Integrating a Glade Air Freshener with Home Assistant Full tutorial Mod 

Thank you. Glad you like the video. I plan on making more of these type video's in the future. Like modifying devices to make them smarter and work in home assistant

That's a world class pun!

Glad you like the video. I have made a automation video for the glade air freshener mod ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-qKIG5ycUd7Q.html I plan on making more in the future. 😀

Glad you liked the video. It has great wife approval factor also. Wanted to find a way to make it better., as the way it was you could only have it spray on a schedule, either 9, 18 or 36 minutes. Very wasteful IMO. This should make the cans of spray last a LOT longer. Plus it sprays when you really need it now. 😀

Thank You. I made the decision to replace the original PCB to make it easier, instead of having to cut traces and solder tiny wires to tiny points on a tiny PCB. For a $1.50 USD for the motor controller, i figured it was worth it.

Thank You. The MCU needs to be listening to HA to know when to spray so it needed to be powered instead of running off of batteries anyway. I thought of putting a PIR or mmWave sensor inside it but i like most others already have PIR and mmWave sensors in most rooms anyway so decided not to. I will be putting out a part 2 showing how i used those sensors and others to make the air freshener spray when i wanted. So stay tuned for that

Thank You. Glad you liked the video. I will see what i can put together, once we get some others requesting it. 👍

Thanks You. 😀i thought of that but it is now connected to HA already and i already have mmWave sensors everywhere, as i'm sure most people do. So decided against it. I will be coming out with a part 2 to this video showing how i use those sensors and others to make it spray when i want. Stay tuned

Yep i'm afraid so. The MCU needs to be constantly connected to HA via wifi so it can listen for commands to know when to spray. So the MCU can not be put to sleep like say a temp sensor could be, and wifi is a power hog.

Thanks Dave, glad you liked it. Want to see how you did yours soon 😀

Glad you like the video and thanks for subscribing. Code is in the video description. But I'll post the link to it here as well for you github.com/HATipsByLarry/Glade-Air-Freshener-Mod/blob/main/ESPHome%20Code 😀

Through ESPHome via wifi.When you flash the micro-controller with esphome the first part of the code that identifies the connection information is created by esphome. The code i provided is placed after the Captive Portal line which will be the last line of the pre-made code.For example this was placed in my MCU after i added it to esphome esphome: name: air-freshener-bathroom friendly_name: Air Freshener Bathroom esp32: board: esp32-c3-devkitm-1 framework: type: arduino # Enable logging logger: # Enable Home Assistant API api: encryption: key: "ppnXxOvsUOrTTY8hwuqQIVd1F0MazM+9zQulhUpz8I4=" ota: password: "87fa8773048c73f0ebb27acf663198e4" wifi: ssid: !secret wifi_ssid password: !secret wifi_password # Enable fallback hotspot (captive portal) in case wifi connection fails ap: ssid: "Air-Freshener-Bathroom" password: "zejxypP0Iw9R" captive_portal:

@@HATipsByLarry Thanks!

@@JonnyFix No Problem, glad to help

If you check out my code you can see where i start the motor forward then wait for 300 ms then break the motor. Then reverse the motor for another 300 ms. The timing was trail and error, slowly rising the value until i got it right. switch: - platform: gpio id: fwd name: Motor Forward pin: 9 - platform: gpio id: rvs name: Motor Reverse pin: 10 button: - platform: template id: btn_spray name: "Spray" on_press: - switch.turn_on: fwd - delay: 300ms - switch.turn_on: rvs - delay: 500ms - switch.turn_off: fwd - delay: 300ms - switch.turn_on: fwd - delay: 500ms - switch.turn_off: fwd - switch.turn_off: rvs

@HATipsByLarry I had an older model (20 years). I figured out indeed it was trial and error. I landed at 500ms but alas it lived only 2 weeks until it broke. I was lucky I had footage of it working or I wouldn't have had a project to submit. 😬

@@Dylan_Lanckman I've had mine going for over a month now. So far no problems with it at all and gears look brand new. 😀 A friend of mine did try driving the motor with 5vdc (didn't use a buck converter to bring the voltage down) and ended up damaging the teeth on the gears.

@HATipsByLarry exactly what happened with me. My electronics professor warned me for this but I didn't understand the logic at the moment so my contraption ground it's own gears apart.

@@Dylan_Lanckman Well now you know for next time 😀

Good Question. Yes and no, to answer your questions in order. The micro controller i picked, (although i didn't pick it for this reason) has battery connections on the back of it (as you can see in my wiring diagram github.com/HATipsByLarry/Glade-Air-Freshener-Mod/blob/main/Glade%20Air%20Freshener%20Wiring%20Diagram.jpg ) that would allow a battery to be connected and recharged, but because the micro controller needs constant wifi connection, (to know when to run the motor controller) you could not put it to sleep, so the drain on the battery would be constant and high.

@@HATipsByLarry thank you alot is any alternative controller can be used for 24/7 usage or any other way to make it more efficient

@@akasha1337 No because of the need for any controller to have constant wifi connection to home assistant so it knows when to spray, the draw on the battery will be high. If we were talking about say a temperature and humidity sensor then things would be different as the sensor could wake the controller up from sleep, when the temp or humidity changed, then the controller could transmit the changes and go back to sleep. But in this situation we need to constantly listen to HA to know when to spray.

No. That's why i delay exactly 300ms then break the motor so it doesn't cost and reverse for exactly 300ms then break then release the motor. I did break a few gears until i got it right testing of course, but then that's why you have me 😀So you don't have to break things getting it right. I have 5 of these around the house and they all have been working for over 3 months with no problems at all.

@@HATipsByLarry thats great and nice to hear. I was looking to automate the same air freshner for quite some time now and it was a suprise when I saw your video haha. I'm still looking into a battery powered one and a stepper motor instead so the turns are more precise. But I guess with what you've shown, we have a proof of concept. Great job!

@@carljoshuasandiego8354 Thank You. A battery powered one that works with home assistant would be almost impossible to do (unless you want to recharge the battery a LOT) or had a big external battery, because the Micro-Controller can't be put to sleep and needs constant wifi (power hog) connection so it can be triggered by the automations. If your talking say a temp/humidity sensor for example then no problem as the sensor could wake the micro-controller when the temp/humidity changes then the controller could transmit the changes and go back to sleep.

@@HATipsByLarry thats why I wasn't able to do it haha An 18650 battery could work. I hear it could last 17 hrs for an ESP with deep sleep. Not sure how could you just wake it up when a command is sent from Home Assistant. I've also seen a small solar panel that charges the battery in the day so it never runs out but I mean the air freshner is an indoor thing so you'd have to put a wire to the solar panel outside which kinda defeats the purpose haha. Some solar lights have that circuit, you have rip apart the lights and just put a voltage regulator to 3.3v and you're good to go.

@@carljoshuasandiego8354 If you want to discuss this more discord would be the way to go as it is easy to carry on a conversation there. I just recently opened up a channel if your interested. discord.gg/HB9fne2VDu

No problem. 👍