Not sure if this is a better fit for here or Off Topic. Please move if this is the wrong forum.
Anyway, we're doing a large remodel on a 50 year old house, and I'm wondering what the current best choices are for Home Automation - mostly re lighting and outlet control, but also want to learn what other goodies are possible. My current state of knowledge is X-10, which I'd guess is many generations obsolete. Thanks.
I use CRESTRON. I have been programming the gear for ten years, but you have to be a certified/registered dealer/programmer/provider in order to get the software to do the work.
There is also Lutron, and Control4 as well. I like Control 4 for the price/performance.
Jim
I would rather attempt something great and fail, than attempt nothing and succeed - Fortune Cookie
"The critical shortage here is not stuff, but time." - Johan Ekdahl
"Step N is required before you can do step N+1!" - ka7ehk
"If you want a career with a known path - become an undertaker. Dead people don't sue!" - Kartman
"Why is there a "Highway to Hell" and only a "Stairway to Heaven"? A prediction of the expected traffic load?" - Lee "theusch"
Speak sweetly. It makes your words easier to digest when at a later date you have to eat them ;-) - Source Unknown
You're spoilt for choice. Do you want to talk to Siri,Alexa or the Google equiv to turn things on or off? The downside with these is if the interwebs aren't working, then you're stuck. For me, the simplicity of just tuning a switch on or off seems hard to beat.
There's also plenty of wireless gadgets like the Philips Hue that just seem ripe for hacking. Kidde have some wireless smoke detectors that talk to each other that seems to have no security - hack the protocol and you could cause some mayhem. So I'm suspicious of wireless gadgets at the moment.
The like of NEST for heater control sounds good to me - there's savings to be had, but having other companies harvest my data for their own benefit and that they can sell causes me a level of concern, but then again, Google harvest just about everything anyways.
The local home improvement show has been pushing Alexa devices lately. Do you really want voice control of your shower? I can understand voice control of the front gate as you'd be driving and can use voice to request the gate to open. Brings back memories of 2001 A space odyssey! "I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that!"
As I have a couple of Echo Dots (Alexa) I recently got bulbs and sockets that are compatible with her. So I chose TP-Link equipment (because I'd had good experiences with TP-Link Powerline adapters in the past)
There are a gazillion different options for home automation nowaday's.
There is however not much standardisation and interoperability.
Which means that if you choose for some manufacturer's system, your mostly stuck with that manufacturer, although some other companies try to integrate phone software with hardware from different manufacurers.
"If this then that" comes to mind, but it is cloud based, and I will never put my head into the mist.
Stuff like Alexa or Google microphones in my house are completely unacceptable, If I see such a thing when I'm visiting somebody it is probably enough reason to stand up and walk away.
No thank you please.
For me an Open Source solution will be the only acceptable path.
Some of the Open Source solutions probably have support for the widest range of existing hardware, because lots of people contibute to reverse engineer communication protocols to integrate the gadgets they like into the software.
Open Source solutions tend to have a little linux PC ( Beaglebone, Cubieboard, Odroid, Olimex A20, etc) as the hart of the system which runs the server software.
Criticism and controversies
Home automation suffers from platform fragmentation and lack of technical standards[25][26][27][28][29][30]
a situation where the variety of home automation devices, in terms of both hardware variations and differences
in the software running on them, makes the task of developing applications that work consistently between
different inconsistent technology ecosystems hard.[31] Customers may be hesitant to bet their IoT future on
proprietary software or hardware devices that use proprietary protocols that may fade or become difficult to
customize and interconnect.[32]
There are also some standards. There's Zigbee and Z-wave for wireless.
I've written some software for AVR's on an RS485 network, and a daemon for a linux box several years ago (see my site) but it is not well maintained and still buggy.
For a wired (RS485) solution modbus seems to be the best option.
And of course a lot of stuff is WiFi based.
Normal Regular price for a single WiFi controlled switch is somewhere between EUR 40 and EUR 60, but an exception to that are the sOnOff switches.
The Sonoff S20 is a switch made for a wall socket and can be bought for around EUR 12.
Both these Sonoff devices are based on the ESP8266. The Chinese (mist based) software seems to be pretty crappy from what I have heared, but the ESP8266 and these Sonoff devices are very popular in the hacker and hobby world and there is lots of firmware available to be put in these gadgeds.
