Home automation - all tasks that need to occur at a similar time or on a semi-fixed schedule to maintain the climate, lighting, safety, irrigation, pet access and contribute to the comfort, safety and operation of the home and itās occupants are performed without any physical interaction. All items that are not criteria, schedule or occupancy based are available via voice.
Home control - controlling the home systems from somewhere other than itās fixed location - I donāt care about this nor have any desire to use this because HA already performs all needed functions.
I like smart tech which appears to also be dumb. Love having the option of lights activated by motion sensors, or by a cool dash, or by an automatic 'holiday mode', or simply by the wall switch.
Multiple zoned heating was a fairly involved project for me involving some clever webcore, nodemcu s, relays, humidity sensors and thermal actuators for the rads.
Security with text messaging was high on my initial priority list.
Propane heated, remotely controlled hot tub was another.
All in all - its a hobby. And I've loved learning all that I have so far =)
Yeah, my lights have a setting (not really sure which device that routine, rule, setting is controlled with - Alexa, HE, or the Wiz color bulb app) that bring them on about 30 minutes before sunset but the gloomy day thing is really the icing on the cake. Get that figured out and boom.
The problem is if you use a light sensor in the room to detect the light level and then your automation turns on lights because itās too dark then the room lights affect the light sensor reading so they turnoff the lights and you have a runaway feedback loop.
I think you need to determine how dark it is outside, the time of day, maybe the weather conditions (overcast), general occupancy of the dwelling and is that room occupied. But how do you monitor someone sitting in the room watching TV for letās say a two hour movie or the news and not turn off lights because they are sitting still? So much logic that has to go into this.
I have dogs and catās. And when the cars have the āzoomiesā they are like fur missiles running up and down everywhere like parkour champions. Lol
Automate the stuff that is easy and realiable, and generates quality of life. Security? Only in a "turn the outside lights on when it's dark" sort of way.
I use RM to build middling complexity motion & luminance sensing lighting automations, I have some moisture detection rules to alert me if the basement starts to flood, and I do some night time power control to prevent unneccessary power use when devices are idle.
The highest WAF devices in my house are the automated ceiling fans in the Bedroom, and the automated stairwell and closet lighting. The automated outside lights are significant too, and the Mrs likes the fact that our Sonos in the MB automatically plays quiet music around bedtime.
I monitor a few things power wise to make sure they run as they should (Sump Pumps, Septic Pump) and leverage the LEDs on some of my Inovelli devices to alert us if the garage door is open.
I've tried a heck of a lot of other things and found the reward for the efffort was effectively nil, so simplicity rules in my house. And Alexa/Google Home Siri are all banned.
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So the 3rd gen Iris motion sensors do humidity as well? I don't need, nor do I really want LUX readings anyway... My main parameters are, how hot is it, how humid is it, and is there someone, or something moving in this space? Although the pets have a tendency to turn the lights on at funny hours in the rooms thusly configured. But say in the bedrooms, I want to get an automation going that reads temp and adjuste ceiling fan speed accordingly.
That sounds very similar to my ideas. I don't want a house I can talk to, I want a house that does what I want without even asking. In my mind the ideal smart home would never require anyone to use a switch or talk to anything. It would just do what you want, when you want it. Obviously not possible, but it is achievable in a lot of situations. The best feedback for me when I make a change is when nobody notices. If anyone can't figure out how to control something, especially a light, I have really screwed up.
Yeah, I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a lot about that for me too. It merges two things together that I've always enjoyed. Home improvement and tinkering with technology.
The rooms that need RH are the shower / commode rooms. So 2 needed. The bedrooms don't need motion, but the window sensors get skewed Temps due to my currently horrible 1980s aluminum frame single pane windows...
Do NOT get the Zooz 4-in-1 sensors! They have major issues with the C7 hub, they basically don't work with security enabled and lots of folks have had issues with them even after jumping through the hoops needed to get them added without security. Given the very wide variety of devices supported by Hubitat I think it's fair to say that it's a sensor problem and not a hub problem (the main problem seems to be them clobbering repeaters)..
I'm guessing you missed my comments above. I don't need all of hte features of the Zooz sensors, V3 Iris motion sensors have all of the features I need. So yes I have them on order.
15 Iris V1 contact sensors
2 Iris V2 contact sensors
9 Iris V2 Motion sensors. Used to be 10, 1 died.
4 Iris V3 Motion sensors incoming to finalize things. These have been shipped, just waiting for them to come in.
5 Hampton Bay Ceiling Fan / Light zigbee controllers
10 Ikea Tradfri smart plugs
1 Iris V3 (or V2 don't recall) smart plug
16 Sylvania Smart+ LED dimmable Zigbee bulbs
4 Utilitech Sirens
1 Iris V2 keypad, want another.
3 Zooz Zen22s
3 Zooz Zen27s, 1 of them is yet to be installed. Have a wiring problem an electrician needs to solve for me.
2 NuTone Zwave 15 amp switches
6 Echo Dots
1 Echo
1 Fire Edition TV
3 Fire TV Sticks (2020 versions)
2 RIng Spotlight Cam Wired
1 Ring Floodlight Cam
1 Ring Video Doorbell 2
3 Wyze Cam v3
Apps.
HSM, working on advancing the art there.
9 separate motion + mode lighting.
Looking to do before I call this phase complete.
#1. Install the incoming Iris V3 motion sensors. 1 in each shower room, 1 in kitchen, 1 in master vanity. Move the relevant V2 motion sensors to the bedrooms. Motion sensors done. #2. Add circuit for, and Nutone switch for a Nutone vent fan for the master bath. Add Nutone switch to the Nutone vent fan / light in guest bath. Figure out how to, and configure rules to kick the vent fan on when the RH reaches say 70% to keep the shower from steaming up too badly. #3. Finish the installs of the Hampton Bay controllers, replace the bad controller. Figure out how and configure rule to bump up fan speec 1 level every 2 degrees. #4. Polish HSM / add ins to allow me to arm / disarm / panic from the Iris keypad. Hopefully add a second and configure it at the back door. Figure out how to pass command from Alexa routine to not just start Alexa Guard, but when I say "A;exa I'm leaving", to set the system to Armed Away mode. DO NOT allow Alexa to Disarm the system under any circumstances!
That should at this time finishup my system and have me ready for the next round. Replacing bulbs in fixtures with switches, replacing the smart plugs for lamps with smart bulbs so I get dimmers in place, and automating watering my lawn...
That is quite a list! Do you use Apple stuff? If so then also consider HomeBridge on a "companion" server like a Raspberry PI. Allows you to share your HE and Ring devices with Apple Home.
I also like Node-RED (running on same server) - I use it as a replacement RM. Keeps the resource overhead on my hubs fairly low and hopefully a bit more stable (this is only anecdotal!!). With it you can do some neat stuff like this:
Yeah me too (Fedora/KDE and Win10) but have started to use a few more things Apple lately - a lot of my residential clients have iPhones and iPads etc.
