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How I automate plant care using Raspberry Pi and open source tools Kevin Sonney Sat, 05/28/2022 - 03:00 Register or Login to like Register or Login to like

Automation is a hot topic right now. In my day job as an SRE part of my remit is to automate as many repeating tasks as possible. But how many of us do that in our daily, not-work, lives? This year, I am focused on automating away the toil so that we can focus on the things that are important.

Home Assistant has so many features and integrations, it can be overwhelming at times. And as I’ve mentioned in previous articles, I use it for many things, including monitoring plants.

$ bluetoothctl scan le
Discovery started
[NEW] Device
[NEW] Device
[NEW] Device
[NEW] Device
[NEW] Device
[NEW] Device
[NEW] Device

There are numerous little devices you can buy to keep an eye on your plants. The Xiomi MiaFlora devices are small, inexpensive, and have a native integration with Home Assistant. Which is great—as long as the plant and Home Assistant are in the same room.

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We've all been in places where one spot there is a great signal, and moving 1mm in any direction makes it a dead zone—and it is even more frustrating when you are indoors. Most Bluetooth LE (Low Energy) devices have a range of about 100m, but that's using line of sight, and does not include interference from things like walls, doors, windows, or major appliances (seriously, a refrigerator is a great big signal blocker). Remote Home Assistant is perfect for this. You can set up a Raspberry Pi with Home Assistant Operating System (HASSOS) in the room with the plants, and then use the main Home Assistant as a central control panel. I tried this on a Raspberry Pi Zero W, and while the Pi Zero W can run Home Assistant, it doesn't do it very well. You probably want a Pi 3 or Pi 4 when doing this.

Start with a fresh HASSOS installation, and make sure everything is up-to-date, then install HACS and Remote Home Assistant like I did in my article Automate and manage multiple devices with Remote Home Assistant. Now for the tricky bits. Install the SSH and Web Terminal Add-on, and turn off Protection Mode so that you can get a session on the base OS and not in a container. Start the add-on, and it appears on the sidebar. Click on it to load the terminal.

You are now in a root session terminal on the Pi. Insert all the warnings here about being careful and how you can mess up the system (you know the ones). Inside the terminal, run bluetoothctl scan le to find the plant sensor, often named "Flower Care" like mine.

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(Kevin Sonney, CC BY-SA 40)

Make a note of the address for the plant sensor. If you have more than one, it could be confusing to figure out which is which, and can take some trial and error. Once you've identified the plant sensor, it is time to add it to Home Assistant. This requires editing the configuration.yml file directly, either with the file editor add on, or in the terminal you just created. In my case, I added both a sensor and a plant block to the configuration.

sensor:
  - platform: miflora
    scan_interval: 60
    mac: "C4:7C:8D:6C:DE:FE"
    name: "pitcher_plant"
    plant:
    pitcher_plant:
        sensors:
            moisture: sensor.pitcher_plant_moisture
            battery: sensor.pitcher_plant_battery
            temperature: sensor.pitcher_plant_temperature
            conductivity: sensor.pitcher_plant_conductivity
            brightness: sensor.pitcher_plant_brightness

Save the file, and restart Home Assistant, and you should see a plant card on the Overview tab.

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(Kevin Sonney, CC BY-SA 40)

Once that's done, go back to the main Home Assistant, and add the newly available plant component to the list of things to import from the remote. You can then add the component to dashboards on the main HASS installation, and create automations and notifications based on the plant status.

I use this to monitor a pitcher plant, and I have more sensors on the way so I can keep tabs on all my houseplants—all of which live outside the Bluetooth range of my central Home Assistant Pi.

I keep tabs on all my houseplants by using Home Assistant and a Raspberry Pi.

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3 practical tips for agile transformation Kelsea Zhang Fri, 05/27/2022 - 03:00 2 readers like this 2 readers like this

Agile transformation happens at three levels: team agile, product agile, and organization agile. Helping your team convert to agile is the first and fundamental step in agile transformation, and with good reason. Until you get your people on board with agile, the product of all their hard work can't be agile.

Getting to team agile can be difficult, however. Teams new to agile cite these two factors as common obstacles:

• The team shows strong resistance.
• The team performs when the scrum master is involved, but as soon as the scrum master leaves, the team is thrown into confusion and falls back into old habits.

Overcoming that resistance and sustaining agile workflows takes thoughtful, inclusive leadership. This article will show you how.

Your teams are made of people

Too often, a scrum master expects a team to respond to instructions like robots. If you step away from the standup for a moment and look at how you're presenting agile to your team, you might find some areas for improvement. Are you dictating to your colleagues how meetings must be? Are you following a script or a recipe to achieve what you've been told agile is? Or are you working with the individuals on the team to determine how to work together to change the way things get done?

3 tips for achieving team agile

Here are three tips for those crucial first steps toward team agile.

1. Workshop it

There's nothing wrong with excellent agile practices. The key is in how you get team members to adopt them.

Organize a workshop to discuss current issues with the team. The scrum master is responsible for leading the workshop and providing a structured framework for discussion that encourages team members to put forward ideas and allows members on all sides of a debate to draw their own conclusions. If the team encounters a bottleneck or needs additional information, then the scrum master can provide help and explanation. Always keep in mind, however, that the scrum master's opinion is for reference only and shouldn't be forced on the group. An action plan made this way is co-created by everyone. The whole team is invested in it, which leads to the best possible outcome.

More open source career advice Open source cheat sheets Linux starter kit for developers 7 questions sysadmins should ask a potential employer before taking a job Resources for IT artchitects Cheat sheet: IT job interviews 2. Make it incremental

Tell every team member that no matter what conclusions are drawn, the action plan is just an attempt. Schedule regular reviews, collect everyone's feedback, and only continue as long as it's proving effective. When something's not working, make adjustments as needed. Doing this creates a constructive feedback loop that allows team members to be heard and doesn't ask them to commit to wholesale change all at once.

Change can be incremental and iterative. It's still change, and with regular check-ins, it's bound to be change for the better.

[ Read also: Agile transformation: 5 ways to measure progress ]

3. Address benefit redistribution

Folks don't like to admit it, but sometimes in an organization there are individuals or departments threatened by agile's transparency. People sometimes take advantage of information asymmetry to occupy important positions and to ensure job security. When faced with agile methodologies, they may feel that they're about to be decentralized, devalued, and weakened. They aren't likely to express this sentiment directly, of course. Instead, they may resist, obstruct, or challenge the new agile methodology, both overtly and covertly.

A scrum master needs to help these individuals see the benefit of agile and recognize that a redistribution of benefits is harmful to no one and better for everyone. Make no mistake: This process is full of challenges, and it can bring up many emotional reactions. Change is often hard, and giving up control of something, even if it means less work, can be stressful. Addressing it directly, and with sensitivity, is vital.

Team agile is called team agile for a reason. It's about a team of people, not individuals hoarding domain control.

Implementation is just the beginning

Agile transformation is complex, and most companies have varying degrees of historical baggage to work through. The agile methodology can solve some problems immediately, but at first its primary function is often to expose problems.

You must analyze the issues that agile exposes to find hidden systemic flaws, and you must escalate the issues to promote real problem solving. As with the rest of the process, change is incremental, and it doesn't happen overnight. As long as you're willing to put in the work, however, you can lead your teams to a stronger, more agile state.

This article is adapted from the ZenTao blog and is republished with permission.

Try these tips to help your team make the agile transformation.

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