[mototreks]

Have you been thinking about how to control all those electrical bits in your van? I started off just thinking of how to control the lights. I could use hard wired switches. But, I didn’t what a bunch of switches all over the van to turn lights on/off. I then started looking at units like the sPOD similar to what I have on my Jeep. It has a nice LCD display too. But, I didn’t want a display for the sPOD and a display for my Victron equipment. I had previously read the thread WIRING: If I had it to do over again..... and while ESP32 looked interesting it seemed like just too much trouble.

Then I found the thread Van automation (Technical Discussion ONLY) where sYfte went into the details of the system he is building which checked a lot of the boxes I wanted to see in a control system. It was in that thread that brío made a comment about Home Assistant which sparked my interest.

Home Assistant is an open source home automation system that puts local control and privacy first. Powered by a worldwide community of tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts. After a few days of playing around with it I’m convinced it will handle my needs.

Initial Goals
Control lights, water pump and water heater
Monitor fresh/gray tank levels
Monitor and display my Victron system (solar, inverter, batteries)
Access and control the system from a dedicated display as well as a smart phone

Possible Automation
Alarm when batteries reach a low SOC
Alarm when fresh water tank is low
Alarm when gray water tank is full
When connected to AC turn on water heater
When engine is running turn on water heater
When battery is at a 95% and solar panels are at high output turn on water heater
Enable Third party high power mode
Turn all non critical equipment off

As I’m waiting on my 22MY van to be built I’m planning to start putting a Home Assistant system together to see just how much of the above I can accomplish.

There are a few thread on this forum about automating a van but I didn’t see anything specifically for Home Assistant. Perhaps this thread can become a source of information for everyone.

Any input from those using Home Assistant or those thinking of automating their van with Home Assistant is welcome.

 

[mototreks]

Useful links

• Home Assistant - Home Assistant home page
• Modbus configuration for accessing Victron information
• Fully Kiosk as a dedicated HA display
• GitHub configuration repository - My HA Configuration

More to come

 

[mototreks]

System and Hardware

I’m currently running Home Assistant OS 8.0 on a MacBook as a virtual machine. This allows me explore the systems capabilities with an easy recovery method when something goes wrong.

Eventually. I’ll order a Raspberry Pi 4 when they become available

More to come

 

[andyl]

It would be nice to run all sensors and devices from a single cable that supplies power and data. I guess this could be some sort of four-strand cable running a protocol like USB, I2C, SPI, Can, etc.

In micro-electronics there is the qwiic standard with a healthy ecosystem of software, off-the-shelf devices and interconnects. Is there a comparable standard that is popular with automotive DIY hackers?

 

[dorkmatt]

We're also planning to go down the Home Assistant route too, we're pretty happy with it for our stationary home automation efforts - but that is months away... I purchased a Waveshare touchscreen IPS display, with the intention of mounting this over the sliding door. Will be interesting to follow along

Any input from those using Home Assistant or those thinking of automating their van with Home Assistant is welcome.

 

[BadWolf]

I came across this video a while back, and this thread reminded me of it. The video is for a full RV but might have some good info for you.

 

[kenryan]

... I started off just thinking of how to control the lights ...

Just a little food for thought ... I love having my light switch located right on the lighting fixture. These thinlights are a couple of my favorites:

Thin-lite LED109CP 48 LED Fixture

Thin-lite LED116P - 72 LED DC Fixture

 

[brío]

I purchased a Waveshare touchscreen IPS display, with the intention of mounting this over the sliding door.

That is a very cool display.
How do you plan to deploy it? I.e., are you going to plug it into an HDMI port of the same RPI that will be running HA?

One minor annoyance of HA is that they do not officially support running dashboards on the same RPI as the HA server. They really bend everything in the direction of server and clients on different hosts. I ran into the same issue, because early on I decided it would be good for maintainability to run my van's HA instance on a RPI with the official 7" screen. I am still planning to do that, but it has created a lot of extra work. To wit:

The easiest way to install HA on an RPI is to use "HassIO", which is a turnkey install and turns your Pi into an "HA Appliance". This is nice, because it it is fully-supported and HA has features to monitor and manage the underlying OS. Pretty slick, but no ability to use a local browser. If you want to do that, you need to install Debain 11 with your bare hands, and preferably install Docker (a virtualization package) to run HA. In this mode, you can run Debain's window manager, and thus an RPI client. I got this to work, but it was a PITA (given my limited Linux skills). All of this works fine, and the only real downsides are (a) a lot more complexity, and (b) an innocuous warning from HA that you are running on an "unsupported" platform.

