13 ms·

How I automate my home

241 points by zcbenz 7y ago

Terretta 7y ago
Love seeing this for HomeKit. // Enjoy when we see HN thought leadership supporting use of security-minded or privacy-minded mass market products, rather than endless bashing of consumer products aimed at trust.
georgeoliver 7y ago
I'm curious what the state of the home automation installation/service market is these days; I do home renovation professionally and have a programming hobby so this seems like a fun area to get into.
- OJFord 7y ago
  Extremely expensive proprietary kit, obsolete (or requiring expensive upgrade) after a fairly short lifespan. But of course the market for it doesn't care, and can pay for it. I've thought about it similarly to you, but because of the labour cost of installation, it's an expensive job whatever the cost of the hardware/software, so there's not really a reason for installers to use HomeAssistant, OpenHAB, and the like. The difference will be thousands for hardware, on top of tens of thousands for the whole install job.
  - lgunsch 7y ago
    I work with Levven Controls, and what they offer to home builders is smart home controls on every switch and light in the entire home during construction, but for less cost than traditional wiring. There are no wires going to switch boxes, so that labour and material cost savings is enough to offset the cost of smart controls.
    - CrazyStat 7y ago
      I assume no wires means battery powered. How long do the batteries last? Will I need to replace the batteries in all my light switches every couple years?
      - ghaff 7y ago
        They claim 10+ years. https://levven.com/products/consumer-wireless-switch-controls/ https://levven.com/products/consumer-wireless-switch-control... but I don't have any personal experience. I know a couple of wireless X-10 switches I used to own lasted for a very long time. I'm not sure I ever replaced the batteries.
      - Symbiote 7y ago
        I have a similar system in my rented apartment, and there's no issue with batteries after 4 years so far. I wouldn't choose it. Every ten pushes of the switch, nothing happens, and there's no visible / feelable state of the position of a switch.
        lgunsch 7y ago
        The tactile feedback part of the switch is definitely an area we have tagged for improvement.
      - lgunsch 7y ago
        Batteries last 10 - 15 years with regular usage (30 on/offs a day). They use just a regular button cell battery.
        CrazyStat 7y ago
        Thanks! That seems pretty reasonable.
      - MarioMan 7y ago
        Some wireless switches use the force of flipping the switch itself to power the transmission: kinetic light switches. That means you need to press a bit harder, but there’s no need to replace batteries.
  - Havoc 7y ago
    It's all stupid walled gardens from all the usual suspects. The alternative is a self hosted server like haome assistant. That works but requires tinkering
- baseballMan 7y ago
  I think it's at a pretty good state right now. A lot of the things you'll need aren't exactly cheap (in my opinion) but you can definitely automate a lot nowadays. Check out hassio if you're interested in this sorta stuff! https://www.home-assistant.io/hassio/ https://www.home-assistant.io/hassio/
  - ghaff 7y ago
    I guess my perspective is pretty different. I have some basic monitoring but most of the things I could easily automate don't rise anywhere near the top of the list of things I care about. Turning lights on and off is basically something I don't even think about. It's cleaning, organizing, laundry, washing dishes, etc. that I'd really prefer not to do and--major appliances (and/or hiring someone) aside--there's no way to automate all that.
    - baseballMan 7y ago
      Yeah I think that it's more of a hobby for a lot of people than something that significantly improves their daily lives.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
- t34543 7y ago
  It’s lucrative. I work with URC. It’s more about integration and working around bugs/limitations. Programming isn’t so difficult compared to learning quirks of hardware. Knowing what receiver models work with a broken ARC implementation for example is something you learn on the job.
ashleyn 7y ago
As a security-conscious professional, and home automation enthusiast, I'm profoundly disappointed that HA's ultimate commercial breakthrough was accompanied by proprietary vendor lock-in and insecure "cloud" strings attached (looking square at you, Alexa).
- dvtrn 7y ago
  (looking square at you, Alexa). Not Crestron? Commercial home automation largely came on their backs long before Alexa, along with the annoying vendor exclusive peculiarities w/rt interoperability.
  - orev 7y ago
    I think OPs point is the “commercial breakthrough” part. Yes, there have been home automation vendors for decades that have tried the lock-in game, but you really cannot say any of them are a huge commercial success outside of niche areas. It’s only now with devices like Alexa that people have really gotten much more into home automation.
    - dvtrn 7y ago
      but you really cannot say any of them are a huge commercial success outside of niche areas. But this is the exact point I'm making about Crestron, they are absolutely a massive commercial success in not just home automation but automated facilities and media control period. From home to college campuses to professional sports arenas. They are a massive player in that vertical.
      - orev 7y ago
        “Commercial success” in this context is home automation. The only people who have a Crestron system at home are wealthy people. That’s a niche market. When they have the same market penetration as Apple or Google do with phones, then I will agree.
        7y ago
a254613e 7y ago
I'm curious why not use home assistant, and all the integrations that come with it, and then just expose them as homekit devices if you need/want to use homekit? Seems like it would save you a lot of time and custom code.
- KaiserPro 7y ago
  I suspect its because the native ios integration is far superior
- spiderfarmer 7y ago
  Homekit, Siri and Shortcuts offer superior integration with Apple’s ecosystem.
brenden2 7y ago
I really prefer using physical analog light switches that don't require internet access, and don't send my data to big tech cos. Maybe I'm just old fashioned.
- spiderfarmer 7y ago
  Almost none of this stuff requires an internet connection and it goes way further than simply turning your lights on/off.
  - thinkloop 7y ago
    Does Alexa et al work without internet as well? We need a local closed-circuit voice recognition equivalent to be the brains
    - sjwright 7y ago
      Voice recognition isn’t automation, it’s an elaborate remote control. Real automation is having the room lights react to stuff like motion, presence, time of day, ambient brightness, and whether you’re watching TV. Telling Alexa to turn the lights on is more of a Rube Goldberg hack.
      - thinkloop 7y ago
        Does home automation require internet for anything?
        sjwright 7y ago
        Not inherently, no. I'm building out my home automation with mostly ESP8266 based sensors, relays, modules etc. About half of those are NodeMCU, the other half are commercial devices flashed with custom firmware. My biggest "win" so far is taking over thermostat control of the whole house ducted AC. I now have it automatically change which room it prioritises temperature stability based on presence and time of day (when the child goes to bed). My system "relies" on an internet connection for just one thing right now: iPhone push notifications, which are merely informational and mostly for debugging. It also uses the internet to keep my local NTP server in sync. When I'm away from home I can manually check on stuff with a VPN. In future I plan to expose a minimalist HTTPS api for triggering certain actions remotely, like the garage door. But even that's not a big deal right now because I've got a outdoor AP that covers a wide area outside my house—my phone is generally already on wifi as I approach home by foot.
brachi 7y ago
