---
title: 'The Most Automated Smart Home on Wheels EVER'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=pWVpymSqFjI'
video_id: 'pWVpymSqFjI'
date: 2026-08-06
duration_sec: 895
---

# The Most Automated Smart Home on Wheels EVER

> Source: [The Most Automated Smart Home on Wheels EVER](https://youtube.com/watch?v=pWVpymSqFjI)

## Summary

This video tours a fully automated Sprinter van, showcasing how Mike and Char from Smarty Van have integrated smart home technology into their mobile home. The tour highlights custom solutions for power management, security, and convenience, all controlled via Home Assistant.

### Key Points

- **Introduction to the Smart Van** [00:08] — The video is a smart van tour, not a smart home tour, featuring Mike and Char's 4x4 170 Sprinter van that they built from an empty cargo van over three years.
- **Key Features** [01:03] — The van includes 180 lb pull force electromagnetic drawer locks, multiple freshwater and gray tanks, a motorized bed platform, a motorized projection screen, and matched COB style LED lighting.
- **Motorized Magic Drawer** [01:42] — A motorized drawer with 500lb slides serves as storage and a step to get into bed.
- **Smart Ventilation and Vehicle Data** [01:54] — The ventilation fan was made smart, and a YCAN OBD reader pulls vehicle data into the system. Starlink on the roof with SIM cards provides internet.
- **Leveling System** [02:09] — A controller with an IMU detects the van's level and automatically levels it using traction blocks and leveling blocks.
- **Lighting and Cameras** [02:35] — Underglow strips and a soft strip under the awning provide lighting. Three cameras give a 360 view around the van.
- **Main Dashboard** [03:04] — A dashboard in the kitchen integrates all systems (engine, water, electricity) without physical buttons, keeping the design clean.
- **Electromagnetic Drawer Locks** [03:32] — Drawers use electromagnetic locks that require 12V to lock; Mike developed a MOSFET driver to switch them via automation.
- **Microcontrollers and ESPHome** [04:11] — ESPHome controllers are used for HVAC and electronic valves, ideal for the 12V DC system.
- **Home Assistant as Platform** [05:06] — Home Assistant runs on an electric bench, chosen for its power and flexibility, running non-stop for almost 3 years.
- **Communication Protocols** [05:20] — ESPHome, MQTT, and Zigbee are used. Vehicle data from OBD goes to MQTT, and Zigbee sensors (Aqara) integrate via Zigbee2MQTT.
- **Water Leak Detection** [06:42] — Aqara leak detectors saved them from a water leak; Mike got a critical notification and stopped the pump.
- **Presence-Based Automation** [07:14] — When they leave the van, presence detection (via phone Bluetooth) shuts down critical systems like water pump, inverter, and lights.
- **Power Management** [07:40] — Push notifications alert them if they're using too much power (cooktop and Instant Pot) to avoid overloading the inverter.
- **Drive-Away Automation** [08:21] — Using OBD speed and ignition signal, a checklist runs when driving: locks drawers, turns off Max Air fan, etc.
- **Movie Theater Automation** [09:01] — When projector is turned on, lights dim and screen comes down, with a condition to prevent screen damage if bed is down.
- **Time Zone Handling** [10:06] — A custom component 'Geoloccator' determines time zone from GPS coordinates, updating Home Assistant and announcing new time zones.
- **Water Tank Management** [10:45] — Integrated 12V valves and tank level sensors allow automatic switching from primary to auxiliary freshwater tank.
- **Security Cameras** [11:35] — Cameras with Google Coral for local AI detection send push notifications when people are detected, all offline on Raspberry Pi.
- **Starlink Backup Automation** [12:16] — If cellular and Starlink are down, an automation turns Starlink on after a few hours, allowing remote login to fix issues.
- **Bedtime Automation** [12:58] — A button shuts down non-essential systems, turns on a red nightlight, and starts a Starlink sleep timer.
- **Travel Stats** [13:23] — They've traveled to 31 states, 3 countries, 23 national parks, and slept in 198 different locations.

### Conclusion

The van demonstrates that with creativity and the right tools, full automation is possible even in a mobile environment, enhancing the van life experience. Mike and Char's setup shows that smart home principles can be adapted to any space, making life easier and more enjoyable.

