Recommendation: Cheap (free!) IoT cloud service

On Saturday, 5 February 2022 at 03:45:13 UTC+11, Theo wrote:
> Chris <chris.h...@gmail.com> wrote: 
> > This is not a commercial product, just an initial foray into this space 
> > and hopefully a more convenient way of keeping tabs on my water level 
> > without having to resort to uncovering the manhole & using a dipstick. We 
> > recently build a deck over the tank as an outdoor area and even though I 
> > have a (screwed down) hatch in the deck over the manhole, it's an extra 
> > level of annoyance to get to it.
> Depends how much this is a 'project' rather than an end goal, but Home 
> Assistant will cover most of that. 
> 
> 
> HA on a Pi to do the web front end / phone app / etc 
> 
> ESPHome on the ESP8266 to run the sensor node (just needs a config file if 
> the sensor type is already supported). HA auto-detects the ESP8266 and 
> fetches/logs the sensor data. 
> 
> Nabu Casa to provide the cloud connection so you can link back into your HA 
> instance from outside your network. It also provides various cloud service 
> interfacing that can't be done locally, eg Alexa and Google Assistant. 
> 
> 
> The first two are free, Nabu Casa is $6.50 per month. That's not super 
> cheap, but feeds back into funding Home Assistant. You are free to do your 
> own port-forwarding/dynamic DNS/etc setup if you'd rather not pay for that. 
> 
> Theo

Thanks! I'll have a look at this...

--
Cheers,
Chris.

On Monday, 7 February 2022 at 09:35:55 UTC+11, Chris wrote:
> On Saturday, 5 February 2022 at 03:45:13 UTC+11, Theo wrote: 
> > Chris <> wrote: 
> > > This is not a commercial product, just an initial foray into this space 
> > > and hopefully a more convenient way of keeping tabs on my water level 
> > > without having to resort to uncovering the manhole & using a dipstick. We 
> > > recently build a deck over the tank as an outdoor area and even though I 
> > > have a (screwed down) hatch in the deck over the manhole, it's an extra 
> > > level of annoyance to get to it. 
> > Depends how much this is a 'project' rather than an end goal, but Home 
> > Assistant will cover most of that. 
> > 
> > 
> > HA on a Pi to do the web front end / phone app / etc 
> > 
> > ESPHome on the ESP8266 to run the sensor node (just needs a config file if 
> > the sensor type is already supported). HA auto-detects the ESP8266 and 
> > fetches/logs the sensor data. 
> > 
> > Nabu Casa to provide the cloud connection so you can link back into your HA 
> > instance from outside your network. It also provides various cloud service 
> > interfacing that can't be done locally, eg Alexa and Google Assistant. 
> > 
> > 
> > The first two are free, Nabu Casa is $6.50 per month. That's not super 
> > cheap, but feeds back into funding Home Assistant. You are free to do your 
> > own port-forwarding/dynamic DNS/etc setup if you'd rather not pay for that. 
> > 
> > Theo
> Thanks! I'll have a look at this... 
> 
> -- 
> Cheers, 
> Chris.

Thanks all for the advice. As previously indicated I have a demo working on the Arduino IoT cloud with it's attendant limitations.

I'm leaning toward a Mosquito MQTT client/broker solution as it seems a bit more lightweight than the ESPHome version (my old RPi 3B might cut the mustard but not sure).

I'm using a Adafruit Huzzah ESP8266 for the sensor and I have a couple of  Omega2 embedded linux devices from <https://onion.io/resources/> that I can run the broker on.

Eventually it might even be possible to add in the Google Home mini to report the data (on the backburner for now).

--
Cheers,
Chris.