This is pretty cool. After a year experimenting I found that turning things off/on in an if/then fashion doesn't add much value to me. The kind of automation I want is for chores that take time and are not much fun, like laundry. Turns out that doing that is much harder than turning things on/off remotely :). I'm thinking of an assistant where I show (or tell it) what I want, and it just does it (it 'learns'), improving based on feedback from the users. Hard-coding times in the day, for example, could be improved if the assistant knew what would be the ideal time to sleep to me, based on all the data collected for each profile of the people living in that home. It might ask me or suggest me things to do, having more flexibility than static rules.
- ghaff 7y ago
  Even a digital assistant is really hard. For me, I'd love something that could handle a lot of my administrivia like booking travel. But the thing is that, if it's straightforward, it's really not a big deal. And if it's not straightforward, that's because there are a bunch of tradeoffs and decisions that would be hard for all but a good personal human assistant who knows your preferences well. And, of course, that's not even talking about tasks that require moving around and manipulating things in the physical world. TBH, things like auto bill pay and direct deposit save me more time and distraction than any of my (few) home automation devices.
  - jakear 7y ago
    I wonder what a “good personal human assistant” As A Service would look like. A real human that knows all about you (and 100 other clients) and can book appointments, plan vacations, or who knows what.
    - ghaff 7y ago
      100 is probably a big number. Consider that would only get you their services for about 30 minutes/week on average. They're also not going to know you and your preferences very well at that point or be immediately on call. That's certainly far more than an admin at a company covers for anything beyond very cursory attention. Travel agents can still help you a fair bit within their area of expertise. My experience is that for a very long time, most largely just booked flights, hotels, and cruises before the days of self-service. However, there are specialty companies that can help handle a lot of details for certain types of trips. There are also companies that offer virtual assistants but, going by past experiences with not so good admins, I'm a bit skeptical how much value you'd get in general.
pickledish 7y ago
I dunno, I find it pretty hard to get on board the home automation train. I feel like, working in tech, we know better than anyone else how incomplete or unreliable these systems can be, so why introduce it to your home? Why replace your plain old metal kettle with a fancy smart-kettle that you can turn on with your Alexa, but would easily crap out on you if your Internet goes down, or some circuit breaks, or Amazon's API starts being flaky, or you lose electricity in your home? Shouldn't we be a little more worried about introducing this kind of extra complexity into our lives? (^ these aren't meant to be sassy rhetorical questions, I'm genuinely curious if everyone else just views this a different way than I do)
- spiderfarmer 7y ago
  Not GP, but for me it’s a small hobby, I want to do more with computers than just designing, developing and running websites. I use homekit/homebridge to do some basic stuff, switching on/off all the lights, computers, displays and audio gear in my office all at once, pushing just one button. This saves me a minute each time I enter and leave the office and it’s just very convenient This setup has worked flawlessly for a full year now and I don’t expect it to break any time soon.
- wayoutthere 7y ago
  There’s another part that people forget: analog tech is nigh bulletproof. Your $50 smart light switch may last a decade or more, but a $0.50 analog light switch will last a century. The extreme difference in cost often leaves you with something that is worse in the long run. Agree about the complexity as well. Analog circuits don’t have an API that changes every few years — a modern 3-way light switch circuit would be easily understood by an electrician from 1920 (and vice-versa). Good luck doing that with Lutron gear from a decade ago. I probably dropped $5k on home automation stuff. While I could afford it and it was partially a research project, the main lesson I learned was that home automation is generally more trouble than its worth at any price. Sure, it’s great that I can tell Alexa to turn my lights off, but I also have to make sure that the 3 services required to make that work remain talking to each other. I would cumulatively save more time by just walking downstairs to turn the lights off.
ww520 7y ago
Most of the auto-lighting cases can be handled with a motion sensor and/or a timer. I've got two internet capable sockets and I've yet to found a use case for them. The only case I found useful is using an internet capable magnetic sensor on the garage door to notice me when it's opened or closed, so that I have a peace of mind after driving off.
- matharmin 7y ago
  Magnetic sensor for garage door is also still my main use case for home automation (after going to work and leaving it open for the third time). Also added a relay to allow opening/closing remotely, which has been useful a couple of times.
- JshWright 7y ago
  Every night I trigger a ZWave scene via the light switch in my bedroom when I head to bed. That scene shuts off all the lights, makes sure the doors (both "human" and garage) are closed and locked, sets the thermostat back, etc. In the morning I trigger a different scene that brings the thermostat back to "daytime" levels, turns on a few lights, etc. There are a couple lights that are set up to come on automatically at sunset, but only if either my wife or I are home (there's a bit of an issue there in that the house can still be occupied when we're away if the kids are with a sitter, but the lights are just a pleasant convenience). I've been considering adding an automation to gradually turn on the lights in the kids rooms at an appropriate on school mornings. This could potentially be done with a timer built into a smart bulb, but at that point it would just be another app I'd have to use to manage it... easier to just do it via Home Assistant. I also use ZWave smoke detectors (they just function as normal "dumb" smoke detectors with a local alarm), which trigger all the lights in the house to 100% if smoke or carbon monoxide is detected (unless it's the one in the kitchen...). There are plenty more (I added a wifi enabled microcontroller to my "dumb" doorbell and do some fun stuff with that, etc), but those are most of the light based automations.
  - ww520 7y ago
    That's a good use case with ZWave. Kudos for setting it up. Still for the lighting case, an occupancy sensing light switch with timed shutoff could take care of most usage. Actually lots of jurisdictions have updated their building code in recent years to require occupancy sensing light switch to save energy. When I arm the perimeter alarm of the alarm system at night, it would check to make sure all the doors and windows are closed. Most alarm systems support perimeter alarm. Most thermostats can run on a schedule to adjust the temperature. Nest and the likes can do occupancy check. Of course they won't support the exotic uses but most of the basic needs are met.
Havoc 7y ago
The ios app for home assistant works just fine.
- robbiet480 7y ago
  Thanks! :-)
stevekemp 7y ago
That's a pretty nice writeup, but I suspect some of the use-cases could be solved more easily with off-the-shelf parts. For example I bought a couple of small LED-light boxes, they're about the size of a match-box and contain 5 LED lights and a motion sensor. I've stuck a couple inside cupboards, and low down on the walls of our bathroom. When it is dark and you walk past they come on for 30-seconds or so. Additional movement keeps them on. Getting up to use the toilet in the night is much nicer with these low-level lights than turning on the proper lights and killing your night vision. (No lights would be fine 90% of the time, but children's toys get everywhere!)
- originalvichy 7y ago
  Can you share the LED manufacturer?
  - stevekemp 7y ago
    They're random un-branded ones I picked up from a local hardware store, and look somewhat similar to this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/blah/dp/B01N6EUXPF/ https://www.amazon.co.uk/blah/dp/B01N6EUXPF/ I just used some double-sided tape to stick them to the wall, about 1 foot off the ground, so I can get them off easily when I need to replace their batteries.
- netsharc 7y ago
  > Additional movement keeps them on. So it doesn't time out after those 30 seconds and you have to frantically wave your arms to get them to switch back on? As the sibling commenter said, what's the brand?
