ZigBee and Home Assistant: My Smart Home Journey

Observatory Reborn: A 15-Year Refresh & Tech Upgrade!

My observatory is officially 15 years old, and for its birthday, I’m giving it a serious refresh! On the agenda: roof renovation, brand-new separate setups on two piers, fresh electrical wiring, a complete network overhaul, and smart home integration. My ultimate goal is to simplify the overall operation and maintenance. I’m leveraging my experience from Deep Sky Chile to evolve my little backyard observatory.

For the smart home automation, I’ve chosen the wireless ZigBee protocol (which I already happily use at home to control everything). This allowed me to ditch a huge number of now-superfluous cables. The old IPX800 I was using has also been retired. Now, a Home Assistant server lets me manage everything from a single, clean interface. It’s truly a joy to use daily!

For remote PC control, I’ve switched to Google Remote Desktop and RustDesk (running on my own relay server). Both are free and prove to be much faster and more stable than Anydesk and Teamviewer ever were.

I also replaced the Ethernet cable connecting the observatory to my office with a fiber optic link. On several occasions, during big thunderstorms accompanied by lightning, the old Ethernet cable had carried power surges straight to the switches on both ends, and let’s just say they weren’t too happy about it… Fiber optics to the rescue!