## Transcript

different because for the first time, it's not a smart home tour. It's a smart van tour. And there are so many great ideas packed into this van that can apply to any smart home. Mike from Smarty Van has automated things that I
didn't even know could be automated. So, let's check it out. right, first let's start off with the main piece of hardware, the van itself. This is a 4x4 170 Sprinter van that has been
completely remodeled. That means it was carefully designed by these two to be >> Hey, I'm Mike. >> And I'm Char. >> Just about 3 years ago, we decided to move into a van fulltime. And we decided
empty cargo van and built it from the ground up. That gave us the opportunity to also design all the home automation that goes on inside the vent. van down by the river. >> In a van down by the river.
>> There is tons of cool stuff packed in here. >> Like 180 lb pull force electromagnetic drawer locks, multiple freshwater and gray tanks, and control the water pump. This is our dining room, but the
motorized bed platform drops the bed down and becomes our bedroom at night. with a motorized projection screen, speakers on the rear door, and a hidden magnet for the projector. Lighting is
from the ceiling to the floor uses the same matched Cobb style LED lights. Those are the kind of lights where you can't even really see the LEDs, but we really soft light. One of our favorite features is the motorized magic drawer,
which we can use for storage, but it also has 500lb drawer slides, so it can be used as a step to get into bed. Like most RVs and vans, we of course have a ventilation fan, which came with an IR remote, but we made it smart. Since our
for us to be able to pull data from the vehicle in. So, we use a YCAN OBD reader into the OBD port of the vehicle so we can get all that data into our home Starlink, which is mounted on the roof, with a couple of SIM cards that are
connected to the internet. When we arrive at camp, we always want to try to around that are traction blocks and leveling blocks, but we have a controller in the van that uses an IMU to detect the level of the van, and it
get us to level. With this side having the sliding door, this is of course at night, we love to have soft lighting. So, there's underglow [music] strips underneath the chassis, and there's a soft strip underneath the awning that
works whether the awning is open or closed. On the roof, we have a Starling also have an antenna for our cellular and Wi-Fi signals and three cameras so that we can get a 360 view around the van.
in this van, but what makes it even better is making them smart so they could all work together. And what better way to display everything than a dashboard. So our our main dashboard is here in the kitchen. But the goal was to
integrate everything in the van from the engine to the water, electricity, the integrated and available on this main dashboard display. But we wanted to be right here without having buttons, gauges, dials, and switches everywhere.
And aesthetically, I just wanted to keep it really clean. So everything lives >> And you might be wondering, how do you connect drawers to your smart home or smart van? Well, Mike was really smart and found a way to connect it.
>> We settled on electromagnetic drawer locks for the drawers, and those simply required 12 volts to be applied to lock. So, if you apply 12 volts, the magnets lock, and if you remove that voltage, the magnets unlock. So, I developed a
MOSFET driver, and that allows me to switch the 12 volts on and off through our automation platform. Isn't that so cool that Mike was able to figure out how to connect these drawers to his smart van? And wait till you see how
he's automating it. We'll get to that in a second. So, just like these drawer locks, Mike added microcontrollers all over this van. And for a good reason. In fact, we use a lot of ESP home controllers for
everything from HVAC to the electronic valves in our plumbing system. And the reason is because our house system is DC. Our electric system is 12 volts. And that means it's really ideal to use low voltage DC powered microcontrollers to
offthe-shelf bits for a home that doesn't have wheels, but that's probably really just don't have that. >> Yeah, there's just not a lot of smart home devices that are made to work with RVs and vans. So, I think it's pretty
sweet that Mike was able to venture into uncharted territories and figure this good off-the-shelf solution, and he's able to write all the code and get those microcontrollers working with those devices. It's awesome. Okay, but what
thought about using one of the standard smartarth home platforms for the van, needed something that was more powerful and more flexible to do all the custom integrations we would need in a moving home. So, we settled on Home Assistant.
it's in the electric bench right under me. It's been working great. It's been running for almost 3 years non-stop. >> And for the mega nerds out there who devices to talk with Home Assistant, here you go. We do use ESP home for a
lot of controls in the van, but we also use MQTT. For instance, we get vehicle data from the OBD port into our MQTT server as well as all of our communicates with Home Assistant via MQTT. And of course, our Ziggb sensors.
detection, as well as temperature and humidity sensors. Those are all integrated via Ziggb to MQTT into Home Assistant. So, speaking of those ZigGB sensors, look what we have in here. An Accara contact sensor. And Aara is
traveling is expensive. So, they're helping making it possible. And Mike is using Aara sensors all over the van. Yeah. Contact, water leak, and temperature sensors. And he has limited space here. So, the fact that he's
choosing to use Aara and sticking with them shows how good the sensors are. And Accara also sent over the FP2 for Mike to use for different automations here in never used it, you can divide up sections into different zones and run
automations depending on where you're standing or sitting. Accara makes a lot of unique devices like this one that I don't see a lot of other manufacturers making. And I've been using a car devices all over my home for years and
they work extremely well for me. Thanks for a car for sponsoring this video. in the description. And thanks for making these smart home tours possible. We actually uh were saved by one of the
car leak detector sensors. I had the whole home automation system sketched out and I was driving around testing our plumbing system and I got a critical notification that there was a water leak
pull over really quickly and stop the water pump from filling the van with really saving our butts. >> Yeah, Mike has tons of really cool automations in here. So, let's get into how he's automating this van. [music]
there are a lot of systems that should ideally be shut down when we're away from the van. So to solve that problem, we automated everything using presence phones so that when we leave the van, critical systems like the water pump,