  - stevekemp 7y ago
    Linked a similar item below, these were just random finds at a local hardware store. They're low enough on my walls that I've never really had to jump around to keep them alive though. I guess if you did literally walk out, then stand still for 30 seconds or so they would time out on you. If you need proper light then you can use one, these are just little helpers if you need to get out of bed to deal with a child overnight, use the toilet, or similar. In practice they work really well.
tamaharbor 7y ago
I have automated a nightlight via Alexa. Needless to say, she will not be driving my car anytime soon.
novok 7y ago
For the author: home assistant has had a native homekit plugin for a while, so you could move to a %100 home assistant setup if your devices are not homekit native.
jonstewart 7y ago
Turning lights off and on and adjusting speaker volume in most homes are such simple things, it's hard to get excited about automating them. The home automation tasks I'd like to see: - cleaning gutters - putting dishes away - sorting mail - taking garbage cans down to the street - unboxing packages and breaking down boxes - folding laundry These drudgeries take time. They're obviously not as amenable to automation as simple controls on existing electronics, but, in contrast to automated lighting, they'd be worth the investment to solve.
- ojkelly 7y ago
  Automating lights doesn’t seem super exciting, but as someone whose done it - it’s been a surprising quality of life improvement. The colours are cool. But the real power I’ve found is that every light is dimmable. It doesn’t matter if you have a dimmer installed, which is not something you can usually do in a rental. So, my lights automatically stay at the ideal level of brightness for the time of day. Later into the evening they only put out between 1-10%, and in some cases are set to only red. Compared to living with lights that are either 0 or 100%, having that range in between has made a dimly lit house possible when it makes sense. And that’s been so much more pleasant I’m never going back.
  - swsieber 7y ago
    So, are you using smart lightbulbs instead of smart lights?
    - swsieber 7y ago
      I mean, I'm asking because it's not entirely obvious to me, and smart light switches would be my goto, but you mention color. I'm not sure why my question was a bad one.
      - ojkelly 7y ago
        Smart light bulbs. The value comes is automating more than just on off, though I have some non light things I automate with switches. Smart bulbs allow fallback with norma switches, and don’t require modifications. Just swapping of a bulb.
raintrees 7y ago
I would enjoy seeing a BOM for the hardware. I am looking for PoE circuit designs to roll my own.
gswdh 7y ago
Is anyone else conflicted by the desire for something better than a light switch in the home and the idea of bringing more tech into home. The negative of tech in the home being compromising privacy?
- beatgammit 7y ago
  Yup, which is why I'm interested in privacy-oriented solutions like HomeAssistant. I think the main things I want are: - control temperature remotely (e.g. set furnace to turn on when I'm coming home from a trip) - turn on/off power outlets to save electricity from "vampire" devices - check for open doors/windows - adjust airflow to make sure rooms are heated sufficiently None of this requires sending data outside my home, yet the main smart home devices do. Also, I'm worried about security, and I don't trust these devices to update firmware appropriately. So, until I get time to do it myself, I just do without.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
dfc 7y ago
The most intriguing feature for me was the automatic curtains. Does anyone have any experience with them? Suggested vendors?
lurquer 7y ago
I just have my kids do stuff. "Water the yard!" "Turn off that light!" "Change the channel!" "Go get the mail!" Simple. Fairly reliable. Best DIY project the wife and I have ever done.
- kingosticks 7y ago
  Really, really expensive solution.
  - jlgaddis 7y ago
    Not only that, you're forced to support it for (at least) 18 years after the last version is released. Requires a lot of maintenance the first few years especially!
    - Wistar 7y ago
      ... with nearly continuous updates.
      - kohtatsu 7y ago
        Some not by you!
    - lurquer 7y ago
      I suppose. The beauty of it is, though, that when they get old enough, and Christmas rolls around, one of them will inevitably buy you an Amazon Echo. And then you can issue them your last command: "Set this thing up for us!"
  - joe_the_user 7y ago
    I don't have kids but it seems obvious people don't have kids to do house and yard work for themselves. Kids are there 'cause you wanted kids. Get kids to do any drudgery and the result is "co-production"; You get home automation and kids for the price of kids.
  - agumonkey 7y ago
StavrosK 7y ago
Whenever I read any post about home automation, it might as well be talking about a completely different world from mine. I've automated a lot of my house using pretty much just FOSS solutions. The Sonoff series of switches/devices is fantastic and ESP8266-based, so you can flash it with any firmware you want[1]. I wrote a small ad-hoc server to orchestrate things like "when there's motion in that room and it's dark, turn on that lamp", but you can just use Home Assistant. I have a WiFi network that has no internet access where all these go, with access to a local server running an autoupdater[2] so I can just put the new firmware in a specific directory and all my devices autoupdate. All of my devices are FOSS so I know they aren't talking to a mothership, and even if they tried to, they can't get on the internet. I do have an Alexa, which I should get rid of, since it's pretty much barely only useful for playing music. This way is much more secure, companies can't spy on your house, and you're supporting user freedom. [1]: https://github.com/xoseperez/espurna https://github.com/xoseperez/espurna [2]: https://gitlab.com/stavros/espota-server https://gitlab.com/stavros/espota-server
- alexktz 7y ago
  Not only are you supporting user freedom, you're also not at the mercy of a business model designed around planned obsolescence and selling your data. Tuya-convert is a wonderful project and has liberated about a dozen devices on my network so that they will run Tasmota until the day they die.
- JshWright 7y ago
  I use ESP's in some cases (doorbell, garage doors, etc), but when it comes to lighting I've stopped bothering with devices I have to flash (like the Sonoff) and now I just use the TP-Link Kasa products.
  - StavrosK 7y ago
    What do you do about the opaque firmware that talks to wherever and has who knows what vulnerabilities?
    - 7y ago
twoflower9 7y ago
With the wardrobe light I'd prefer something simple like a relay that closes the circuit when the door is closed. Invert that signal with a transistor and buddabing buddaboom. Seems like more can go wrong once you start adding programming and iPhone apps and all this sort of stuff.
- escardin 7y ago
  That's already too complicated. You want a normally closed switch (i.e. on when not pressed). When the door is closed, it's pressed, and the light is off. When the door is open, the light is on.
anotherevan 7y ago
If you are interested in DIY home automation, you should definitely follow Jon Oxer at https://www.superhouse.tv/ https://www.superhouse.tv/ One of his biggest guiding principles which I strongly share is not needing an Internet connection for your house to work - which rules out most commercial home automation stuff that needs to talk back to home base. He uses a lot of arduino and sonoff more recently. Also runs a lot of stuff with power over ethernet. All interesting stuff. Lately he has been working a lot on understanding assistive technology hardware (e.g. wheelchair controller joysticks) and creating additional open hardware and software that can interface with them. Well worth going back through his many years of material if you want to get into this sort of thing.
anotherevan 7y ago
