Re: USB controlled mains switch

In message <voibvg$2bloc$1@dont-email.me>, Pancho <Pancho.Jones@proton.me> writes

 OP here with a follow up.
 After some ruminating, I decided to give the Local Bytes Smart plug a try. I've got it happily working now, although I did have to install (yet) another Pi to act as the control hub (Home Assistant if anyone is interested).  I'm now waiting for a fresh delivery of a Pi3 to install  as a WiFi AP (the Pis in the locality are all Pi2).
 One useful feature of the Local Bytes offering is that you can see to power being consumed by the device it is controlling (although mine suggests that I'm on 245V), but I've yet to work out how to access that via a command line, rather than web interface.
 Thanks again for the suggestions.
 Adrian

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Did you opt for ESPHome or Tasmota firmware?
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Tasmota.  No particular reason.

I use Tasmota, but I use Domoticz rather than Home Assistant. From what I read ESPHome is tailored for Home Assistant and uses REST API rather than MMQT like Tasmota.
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A Pi4 can handle a lot of different services on the same machine, installed in Docker Containers. So you don't necessarily need lots of Pis. If the Pi4 isn't enough, there are more powerful Pis.
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Machine power isn't likely to be an issue.  HA suggest a Pi4 as a suitable host, but I didn't have a spare one, so I installed it on a Pi3.  However, as I need to set up a WiFi Access point, and that needs  >=Pi3 I had to go shopping.  I hope that for what I'm going to be using it for (apart from the AP), a Pi3 will be more than enough.
So far as I've been able to find out, HA is only installed as an image on the SD card (using the RPI Imager), rather than manually installed on an existing Pi image (e.g. apt install ...), so that means that the Pi can only be used for what HA allows you to do.  Therefore, one downside (for me) with HA is that I don't seem to be able to gain SSH access to the PI.  I can access it via the web interface, and I can install a ZSH shell on it, but that is in (I think) a Docker Container.  What I would like to be able to do, which I can with my other Pis, is to run regular health check stuff, CPU temp, free memory, free card space that sort of stuff.  I can do that from the Docker Container, but I can't set up a cron job to do it, and I haven't even tried getting it to email me a daily summary.
A quick look at Domoticz suggests that it will allow me to do my own monitoring, so that could be worth looking at in due course.
Thanks for the follow up.
Adrian
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