Home automation thread

[Theruleslawyer]

I have a fair amount of HA. I find the best practice is to have practical goals for each purchase. Also you should be able to operate the system like a non-HA system for guests or a spouse that is less tolerant of technical issues. Also some problems are best solved with dumb sensors, not a networked device.

-Zwave front door for when we had a dog walker, cleaner, etc that needed to get in. I could give them a code or open it remotely if they only were going to be there a few times.

-Zwave garage door and light setup that just turns on the lights for us when coming in and out of the garage. Its much nicer to get out at night, but notifications if someone opens the door.

-Wifi thermastat because I'm too lazy to get off the couch, but also its nice to do things like pre-heat when we return from vacation.

-Numerous light switches around my desk in the basement. Mostly because otherwise it would be a PITA to turn on 3 different lights that are manually operated and now its a command word when I walk in.

-Zwave water sensors in my sump pit so I can take care of a dead sump pump before it overflows, even if I'm out for the night.

-Numerous dumb presence sensors so I can stop fighting with my wife about how she walks around the house and turns on every single light and never ever turns them out. Not even when she goes to bed. I mean seriously, she will goto sleep with the front door unlocked and all the lights on.

I think next on the list is door sensors so I can turn off the AC\heat when the wife decides to leave all the doors open to let in 'fresh air' just turns them up to compensate.

[ryan stewart]

Originally Posted by Theruleslawyer

-Numerous dumb presence sensors so I can stop fighting with my wife about how she walks around the house and turns on every single light and never ever turns them out. Not even when she goes to bed. I mean seriously, she will goto sleep with the front door unlocked and all the lights on.

I think next on the list is door sensors so I can turn off the AC\heat when the wife decides to leave all the doors open to let in 'fresh air' just turns them up to compensate.

LOL my routines help prevent fights when my girlfriend is over, she is bad about this too. Like how hard is it to turn a light off? Its not even like you were going back. She will go down and get water before bed and leave EVERY SINGLE light on while coming back. Im like, "Uhh, are you going back downstairs?"

Turning lights off and loading dishwashers properly seem to be something that women just cannot do.

[M_Six]

Wifey is bad about the lights as well. Never walks into a room without turning them on and then leaves without turning them off. Drives me batty. But she is always claiming I'm the one who needs lessons on loading the dishwasher.

[M_Six]

I have a few automations. My Pain Cave has one for firing up my bike trainer, the TV, the Apple TV box, and Fulgaz, which is my training program. It will also fire up the dehumidifier if the humidity creeps up. I have the same dehumidifier automation for the big dehumidifier in the basement. Garage lights turn on when the garage door opens and turn off 5 minutes later. Office lights turn on when i walk in and will stay on until there is no motion detected for 10 minutes. Back door light and front floodlights turn on when someone walks by the motion detectors. Front door light, outside garage lights, and a light on a lampost in the front yard all turn on at sunset and off at sunrise. I have one more smart door lock to install, but all the doors have open/closed sensors on them.

I haven't found a need to add the thermostat to HA. We have summer settings and winter settings, day and night for each. First one up in the morning hits the day setting and Wifey usually sets the temp to the night setting before she goes to bed. We have an "away" temp that gets set before we leave the house, but it's not that far off our normal setting that we need to heat up or cool down the house before we get home.

[ryan stewart]

Similar on the stat. I have it tied to the voice commands but really no need for anything advanced because once you program a temp range its fire and forget. The only thing it does integrated is if the smoke detectors go of fully (meaning heavy smoke) it shuts off both units blowers so they wont spread smoke.

[M_Six]

Originally Posted by ryan stewart

Similar on the stat. I have it tied to the voice commands but really no need for anything advanced because once you program a temp range its fire and forget. The only thing it does integrated is if the smoke detectors go of fully (meaning heavy smoke) it shuts off both units blowers so they wont spread smoke.

That's very cool. Perfect use of an automation.

[M_Six]

Today I added door sensors to the attic door above the garage and the closet under the basement stairs. Both sensors turn the light inside on when open and off when closed. I also added a tilt sensor to the mailbox door. We'll see how well that one works. The mailbox is pretty far from the house. I added a shortcut to my iPhone that should alert me that mail has been delivered.

[kscarrol]

Wow, you need a hobby Mark!! Oh, wait, you have found your hobby...

[ryan stewart]

its a rabbit hole. you start playing with those integrations and routines and the sky is the limit.

