home automation hardware/software

[eFestivals]

On 7/24/2017 at 8:23 AM, eFestivals said:

I also got a bit carried away last night - whoops - and spunked £250 on a robot hoover. I seemed to have found a bargain, tho, cos the one I've bought cost over £150 less than its price on amazon, and reviews of that model compare its features and performance and with the top-of-the-range ones that cost nearly £1k. It'll probably be a couple of weeks before that arrives.

arrived yesterday - and it's brilliant.

It hoovers well. It's not 100% perfect, but from reviews I've read of just about all the robot vacs (cheap or expensive) they can get away with that because they hoover so often they'll get everything eventually (cos when it is being done every day it doesn't really leave anything much behind but if it does it gets it next time).

I was worried it wouldn't cope with some thick-ish rugs, but it doesn't have a problem climbing up onto them or vaccing them.

We also have a small 30 degree slope between our front and back room, where the wall was knocked thru. It copes with that, too.

It's less happy with the raised dividers where the flooring changes from carpet to wood, so it either needs them shaved down a little or something done to make them less slippy. I'm sure I'll come up with a solution, tho.

I was slightly worried that I might have got hit with import duties (it came from China) as I got stung with something I bought from the USA recently, but I didn't so it was a definite bargain, nearly £200 cheaper than from a UK supplier.

[The Nal]

Does it just randomly mill about the house until you stop it?

[eFestivals]

22 minutes ago, The Nal said:

Does it just randomly mill about the house until you stop it?

the 'cheap' ones do it randomly. The better quality ones like mine are smarter, it knows where it's been and where it hasn't, and when it knows it's done everywhere it goes back home.

It even creates a little map of its routes (so ends up as a floor map) that you can see in the app ... except I can't see that in my app for some reason, I need to look into that when I have a minute.

Edited August 4, 2017 by eFestivals

[Ommadawn]

On 04/08/2017 at 0:47 PM, eFestivals said:

the 'cheap' ones do it randomly. The better quality ones like mine are smarter, it knows where it's been and where it hasn't, and when it knows it's done everywhere it goes back home.

It even creates a little map of its routes (so ends up as a floor map) that you can see in the app ... except I can't see that in my app for some reason, I need to look into that when I have a minute.

You might need to buy a Chinese phone

[eFestivals]

I've not had time to properly look at the new vac yet, but I gave robbie another run earlier and while he still struggled with the wood dividers on the floor, he did get over them eventually - which means he got round all of the ground floor, and the missus is happy with the job he did.

 

[eFestivals]

Just now, Ommadawn said:

You might need to buy a Chinese phone

any reason why do you say that?

 

[Ommadawn]

3 hours ago, eFestivals said:

any reason why do you say that?

 

Only that the robotic cleaner came from China and you couldn't get the app to work on your phone.

Sorry - I have a poor sense of humour.

[eFestivals]

have now got the app working properly. Very oddly, if you sign-in on the app to the chinese server everything works as expected, but not for the other servers.

Anyway, having given it several runs round the house now I'm extremely impressed, particularly with how it copes with rugs, the wooden room dividers (which it now gets over most times but not every time, but I can improve that) and any awkward bits it initially might get stuck on such as the curled corner of a rug. And the missus loves it too (always an advantage :P), and has now named it not-too-imaginatively R2D2.

So I'll give the model a plug -  the XIAOMI Mi Robot Vacuum -  and where I ordered from (took about 2 weeks for delivery) here and it cost me £264 all in. Last week the cheapest on Amazon was £405, but I've just found this one at £320 from a UK supplier.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01LYV1EMA?m=A2OOSCUGCA55YD&ref_=v_sp_widget_detail_page

Various reviews of this model rate it as good - or better - than the Roomba 980 (£850) or the Dyson 360 (£810).

If you love your gadgets and hate hoovering I highly recommend it.

Now to get it integrated into openHAB so that it goes for a walk when it knows there's no-one downstairs to be bothered by the noise of a hoover (it's not too noisy, but there's some noise as you'd expect from a vac).

[eFestivals]

have got everything sorted with the app, and have got the vac integrated into the openHAB system.

 

[eFestivals]

and now if the vacuum has an error of any sort (most likely cos it's got stuck somehow, or it needs emptying), I get a message played out of my speakers every 30 minutes until I get off my arse and fix the error.

And if there's music playing out of my speakers when it tells me of that error, it turns down the music first, gives me the message, and then restores the music.

