Sat Oct 09, 2021 8:23 am
#1875565
I started dabbling in home automation in ~ 2003 using X10 and a windows NT server, an SMS gateway, and a few bits of soldering.
My first project was the ability to switch the central heating on/off by (a) text message; (b) a more sophisticate schedule than the weekdays vs weekends allowed by the wall timers of the time. At the time we were 'dual income no kids' and had very little pattern to when we were at home. The aim was to be able to reduce the amount we heated the house, whilst being able to return from a weekend away to a nice warm house.
We quickly added to it a few 'smart' lights to replace the then mechanical timers that back then had to be adjusted every few weeks for changing sunrise/sunset times.
Next was adding remote switches. Things like garden flood lights, pond pump, etc all had their wiring and traditional switches in completely the wrong places, so adding several remote control switches in the right place meant we could e.g. switch on the flood light next to the back door.
Somewhere along the way I added a basic web front end, so that I could control this all from my Motorola Razr phone, which started the shift from controlling things remotely or to schedule, to being lazy in the house itself. No need to leave the sofa to put the heating on, turn the living room lights down, etc. It's also when it started to get the 'wow' reactions from friends, rather than being geeky.
Since then it's evolved, and I finally eliminated X10 only a couple of years ago. What do I have now and why?
- Nest in main house, hive in house #2:
- Hive is doing heating and lighting, primarily so that we can reduce heating the place when we're not there, and warm it up before we arrive. Lights mostly for security to give the impression of it being occupied. I've disabled all the geofencing stuff, and just do it manually (at times of the year it needs 12 hours pre-heating before we arrive, but geofence would only trigger a few minutes before we arrive). I've had no real reliability issues with Hive, but two gripes: (a) the scheduling capability really struggles to mix 'events' (like sunrise) with fixed times - e.g. if you want a light on from 6am until sunrise, when sunrise gets before 6am, it just comes on all day!; (b) it uses batteries in the thermostat, which invariably go when we're not there, losing the ability to remote control it.
- Nest is just doing (legacy) heating/hot water. I use the geofence stuff as fall-back to disable it (if we're away for more than 48 hours it stops heating the water for example). Nest works fine for me, but relatives have struggled with the bluetooth range from the thermostat to the control unit in larger houses.
- I've got quite a lot of smart plugs/smart light switches, mostly turning lights on at sunset, off at 11pm etc. A few are for remote control purposes - e.g. the floodlights on our garage/outbuilding are wired from the outbuilding itself - but the remote switch allows me to switch them on/off from the house. The living room lights are smart for laziness, can remain on the sofa and change from e.g. reading mode to tv watching mode. With 8 different lighting circuits in the living room (spots, wall lights, lamps, etc), it's also easier than twiddling 8 dimmer switches to get the combination that you want. This is mostly sonoff stuff.
- I've got a remote control skylight. Think of this as an extension of the heating controls, opening to help cool the house on warm days, or closing it when heating or air conditioning is on.
- All our aircon units have their own Mitsubishi internet control. Primarily use this for setting elaborate schedules, or to warm/cool the house before returning home. When we're in the house we just tend to use the wall controls.
- I've got a CT clip smart meter, with three different clips for mains, airsource, and garden. This has been a bit of an eye opener to things that use more electricity than you'd think, or simply things that have been left on by accident (!) Undoubtedly saved us some money. This is an efergy device, which I wouldn't recommend!
- I've got some Broadlink 'universal remotes' primarily to control hifi (being a separates person, this gives me e.g. one touch amp & tuner switch on, and also put the amp in the right mode etc). Also allows us to control the garden audio, which is actually running from a hifi deep in the house.
- House alarm is Eaton in one house, Texecom in the other, both with their own smart services. Don't really use this to control them, primarily it is for the remote notification that they've triggered. However, you can see e.g. when the kids get home from school and switch the alarm off which is a bit big brother. The Eaton also gives a log of main supply status/voltage which is occasionally handy.
- We're on our second smart washing machine. Frankly I just don't see the point. The first one was NFC, so you physically had to touch your phone against it to remote control it anyway. More recent one is WiFi. It's slightly useful to get the push notification that it's finished the cycle and time to hang the washing out I suppose. I'm looking at the Bosch smart ovens though, as I think being able to remotely put dinner on would be useful.
I've probably missed some bits, but that's the bulk of it.