Comments on: IOT in Cars (and Vans): Home Automation on the Road

By: Benjamin

Benjamin — Tue, 10 May 2022 07:58:14 +0000

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.

By: (zane) / Technically Wizardry

(zane) / Technically Wizardry — Tue, 23 Feb 2021 21:26:57 +0000

In reply to Rob.

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!

By: Rob

Rob — Mon, 22 Feb 2021 22:54:45 +0000

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?

By: (zane) / Technically Wizardry

(zane) / Technically Wizardry — Fri, 18 Sep 2020 12:26:50 +0000

In reply to Bradley.

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!

By: Bradley

Bradley — Tue, 15 Sep 2020 21:43:39 +0000

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!

By: (zane) / Technically Wizardry

(zane) / Technically Wizardry — Thu, 09 Apr 2020 03:03:57 +0000

In reply to Glenn Farrell.

Thanks Glenn! Life tends to do that 😉 Very glad you’re enjoying it, and the offer stands for help on any of my projects.

By: Glenn Farrell

Glenn Farrell — Thu, 09 Apr 2020 03:00:47 +0000

In reply to (zane) / Technically Wizardry.

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.

By: (zane) / Technically Wizardry

(zane) / Technically Wizardry — Wed, 26 Feb 2020 22:31:00 +0000

In reply to Glenn.

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

By: Glenn

Glenn — Wed, 26 Feb 2020 12:02:55 +0000

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?