Which is pretty damned cool

Edited August 14, 2017 by eFestivals

[eFestivals]

a geezer is due here soon to install Nest 'smart' heating. I could have done it myself, but decided the missus wouldn't be happy if I screwed up the boiler so took the safe option at £60 rather than thousands on a new boiler if the worst happened.

To be honest i'm not sure how much of the 'smart' I might use of it - tho it'll be handy to turn the heating on from my desk - but it'll be nice to have better timed-control of the boiler than currently from an old-style (just) 24-hour manual timeclock.

Once that's been done I might add some TRVs to the radiators to give more control of what rooms get heated, so that the boiler heating works better alongside the heat from the wood burner.

Meanwhile, the missus has fallen in love with the robot vac and much prefers having an always-clean floor to nagging me, and is getting happier with the other stuff i've set-up.

She's still not having my idea of a powered curtain rail (which i reckon is pretty important, before one of us falls thru the window while drawing the curtains), tho we're about to change the blinds on the window, which will probably obstruct the curtains and mean something different needs to be done ... so it might happen.

Apart from TRVs and the curtains, I reckon I'm about done within what the missus will accept. I'd do the whole house if I could.

[fred quimby]

8 hours ago, eFestivals said:

 

She's still not having my idea of a powered curtain rail (which i reckon is pretty important, before one of us falls thru the window while drawing the curtains), 

 

That made me giggle thanks. How many times have you nearly fell through the window.  Love the gadget persistence Neil

[eFestivals]

11 hours ago, fred quimby said:

That made me giggle thanks. How many times have you nearly fell through the window.  Love the gadget persistence Neil

it's not me playing it up. Standing on the back of the sofa with only the windows to stop you falling if - when - you lose your balance is going to end badly for one of us one day. Losing balance happens regularly, falling thru the window only has to happen once.

I'm not 100% hung up on powered curtains, anything better than currently would be good - but powered ones do make the best sense, and don't necessarily have to be tied in to the automated system (tho that makes the most sense, too).

Plenty of the other stuff is 'just because I can'. Powered curtains *really* is one that makes good sense (like the heating upgrade yesterday does too).

Edited September 21, 2017 by eFestivals

[eFestivals]

On 4/13/2017 at 6:06 PM, eFestivals said:

I'm currently wanting an electric venetian blind for my office window. Bleedin' expensive, tho.

My desk is opposite the window, and for about 2 hours a day the sun is straight thru on my eyes ... so the blinds just tend to stay shut, and I don't see the day.

Some smart electric blinds could close and open as necessary, would be fab.

But £300-£400 for everything I'd need feels just too much.

This was my first properly-useful idea for automation. 

It took a while for me to buy some kit (cost about £80 in the end), and then a while for some software to be written (free) that I could use to integrate it with.  And then it was summer and the sun was too high in the sky to shine in my eyes.

This time of year it shines straight in my eyes, and the blinds are working perfectly to shut when it does and open again when the sun goes in - fabulous.

[eFestivals]

I couldn't resist it, so have now integrated the Nest heating controls into the main set-up.

The plumber is coming next week to fit radiator thermostats on most of the radiators, and when he's done that I'll add some 'smart' controls to the top of them, so that individual radiators can be turned on or off as appropriate.

I need to come up with a plan to try and foist some presence detection onto the won't-have-a-smartphone wife, cos until the system (everything, not just heating) really knows who is in the house I can't make the best of it.

[carlosj]

On 10/13/2017 at 9:10 AM, eFestivals said:

I couldn't resist it, so have now integrated the Nest heating controls into the main set-up.

The plumber is coming next week to fit radiator thermostats on most of the radiators, and when he's done that I'll add some 'smart' controls to the top of them, so that individual radiators can be turned on or off as appropriate.

I need to come up with a plan to try and foist some presence detection jumper & torch onto the won't-have-a-smartphone wife, cos until the system (everything, not just heating) really knows who is in the house I can't make the best of it.

Suggested correction.

[eFestivals]

I've got some new toys to hang onto the system when I get a few minutes.

1. the first of the 6 controllable radiator thermostats I'll need (I've just bought one for the moment). These will allow me to turn individual radiators on or off, as wanted, to give absolute control of the heating in every room.

2. a 'nano dimmer switch', which goes in the box behind a wall switch, so that a light can be turned on/off with the wall switch or with the remote system. It doesn't need a neutral so these could be fitted to every wall switch.

