I know David was looking for reason to use homebridge again. You can use cron job switch in homebridge to run every x minutes and check if fridge is open or not.
Really enjoyed this episode - especially the first half.
It made me pine for the affiliate business I had when I was younger that was generating decent revenue but I didn’t really grow. I used to love all these problems around where to host my site, how to manage my mailing lists etc.
One question I had was around the aqara hubs - which hub was being talked about specifically, and what’s the difference between them? Looking on their website, the main differences seem to be around the number of devices that can be connected and their connection port. Have I got that right?
That’s it in a nutshell! The M2 is excellent if you want a hub, if you want a camera then look at that one - I got my parents the E1 for Christmas though (the USB stick like one) and it works great for their 6 sensors!
Hi Rose and David!
To check if the fridge door has been left open for too long, I use Homebridge.
This delay switch plugin creates two accessories in Homekit, a virtual switch and a virtual motion sensor.
You create an automation that turns the virtual switch on when the contact sensor opens.
The switch in the background starts a timer (you can customize the duration) and when the timer “goes off”, the motion sensor connected to the switch is triggered like it detected motion (all automatically by the plugin)
At that point you can add an automation to do something when motion on the virtual motion sensor has been detected (I decided to turn on a siren on a dedicated virtual security system that I installed with another plugin.
You also need to add an automation when the contact sensor closes: on that event you need to turn the virtual switch off, so that the timer is stopped. And if you use a virtual security system, you also need to turn the siren off when the contact sensor closes.
Cheers!
RE: Fridge door.
- Make sure the seal is clean and undamaged/undistorted.
- Make sure the levelers underneath are set to give the fridge an ever-so-slight back tilt.
Tony
Thats Great. Explained well!