My home automation efforts are pretty modest so far, but address definite pain points in my house. Not really automated at all, but there is a LED in the ceiling near the front door that flashes when the garage door is open[1]. Seeing that light when coming down the hall has saved us heaps of times from leaving the garage door open all night. I also have laser pointers hanging from the ceiling in the garage that are positioned so when the laser dot reaches the dash you know the car is in far enough. Another not quite automated addition is using a Sonoff wifi touch light switch[2] in the lounge room[3]. Reflashed with Tasmota it allows us to easily turn the overhead lights on and off from the same remote control for the TV, Amp and Kodi media player. (Works via a script in Kodi.) Probably the handiest is using an ultrasonic distance sensor as a presence sensor to tell the computer when I’m in front of it or not[5]. If music is playing when I walk away from the computer, it pauses then resumes when I come back. Also wakes sleeping screens when I return. Just recently I wrote a little script that displays the number of minutes I've been sitting at the computer in the corner of the screen. At thirty minutes it turns from green to red and plays, "Move it! Move it!" sound, which it'll keep doing every five minutes until I get up and leave the computer for a little bit. (Although I think I'm going to have to change the sound to something that doesn't startle the hell out of me every time.) Also have an analogue modem on the phone line that lets me initiate calls from my command line by just typing something like, "call dad" and it looks up contact information in my centralised contacts list. It also cross-references incoming caller ID info with the contact list and displays caller info on my computer screen and the Kodi media player[6]. If I were to really get into more home automation in earnest, I think being able to control the curtains in the house would be ahead of controlling lights. Hate wandering around the house opening and closing them all. Two things I dislike about current trends in home automation are: 1) The requirement for an active Internet connection for a lot of your stuff to work. I want it self contained to the house and not sending information out into the world. 2) The need to have your phone near to you to use half the stuff. E.g., with the lounge room light switch mentioned above I can turn the light on or off at the switch (as well as the remote). I don't have to go find my phone and swipe back and forth five times just to toggle it. One concept I find very interesting from the late 90's was the adaptive house[7]. It would learn things like your hot water usage, preferred room temperature and ambient light levels and used neural network reinforcement learning to optimise. I wonder how far this could be taken now with advances in machine learning. [1] https://www.michevan.id.au/posts/garage-door-sensor/ https://www.michevan.id.au/posts/garage-door-sensor/ [2] https://www.itead.cc/sonoff-touch.html https://www.itead.cc/sonoff-touch.html [3] Aside: To my mind, in most cases it seems to make more sense to automate the switch, than automate the light bulb itself. Changing a light bulb doesn't need an electrician though, I guess. [4] https://github.com/arendst/Tasmota https://github.com/arendst/Tasmota [5] https://www.michevan.id.au/posts/are-you-there/ https://www.michevan.id.au/posts/are-you-there/ [6] http://ncid.sourceforge.net/ http://ncid.sourceforge.net/ [7] https://www.cs.colorado.edu/~mozer/index.php?dir=/Research/Projects/Adaptive%20house/ https://www.cs.colorado.edu/~mozer/index.php?dir=/Research/P...
aaron695 7y ago
How to automate a home over a 100 years - Electricity (fire automation) Washing machine Vacuum Microwave/Rice cooker Dishwasher ----------------------------------------- Turing lights on and off with a super computer? [Edit: The OPs post is interesting and cool as a hacker, it's just the actual next big thing in automation that will change lives will be something boring like an electric mop or duster. And if you want to automate your life, only having dishwasher safe plates is a good first step]
twblalock 7y ago
In the past year I have probably spent no more than a couple of minutes thinking about my light bulbs, my smoke alarms, my door locks, etc. They just work. It seems like home automation has a lot of advantages but it would also require me to spend time on it (which products to buy, how to secure them, dealing with malfunctions, upgrades, batteries...), which probably amounts to an overall net loss of quality of life.
- hnuser123456 7y ago
  I live in an apartment, so I can't install ceiling lights. I'd have to hit ~8 switches on walls and lamps to fully illuminate my place. If I had smart bulbs, I could use one switch, or a voice command. I guess this isn't a problem if you already have a house and are free to wire it up intelligently to begin with.
  - fbernier 7y ago
    Precisely. I recently stripped out my apartment (that I own) completely and redoing the electrical wiring and I have zero interest in installing smart stuff. I just have 4 dimming switches all next to each other that control all the zones, at both ends of the apartment. I can't understand how home automation would improve my quality of life if you factor in the added complexity.
    - rhinoceraptor 7y ago
      It's nice to have an automation to turn off all the lights for bedtime when you live with people who routinely leave the basement lights on, for example.
    - Wheaties466 7y ago
      One of the nice things I have done, is I have the porch lights come on at sunset. If I let my dog out I generally have to walk all the way to the other end of the house to turn this light on then walk back to let him out. Then before I go to bed I turn it off. After I installed a smart light switch, It comes on automatically and all the lights in my house turn off with a simple voice command.
hello_asdf 7y ago
For the author: any tips or recommendations for electric curtains? I'd love to automate that.
manuelmagic 7y ago
I'm surprised nobody mentioned Shelly smart switches since many people here are worried about manufacturer cloud dependency, obsolescence and security. I installed a bunch of Shelly 1 smart switches (https://shelly.cloud/shelly1-open-source/ https://shelly.cloud/shelly1-open-source/), they work via WiFi in LAN (even with the manufacturer's App) or Cloud (it's optional). There is the possibility to manage them via REST APIs, all the smart switches serve a web page that can be reached via browser. If you connect them to the Cloud you can optionally add Alexa or Google Home on top. They do not support HomeKit natively[1] nor IFTT. I choose this solution because I wanted to automate part of my appliances and lights in my house without losing the possibility to use the analog wall switches that I already have installed: Philips Hue lights are nice but if you switch them off via the analog switch in the wall the App or your favorite voice assistant can't work anymore. Furthermore, they are very expensive; at lest 20€ for a single 8W bulb (no other size available), while a single Shelly 1 costs half the price. [1] but from the original link of the thread I found this https://www.npmjs.com/package/@kacepe/homebridge-shelly https://www.npmjs.com/package/@kacepe/homebridge-shelly
yitchelle 7y ago
I don't think that ROI on home automation is positive, at least not for me. While the automations mentioned are nice for the author, it seems to be too much effort for too little gains. For me, home automation suppose to free up your time for other activities. Washing the dishes or clothes are great automation. I would look to other automation like changing the bed sheets, folding clothes, cooking the evening meals, grocery shopping etc. Let's talk again when these items become main stream.
- intpx 7y ago
  i have adhd and early in the morning and late at night (when my meds have worn off) my brain just doesn't work right. home automation has been a major game-changer for keeping me on schedule and not getting engrossed in something and looking up only to realize i need to be getting up for work in 2 hours. I have a whole bunch of time based and triggered automations for all sorts of things.The time I save is not the extra 14 seconds to shutdown the house, its the time I save keeping on a schedule so I can actually do the things I plan to do rather than getting distracted and snapping out of it at 4AM to find that I have taken apart my dishwasher.
  - yitchelle 7y ago
    That is great that the ROI is significant higher for you. Can you share the specifics of a couple of your automations? I am genuinely curious.

