Home Automation - Mainstream price point & functionality?

[MuffDaddy]

Renovation said:

To be viable for me to purchase, firstly I'd have to want it and I'm unaware of ever wanting nor needing any automation.

Can you give me an example of what I'm missing ?

My heating is programmed I can have my lights turned on by timer / PIR / Dawn dusk - I can't see that I need anything else.

How about a very simple one. A moisture sensor that alerts you of leaks in the kitchen meaning the damage caused is far less. Or your heating turning on via go fence/outside temp. You get within 1km of the home and it's brass monkeys so the heating comes on.

I have my Sonos read the weather to me when I enter the kitchen for the first time. I also have it play a theme tune when I come home from work.

Garage door open, set an alert. Anywhere. With work flow informing a neighbour if you are away.

Have a porch? Why not allow Amazon a one time only access to leave parcels.

The possibilities increase as you add sensors, end points.

[Murph7355]

dirty_dog said:

...

Anyway, I think the Nest type product / price point is a good start and not too nerdy. ...

I have 3x Nest Protects at home. They're very nice products, but IMO ~50% too expensive (and I bought mine for under £70).

[Murph7355]

C Lee Farquar said:

Now the debate has widened...

The main benefit I think we could enjoy would be a centralised video/Sky centre, whereby we could access our DVDs and recorded TV from any TV in the house.

We're not at first fix yet so hard wiring isn't a problem, but is an easy to use, reliable solution available?

I wouldn't want to change my Sky subscription, ideally, as I get 'free' Sky F1. I'm not interested in other sports so wouldn't want to pay for Sky Sports.

Thanks for everyones input, informative thread.

This isn't really home automation.

I think you'll be better off asking in the Home Cinema & HiFi section, but IMO:

Don't try and wire your house for a specific function as the technology is changing.

Wire each room with plenty of Cat5e (or possibly Cat6 - not essential but gives a degree of future proofing) which will allow you plenty of flexibility.

There are plenty of options for Sky and watching your DVD collection without the manual faff. Do a good search on here and you'll find a lot of info. There are no solutions that don't require a bit of reading up first IMO.

[dirty_dog]

Murph7355 said:

Don't try and wire your house for a specific function as the technology is changing.

Wire each room with plenty of Cat5e (or possibly Cat6 - not essential but gives a degree of future proofing) which will allow you plenty of flexibility.

may as well run Cat6 for the cost of materials, labour will be the same anyway. Like Murph says its flexible and you can convert pretty much anything to utilise Cat6.

[Pheo]

Just done CAT5e myself as I had a box, and the price is surprisingly more expensive for CAT6 - and you can run gigabit on CAT5e without issue. Definitely the easiest way to future proof.

[Harry Flashman]

Jon1967x said:

I had a play with lightwaverf - does most of what you ask, used to be in B&Q and maplin.

It's ok, not brilliant, can be little frustrating at times when setting up. I'm not rushing to buy the bits to control my heating.

I've just bought and installed the central heating bit.

Unbelievably frustrating to setup, completely non-intuitive app without proper override buttons etc, seemingly impossible to clear device memories and start again. Even seems impossible to do something as simple as remove a device from the app!

It looks good on paper, but the setup instructions and app functionality is poor. No response from their helpdesk. The app is poor.

I'd avoid. I bought it for the fact that you could create zoned heating with room TRVs, but if even getting the thermostat to work remotely (it won't - I have had to use manual settings) is this hard, I'm damned if I'm putting the rest of the home on the system!

[forest07]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

+1 one of the last projects I worked on was looking at developing these products. All looked too complex and little if any cost benefits for users. Fine for geeks and those who have to have the latest technology.

[Harry Flashman]

forest07 said:

anonymous said:

[redacted]

+1 one of the last projects I worked on was looking at developing these products. All looked too complex and little if any cost benefits for users. Fine for geeks and those who have to have the latest technology.

Exactly - I am not a geek or early adopter. I want something that works out of the box, doesn't crash and is supported/upgradeable.

So LightwaveRF will go in the bin, and I'll just buy a Nest. People will always argue against things like Nest, arguing that better functionality is achievable with something else. It isn't, for the average user like me. Fine if you are a tech person, but most of us want something that just works well and looks good. Most of these solutions seem to fail to recognise this.

