The Smart Home We Wanted - wish list

rolion

Hi guys,

Just reading half way torugh this article and..i've lost it ,so jealos on that couple,so well designed,built an maintained !
A house that makes intelligent autonomous decisions rather than rely on its occupants to operate remote controls.

What do you think...can you match it / beat it !?

Chris’ Home Automation ambitions were clear from the start…

“With the Home Automation, we decided to go all the way – full automation and no conventional fall-back. If cars can completely rely on computers for engine management / people-comfort / support services, why not a house, too ? They are hugely better for it, so the house should be, too . We looked particularly at EIB / Knx, C-Bus, Niko, Dupline, EnOcean, IDRATEK, and later Velbus. All had advantages, different mixes of cost, capability, topology, intelligence, data-logging, reliability, support, flexibility, appearance, DIY, WAF. We chose Idratek for all these, but mostly for its intelligence, its affordability, do-able approach, and its prospects for future development”

“For us, this was important – a glorified remote-control and/or super-smart programmer / thermostat was not what we wanted, the HA had to go further, much further, and be non-intrusive and provide context sensitivity, and be easy to tune and adapt and grow in the light of experience, and as new things come along .”



article HERE


Whats'your ideal smart home setup,without any financial bariers...i mean ,who ever is not thinking at a perfect smart home without worrying of the cost,well, that chap has no imagination ! )

ted1

Come home and door opens automatically, whatever I was listening to in the car or headphones is transferred to the speakers in the room I'm in. After I pour myself a glass of milk the fridge checks to see if I need more and orders it from the milkman.
Sensors in the room check my vitals and adjust the light and climate in the room to suit my needs.
The fridge and cupboard check the rfid on each item in them and produces a step by step receipe for me to follow that's nice and nutritional

Part two tomorrow

jester77

My dream home would be self-sufficient. Lots of large windows for natural light that are also transparent solar panels and can save the energy. Windows should also automatically tint based on sunlight and time of day. Rain/ground water would be saved and filtered for use.

The house should always be situational aware, temps should always be optimal based on outside temps. My alarm should use natural light to wake me, shower should be at the optimal temperature and should just come on when I walk under and turn off when I step out.

And so on I shouldn't have to open apps or play with remotes to do most things. The house should know me.

degsie

Face recognition triggers front door to unlock. Met in hallway by the missus who hands me my dinner, leads me to the couch, fetches my slippers and puts the footie on the tv.

bk

Sure, you can build fully automated systems like this, but usually they cost as much as a whole house themselves!

Of course even with a basic Nest/Netatmo thermostat you can easily have it get the temperature at a comfortable 21 * all the time, but the problem with this is that unless you have a very expensive zero energy home, then you are going to be spending a lot extra on gas/oil.

Then there is the issue of really how much automation do you really want and is it really practical. Take the example of the music you were listening to in the car following you into your house. Sounds cool if you are single, but what happens when the music follows you home and suddenly wakes up the sleeping baby! Your missus is likely to murder you!

* The problem with keeping the temperature at a constant, is that it only monitors the temperature of the house, but it doesn't measure the body temperature of the occupants! One of the issues I've found with keeping systems at a constant temp is that what temp I want changes all the time based on circumstance.

When I come home in the evening after a run, I think the house feels like a furnance, but when I check, it is only a moderate 19. But if I happen to be worknig from home all day and barely moved from my desk, I feel cold, but then when I check, it is a pretty warm 21!

Home Automation systems are still very poor at guessing what us meat bags actually want. That is why I find a certain degree of HA is great, but you don't ant to be taking it too far and certainly you want to have manual backups.

Dardania

Home automation should make life simpler. Not add features. In my opinion.

I want my home to give me shelter, comfort, a space to eat, dress, sleep, relax. Address my basic needs, with automation if necessary, and I'll be happy.

And if that means less automation in some areas, in preference to passive solutions, I'm happy with that also.
So my first step would be automating the basic building services - they should respond to people there.

bk

I agree Dardania above, a lot of HA can be Automation for the sake of it and not actually useful and can end up causing extra trouble.

A small example of automation making life easier is my Harmony Remote. I went from having almost a dozen ugly remotes on my coffee table and having to press 7 buttons across 3 remotes just to watch TV, to just one remote and one button press. A fantastic simplification of my life. It won't change my life, but it certainly makes it easier.

I think it is better to build in small amounts of practical automations like these, then trying to build Jarvis in your home!

ted1

bk wrote: »

Sure, you can build fully automated systems like this, but usually they cost as much as a whole house themselves!

Of course even with a basic Nest/Netatmo thermostat you can easily have it get the temperature at a comfortable 21 * all the time, but the problem with this is that unless you have a very expensive zero energy home, then you are going to be spending a lot extra on gas/oil.