241 points by zcbenz 7y ago

Love seeing this for HomeKit. // Enjoy when we see HN thought leadership supporting use of security-minded or privacy-minded mass market products, rather than endless bashing of consumer products aimed at trust.

georgeoliver 7y ago

I'm curious what the state of the home automation installation/service market is these days; I do home renovation professionally and have a programming hobby so this seems like a fun area to get into.

OJFord 7y ago
Extremely expensive proprietary kit, obsolete (or requiring expensive upgrade) after a fairly short lifespan. But of course the market for it doesn't care, and can pay for it. I've thought about it similarly to you, but because of the labour cost of installation, it's an expensive job whatever the cost of the hardware/software, so there's not really a reason for installers to use HomeAssistant, OpenHAB, and the like. The difference will be thousands for hardware, on top of tens of thousands for the whole install job.
- lgunsch 7y ago
  I work with Levven Controls, and what they offer to home builders is smart home controls on every switch and light in the entire home during construction, but for less cost than traditional wiring. There are no wires going to switch boxes, so that labour and material cost savings is enough to offset the cost of smart controls.
  - CrazyStat 7y ago
    I assume no wires means battery powered. How long do the batteries last? Will I need to replace the batteries in all my light switches every couple years?
    - ghaff 7y ago
      They claim 10+ years. https://levven.com/products/consumer-wireless-switch-controls/ https://levven.com/products/consumer-wireless-switch-control... but I don't have any personal experience. I know a couple of wireless X-10 switches I used to own lasted for a very long time. I'm not sure I ever replaced the batteries.
    - Symbiote 7y ago
      I have a similar system in my rented apartment, and there's no issue with batteries after 4 years so far. I wouldn't choose it. Every ten pushes of the switch, nothing happens, and there's no visible / feelable state of the position of a switch.
      - lgunsch 7y ago
        The tactile feedback part of the switch is definitely an area we have tagged for improvement.
    - lgunsch 7y ago
      Batteries last 10 - 15 years with regular usage (30 on/offs a day). They use just a regular button cell battery.
      - CrazyStat 7y ago
        Thanks! That seems pretty reasonable.
    - MarioMan 7y ago
      Some wireless switches use the force of flipping the switch itself to power the transmission: kinetic light switches. That means you need to press a bit harder, but there’s no need to replace batteries.
- Havoc 7y ago
  It's all stupid walled gardens from all the usual suspects. The alternative is a self hosted server like haome assistant. That works but requires tinkering
baseballMan 7y ago
I think it's at a pretty good state right now. A lot of the things you'll need aren't exactly cheap (in my opinion) but you can definitely automate a lot nowadays. Check out hassio if you're interested in this sorta stuff! https://www.home-assistant.io/hassio/ https://www.home-assistant.io/hassio/
- ghaff 7y ago
  I guess my perspective is pretty different. I have some basic monitoring but most of the things I could easily automate don't rise anywhere near the top of the list of things I care about. Turning lights on and off is basically something I don't even think about. It's cleaning, organizing, laundry, washing dishes, etc. that I'd really prefer not to do and--major appliances (and/or hiring someone) aside--there's no way to automate all that.
  - baseballMan 7y ago
    Yeah I think that it's more of a hobby for a lot of people than something that significantly improves their daily lives.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
t34543 7y ago
It’s lucrative. I work with URC. It’s more about integration and working around bugs/limitations. Programming isn’t so difficult compared to learning quirks of hardware. Knowing what receiver models work with a broken ARC implementation for example is something you learn on the job.

ashleyn 7y ago

As a security-conscious professional, and home automation enthusiast, I'm profoundly disappointed that HA's ultimate commercial breakthrough was accompanied by proprietary vendor lock-in and insecure "cloud" strings attached (looking square at you, Alexa).

dvtrn 7y ago
(looking square at you, Alexa). Not Crestron? Commercial home automation largely came on their backs long before Alexa, along with the annoying vendor exclusive peculiarities w/rt interoperability.
- orev 7y ago
  I think OPs point is the “commercial breakthrough” part. Yes, there have been home automation vendors for decades that have tried the lock-in game, but you really cannot say any of them are a huge commercial success outside of niche areas. It’s only now with devices like Alexa that people have really gotten much more into home automation.
  - dvtrn 7y ago
    but you really cannot say any of them are a huge commercial success outside of niche areas. But this is the exact point I'm making about Crestron, they are absolutely a massive commercial success in not just home automation but automated facilities and media control period. From home to college campuses to professional sports arenas. They are a massive player in that vertical.
    - orev 7y ago
      “Commercial success” in this context is home automation. The only people who have a Crestron system at home are wealthy people. That’s a niche market. When they have the same market penetration as Apple or Google do with phones, then I will agree.
      - 7y ago

a254613e 7y ago

I'm curious why not use home assistant, and all the integrations that come with it, and then just expose them as homekit devices if you need/want to use homekit? Seems like it would save you a lot of time and custom code.

KaiserPro 7y ago
I suspect its because the native ios integration is far superior
spiderfarmer 7y ago
Homekit, Siri and Shortcuts offer superior integration with Apple’s ecosystem.

brenden2 7y ago

I really prefer using physical analog light switches that don't require internet access, and don't send my data to big tech cos. Maybe I'm just old fashioned.

spiderfarmer 7y ago
Almost none of this stuff requires an internet connection and it goes way further than simply turning your lights on/off.
- thinkloop 7y ago
  Does Alexa et al work without internet as well? We need a local closed-circuit voice recognition equivalent to be the brains
  - sjwright 7y ago
    Voice recognition isn’t automation, it’s an elaborate remote control. Real automation is having the room lights react to stuff like motion, presence, time of day, ambient brightness, and whether you’re watching TV. Telling Alexa to turn the lights on is more of a Rube Goldberg hack.
    - thinkloop 7y ago
      Does home automation require internet for anything?
      - sjwright 7y ago
        Not inherently, no. I'm building out my home automation with mostly ESP8266 based sensors, relays, modules etc. About half of those are NodeMCU, the other half are commercial devices flashed with custom firmware. My biggest "win" so far is taking over thermostat control of the whole house ducted AC. I now have it automatically change which room it prioritises temperature stability based on presence and time of day (when the child goes to bed). My system "relies" on an internet connection for just one thing right now: iPhone push notifications, which are merely informational and mostly for debugging. It also uses the internet to keep my local NTP server in sync. When I'm away from home I can manually check on stuff with a VPN. In future I plan to expose a minimalist HTTPS api for triggering certain actions remotely, like the garage door. But even that's not a big deal right now because I've got a outdoor AP that covers a wide area outside my house—my phone is generally already on wifi as I approach home by foot.