[Renovation]

I see what you're selling but the appeal to me is so low that I wouldn't be interested even if it was £100.

I wish you luck but I'd suggest your target market is tiny.

[ross-co]

I think Control 4 is not too bad from this point of view, as it is modular however the modules can still be expensive.

[Jon1967x]

Harry Flashman said:

So LightwaveRF will go in the bin,..

You can put it in my bin, I wouldn't mind trying to get it to work but I'm not tempted on shelling out a couple of hundred on valves and thermostats

[Renovation]

MuffDaddy said:

How about a very simple one. A moisture sensor that alerts you of leaks in the kitchen meaning the damage caused is far less. Or your heating turning on via go fence/outside temp. You get within 1km of the home and it's brass monkeys so the heating comes on.

I have my Sonos read the weather to me when I enter the kitchen for the first time. I also have it play a theme tune when I come home from work.

Garage door open, set an alert. Anywhere. With work flow informing a neighbour if you are away.

Have a porch? Why not allow Amazon a one time only access to leave parcels.

The possibilities increase as you add sensors, end points.

I've never had a leak of any sort nor have my parents so I wouldn't be interested.

My heating is on a timer and thermostatically controlled with zones and TRVs I have a wife and kids so our routine is pretty regular - it takes a few mins to change the timer at holiday periods.

I am shortly fitting electric gates (with remote opening and CCTV) and they will be a bit of a pain with parcels when we're out - I could spend thousands on automation or I could just fit a large lockable box at the end of the drive.

I guess I'm just old fashioned.

[C Lee Farquar]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Thanks, I'd like a central source to 4 - 6 rooms. Further investigation suggests it's possible but not cheap.

I'm planning to run a couple of CAT5/6 cables to each room anyway and I guess see what's available when I'm done.

[briang9]

Renovation said:

To be viable for me to purchase, firstly I'd have to want it and I'm unaware of ever wanting nor needing any automation.

Can you give me an example of what I'm missing ?

My heating is programmed I can have my lights turned on by timer / PIR / Dawn dusk - I can't see that I need anything else.

I agree with this, suspect your market is going to be a tad limited

[DSLiverpool]

Murph7355 said:

Lightwave RF is actually very good stuff IMO, and the end to end idea is pretty well thought out.

Only hassle is that they seem to have buggered up their supply chain.

Watch this space, I am discussing it with them right now .

[Harry Flashman]

Jon1967x said:

Harry Flashman said:

So LightwaveRF will go in the bin,..

You can put it in my bin, I wouldn't mind trying to get it to work but I'm not tempted on shelling out a couple of hundred on valves and thermostats

Heh. By bin I mean ebay!

[Too Late]

I am moving to Loxone.
I have just laid all cat6 to all light points and every light zone is on its own circuit. Just now need to bight the bullet and buy it all

[Rabbo]

Too Late said:

I am moving to Loxone.
I have just laid all cat6 to all light points and every light zone is on its own circuit. Just now need to bight the bullet and buy it all

I'd be interested to know more about your experience in preparing for a Loxone installation. My soon-to-be-purchased house requires a rewire and I've been considering wiring all lighting circuits back to the consumer unit and running Cat6 to light switches. I'd be interested to know what the extra over cost was compared to a standard rewire and what you anticipate spending on the kit and whether or not you're considering doing the Loxone programming yourself.

[VEX]

Loxone, HDL and Fibaro are all in the same position, less established than the likes on KNX or even bigger control systems but they are becoming established and there market is growing.

Toxic, I have been using CYP but recently switched to HDAnywhere which are doing 4x4 HDBaseT matrixes with PoE for under £2k Rrp and if you plug it into the Internet your dealer can monitor it as well.

A newcomer to the market launched at ISE last week with similar price points to good reviews

V.

[Smiler.]

VEX said:

Loxone, HDL and Fibaro are all in the same position, less established than the likes on KNX or even bigger control systems but they are becoming established and there market is growing.

Toxic, I have been using CYP but recently switched to HDAnywhere which are doing 4x4 HDBaseT matrixes with PoE for under £2k Rrp and if you plug it into the Internet your dealer can monitor it as well.

A newcomer to the market launched at ISE last week with similar price points to good reviews

V.

Have you had any experience of KNX VEX? (KNX VEX )

I'm sort-of a developer of KNX systems.