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Offline bagheadinc

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What's your setup?
« on: August 02, 2013, 11:31:08 pm »
So, as the title says, what kind of home automation do you have either currently setup or planned? I'd love to hear what others have done.

I'm rather new to the home automation scene so right now I'm still building my network of devices. At the core will obviously be the Almond+. My door locks will be controlled via Lockitron. I've got a Honeywell Lynx Touch for my alarm system. For heating/air, don't have anything yet, but I'm planning to pick up another Honeywell device. All my ceiling fans/lights in my house were wired to only one switch instead of two so I ended up getting Insteon FanLincs to gain individual control of the fans and lights.

Not too sure where I'm gonna go from there, but I can't wait to get my hands on the Almond+ and start tinkering around with it. My end goal is to be able to walk up to my front door, wave my phone over an NFC tag to unlock it, turn off the alarm, turn on the appropriate lights, and set the AC to a comfortable temperature.

LGNilsson

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Re: What's your setup?
« Reply #1 on: August 03, 2013, 12:05:53 am »
Just out of curiosity, why the NFC tag? Technically you should be able to set up a proximity grid so when your phone is within a certain distance from your home, this should all happen automagically.
In fact, you could set it up so that when you're a set distance from your home and it's within the time period you'd normally be arriving home, the AC would switch on and start cooling down the house before you've even gotten home.
Of course all of this is somewhat theoretical, but not impossible for sure.

Offline bagheadinc

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Re: What's your setup?
« Reply #2 on: August 03, 2013, 12:25:36 am »
I like the idea of a proximity grid. I was thinking NFC because I wasn't sure about everything the Almond+ is be able to do. Also until the Lockitron and Insteon are supported I'd need other apps to do their thing, so I figured a little NFC magic would cover everything. I had thought about using something like Locale, but it's location condition is too wide of a radius for my preference.

LGNilsson

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Re: What's your setup?
« Reply #3 on: August 03, 2013, 02:36:34 am »
Bluetooth support shouldn't be too hard to add via OpenWRT, if it's not already supported.
We're going to try out some location based ideas that we have and we'll see what we come up with.

Offline bagheadinc

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Re: What's your setup?
« Reply #4 on: August 03, 2013, 02:40:26 am »
BLE support would be cool, now that Android finally support it as well.

Offline wstocker

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Re: What's your setup?
« Reply #5 on: August 03, 2013, 05:47:05 am »
About two years ago, Radio Shack decided to purge its stock of Z-Wave products, so I bought as much of it as I could.  Almost every light switch is a GE Dimmer, I have a few 15A In-Wall Outlets, some lamp modules, and some outdoor modules.  I am currently using only GE Advanced Remotes as my Controllers, I have one primary and one backup.  I frequently considered a Vera product, but as I got such a good deal on my equipment I couldn't justify the price. So very excited to get my Almond+.  I must have some kind of network problem because I have two outlets that are only on the controller in a group, and two lamp modules that if I turn the group on, only the outlets come on, but if I turn on a lamp module [as a single light], one of the outlets comes on/off with it?

Vito

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Re: What's your setup?
« Reply #6 on: August 03, 2013, 12:42:09 pm »
I've been using Vera devices for the past few years.  I have multiple door locks, from Schlage and Yale.  I have a garage door opener and sensor, as well as multiple types of outdoor lighting (LED flood lights, LED tape lights).  The entire house has been converted to LED lighting inside, many of them dimmable.  I had started using the GE Z-Wave dimmers, but then upgraded most of them to Leviton Z-Wave dimmers.  I also have several ceiling fans that are connected to Leviton dimmers, so that they fans can be controlled with remotes in each room.  About half of my outlets are also Z-Wave controlled, allowing me to operate holiday lighting and room lamps through scenes.  I also have a Trane thermostat that is controlled via Z-Wave.

I'm currently using a Windows Phone app called "Grasshopper", but may have to develop a new app as soon as I receive my new Almond+.  I didn't sign up for the Developer edition on Kickstarter, and I'm regretting that now - as I thought I would have been receiving the Almond+ in September, and really didn't have the time to develop until then anyway.  Now that I will not be receiving a new device until the end of the year (or early next year), I'm a little frustrated that I'll be losing that head-start on development.

