Using ESPHome on critical devices, such as networking gear

In an effort to monitor the consumption of everything- I ran across an unusual problem.

When connecting my core switch to a ESPHome flashed smart switch, I noticed two things-

1. It is very easy to accidentally turn the switch off.
   • This is a problem, because you cannot turn it back on remotely! Since, wifi connects to the core switch.
2. When flashing updated firmware, the relay will quickly toggle for a very short duration.
   • This can cause devices to power cycle.

So, I set out to see how I could customize my configuration to be suitable for managing my core switch.

I will be implementing:

1. A button to power-cycle the core switch.
2. Configuration to prevent the relay from toggling during firmware updates / ESPHome restarts.
3. Removing toggle switches.

Sonoff S31 - Low Cost Energy Monitoring

Everyone wants to monitor energy consumption. Everyone wants to automate their home.

The Sonoff S31, is a pretty low-cost way of doing this.

Home Assistant - Split Sensor into Negative and Positive

This is a very quick post on how to take a sensor- such as sensor.grid_power and split it into sensor.grid_power_in and sensor.grid_power_out.

This can be handy if you need a separate sensor for energy/power in, and energy/power out.

For this short post, I will be splitting sensor.battery_power into sensor.battery_power_in and sensor.battery_power_out

Home Assistant - Energy Flow Diagram

This is a quite guide on creating a real-time sankey diagram to show your current energy usage.

How to start your A/C compressor off-grid.

Starting your A/C compressor generates a massive inrush current. Many inverters will have issues getting the motor spinning.

In the case of my 3.5 Ton unit, the L.R.A. (Locked rotor amps) is 112.0 amps @ 220v (24,640 watts). This is far more current then my inverter can provide. This is the amount of amperage which it can potentially take to start the compressor motor.

This post, describes how to install a soft start, which will allow your compressor to easily start off-grid using your solar array with inverter and batteries, or via a smaller generator.

Home Solar Project - Next Steps

Continuation of the home solar project.

Home Solar Project - Adding Monitoring and Data Collection

Part 4 of the home solar project. Adding monitoring tools and hardware.

Will be adding Iotawatt for per-circuit energy monitoring, and solar-assistant for monitoring the performance of my inverter / batteries.

Installing Solar-Assistant

Per my home solar project, I needed a method to collect data from both my batteries and inverters, in near-real-time, with no dependancy on the internet.

Since, my inverter's connection relies on cloud applications to move data around, I decided to give Solar Assistant a try after reading of its support for the solark-12k.

Finished Energy Dashboard:

ConnectX-3 Set Port Mode to ETH/IB

I just swapped my TrueNAS from a Dell R720XD over to a Dell r730XD. During this migration, I moved over my NVMe drives, NICs, and everything else relavent.

However, after firing up TrueNAS on the new hardware, I noticed my 40G NIC was not listed in the list of devices!

After once again googling how to change the mode over, I figured I would just quickly write some documentation incase this happens again in the future.

How to identify and resolve network performance problems

Last week, I added a 10G Unifi aggregation switch to my network.

I noticed a few potential performance issues, and decided to track them down.

This is a simple guide, with a few methods you can leverage to troubleshoot network performance issues.