Tech Up My Gaff

[Too Late]

whoami said:

I live in the sticks with a correspondingly poor broadband connection.

What bandwidth do you require to use, say, the Samsung products talked about above?

Samsung HA controller is cloud based.... booooooooo
Vera/fibaro HA controllers are local. YAY

[smighall]

I've started to do a lot of this at home now, although still in early stages. I'm using OpenHAB as the central HA, primarily as it's opensource and is not tied into any one specific brand of HA devices. I've built arduino sensor nodes for motion/light/temperature/humidity detection and will be placing one in each room once i find a nice case to put them in. Currently looking for empty alarm PIR cases or ceiling PIR cases to house them so they look fairly discrete.

I've got a couple of z-wave dimmer modules and just use the Aeon Labs Z-wave stick. All of this is currently running on a Pi2 so everything is relatively cheap and cheerful whilst i work out exactly what i want to monitor and control. The new Pi2's seem to have plenty of capacity in terms of processing but as i build up the rules etc it might start to slow down but i'll deal with that as and when. Only the Z-wave bits are more expensive but i do like the fact that the light modules can still use your existing light switches and can also be wired up without a neutral, which considering most light switches won't have a neutral behind them is a big plus point.

The arduino sensors are coming in at less than £5 per unit (excluding case) currently.

I'm looking at the Max EQ-3 TRV's and thermostats to do the heating side of things, i just need to work out a way of monitoring and controlling the boiler itself, but that should be fairly easy with a couple of relays and another Arduino in theory. New boiler currently being installed so i'll see what's doable on that front soon.

[smighall]

eliot said:

I have pulse counters on the gas and water to monitor consumption and detect leaks - I also monitor the hot and cold water temperature and pressure.

Out of interest what are you using to monitor the temp/pressure and flow of water? I assume flow is purely from the pulse counters on the water meter or do you have another in-line sensor for that?

[Too Late]

smighall said:

I've started to do a lot of this at home now, although still in early stages. I'm using OpenHAB as the central HA, primarily as it's opensource and is not tied into any one specific brand of HA devices. I've built arduino sensor nodes for motion/light/temperature/humidity detection and will be placing one in each room once i find a nice case to put them in. Currently looking for empty alarm PIR cases or ceiling PIR cases to house them so they look fairly discrete.

I've got a couple of z-wave dimmer modules and just use the Aeon Labs Z-wave stick. All of this is currently running on a Pi2 so everything is relatively cheap and cheerful whilst i work out exactly what i want to monitor and control. The new Pi2's seem to have plenty of capacity in terms of processing but as i build up the rules etc it might start to slow down but i'll deal with that as and when. Only the Z-wave bits are more expensive but i do like the fact that the light modules can still use your existing light switches and can also be wired up without a neutral, which considering most light switches won't have a neutral behind them is a big plus point.

The arduino sensors are coming in at less than £5 per unit (excluding case) currently.

I'm looking at the Max EQ-3 TRV's and thermostats to do the heating side of things, i just need to work out a way of monitoring and controlling the boiler itself, but that should be fairly easy with a couple of relays and another Arduino in theory. New boiler currently being installed so i'll see what's doable on that front soon.

interesting articles on the arduino ....
But how would you power them? They need mains or 1amp power dont they? no batter options?

N

[smighall]

You can easily run them off a couple of AA battery's, although i plan to have all of mine powered, probably using a power splitter / set of relays in the loft then use alarm cable / cat5 to run the 5v down. Currently i'm just using any old phone chargers i have kicking about, but you don't have to use the usb connector, you can just connect power and ground to the relevant pins on the arduino.

[eliot]

smighall said:

eliot said:

I have pulse counters on the gas and water to monitor consumption and detect leaks - I also monitor the hot and cold water temperature and pressure.

Out of interest what are you using to monitor the temp/pressure and flow of water? I assume flow is purely from the pulse counters on the water meter or do you have another in-line sensor for that?

I use 1-wire sensors for temperature, pressure transducers via analogue input for pressure and reed-relays(on/off pulse) for flow monitoring.

Pressure:

Writeup: http://www.mez.co.uk/homeseer-pressuremonitoring.h...

Gas Flow:

Writeup: http://www.mez.co.uk/page44.html


Water flow:

Writeup: http://www.mez.co.uk/page123.html

Start another thread if you are interested in more info on homeseer and what can be done with it - I'm happy to explain it all.

[fastgerman]

Thanks very much for the responses, thought this thread died :-)

Think I'm going the Philips Hue and Nest route for lights, thermostat and alarms. Undecided on the rest

[onlynik]

fastgerman said:

Thanks very much for the responses, thought this thread died :-)

Think I'm going the Philips Hue and Nest route for lights, thermostat and alarms. Undecided on the rest

If you want a multizone thermostat, or have a big house, I suggest you look elsewhere rather than a Nest (I have a Nest).

[fastgerman]

only 1 thermostat in the house, so gone with Nest 3 as also does the hot water. In addition have gone with Nest 2 smoke and carbon monoxide alarms. 1 for the downstairs hallway, and 1 for the upstairs. May add another one in the garage as attached to the house.

Likely to go the Philips Hue route if just for triggering remote lighting and gps activation when I drive up to the house.

Might install some solar motion lights around 'the grounds' and perhaps a motion camera but assuming I'll just have lots of videos of cats, which I'll end up paying a subscription for.