[The Nal]

Going to this on Friday. May as well smart up the new house while I can.

https://idealhome.ie/ideal-energy-technology/

[eFestivals]

2 minutes ago, The Nal said:

May as well smart up the new house while I can.

what you want to avoid is locking yourself into a single technology, and to avoid buying a number of different technologies which cannot be joined together to interact with each other. Just about everything comes with an app, but the apps for products from different companies don't integrate.

So you'll need some cross-platform controlling software, such as those listed here:-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_home_automation_software

Missing from that list are openHAB2 (which is what I use), Domoticz, and others.  I use openHAB cos it seems to have the best software development for new products as they arrive on the market, and the automation devices can be accessed and controlled without opening up your home network to the web.

You also want to avoid devices that use wifi - to some degree, anyway. Firstly there's the security issues, but there's also the limit (less than 255) to the number of devices that can be connected to the same subnet. There's a number of different controlling technologies, but the best one to use is z-wave.

I recommend that you check what controlling platform software will support a particular devices/technologies before you buy it. The 'featured technologies' list for openHAB is here (and the list expands almost daily).

If you need any advice give me a shout.

[The Nal]

Cheers Neil will do. Plenty to crack on with there. New gaff will be basically stripped bare so I've an open canvas for this kind of thing. 

[eFestivals]

13 minutes ago, The Nal said:

Cheers Neil will do. Plenty to crack on with there. New gaff will be basically stripped bare so I've an open canvas for this kind of thing. 

for price/availability/likely-to-stay-around technologies, I recommend...

For lighting:
either Philips Hue, or even better (cos the wall switches will still work as normal) would be something like the Aeon (or Aeotec) nano switch (if you have a neutral wire behind the switches) or nano dimmer (if you don't have a neutral wire behind the switches).

For sockets:-
either TP-Link wifi ones (cos they're cheap-ish but not crap), or pick one of those that uses z-wave.

For heating:-
Nest (as timeclock / wall stat / away / knows when you're coming home).

For Weather (right-now, and forecasts):-
you don't need your own weather station, you can get very local weather from any of these:-
https://www.wunderground.com/weather/ie/dublin
(click on 'change' to see the full list of Dublin weather stations)

For remote control (infra-red - TVs, etc)
either a Broadlink RM2 Pro, or RM3 mini
(the RM2 also does RF as well as IR, and it has a thermometer)

For audio-out:-
the easiest is Sonos cos it's well supported, but if you do bluetooth or DLNA you can use those too.

For audio-in (voice control of automation hardware):-
Amazon Echo is the leader at the mo, but the google home stuff might take over.

Also have a look at the Sonoff stuff, as that's what I'd probably use if I was wiring a house from scratch. It's mostly designed for under floorboards, etc - not pretty - but it's cheap.

Try to avoid anything which uses cloud services in preference for stuff that will work (just) locally - tho sometimes you just have to go with cloud stuff anyway (such as Nest).

[eFestivals]

I've successfully 'tagged' the wife, using an iTag bluetooth keyring (£3!, and it doesn't need constant charging) and a small script I wrote - so now the system knows when she's home.

And according to the monthly Nest report I'm using less heating than the average (about 2/3rds) - and that's despite being home all day every day, which is great.  The heating is also better than it was since the upgrades to the heating system, with a much smoother temperature level.

Edited November 10, 2017 by eFestivals

[eFestivals]

there's a black friday deal at amazon for the tp-link HS110 'smart' plug - which is about the best smart plug socket (includes energy monitoring), and at a great price, £19.95 (instead of the normal £35)

https://www.amazon.co.uk/HS110-Monitoring-Assistant-Required-UK/dp/B01IBUF48S/ref=gbps_tit_m-5_4ace_9f218814?smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_p=b5d2cbd6-1446-485e-ab07-aa0777e84ace&pf_rd_s=merchandised-search-5&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_i=14235985031&pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_r=QND1PHA6NKTD9SQXSC04&tag=efestivals-21

I didn't plan to buy any more of these at the moment, but at a nearly 2-1 price i couldn't resist.

[eFestivals]

the hardware for my blinds stopped responding to the remote control about a week ago.

I thought they were broken, but finally found a minute to mail the makers, who mailed back saying "try this" ... and i have, and they're fixed.

 

[eFestivals]

the new version of openHAB (v2.2) has just been released, with user-friendly interfaces for the first time.

I had a quick play with them cos I chose the wrong install option and they look much better than struggling to understand config files, so it should be a big improvement.

http://www.openhab.org