Home automation is not a new concept, but sometimes you need to get creative to automate the desired functions. Fortunately, there are plenty of tools to choose from, and Richard from the YouTube channel Break it yourself knows what to look for. Using our favorite SBC, the Raspberry Piit has started automatically his car on cold days
According to Richard, the problem started when he didn’t always remember to start the car on cold mornings. Of course, you can automate something like this with Alexa, but I needed the car to start without having to remember the command. This is where Pi comes into play. With Home Assistant, he has created a system that will activate his car to start on mornings when the temperature drops too low.
This project uses a few tables and a custom platform that links to your car keys. The Raspberry Pi communicates with an ESP32 wirelessly, which is responsible for initiating the command to start the car. For a little extra fun, some of the code used in the project was written using ChatGPT, although some tweaks were made to get it right.
Richard created a custom wooden platform that holds his car keys. The fob must be positioned correctly so that the button can be accessed from the bottom. An ESP32 is attached and is responsible for physically actuating the button, indicating that the car starts. ChatGPT created the script that activates the buttons needed to start the vehicle remotely.
The Raspberry Pi runs Home Assistant, which is wirelessly connected to the ESP32. To automate the feature, a trigger has been set to start the car once the temperature drops below a certain temperature, but only on certain days and certain hours. The trigger runs the script generated by ChatGPT on the ESP32, which then presses the button on its key fob.
If you want to see this Raspberry Pi project in action or just get a better idea of how it goes together, check out the original video shared on YouTube and be sure to follow Break It Yourself for more cool projects and any future updates. in that.