-Vito

Offline Automate

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Re: What's your setup?
« Reply #7 on: August 03, 2013, 04:44:50 pm »
I currently use http://opensourceautomation.com with:
X10
Aprilaire Thermostat
Oregon Scientific Temperature/Humidity sensors
Global Cache
DSC Alarm system
Android
and other plugins

Offline pete

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Re: What's your setup?
« Reply #8 on: August 04, 2013, 06:18:02 am »
wstocker,

Here too I went to a number of local Radio Shacks and "purged" their stock of Z-Wave products purchasing all that I saw on their shelves and then some...its been a while now.

Currently though all of my inwall switches are UPB.  Lately though updated many to multitoggle and dual load switches.

I have multiple UPB Pims configured with different controllers as I do Z-Wave networks today.

Testing these with wife; she knows them better now than me; such that WAF is high.  IE: kitchen area has sets of cans and other lighting on many switches (too many lately).

Utilizing links between switches for many virtual 3-4-5 way lighting these days.
« Last Edit: August 04, 2013, 11:55:30 pm by pete »
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Pete
Lockport, IL  USA

Offline BrownChiLD

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Re: What's your setup?
« Reply #9 on: August 12, 2013, 09:26:48 pm »
I'm actually just starting out to do HA for my new Apartment.. i've done soo much research on this topic in the last few months... here's a summary of my personal journey:

GOAL: setup my apartment w/ a complete HA system and more, plus be able to DEVELOP my own GUI for controlling things (using my PHP programming knowledge)
PROBLEM: Too many options out there, the darn thing is expensive, and I live in the Philippines... w/c limited my choices down to 30% or less of available HA devices, modules, solutions out there mainly due to POWER PROFILE (220v 50/60hz)

the 2 toughest Challenge I encountered were:
1) needed to decide on what standard to follow, and where to get them. X10,Zwave, zigbee,etc - it's just so confusing..all standards were enticing..
--> but i decided to go w/ Z-wave as it seems to offer much better compatibility across its devices, (zigbee is just a mess w/ their different HA profiles and all that) .. also zwave is able to do 2-way communication as a normal standard (vs 433 devices and such) , and it seems to have more available devices for it over Zigbee..

2) needed to find what devices/hardware to go with ... I was really attracted w/ Ninja Blocks, it's cheap, it's got great dev community, and it's so expandable. but it only deals w/ 433 devices, so left the Ninja Blocks band wagon. I then realized that i wanted to be able to do both Zigbee and Z-wave.. Mainly Z-wave for 99% of the stuffs, and Zigbee incase there are devices I REALLY REALLY want to integrate but are using zigbee (such as the Philips Hue bulbs) ..

All roads led me to 2 things:
1) ALMOND+ Router (w/c was my first choice as I have become an Almond Fan) .. but then the + is not available yet i had to research for other options.. and finally i found:
2) SmartThings hub... so for now im going to be using this.. but later go w/ Almond when it becomes ready and stable... as i love the all in one approach of Almond (router, ha system, plus touch screen!)


My setup would be simple..
instead of fidling w/ all the different switches and outlets, i decided to go w/ the "Z-WAVE inwall modules". these are microcontrollers you embed in existing switches and outlets .. This way it's cheaper (a bit) and I am not limited to a certain Z-wave switch design. i can use any switch i want.. and just have the module embedded!

Also i need not worry about how many switches or how many outlets i need to purchase.. i just need to count "all devices i want to control" and buy that many micro-controllers.. no surplus switches and lacking outlets scenario..

Then I just add a few sensors in the mix for security, magnetic door things, temps/humidity etc.. the works..

AS FOR THE AUTOMATED ENTRY talk here, w/ proximity sensor..

I really wanted this as well, but realized RFID Proximity setup is really expensive! and it's gona be a pain to integrate into HA

so my plan (w/c i think is a genius idea)  is to use one of the Z-wave temp sensors or door sensors!!! lol

these sensors are polling data to the hub, and when it's out of range it stops doing so.. so all i have to do is figure out the RULE on WHAT TO DO IF and WHEN the sensor is polling data or not hehe


Anyway hope this info is of help to people :)

Regards

 

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