354 Remote Monitoring

Starting with temperature, to keep an eye on the pipes that froze last winter. This winter is almost over, so aiming to get this set up for next year.

Compared Z-wave, zigbee, wifi, matter, etc. and decided to try 433 MHz sensors based on them having good range. The zigbee ones are cheap with good battery life, but limited range, so we'd need to position repeaters carefully. The Z-wave ones have better range but cost more and there don't seem to be many to choose from.

Ordered an Accurite 06044M sensor ($20) and a NESDR SMArTee v2 Bundle ($50). Will try to use with HA OS on a raspberry pi 4. The SDR won't come until next week.

Flashed HA OA 17.1 onto a 32GB SD card. And then went through the setup making a 'home' at 3950 Haverford for testing.

-- Main.BenDugan - 17 Feb 2026 - 16:05

The SDR came earlier this week and I fiddled with it today with homeassistant.

Had to remember this url: http://homeassistant.local:8123/home/overview

It's only set up for internal use now. Near the end of day I was seeing temperatures coming from our sensor (I think) in SI units. I tried to change to °F and somehow it quit working. I could only see that in the logs, not in the home assistant dashboard. But it's getting close..

-- Main.BenDugan - 27 Feb 2026

Have a new linux laptop so I will start fiddling with this at home now. First need to get the rpi on the network using a network cable.

-- Main.BenDugan - 04 Mar 2026 - 02:03