(But beware, the power supply is not isolated from mains, so be carefull when reprogramming (Use a separate 3V3 supply while programming).
If you want to toy with the ESP8266, then throw in some Wemos D1 Mini's. These cost next to nothing, and are breadboard compatible and are a great way to get aquianted with the ESP8266.
A big disadvantage of the ESP8266 platform is that most knowledge is reverse engineered. There is no datasheet of the ESP8266, just a 30 page summary of this 266MHz microcontroller with built in Wi-Fi USART, SPI, Timers, and all the usual stuff. It has been made compatible with "arduino" if that is your thing.
For (linux) software OpenHAB, MQTT and Node Red are probably worth checking out. There are also multiple books available which can help with setting up home automation projects with Linux and other Open Source software.
X-10 was awful! The more units you have, the more signal loss and less reliable it became!
If your a mac user take a look at Insteon based systems and Indigo as your base server, it has a lot of basic functions built in and is user expandable.
I've been using mine for over 10 years now, but as stated above, you have lots of choices (like do you really want Amazon to listen and record all the sounds in your house 24x7?)
Pick something and start enjoying the benefits, expand as funds are available!
Posted by John_A_Brown: Thu. Sep 27, 2018 - 06:25 PM
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"Stuff like Alexa or Google microphones in my house are completely unacceptable, If I see such a thing when I'm visiting somebody it is probably enough reason to stand up and walk away.
"Stuff like Alexa or Google microphones in my house are completely unacceptable, If I see such a thing when I'm visiting somebody it is probably enough reason to stand up and walk away.
No thank you please."
Curious as to why?
+1
Jim
I would rather attempt something great and fail, than attempt nothing and succeed - Fortune Cookie
"The critical shortage here is not stuff, but time." - Johan Ekdahl
"Step N is required before you can do step N+1!" - ka7ehk
"If you want a career with a known path - become an undertaker. Dead people don't sue!" - Kartman
"Why is there a "Highway to Hell" and only a "Stairway to Heaven"? A prediction of the expected traffic load?" - Lee "theusch"
Speak sweetly. It makes your words easier to digest when at a later date you have to eat them ;-) - Source Unknown
Stuff like Alexa or Google microphones in my house are completely unacceptable, If I see such a thing when I'm visiting somebody it is probably enough reason to stand up and walk away. No thank you please.
To me such devices are a strong indication of a total disregard of respect for the most basic privacy rules. Those devices are for naive peope who assume those devices only do what they are supposed to do. Just like typing your passwords on a wireless keyboard without andy (decent) encryption. Here in The Netherlands a few years ago there was a big fuss about the Mifare chips. Those were intended for getting some coffe from a dispenser or something, but they ended up in public transportation where the whole system got hacked and collapsed within a year or so of it's introduction. Pacemakers and Insulin pumps without a decent form of encryption is also a disaster waiting to happen.
People who design such stuff are not worthy of the title of engineer (in my opinion) and the would would be better of if they had a job cleaning toilets or something else harmless.
Pacemakers and Insulin pumps without a decent form of encryption is also a disaster waiting to happen.
Security is an issue, so is safety (safety by reliability)
A US model pacemaker was having a major intermittent malfunction and ended up at USA FDA where one ran a static analyzer over the source code ... an inadvertent infinite loop was the cause.
but also want to learn what other goodies are possible.
One of my son's has Alexia, and he uses it all the time to turn his music on and off while he does his homework.
I also purchased him a couple of light bulbs for the basement, his man cave, which he can control with the system.
I recently purchased a small vacation home in South Carolina, (I live in Ohio, a 12 hour drive away).
I purchased a wireless alarm system for the place which is very cool.
I looked around and chose SimpliSafe.
Trivial to install, easy to add extra sensors or cameras, and in addition to calling the Alarm Center, I can check on the system status or camera ( s ) from my cell phone or PC.
It calls an alarm center as it is very expensive / difficult to set up a private residence to directly call the police.
I can recall drilling holes and running wires, etc., for the alarm system in my main house, what a hassle that was, and very poorly expandable!
I have also used X10 over the years.
I still use X10 for Christmas lights, candles in the windows, Christmas Tree, outside wreath, etc.
Trivial to turn them on/off, and not mission critical.
