“Home Automation” sounds like something that belongs, well… in the home. But since we sometimes live in a van, I could not help but wonder: is there anything the Internet of Things could make easier?
I already had a Raspberry Pi creating a Wifi network in the van (another one of my Magic Spellbooks: inconspicuous Home-Assistant touchscreen kiosks living in a stylish book). Curious what else I might do with it, I began searching around and found the AutoPi project: an IoT platform built on Raspberry Pis and some custom hardware. I appreciate how they’ve built with open-source and open-hardware to create a complete solution for car owners.
I chose instead to work with the Home-Assistant platform. The AutoPi platform does have some nice consumer uses, but is geared more at fleet vehicles and commercial applications. On the other hand, I was already familiar with Home-Assistant and it seemed better suited for my needs.
My entire Van Home Assistant configuration is available open-source on Github.
This is one of those posts where I can’t give very precise instructions to DIY. I hope that the source code gives you a good starting place for some of the features I describe below. If not, at least let it serve as inspiration 😉
Security & Dashcams
Having things stolen from the van could be devastating. When we travel and work from the road, we’re carrying our entire lives with us. Not to mention, it’s nice to have a dashcam recording in case of any accident or police interaction.
I started with a Raspberry Pi night vision camera (or this one for a Zero W). The easiest approach is to use Home Assistant’s built-in support for the Raspberry Pi camera. However, this only creates still images. This is good enough for checking in on the van via the Home Assistant UI, but doesn’t do much to prevent theft.
A better security solution is the popular motion open-source project, which can save all video or just detect periods of motion. The various options are quite exhaustive. Most importantly, it can run a script when motion is detected.
When we’re not around, the security camera motion detection becomes “active” and triggers a notification to my phone.
In my post about the best uses Home Assistant, I described how we detect when we are at home or not.
100% DIY home automation. From the thermostats to the security cameras, everything we used in designing our home was built on a budget. At the heart is Raspberry Pi home automation with Arduino sensors. Below are all of the IOT projects (networking, software, and hardware) that made this DIY home automation possible.
Speed, Fuel Usage, and More
I’m a data nerd. I love seeing stats about our trip — all the better if they can be collected automatically.
The OBD II port is standard diagnostic on pretty much every vehicle created in the last decade. A simple bluetooth ELM327 dongle can plug into the port to read everything the vehicle has to offer.
| Preview | Product | |
|---|---|---|
 | for Android Phones ONLY - Wireless Bluetooth Diagnostic OBD2 Scanner Car Code Reader and Scan Tool... |
My open-source OBD monitor project reports all stats to Prometheus, which can also be bridged into Home-Assistant via node-red (or similar).
The Home Assistant UI can show graphs including:
- Fuel levels
- Speed & engine RPMs
- Outside temperature & barometric pressure
- … and a lot more.
Plus, a simple USB GPS device is enough to track where the car is at all times.
Protecting Pets
In my post about living the vanlife with a dog, I shared a scary story about police nearly breaking in to our van to “save” our dog. We started using the relatively low-tech solution of taping a note to the window explaining that Azuli is fine and has her own fan and amenities.
But for our own peace of mind, we wanted to know when the van might become uncomfortable for her. A simple temperature sensor is enough to trigger a notification when it gets too hot (or cold) for her to be in the car. This particular sensor also detects light, air pressure, humidity, and motion — making it a pretty full-featured addition to the Home Assistant configuration.
Tracking Cellular Data Usage
Finally, perhaps one of the most useful features.
Our solution to having internet involved bonding multiple internet connections together. This meant that we could use our cell phones, a Mifi, or connect to local Wifi networks — or use all of them at once. This is great for getting work done on the road, but we have to keep an eye on data usage.
The Verizon Jetpack, like many Mifi providers, can be queried to determine the current data plan usage. I wired up some quick scripts that parsed this information so that they each showed as sensors in Home Assistant. Putting it all together, we get a nice readout on the Home Assistant UI (above) that shows:
- Connectivity (the bars to the left of the Verizon name)
- Data usage so far (and how many days remain)
- Wifi connectivity status
It would be possible to extend this even further. The Speedify CLI (the software I used for internet bonding) can output specific information about how much data is being used by each of the different connections, apply throttling/caps, etc.
This is great. I’ve forked your HASS config, cloned your OBD docker, and got it all running…. but then I know nothing of prometheus. I’ve set up a basic ARM7 prometheus docker but I can’t see any OBD info.
I can’t access the OBD stuff via port 8000 and I can get into prometheus but not see anything other than the standard metrics the docker image comes with.
Any guidance?
Thanks, Glenn!
You say you *can’t* access the OBD stuff on port 8000? Are you sure the container is up and running? It should at least be serving a HTTP interface for Prometheus to consume from that URL. Prometheus works by polling (scraping) a URL periodically, so until that page can be accessed there’s nothing for Prometheus to consume. Have you tried looking at the logs from the container?
If you want to reach out via the contact form, I’d be happy to chat over email directly — include your docker logs and I’ll try to debug: [link to technicallywizardry.com]
– Z
Hi! Sorry I never got back to you. Life kinda took over but with the thing percolating in my head I got it working. I had a docker (newbie) problem was all. Thanks. Loving your work. Glenn.
Thanks Glenn! Life tends to do that 😉 Very glad you’re enjoying it, and the offer stands for help on any of my projects.
This is all super cool! I’ve been getting into using HA at home and am thinking about giving it a go in our vehicle as well which we’re building out for full-time travel. Thanks for the inspiration!
Nice! Home automation in the car can be pretty useful when living out of it. It was definitely good peace of mind for us. Good luck!
I love the project. But how do you power the raspberry Pi in the van? And, more importantly: how do you prevent the HA setup from draining your battery? In understand that autopi goes into ‘deep sleep’ when the car is not running. Did you implement something like that?
Thanks!
Well, our vanlife van has a 7,600 Ah “house” battery (enough to run a Pi continuously for many months on a single charge), plus 510 W of solar and an alternator wiring kit to recharge the house battery. Suffice to say: I wasn’t too concerned about power draw, I’m afraid. That said, I’m sure you could use the OBD monitor to trigger various power saving features when the car is off!
This article is really exciting. I’m an owner/operator truck driver who has a background in computers. About a year ago I dropped serious money on a multicam dashcam system and it’s already dead. I started thinking about building one of my own and ended up here. I also really like the idea of bonding multiple connections.