22 ms·

I Ripped Out a £6k Lighting System

• aronpye 6y ago
  When people have more money than good sense.
  • Symbiote 6y ago
    I can't imagine how large a house or must be, to require 150 lighting circuits.
    • RobinL 6y ago
      My house had a kitchen extension built by previous owners. I count 27 lights in total, mostly in-ceiling spotlights. At least they're controlled with a normal switch. With decent quality, high powered LED bulbs like we have in the living room, 2 or 3 would do.
  • jwmoz 6y ago
    Don't forget time.
• baybal2 6y ago
  Worked on a project for Kazakhstani real estate company to make a cheap "smart home" solution. Went for 100% wired installation exactly because of that. Second problem was every "star" topology hugely increases wiring cost, so a bus it was, and with bus came a problem of software MAC not being performant enough even to send audio, electrical isolation, CSMA... Long story I can't wait for 802.3cg
  • Spare_account 6y ago
    >Long story It sounds like a story I'd like to hear more of, if you've the time
    • baybal2 6y ago
      Ok, here it is: 1. Wireless is off for so many reasons. Even if cost wouldn't be a problem, wireless has many other disadvantages. First, it's not really wireless, you need to wire power, and cut walls. Second, most of devices will spend their life deep in the junction box, or even cemented inside the wall. Having an external antenna for every one of them is impractical. Third, no wireless standard is even 1/10th as reliable as wire. They are simply too complex. Fourth, you want to have backup power for such vital things like HVAC in highrises without windows, security, and fire alarms, emergency water, and electricity cutoff, door locks, and intercom. This way, you need to have wiring anyways. 2. Star topology as I said hugely increase costs through: additional labour, cabling, cutting walls, switches, bigger junction boxes. Main idea is that you don't want the builder to have to cut walls when they can not to. 2. For busses you have no alternative to CAN, or RS485 based busses, or multidrop ethernet hacks. Third is off because it's expensive (think of having 3 port T hubs for every device.) First is off because of bad hardware selection. So we are left with many hacky RS485 based solutions. Choose your poison: Unreliable CSMA Manual addressing Super low performance Polled nature Near no existing ecosystem In the end, MODBUS with hacks it was. The lesser of all evils. 4. It being a bus, and you having devices connected to other appliances, you have to provide electrical, and I/O isolation, as you don't want a random man plugging 220VAC into it in error, or deliberately frying all electronics in the highrise. That's hugely expensive, and sometimes you want to power external devices through your box. This necessitates to invent many case-by case compromise solutions.
  • WalterBright 6y ago
    It took me several days to do all the drilling for the star in my house. It was a lot of wire. But it was all worth it. Tip: get a Milwaukee right angle drill. Worth every penny.
• kristiandupont 6y ago
  Off-topic, but >Quentin Stafford-Fraser (co-inventor of the webcam). How can you be the inventor of the webcam? What is it even, besides from a digital camera? Did he invent that?
  • bryanrasmussen 6y ago
    he has a wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quentin_Stafford-Fraser https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quentin_Stafford-Fraser He was one of the team that created the first webcam: the Trojan room coffee pot: Quentin pointed a camera at the coffee pot and wrote the XCoffee client program which allowed the image of the pot to be displayed on a workstation screen. When web browsers gained the ability to display images, the system was modified to make the coffee pot images available over HTTP and thus became the first webcam.
  • timthorn 6y ago
    It wasn't even a digital camera for that system - it was an analogue CCTV camera hooked up to a framegrabber. Digital cameras weren't really a thing at that time.
• chris_wot 6y ago
  I’m rather confused - what exactly is a wireless lighting system? And what are the advantages?
  • eps 6y ago
    Being able to switch lights on/off either with conventional wall switches or programmatically, i.e. from your smartphone. If you don't get carried away with the "automation" aspect of it, it can really enhance the UX in some common cases.
  • tsimionescu 6y ago
    It's a system for controlling lights wirelessly. The lights themselves are of course still wired, but instead of having physical switches you have a wireless control network turning them on or off.
• tgirod 6y ago
  a few days ago I helped my neighbour install some light fixtures in her house. She was sold some smart lightbulbs with it because you can dim them and change the light color a bit from a remote control. There are 6 or 8 lightbulbs next to each others. I'm impressed how unreliable this tech is. Standing 2 meters away from the lightbulbs, I had to press 3 or 4 times the off button to turn them all off. I just don't understand why you would knowingly install that kind of crap.
