An actual smart home

alexlyons

I've just bought a house and am aiming to make it reasonably smart.
I'm not against investment in tech, like the people you hear who say they want a really smart home but want it all for next to nothing.

I have a Hue hub and two bulbs to try, and I have a Wemo smart plug to try also. I am still unsure as to what brands to use, or if a zigbee modules on the wires and a server would be better. But lets just say that I wouldn't have much knowledge of doing that, but I could get help.

I also have a nest and a phone watch alarm.

The only issue so far is that the memo won't connect to the wifi, but will connect to a mac network i setup, so I need to look at the router settings as to why its not letting it on.


Now for the ideas
My alarm knows when I, or my partner, is at home or out. As does the wifi. My alarm app (Sleep Cycle) knows when I am asleep or awake.

So surely between them (granted the house alarm has limited links to outside tech) I should be able to turn on certain lights when one of us is in the house, turn everything off when I go to bed (I'm aware of the issues around one still being downstairs), but also turn on a couple of lights when I wake up (the only thing sleep cycle can help with so far, if I stick with Hue)


I'm not a fan of geofencing due to battery constraints. My thoughts are more around that there is enough knowledge and data collected about me (nest knows when its in home/away mode for example) that should allow pretty good automation.


I'm interested to hear peoples thoughts or what they have done on this. Maybe Alexa or google whatsit can help. I'd get one but have no interest in talking to the house. I can run a server if needed, but again, if we get to that level I'll need to enlist sibling help...

DonSpud

Get sibling help and set up a server.
I say this because dealing with commercial products will frustrate you beyond belief and send you broke in the process.

If you want a home automation system to function as you truly want it to with endless customisation, you need to build one yourself.

I did this and although it was initially a bit of research and work, it cost 10% of a commercial system that would ultimately be limited to what other people allowed it to do.

If you’re up for the challenge, here are some things to research to get you started:

MQTT Broker (Mosquitto), Sonoff with tasmota software, Raspberry Pi 3, Node-Red.

In a nutshell and relative to your question, when a phone connects to my home WiFi (or Bluetooth on the raspberry pi), I can turn on lights, unlock the front door, turn on the heating and play and audio welcome specific to that person. The system is only limited by my imagination and can be integrated with voice such as Alexa or Google if you ever wanted to go down that route.

Good luck.

bk

alexlyons, the idea of linking you alarm system with your smart devices is an obvious one, but not really their yet in the market.

Part of the reason is that security alarm companies are understandably conservative and thus slow to interlink their systems with smart home devices.

However it is slowly starting to happen. Nest, Ring and Blink have all announced Smart Alarm systems to launch over the next few months, which would do what you are asking for. And you already have some systems in the US market like Go Abode.

But non of these are in the Irish market yet. I'd recommend living with your existing alarm systems for a year or two and then coming back to look again. Hopefully the market will have matured by then.

You can still gradually invest in other parts of home automation before then. Smart/Wifi Thermostat is the one I'd recommend to most people. You already have some Hue lights, so play with those and you can add more if you like over time. Most of the smart security systems integrate with Hue lights. It is one of the advantages of Hue, it has a very comprehensive and open ecosystem.

Stoner

alexlyons wrote:

I also have a nest and a phone watch alarm.

You've the wrong alarm for automation unfortunately.

All kinds of items share home and away modes. Eg lightwaverf and Google nest.

Turning on an off lights is best achieved by taking real data. You can mix this with iot inputs like Google day light services

Check out Wexfordmans posts on using the sensors from his intruder alarm to control and switching items. His panel can have zigbee and z wave radios in it. I haven't seen it but it sounds fantastic.

alexlyons

Thanks all, some good info there.
I think philips hue will allow a good amount of automation, particularly with the motion sensor which also does light sensing etc.
I think i'm going to, and it may be a bad idea, go with homekit items initially, so just one or two more devices and see how things look.

The idea of a server etc is good, and I can set it up, but my nature doesn't suit a server that needs maintenance and time every so often. If i can run it simply from my phone I think i'll remain a bit more sane...
Having said that, if it doesn't work I will likely go down the server route with complete automation of everything, from lights to blinds, to alarm etc.