The HUGE improvement in X10 was when I put a capacitor across the two phases of the power line in the breaker box in the house.
Now the signal doesn't have to go to the transformer for the neighborhood, couple through the transformer, and make it back to the house in case the signal generator and the signal receiver are on separate phases.
Posted by John_A_Brown: Fri. Sep 28, 2018 - 07:55 AM
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Paulvdh wrote:
Paulvdh wrote:
Stuff like Alexa or Google microphones in my house are completely unacceptable, If I see such a thing when I'm visiting somebody it is probably enough reason to stand up and walk away. No thank you please.
To me such devices are a strong indication of a total disregard of respect for the most basic privacy rules. Those devices are for naive peope who assume those devices only do what they are supposed to do. Just like typing your passwords on a wireless keyboard without andy (decent) encryption. Here in The Netherlands a few years ago there was a big fuss about the Mifare chips. Those were intended for getting some coffe from a dispenser or something, but they ended up in public transportation where the whole system got hacked and collapsed within a year or so of it's introduction. Pacemakers and Insulin pumps without a decent form of encryption is also a disaster waiting to happen.
People who design such stuff are not worthy of the title of engineer (in my opinion) and the would would be better of if they had a job cleaning toilets or something else harmless.
But if you wish you may also call it paranoia.
A bit of paranoia is good for self preservation.
Well I guess I'm a naive person then.
I hold the view that if the Alexa device was listening to everything one says, contrary to the claims of Amazon, it would be fairly easy to demonstrate by examining the WiFi activity. But even if I'm wrong, anyone monitoring the conversations in my house would fairly rapidly fall into a deep sleep.
Posted by John_A_Brown: Tue. Apr 6, 2021 - 12:29 PM
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Just an addendum to my previous posts...
This came up the other day. We have a mesh network to combat thick marlstone walls. I can see the data usage of all connected devices. So I checked the Echo dot data. It's fairly obvious that there is zero activity until the trigger word is spoken. Not that that convinced my conspiracy theory believing friends...They think the makers of the mesh network are in on the scam. The really funny part is that the woman who sparked off the discussion, with one of those "we were discussing so and so, and then we got an advert for it" stories, later remembered that at the time of the conversation, her smart phone had been in the garden room, completely out of earshot.
I would, I think, be harder to demonstrate with Siri or Google assistant, as there is a lot of background communication on smart phones.
The stove reported the other day that it had overheard the fridge informing the sink that the broccoli the human just put in there to wash was beyond its eat by date and more needed to be purchased, so, being an upstanding and caring appliance, the stove's other half, the microwave, dutifully put through an order to the local grocery store ...
Yeah, not something an original point and click interface (Smith & Wesson) couldn't fix in an instant. Mind you, a 10-pound hammer would work just as well.
Wayne
East London
South Africa
No, I am not an Electronics Engineer, just a 54 year old hobbyist/enthusiast
Yes, I am using Proteus to learn more about circuit design and electronics
No, I do not own a licensed copy of Proteus, I am evaluating it legitimately
No, I do not believe in software or intellectual property piracy or theft
The current favourite seems to be Home Assistant. You can run it on a Raspberry Pi and there are lots of things you can do with it beyond basic automation.
It supports a lot of devices but you will find that many things like smart switches and sensors can have their firmware replaced with Tasmota, an open source one that works flawlessly with Home Assistant.
The other big advantage is that everything can be done locally. Well, you will still need some internet access for things like Google Assistant/Alexa, but especially if you use Tasmota then the devices in your house won't be phoning home or reliant on some cloud server that gets turned off in a few years.
Now, there are so many different options for Home Automation that I don’t even know which one to choose. They all look the same to me, and the number of functions depends on the price.
Some of these functions also look unnecessary and redundant, while others seem to be underdeveloped. Or it is just my personal needs. I have chosen Crestron and hope that I will be able to adjust it to my 3-bed house plan. I want to make the lights and the heating app controlled. I also think that when I get some additional wireless gadgets, I will be able to connect them to this network and make it work as a whole. I am no programmer, but the software does not look complicated.
Now, there are so many different options for Home Automation that I don’t even know which one to choose. They all look the same to me, and the number of functions depends on the price
jgmdesign 
js 
clawson 
WayneZA 
