We have a good old-fashioned cottage in the mountains, without running water or electricity. There is hardly GSM coverage in the cottage. But for a long time, we have wanted the option of internet.
We have tried different solutions, everything from an amplifier on the Wi-Fi signal from a farm on the other side of the lake, to a satellite solution. Unfortunately, nothing has worked.
But then we tried Starlink. This provided immediate coverage, and we suddenly had internet in our cottage.
Now it’s the cottage’s turn to become “smart”.
The first step was to test out an old Homey that we had lying around. Connect a couple of temperature sensors and see what we can achieve here. Not exactly impressive, but good enough. It works.
The next step is to set up an RPi with Home Assistant. It has slightly more possibilities to bring in different solutions.
Among other things, we are thinking of getting the information about Starlink right into the “Smart cottage”.
Since we don’t have electricity installed, everything runs on solar cells. So we also need to get data from batteries and the solar panels into the Smart cabin.
The only challenge so far is that Starlink draws a lot of power! In standby mode (internet off), it draws 20 watts per hour. Normal operation is between 30-50 watts per hour, and if it turns on snow melting mode, it draws between 70 and 150 watts!
Then the battery park and the solar panels will no longer be able to keep up. They don’t manage to produce enough electricity in one day so that we don’t run out.
So getting battery status, charging status, etc into Home Assistant and some automation to notify us becomes important.
The next step will probably be to get a bigger solar cell system.
But, the positive thing about Starlink is that the speed was absolutely within. 151 Mbps download is superb.
Now we can even watch football matches at the cottage.
First post – ever – to be posted from the Cabin