Just a head's up.

 

[mototreks]

I'm looking at using an Amazon Fire 7" or 8" tablet running Fully Kiosk as the main interface. I want to mount the RPI back in the electrical compartment of the van so it would be nice to have a display attached directly to the RPI that is displaying the HA views. However, it sounds like the setup is a bit more involved.

 

[sprocketvan]

Thanks for starting this thread! I have been working on something similar using a Pi and Node Red. Still trying to decide if I need to switch to Home Assistant and/or use a combination of the two. I have found a few ioT things to help though... Shelly makes an RBGW2 dimmer controller that can be controlled in a number of ways and can be used to either control a single RGB light to do multiple colors or to control 4 separate sets of white led lights. I also ran across a wireless ruuvi temp/humidity sensor that can be directly linked to the Victron Cerbo or most likely directly to Home Assistant. Look forward to what others come up with for Home Assistant.

 

[brío]

I'm looking at using an Amazon Fire 7" or 8" tablet running Fully Kiosk as the main interface. I want to mount the RPI back in the electrical compartment of the van so it would be nice to have a display attached directly to the RPI that is displaying the HA views. However, it sounds like the setup is a bit more involved.

Yes, my thinking is similar. I have a 7" Fire Tablet running Fully which will be semi-permanently mounted in a cabinet handy to our sofabed area. The RPI screen is intended to be at the "control panel" with the breakers, etc, on the opposite end of the van. It is also possible to build tiny TFT touchscreens for specific purposes using ESPHome. I will probably build one to be mounted on the dash for the few functions one needs to do while driving.

One thing to keep in mind when using a tablet:
The internal battery can easily be damaged when exposed to freezing temperatures, so one may not want to store the rig with a tablet inside. For that reason, I am going to make the screen removable for winterization. Some people remove the batteries entirely, but that is often tricky, because the batteries are "smart".

 

[brío]

Thanks for starting this thread! I have been working on something similar using a Pi and Node Red. Still trying to decide if I need to switch to Home Assistant and/or use a combination of the two.

HA contains Node Red support, although I haven't tried it yet.

I have found a few ioT things to help though... Shelly makes an RBGW2 dimmer controller that can be controlled in a number of ways and can be used to either control a single RGB light to do multiple colors or to control 4 separate sets of white led lights.

Yes! This is an important module for van use. It works on 12 or 24 volts and has an input terminal that supports simultaneous control with a physical switch and HA. Building a system that fails gracefully is IMO a key issue in a project like this. I don't want a failed RPI to spoil a trip. I just hope they will come out with one that supports RGBWW strips.

The Shelly stuff is great. Integration with HA is excellent and very easy.

I also ran across a wireless ruuvi temp/humidity sensor that can be directly linked to the Victron Cerbo or most likely directly to Home Assistant. Look forward to what others come up with for Home Assistant.

I plan to use numerous temperature sensors. I am using Dallas 1-wire sensors, which are cheap and robust, and have good ESPhome support.

 

[gregoryx]

Curious if the Shelly stuff will communicate locally - without "cloud" as their marketing touts?

WRT the Cerbo GX, the Ruuvi tags are supported natively (as of 2.80 or something like that) and they're working on the recent versions to support BT and BTLE (and external adapters) better (though I'm having issues with the betas now).

Cerbo GX also natively supports their "Large" build now, which includes NodeRED and Signal K built in to the firmware. I've only touched on the NodeRED a bit and shut the Signal K back off. MQTT seems to be the key to reporting things /from/ Cerbo/Venus to other stuff like HA. Reports are that the Ruuvi tags are supported well.

There's people specifically testing Venus/HA integration as well: Home Assistant integration with Victron - Victron Community

And a brief page about similar integration: Boat energy management using Victron and Home Assistant

...
One minor annoyance of HA is that they do not officially support running dashboards on the same RPI as the HA server. They really bend everything in the direction of server and clients on different hosts.
...

Not worth using an RPI-Zero or an older RPI-3 for this purpose?