Then there is the issue of really how much automation do you really want and is it really practical. Take the example of the music you were listening to in the car following you into your house. Sounds cool if you are single, but what happens when the music follows you home and suddenly wakes up the sleeping baby! Your missus is likely to murder you!

* The problem with keeping the temperature at a constant, is that it only monitors the temperature of the house, but it doesn't measure the body temperature of the occupants! One of the issues I've found with keeping systems at a constant temp is that what temp I want changes all the time based on circumstance.

When I come home in the evening after a run, I think the house feels like a furnance, but when I check, it is only a moderate 19. But if I happen to be worknig from home all day and barely moved from my desk, I feel cold, but then when I check, it is a pretty warm 21!

Home Automation systems are still very poor at guessing what us meat bags actually want. That is why I find a certain degree of HA is great, but you don't ant to be taking it too far and certainly you want to have manual backups.

This is a wish list with no financial barrier, i think you are missing the point.

As regards keeping it at a constant temperature that's why I said it should heck my vitals and adjust the climate to suit.

ted1

bk wrote: »

I agree Dardania above, a lot of HA can be Automation for the sake of it and not actually useful and can end up causing extra trouble.

A small example of automation making life easier is my Harmony Remote. I went from having almost a dozen ugly remotes on my coffee table and having to press 7 buttons across 3 remotes just to watch TV, to just one remote and one button press. A fantastic simplification of my life. It won't change my life, but it certainly makes it easier.

I think it is better to build in small amounts of practical automations like these, then trying to build Jarvis in your home!

No need for a fancy remote, my AV system , Apple TV, Blue ray, horizon box etc all have apps. So can be done from the phone.

Graham

ted1 wrote: »

So can be done from the phone.

My ideal smart home wouldn't need a phone to control anything (or much input of any kind from me). The house would have ambient smarts.

Stoner

A robot.
That would sort most things

ted1

Graham wrote: »

My ideal smart home wouldn't need a phone to control anything (or much input of any kind from me). The house would have ambient smarts.

How would you change channel?

Graham

ted1 wrote: »

How would you change channel?

That would be one of the (or much input) scenarios until Amazon release their remote brain waveform scanner

ted1

Graham wrote: »

That would be one of the (or much input) scenarios until Amazon release their remote brain waveform scanner

That would be very dangerous. just think of the stuff that would switch on.

jester77

ted1 wrote: »

No need for a fancy remote, my AV system , Apple TV, Blue ray, horizon box etc all have apps. So can be done from the phone.

I like having the apps on the phone, but in general I find them too cumbersome. I have a chromecast and a fire tv hooked up to my receiver. When I want to watch something on Netflix I usually go the fire tv route, as using it with the remote is much easier than unlocking the phone, opening the app, casting to the chromecast. And then opening the receivers app, changing channel and adjusting volume.

With the remote it is just a few clicks. Granted if the remote is on the other side of the couch I will use my phone

ThisRegard

jester77 wrote: »

I like having the apps on the phone, but in general I find them too cumbersome.

Same here, especially with Netflix, trying to pause at a particular moment or forward/rewind to a specific point was painful using the app. It's so much easier with the remote, plus we have one of those wand type remotes for the TV which acts like a pointer which is fantastic for the kids to use. I just don't know how it's still working though as they're constantly dropping it, the only casualty so far is the Mute button.

ted1

jester77 wrote: »

I like having the apps on the phone, but in general I find them too cumbersome. I have a chromecast and a fire tv hooked up to my receiver. When I want to watch something on Netflix I usually go the fire tv route, as using it with the remote is much easier than unlocking the phone, opening the app, casting to the chromecast. And then opening the receivers app, changing channel and adjusting volume.

With the remote it is just a few clicks. Granted if the remote is on the other side of the couch I will use my phone

That's interesting I watch Netflix through the Apple TV snd much prefer the app as I can type words into the search. But then again realistically it's only the odd time I need to search

bk

ted1 wrote: »

No need for a fancy remote, my AV system , Apple TV, Blue ray, horizon box etc all have apps. So can be done from the phone.

I've a bunch of apps too, plus the Harmony App and I hate using them.

Have to unlock the phone, find that app, launch it, navigate it. And if I didn't have the Harmony App and hub, then I'd have to launch three and navigate different apps just to watch TV!

This sort of stuff is supposed to make life easier, not way harder!

The Physical Harmony remotes are fantastic, so much easier to use then any app.
A single button press that you can do by feel in a pitch black room is so much easier then apps it isn't even funny.

Having said that the Harmony App does come in handy when the little one has hidden the Harmony remote somewhere and we can't find it. But I certainly wouldn't want to be using it day to day.

Stoner wrote: »

A robot.
That would sort most things

Yup, most of this Home Automation stuff is just trying to compensate for us not having a robot like the jetison's.