Quick recap: I’m building a DIY security alarm using a Raspberry Pi, hardwired PIR sensors, and MQTT integration with Home Assistant.

Hello again — it seems to be close to a year since I last managed to get some words published on this blog. And almost three years since I last wrote about my Raspberry Pi security alarm project 😮

But the project is still alive and well. We use it every night and whenever we are away, and it just works 😃 Development usually happens in bulk, with very little happening in between.

We have a Dakboard digital calendar in our kitchen — showing lots of house and temperature data. So naturally; it must show the actual outdoor temperature as well.

To do this I used a Raspberry Pi 2, and a DS18B20 HAT I made some years back.

In November last year — I started building a DIY security alarm system, using a Raspberry Pi as the controller. My plan was to make a self-sustained system, using proper alarm hardware — like PIR sensors and sirens.

Integration with Home Assistant would be an add-on, not a requirement. I wanted the system to be as redundant and fault-tolerant as I could make it.

This is a pretty long story, with some twists and turns — let’s get into it 👇

We have a Raspberry Pi driven digital calendar in the kitchen. I’m currently using crontab to turn the HDMI port off at night, and when we’re at work.

But a much more flexible solution is to control it using MQTT and Home Assistant. That way it can easily be automated to turn on when we’re home, if there is movement in the kitchen, or any number of conditions.

It’s really quite easy to do, here’s how 👇

As the weather is warming up here in Norway — my kids have gotten their bikes out. To make it more fun, both for them and me, I figured I’d build a series of traffic signals that they could play with.

I first started with a traffic light, simple — red, yellow and green. To control it I am using a Raspberry Pi Zero W, this will allow me to make it communicate on Wi-Fi and MQTT later.