 

[brío]

Curious if the Shelly stuff will communicate locally - without "cloud" as their marketing touts?

Absolutely. HA can autodiscover the Shelly nodes on your LAN, or you can configure manually. You can also reflash them with ESPhome and make them do whatever you like. I haven't bothered, though.

WRT the Cerbo GX, the Ruuvi tags are supported natively (as of 2.80 or something like that) and they're working on the recent versions to support BT and BTLE (and external adapters) better (though I'm having issues with the betas now).

Cerbo GX also natively supports their "Large" build now, which includes NodeRED and Signal K built in to the firmware. I've only touched on the NodeRED a bit and shut the Signal K back off. MQTT seems to be the key to reporting things /from/ Cerbo/Venus to other stuff like HA. Reports are that the Ruuvi tags are supported well.

There's people specifically testing Venus/HA integration as well: Home Assistant integration with Victron - Victron Community

And a brief page about similar integration: Boat energy management using Victron and Home Assistant

As far as I am concerned, the hacker-friendliness is one of the main reasons to stick with Victron. They are being smart.

Not worth using an RPI-Zero or an older RPI-3 for this purpose?

I'm sure a 3 would be fine. Don't know about a Zero. I am using a 4GB RPI-4 and it isn't even raising a sweat. I figured for an extra 20 bucks I may as well future proof.

 

[brío]

Note also that the Shelly devices that support physical switches will still work with the switches even without a LAN.

 

[peterbright]

Alexa...build me a van.

 

[mototreks]

Cerbo GX also natively supports their "Large" build now, which includes NodeRED and Signal K built in to the firmware. I've only touched on the NodeRED a bit and shut the Signal K back off. MQTT seems to be the key to reporting things /from/ Cerbo/Venus to other stuff like HA. Reports are that the Ruuvi tags are supported well.

There's people specifically testing Venus/HA integration as well: Home Assistant integration with Victron - Victron Community

And a brief page about similar integration: Boat energy management using Victron and Home Assistant

Not worth using an RPI-Zero or an older RPI-3 for this purpose?

One of the must have goals I had with HA was being able to communicate with Victron stuff. If I couldn't do that then I'm not sure I would have continued exploring the capabilities of HA. So, once HA was up and running in a virtual machine on my MacBook I started working on connecting it to my CCGX. I used the Modbus interface and after getting the configuration syntax correct I was able to pull in data from my Victron Multiplus, BMV, and Bluesolar MPPT. Victron provides a spreadsheet of all Modbus registers available for their system. I haven't implemented writing yet but in the spreadsheet I can see the fields I can control like inverter and solar controller on/off. It also looks like one can control the AC Current limit which I use all the time.

 

[brío]

It also looks like one can control the AC Current limit which I use all the time.

Yeah. It will be really nice to have pushbutton "modes" for things like "30A shore power", "15A extension cord", "Boondocking", etc. In my current rig, I have to tediously drill down into obtuse menus that I have to relearn every time.

 

[gregoryx]

Yeah. It will be really nice to have pushbutton "modes" for things like "30A shore power", "15A extension cord", "Boondocking", etc. In my current rig, I have to tediously drill down into obtuse menus that I have to relearn every time.

If you're talking about doing that on the Victron Cerbo screen... install GuiMods. Technically, first install SetupHelper.

This gives more information on the Cerbo screen... and it makes it a two-touch for what the Multiplus charge-rate is.

Here's what the display looks like with GuiMods.

Touch the Shore tile, and get this. You set what you want those four limits to be.

Touch the inverter tile and get this.

And just in case someone wasn't aware, you can always access the Venus/Cerbo GUI above by going to the IP address of the unit in a web browser. Add /app/ to the end and you get this instead:

But that's certainly still not as cool as getting it all integrated into a system and displaying it over the slider. I like that idea.

 

[brío]

you can always access the Venus/Cerbo GUI above by going to the IP address of the unit in a web browser.

Yes, this is key. Although my intent is to replicate all that stuff in HA so it is seamless with all the rest of the stuff in the van, there is so much cool stuff in Cerbo that this is going to take approximately forever. In the mean time, HA is capable of embedding arbitrary web pages in its dashboard screens. I believe that @mototreks has demonstrated that this works with Cerbo pages. So, I will start with that and incrementally move things to native HA screens a bit at a time.