brachi 7y ago

This is pretty cool. After a year experimenting I found that turning things off/on in an if/then fashion doesn't add much value to me. The kind of automation I want is for chores that take time and are not much fun, like laundry. Turns out that doing that is much harder than turning things on/off remotely :). I'm thinking of an assistant where I show (or tell it) what I want, and it just does it (it 'learns'), improving based on feedback from the users. Hard-coding times in the day, for example, could be improved if the assistant knew what would be the ideal time to sleep to me, based on all the data collected for each profile of the people living in that home. It might ask me or suggest me things to do, having more flexibility than static rules.

ghaff 7y ago
Even a digital assistant is really hard. For me, I'd love something that could handle a lot of my administrivia like booking travel. But the thing is that, if it's straightforward, it's really not a big deal. And if it's not straightforward, that's because there are a bunch of tradeoffs and decisions that would be hard for all but a good personal human assistant who knows your preferences well. And, of course, that's not even talking about tasks that require moving around and manipulating things in the physical world. TBH, things like auto bill pay and direct deposit save me more time and distraction than any of my (few) home automation devices.
- jakear 7y ago
  I wonder what a “good personal human assistant” As A Service would look like. A real human that knows all about you (and 100 other clients) and can book appointments, plan vacations, or who knows what.
  - ghaff 7y ago
    100 is probably a big number. Consider that would only get you their services for about 30 minutes/week on average. They're also not going to know you and your preferences very well at that point or be immediately on call. That's certainly far more than an admin at a company covers for anything beyond very cursory attention. Travel agents can still help you a fair bit within their area of expertise. My experience is that for a very long time, most largely just booked flights, hotels, and cruises before the days of self-service. However, there are specialty companies that can help handle a lot of details for certain types of trips. There are also companies that offer virtual assistants but, going by past experiences with not so good admins, I'm a bit skeptical how much value you'd get in general.

pickledish 7y ago

I dunno, I find it pretty hard to get on board the home automation train. I feel like, working in tech, we know better than anyone else how incomplete or unreliable these systems can be, so why introduce it to your home? Why replace your plain old metal kettle with a fancy smart-kettle that you can turn on with your Alexa, but would easily crap out on you if your Internet goes down, or some circuit breaks, or Amazon's API starts being flaky, or you lose electricity in your home? Shouldn't we be a little more worried about introducing this kind of extra complexity into our lives? (^ these aren't meant to be sassy rhetorical questions, I'm genuinely curious if everyone else just views this a different way than I do)

spiderfarmer 7y ago
Not GP, but for me it’s a small hobby, I want to do more with computers than just designing, developing and running websites. I use homekit/homebridge to do some basic stuff, switching on/off all the lights, computers, displays and audio gear in my office all at once, pushing just one button. This saves me a minute each time I enter and leave the office and it’s just very convenient This setup has worked flawlessly for a full year now and I don’t expect it to break any time soon.
wayoutthere 7y ago
There’s another part that people forget: analog tech is nigh bulletproof. Your $50 smart light switch may last a decade or more, but a $0.50 analog light switch will last a century. The extreme difference in cost often leaves you with something that is worse in the long run. Agree about the complexity as well. Analog circuits don’t have an API that changes every few years — a modern 3-way light switch circuit would be easily understood by an electrician from 1920 (and vice-versa). Good luck doing that with Lutron gear from a decade ago. I probably dropped $5k on home automation stuff. While I could afford it and it was partially a research project, the main lesson I learned was that home automation is generally more trouble than its worth at any price. Sure, it’s great that I can tell Alexa to turn my lights off, but I also have to make sure that the 3 services required to make that work remain talking to each other. I would cumulatively save more time by just walking downstairs to turn the lights off.

ww520 7y ago

Most of the auto-lighting cases can be handled with a motion sensor and/or a timer. I've got two internet capable sockets and I've yet to found a use case for them. The only case I found useful is using an internet capable magnetic sensor on the garage door to notice me when it's opened or closed, so that I have a peace of mind after driving off.

matharmin 7y ago
Magnetic sensor for garage door is also still my main use case for home automation (after going to work and leaving it open for the third time). Also added a relay to allow opening/closing remotely, which has been useful a couple of times.
JshWright 7y ago
Every night I trigger a ZWave scene via the light switch in my bedroom when I head to bed. That scene shuts off all the lights, makes sure the doors (both "human" and garage) are closed and locked, sets the thermostat back, etc. In the morning I trigger a different scene that brings the thermostat back to "daytime" levels, turns on a few lights, etc. There are a couple lights that are set up to come on automatically at sunset, but only if either my wife or I are home (there's a bit of an issue there in that the house can still be occupied when we're away if the kids are with a sitter, but the lights are just a pleasant convenience). I've been considering adding an automation to gradually turn on the lights in the kids rooms at an appropriate on school mornings. This could potentially be done with a timer built into a smart bulb, but at that point it would just be another app I'd have to use to manage it... easier to just do it via Home Assistant. I also use ZWave smoke detectors (they just function as normal "dumb" smoke detectors with a local alarm), which trigger all the lights in the house to 100% if smoke or carbon monoxide is detected (unless it's the one in the kitchen...). There are plenty more (I added a wifi enabled microcontroller to my "dumb" doorbell and do some fun stuff with that, etc), but those are most of the light based automations.
- ww520 7y ago
  That's a good use case with ZWave. Kudos for setting it up. Still for the lighting case, an occupancy sensing light switch with timed shutoff could take care of most usage. Actually lots of jurisdictions have updated their building code in recent years to require occupancy sensing light switch to save energy. When I arm the perimeter alarm of the alarm system at night, it would check to make sure all the doors and windows are closed. Most alarm systems support perimeter alarm. Most thermostats can run on a schedule to adjust the temperature. Nest and the likes can do occupancy check. Of course they won't support the exotic uses but most of the basic needs are met.

Havoc 7y ago

The ios app for home assistant works just fine.

robbiet480 7y ago
Thanks! :-)

stevekemp 7y ago

That's a pretty nice writeup, but I suspect some of the use-cases could be solved more easily with off-the-shelf parts. For example I bought a couple of small LED-light boxes, they're about the size of a match-box and contain 5 LED lights and a motion sensor. I've stuck a couple inside cupboards, and low down on the walls of our bathroom. When it is dark and you walk past they come on for 30-seconds or so. Additional movement keeps them on. Getting up to use the toilet in the night is much nicer with these low-level lights than turning on the proper lights and killing your night vision. (No lights would be fine 90% of the time, but children's toys get everywhere!)

originalvichy 7y ago
Can you share the LED manufacturer?
- stevekemp 7y ago
  They're random un-branded ones I picked up from a local hardware store, and look somewhat similar to this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/blah/dp/B01N6EUXPF/ https://www.amazon.co.uk/blah/dp/B01N6EUXPF/ I just used some double-sided tape to stick them to the wall, about 1 foot off the ground, so I can get them off easily when I need to replace their batteries.
netsharc 7y ago
> Additional movement keeps them on. So it doesn't time out after those 30 seconds and you have to frantically wave your arms to get them to switch back on? As the sibling commenter said, what's the brand?
- stevekemp 7y ago
  Linked a similar item below, these were just random finds at a local hardware store. They're low enough on my walls that I've never really had to jump around to keep them alive though. I guess if you did literally walk out, then stand still for 30 seconds or so they would time out on you. If you need proper light then you can use one, these are just little helpers if you need to get out of bed to deal with a child overnight, use the toilet, or similar. In practice they work really well.