[Theruleslawyer]

The one thing I really want to automate is my blinds. Hook it up to a solar calculator and weather service and you could have them adjust depending if you want heat gain or rejection over the day and then close up at sunset. A full house of motorized blinds isn't cheap though.

[Bc2005]

Not really home automation, but one really neat thing I saw on This Old House was a solar array that followed the sun. It was on a pedestal and it kind of looked like a windmill tower with a solar array on top of it.

As the sun moved across the sky it turned and tilted the array so it would always have max exposure to the sunlight. Apparently increased the charge rate quite a bit, and it was a relatively small array.

[ryan stewart]

Ive wanted motorized blinds too but, yes, having already spend thousands on blinds I am not ready to spend thousands more to just replace them. They do seem to have some battery powered options with good reviews and good battery life.

Next house will be pre-wired for them.

[M_Six]

I set up a door sensor in the mailbox today and have a push notification go to my iPhone and Apple Watch. Now when the mail arrives, I get pinged. The vibration/tilt sensor was too finicky and sensitive, so I replaced it with the door sensor. Works perfectly. I may just stick the vibration sensor in the top corner of the window of our back door.

[Theruleslawyer]

Originally Posted by M_Six

I set up a door sensor in the mailbox today and have a push notification go to my iPhone and Apple Watch. Now when the mail arrives, I get pinged. The vibration/tilt sensor was too finicky and sensitive, so I replaced it with the door sensor. Works perfectly. I may just stick the vibration sensor in the top corner of the window of our back door.

How close is your box? I wouldn't think it would reach the rest of my network.

[M_Six]

Originally Posted by Theruleslawyer

How close is your box? I wouldn't think it would reach the rest of my network.

Here's a pic from the driveway cam. You can see the mailbox at the end of the driveway off to the right. Excuse the mess in the yard. We're in the middle of a landscaping project. The door sensor is an Aqara. My main Aqara hub is in the basement, but I have an Aqara Hub E1 in the garage, so it's picking up the door sensor in the mailbox. You can get the Aqara Hub E1 and Door Sensor kit on Amazon for $45.

https://www.amazon.com/Aqara-Connect...dp/B09KMYQ5ZB/

[ryan stewart]

Also FYI if you go z-wave+ or Zigbee controllers the satellite devices, if plugged in or wired, work as repeaters. I was getting reliable signal about 60 meters away having a wired dimmer switch in the front bedroom of the house.

[M_Six]

Anyone using something besides Homekit for home automation? I'm about fed up with Homekit.

[vreihen16]

Originally Posted by M_Six

Anyone using something besides Homekit for home automation? I'm about fed up with Homekit.

Didn't I warn you about that on page one?

My only use for HomeKit is as a UI to a real home automation platform like Home Assistant, so that we can use Siri from our Apple Watches to control devices without having to use eavesdropping devices like Alexa or Google Home.....

[M_Six]

Originally Posted by vreihen16

Didn't I warn you about that on page one?

My only use for HomeKit is as a UI to a real home automation platform like Home Assistant, so that we can use Siri from our Apple Watches to control devices without having to use eavesdropping devices like Alexa or Google Home.....

You did indeed.

Does HA take a lot of programming experience?

[vreihen16]

Originally Posted by M_Six

You did indeed.

Does HA take a lot of programming experience?

It's written in Python, but distributed as a virtual machine running a bunch of Docker containers if you download the full supervised install for a Pi or your hypervisor du jour. Much of the config is done by web interface, although some legacy integrations still use the YAML text markup language for configuration.

I've got it controlling our dog door, alarm system, and it even could control my car before BMW disabled the ConnectedDrive service with the 3G data sunset a few months ago. It includes a built-in HomeKit bridge, so anything that it can translate to a HomeKit-equivalent device/sensor is automagically available in your Apple ecosystem.....

[Chick Webb]

For the last several years we've had a pretty extensive SmartThings/Hue ecosystem running very effectively. Most lights are Hue, sensors and other devices are on SmartThings. Interface is the SmartThing app and Alexa. Extensive automations driven by a SmartThings app called WebCore. I would recommend it, but SmartThings is moving in the wrong direction and closing their ecosystem down to third-party apps like WebCore. When that happens I'll likely be moving over to Hubitat. HA is an option, as it can run in a Docker container on Synology. Not looking forward to re-doing everything, but the one thing I've learned about HA is that you're never done, you just move on to solving the next problem.

[vreihen16]

I migrated from Hubitat to Home Assistant starting last December, and am not looking back.....