-Einkäufen beteiligt. Dieser Umstand beeinflusst aber nicht die Hintergründe meiner Produktempfehlung. Diese Produktempfehlung erfolgt unabhängig, ehrlich und aufrichtig.

Der Beitrag LED lighting in furniture made smart with Osram Lightify or Philips Hue erschien zuerst auf Pixelfriedhof.

If you use your Raspberry Pi or other single-board computers in not necessarily gentle environments, you know that the file system can suffer unpredictable power fluctuations. Often only a restore of a previously (hopefully) made backup or the repair of the SD card’s file system on a Linux host will help.

However, as I usually have current backups and only rarely use the log data that has been generated in the meantime, I usually use the SD card for this purpose. And that’s a pain in the ass every single time.
The image does not fit to the physical size of the SD card, the image was written unreliably (checksum error) and in the end my Raspberry won’t boot from the card. All over again…

This is over now, because there is a new tool now: Etcher is an open source program for reliable recovery of SD card images with graphical user interface. It not only recovers the SD card from ALL common backup formats (. gz,. zip,. img etc.), it also checks the target card and configures it accordingly and then verifies the written image.

If Etcher says that the image was written successfully, the SD card will work in the target device. You can count on it.
You can find the excellent tool here: https://etcher.io/

Der Beitrag Restore SD card images reliably with graphical user interface erschien zuerst auf Pixelfriedhof.