tamaharbor 7y ago

I have automated a nightlight via Alexa. Needless to say, she will not be driving my car anytime soon.

novok 7y ago

For the author: home assistant has had a native homekit plugin for a while, so you could move to a %100 home assistant setup if your devices are not homekit native.

jonstewart 7y ago

Turning lights off and on and adjusting speaker volume in most homes are such simple things, it's hard to get excited about automating them. The home automation tasks I'd like to see: - cleaning gutters - putting dishes away - sorting mail - taking garbage cans down to the street - unboxing packages and breaking down boxes - folding laundry These drudgeries take time. They're obviously not as amenable to automation as simple controls on existing electronics, but, in contrast to automated lighting, they'd be worth the investment to solve.

ojkelly 7y ago
Automating lights doesn’t seem super exciting, but as someone whose done it - it’s been a surprising quality of life improvement. The colours are cool. But the real power I’ve found is that every light is dimmable. It doesn’t matter if you have a dimmer installed, which is not something you can usually do in a rental. So, my lights automatically stay at the ideal level of brightness for the time of day. Later into the evening they only put out between 1-10%, and in some cases are set to only red. Compared to living with lights that are either 0 or 100%, having that range in between has made a dimly lit house possible when it makes sense. And that’s been so much more pleasant I’m never going back.
- swsieber 7y ago
  So, are you using smart lightbulbs instead of smart lights?
  - swsieber 7y ago
    I mean, I'm asking because it's not entirely obvious to me, and smart light switches would be my goto, but you mention color. I'm not sure why my question was a bad one.
    - ojkelly 7y ago
      Smart light bulbs. The value comes is automating more than just on off, though I have some non light things I automate with switches. Smart bulbs allow fallback with norma switches, and don’t require modifications. Just swapping of a bulb.

raintrees 7y ago

I would enjoy seeing a BOM for the hardware. I am looking for PoE circuit designs to roll my own.

gswdh 7y ago

Is anyone else conflicted by the desire for something better than a light switch in the home and the idea of bringing more tech into home. The negative of tech in the home being compromising privacy?

beatgammit 7y ago
Yup, which is why I'm interested in privacy-oriented solutions like HomeAssistant. I think the main things I want are: - control temperature remotely (e.g. set furnace to turn on when I'm coming home from a trip) - turn on/off power outlets to save electricity from "vampire" devices - check for open doors/windows - adjust airflow to make sure rooms are heated sufficiently None of this requires sending data outside my home, yet the main smart home devices do. Also, I'm worried about security, and I don't trust these devices to update firmware appropriately. So, until I get time to do it myself, I just do without.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

dfc 7y ago

The most intriguing feature for me was the automatic curtains. Does anyone have any experience with them? Suggested vendors?

lurquer 7y ago

I just have my kids do stuff. "Water the yard!" "Turn off that light!" "Change the channel!" "Go get the mail!" Simple. Fairly reliable. Best DIY project the wife and I have ever done.

kingosticks 7y ago
Really, really expensive solution.
- jlgaddis 7y ago
  Not only that, you're forced to support it for (at least) 18 years after the last version is released. Requires a lot of maintenance the first few years especially!
  - Wistar 7y ago
    ... with nearly continuous updates.
    - kohtatsu 7y ago
      Some not by you!
  - lurquer 7y ago
    I suppose. The beauty of it is, though, that when they get old enough, and Christmas rolls around, one of them will inevitably buy you an Amazon Echo. And then you can issue them your last command: "Set this thing up for us!"
- joe_the_user 7y ago
  I don't have kids but it seems obvious people don't have kids to do house and yard work for themselves. Kids are there 'cause you wanted kids. Get kids to do any drudgery and the result is "co-production"; You get home automation and kids for the price of kids.
- agumonkey 7y ago

StavrosK 7y ago

Whenever I read any post about home automation, it might as well be talking about a completely different world from mine. I've automated a lot of my house using pretty much just FOSS solutions. The Sonoff series of switches/devices is fantastic and ESP8266-based, so you can flash it with any firmware you want[1]. I wrote a small ad-hoc server to orchestrate things like "when there's motion in that room and it's dark, turn on that lamp", but you can just use Home Assistant. I have a WiFi network that has no internet access where all these go, with access to a local server running an autoupdater[2] so I can just put the new firmware in a specific directory and all my devices autoupdate. All of my devices are FOSS so I know they aren't talking to a mothership, and even if they tried to, they can't get on the internet. I do have an Alexa, which I should get rid of, since it's pretty much barely only useful for playing music. This way is much more secure, companies can't spy on your house, and you're supporting user freedom. [1]: https://github.com/xoseperez/espurna https://github.com/xoseperez/espurna [2]: https://gitlab.com/stavros/espota-server https://gitlab.com/stavros/espota-server

alexktz 7y ago
Not only are you supporting user freedom, you're also not at the mercy of a business model designed around planned obsolescence and selling your data. Tuya-convert is a wonderful project and has liberated about a dozen devices on my network so that they will run Tasmota until the day they die.
JshWright 7y ago
I use ESP's in some cases (doorbell, garage doors, etc), but when it comes to lighting I've stopped bothering with devices I have to flash (like the Sonoff) and now I just use the TP-Link Kasa products.
- StavrosK 7y ago
  What do you do about the opaque firmware that talks to wherever and has who knows what vulnerabilities?
  - 7y ago

twoflower9 7y ago

With the wardrobe light I'd prefer something simple like a relay that closes the circuit when the door is closed. Invert that signal with a transistor and buddabing buddaboom. Seems like more can go wrong once you start adding programming and iPhone apps and all this sort of stuff.

escardin 7y ago
That's already too complicated. You want a normally closed switch (i.e. on when not pressed). When the door is closed, it's pressed, and the light is off. When the door is open, the light is on.

anotherevan 7y ago

If you are interested in DIY home automation, you should definitely follow Jon Oxer at https://www.superhouse.tv/ https://www.superhouse.tv/ One of his biggest guiding principles which I strongly share is not needing an Internet connection for your house to work - which rules out most commercial home automation stuff that needs to talk back to home base. He uses a lot of arduino and sonoff more recently. Also runs a lot of stuff with power over ethernet. All interesting stuff. Lately he has been working a lot on understanding assistive technology hardware (e.g. wheelchair controller joysticks) and creating additional open hardware and software that can interface with them. Well worth going back through his many years of material if you want to get into this sort of thing.