the inverter, and the lights all shut down while we're gone. Bluetooth on their phone to turn everything off, which is so convenient, and that way they just never have to worry about it. Char and Mike also have
some unique challenges since they can't always pull power from the grid. >> Mike and I love to cook in the van. We're cooking almost daily and we never want to overload our inverter. Otherwise, it'll shut off and we won't
using our cooktop and our Instant Pot, we'll get a push notification to our phone if we're using too much power so that we'll know to turn it down so we don't overload the inverter. So, I think it's so amazing that Mike was able to
make this automation possible to just make van life that much easier. And wait till you hear about this next one. Traveling in a van is so much better >> Before we hit the road, there's usually a huge long checklist of items we need
can leave. >> So, we decided to automate it to make life a little bit easier. We use a combination of the OBD port to sense the speedometer of the vehicle as well as the 12vt signal for the ignition. So,
down a whole list of things. We can lock the drawers, we can turn off the the Max Air fan, etc. That way, everything's kind of locked down, ready everything's kind of locked down, ready to go when we're on the road.
traveling long distances in a van and you finally get to your destination, you might just want to finally lay down, relax, not get up and do anything. So, they have automation to help with that. When we're ready to relax, we grab our
projector, pop it into the magnet on the ceiling, turn it on, and the lights automatically dim. The projector screen automatically comes down, and we're able >> To make that happen, we use an integration with Home Assistant for the
just detecting that the power is on on the Capsule 3 and then the projector screen comes down. But that automation has a condition which checks to make screen is lowered. Otherwise, the screen could come down when the bed is down and
it could damage the screen. I can't believe they have a mini movie theater believe they have a mini movie theater here in their van. How cool is this?
and everything that's plugged in. You don't want them getting caught in the motor or in the rails or anything like that. So, Mike was really smart and use this cable chase to handle all the wires and keep everything nice and secure so
nothing ever gets caught when the bed is moving up and down. Now, one really unique challenge that probably a lot of us wouldn't think of is a smart home platform is meant to be like in one spot. If you're changing time zones in a
moving van, well, that's going to throw off all the automation. So, Mike came up with a really clever solution. While Home Assistant does have a service to affect the time zone. So, I ended up creating a custom component for Home
Assistant called Geoloccator, and that allows you to provide GPS coordinates. antenna connected to our router. We're feeding that into my custom component, which then determines the time zone of our current location. Now, as we're
constantly updates using an automation, and it even announces out loud when we're in a new time zone. So, we have this dashboard up front in the cab as are in the world. >> It's awesome that Mike found a great
easier. >> Because we've integrated all the 12vt valves and water tank level sensors into Home Assistant, it really simplifies our life. we have two freshwater tanks and if the primary tank's empty, then our
over and pull from the auxiliary tank. It's just one less thing that we have to worry about and monitor and micromanage every day.
So, Mike has a YouTube channel, Smarty Van, where he's made a lot of videos like how he set up these drawer locks and all the things connected in his smart van, and they're very detailed, extremely helpful. So, go subscribe to
him on YouTube. You'll learn so much. Even if you don't have a van, it will still apply to your own smart home. Like how he uses security cameras to protect >> We travel and live full-time in our van and we have all of our personal
belongings with us. So security was kind of an important issue. So we installed of the van, and we leave them running all the time. But we've automated it so that we can send alerts to our phones via push notifications when people are
detected around the van. And we're using a Google Coral machine learning device camera feeds. This is all done locally on our Raspberry Pi and kept offline on the Home Assistant install in BAM. >> Yeah, keeping an eye on everything with
the cameras gives such peace of mind and I love looking at my cameras when I'm away from the house. But as you can imagine, they need to stay connected to this van all the time. So Mike came up with a way that was really creative that
we're away from the van, we're often just relying on a SIM card that can that cellular connection is down and Starlink is off, we have an automation that waits for a number of hours and then turns Starlink on, waits for it to
gives me an opportunity to log in and either keep the Starlink on or address the SIM card issue. This way, we're never fully disconnected for the van for longer than a couple of hours. So, it's a Starlink backup automation.
>> That's really smart and could be used at any remote location like a cabin. Now, I have bedtime automations, but they don't involve this.
inverter, the water pump, everything that we don't need at night. It even turns on a little red nightlight in the bathroom. Then, we have one button in final button push shuts the rest of the systems down and starts a Starlink sleep
systems down and starts a Starlink sleep timer. And that's it for the night. >> It's impressive. everything Mike's been able to automate in their van. And what's even crazier is everything they've seen and experienced in their
full-time. >> We have traveled to 31 different states, three different countries, 23 national parks, and we've slept in 198 different
>> Yeah, it's a lot of moving around. And honestly, if we went back and built this van again, I would automate it and I would probably take it even further because it really has made our adventure more special. It's a hobby as well for
me, but I think it makes things easier. >> All right, so my big question is I know Ally really wants to live in a van. Is it worth it? Should I Should we do it? >> Especially if it's fully automated. >> Yeah. What about with three kids? Uh,
>> absolutely. Yeah, maybe something a little bigger. >> That's not that much. >> Nope, not that much. >> No, less than an hour. >> Actually, I don't know if I can handle
could handle it. You guys should definitely go follow Smarty Van on YouTube. I'll link all their links down below. They have some awesome videos, all their adventures and super useful tutorials and everything. So, definitely
letting me hang out with you and see your van. It's been awesome. All the stuff so cool. Thanks for coming out and thanks for watching. thumbnails like >> Yeah,
I think I think I got it before the sun came out.