Homeassistant on Pieter Viljoen's Blog

Reverse Engineering the EasyStart Bluetooth Protocol

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000

I decoded the Bluetooth protocol of my Micro-Air EasyStart soft starters from the vendor’s Android app, with help from Claude Code, and now read their compressor data into Home Assistant through ESPHome.

Trying to Keep my Garage Cool

Wed, 11 Aug 2021 14:11:19 +0000

We live in a moderate climate, and when we built our house my plans were for my home server rack to be installed in the garage and vented through the outside wall to the alley. Unfortunately plans changed, and the instant hot gas water heater had to be moved blocking rack access to outside ventilation. Without cool outside air the servers complain about overheating in the peak of summer, and I either need to power down or keep the garage door open during the day.

ESP32 Water and Gas Utility Meter

Tue, 10 Aug 2021 03:27:27 +0000

The recent release of Home Assistant’s energy dashboard inspired me to restore my gas and water utility meter monitors. I lost the measurements when I removed my Brultech GreenEye energy meters in favor of Sense energy monitors.

To recap, my local city and utilities do not allow any connections in any form to their utility meters, but I am allowed to install my own meters downstream, as long as the meter models are approved for local use, i.e. the exact same model as used by the local utilities. I installed the same model water and gas meters as used by the utilities but with dry-contact metering.