anotherevan 7y ago

My home automation efforts are pretty modest so far, but address definite pain points in my house. Not really automated at all, but there is a LED in the ceiling near the front door that flashes when the garage door is open[1]. Seeing that light when coming down the hall has saved us heaps of times from leaving the garage door open all night. I also have laser pointers hanging from the ceiling in the garage that are positioned so when the laser dot reaches the dash you know the car is in far enough. Another not quite automated addition is using a Sonoff wifi touch light switch[2] in the lounge room[3]. Reflashed with Tasmota it allows us to easily turn the overhead lights on and off from the same remote control for the TV, Amp and Kodi media player. (Works via a script in Kodi.) Probably the handiest is using an ultrasonic distance sensor as a presence sensor to tell the computer when I’m in front of it or not[5]. If music is playing when I walk away from the computer, it pauses then resumes when I come back. Also wakes sleeping screens when I return. Just recently I wrote a little script that displays the number of minutes I've been sitting at the computer in the corner of the screen. At thirty minutes it turns from green to red and plays, "Move it! Move it!" sound, which it'll keep doing every five minutes until I get up and leave the computer for a little bit. (Although I think I'm going to have to change the sound to something that doesn't startle the hell out of me every time.) Also have an analogue modem on the phone line that lets me initiate calls from my command line by just typing something like, "call dad" and it looks up contact information in my centralised contacts list. It also cross-references incoming caller ID info with the contact list and displays caller info on my computer screen and the Kodi media player[6]. If I were to really get into more home automation in earnest, I think being able to control the curtains in the house would be ahead of controlling lights. Hate wandering around the house opening and closing them all. Two things I dislike about current trends in home automation are: 1) The requirement for an active Internet connection for a lot of your stuff to work. I want it self contained to the house and not sending information out into the world. 2) The need to have your phone near to you to use half the stuff. E.g., with the lounge room light switch mentioned above I can turn the light on or off at the switch (as well as the remote). I don't have to go find my phone and swipe back and forth five times just to toggle it. One concept I find very interesting from the late 90's was the adaptive house[7]. It would learn things like your hot water usage, preferred room temperature and ambient light levels and used neural network reinforcement learning to optimise. I wonder how far this could be taken now with advances in machine learning. [1] https://www.michevan.id.au/posts/garage-door-sensor/ https://www.michevan.id.au/posts/garage-door-sensor/ [2] https://www.itead.cc/sonoff-touch.html https://www.itead.cc/sonoff-touch.html [3] Aside: To my mind, in most cases it seems to make more sense to automate the switch, than automate the light bulb itself. Changing a light bulb doesn't need an electrician though, I guess. [4] https://github.com/arendst/Tasmota https://github.com/arendst/Tasmota [5] https://www.michevan.id.au/posts/are-you-there/ https://www.michevan.id.au/posts/are-you-there/ [6] http://ncid.sourceforge.net/ http://ncid.sourceforge.net/ [7] https://www.cs.colorado.edu/~mozer/index.php?dir=/Research/Projects/Adaptive%20house/ https://www.cs.colorado.edu/~mozer/index.php?dir=/Research/P...

aaron695 7y ago

How to automate a home over a 100 years - Electricity (fire automation) Washing machine Vacuum Microwave/Rice cooker Dishwasher ----------------------------------------- Turing lights on and off with a super computer? [Edit: The OPs post is interesting and cool as a hacker, it's just the actual next big thing in automation that will change lives will be something boring like an electric mop or duster. And if you want to automate your life, only having dishwasher safe plates is a good first step]

twblalock 7y ago

In the past year I have probably spent no more than a couple of minutes thinking about my light bulbs, my smoke alarms, my door locks, etc. They just work. It seems like home automation has a lot of advantages but it would also require me to spend time on it (which products to buy, how to secure them, dealing with malfunctions, upgrades, batteries...), which probably amounts to an overall net loss of quality of life.

hnuser123456 7y ago
I live in an apartment, so I can't install ceiling lights. I'd have to hit ~8 switches on walls and lamps to fully illuminate my place. If I had smart bulbs, I could use one switch, or a voice command. I guess this isn't a problem if you already have a house and are free to wire it up intelligently to begin with.
- fbernier 7y ago
  Precisely. I recently stripped out my apartment (that I own) completely and redoing the electrical wiring and I have zero interest in installing smart stuff. I just have 4 dimming switches all next to each other that control all the zones, at both ends of the apartment. I can't understand how home automation would improve my quality of life if you factor in the added complexity.
  - rhinoceraptor 7y ago
    It's nice to have an automation to turn off all the lights for bedtime when you live with people who routinely leave the basement lights on, for example.
  - Wheaties466 7y ago
    One of the nice things I have done, is I have the porch lights come on at sunset. If I let my dog out I generally have to walk all the way to the other end of the house to turn this light on then walk back to let him out. Then before I go to bed I turn it off. After I installed a smart light switch, It comes on automatically and all the lights in my house turn off with a simple voice command.

hello_asdf 7y ago

For the author: any tips or recommendations for electric curtains? I'd love to automate that.

manuelmagic 7y ago

I'm surprised nobody mentioned Shelly smart switches since many people here are worried about manufacturer cloud dependency, obsolescence and security. I installed a bunch of Shelly 1 smart switches (https://shelly.cloud/shelly1-open-source/ https://shelly.cloud/shelly1-open-source/), they work via WiFi in LAN (even with the manufacturer's App) or Cloud (it's optional). There is the possibility to manage them via REST APIs, all the smart switches serve a web page that can be reached via browser. If you connect them to the Cloud you can optionally add Alexa or Google Home on top. They do not support HomeKit natively[1] nor IFTT. I choose this solution because I wanted to automate part of my appliances and lights in my house without losing the possibility to use the analog wall switches that I already have installed: Philips Hue lights are nice but if you switch them off via the analog switch in the wall the App or your favorite voice assistant can't work anymore. Furthermore, they are very expensive; at lest 20€ for a single 8W bulb (no other size available), while a single Shelly 1 costs half the price. [1] but from the original link of the thread I found this https://www.npmjs.com/package/@kacepe/homebridge-shelly https://www.npmjs.com/package/@kacepe/homebridge-shelly

yitchelle 7y ago

I don't think that ROI on home automation is positive, at least not for me. While the automations mentioned are nice for the author, it seems to be too much effort for too little gains. For me, home automation suppose to free up your time for other activities. Washing the dishes or clothes are great automation. I would look to other automation like changing the bed sheets, folding clothes, cooking the evening meals, grocery shopping etc. Let's talk again when these items become main stream.

intpx 7y ago
i have adhd and early in the morning and late at night (when my meds have worn off) my brain just doesn't work right. home automation has been a major game-changer for keeping me on schedule and not getting engrossed in something and looking up only to realize i need to be getting up for work in 2 hours. I have a whole bunch of time based and triggered automations for all sorts of things.The time I save is not the extra 14 seconds to shutdown the house, its the time I save keeping on a schedule so I can actually do the things I plan to do rather than getting distracted and snapping out of it at 4AM to find that I have taken apart my dishwasher.
- yitchelle 7y ago
  That is great that the ROI is significant higher for you. Can you share the specifics of a couple of your automations? I am genuinely curious.