  • jmiserez 6y ago
    Depends on the bulbs. Our Philips Hue bulbs (ZigBee) work perfectly fine. None of the issues you or the OP describes are an issue: they continue to work as regular bulbs if the hub fails, can be paired via Bluetooth app without proximity to the hub, and seem to have a lot of range. Best thing is that no wiring/electrician is necessary.
    • t0mas88 6y ago
      Same experience here, Philips (and other Zigbee lights like IKEA) did a great job. Only problem I had with the Philips hub is that it's memory limited and can't handle more than about 50 devices. Above that you need to replace the hub with something like Home Assistant, but can keep the rest of the system.
      • stordoff 6y ago
        You can also use multiple hubs (HomeKit and various third party apps support this - the Hue app does, but IIRC you have to manually switch between them).
        • t0mas88 6y ago
          Yes I considered that, but it made some use cases that had buttons control lights that were on different hubs impossible.
• morsch 6y ago
  How much power does the new system use when everything is nominally off?
• codetrotter 6y ago
  > there are actually at least three units lost in the walls somewhere which respond to Z-Wave commands but don’t seem to control anything I can find! Reminds me of http://bash.org/?5273 http://bash.org/?5273 haha
  • eps 6y ago
    There's a better version of it - https://www.theregister.com/2001/04/12/missing_novell_server_discovered_after/ https://www.theregister.com/2001/04/12/missing_novell_server...
    • theelous3 6y ago
      Is different. Bash guy cannot find it. Other guys didn't know it was missing. If it was missing for four years and then found it would be a better version.
• thombles 6y ago
  Good grief... who would sign up for such a thing? The biggest lighting system I worked on was Philips Dynalite. It's a gigantic RS-485 bus - you just make sure all the dimmers and light switch panels are on the segment. It can be over a kilometre long and you can control/reprogram everything from everywhere on that bus. The protocol is simple enough that you can bit-bang subsets of it from dumb devices. Do recommend.
  • SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
    Simple engineering rule applies here... “if you can run a wire, run a wire”. Notice over the whole article he talks about the how, but not really the why?
    • WalterBright 6y ago
      I have a wifi access point in the house to supplement the lan, and so I don't have to use the data plan for my phone. The durned thing needs to be power cycled now and then. No way I'm putting the lights on wifi. The wired lan is 10x more reliable, but even it needs the router rebooted. (I've had lots of routers. All needed rebooting.) Never had to reboot the lights or the power sockets.
      • carlhjerpe 6y ago
        Do you think there's something inherent about forwarding packets or beaming WiFi that make devices unreliable or have you considered the possibility that purchasing a more expensive device might resolve these issues for you? MikroTik routers a good for the price, WiFi is decent. Ubiquity APs are good for their price, WiFi is about as good as it gets. HP ProCurve switches has been to space. You could use any device that runs Linux to DYI these things. Though you need one 2ghz and one 5ghz NIC in the device acting AP. Since i started working IT 5 years ago and got some gear from work I've never had to reboot my device because it stopped functioning though I have scheduled automatic software updates checking (and installing if available) every day at 5am which implies automatic reboots every once in awhile.
• lqet 6y ago
  What is a wireless lighting system? What is the advantage of such a system over a switch next to the door? E: A wireless lighting systems seems to be a light bulb with WiFi capabilities.
  • _0o6v 6y ago
    It's an interesting academic exercise / hobby. Beyond that, nothing.
  • gbrown_ 6y ago
    It's solutionism.
    • SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
      Never seen that. I like it. Providing a solution before the problem exists is exactly what this is.
  • Semaphor 6y ago
    For example, not having to get up and go to the door. I find that extremely convenient when lying in bed, about to sleep. I usually read for a few hours with dark red light, when I’m ready to sleep I can just turn the lights off.
    • OJFord 6y ago
      I've had both a switch for the main light (s) and a lamp bedside the bed all my life, multiple houses, none of them 'smart' or wireless. Don't get me wrong - I want to use HomeAssistant or similar - but I don't want to ditch physical switches.
      • Semaphor 6y ago
        I have physical switches, I just don’t use them. They are my fallback for when the network fails, the hue hub dies or whatever.
• codazoda 6y ago
  I have just two of these lights, both phillip hue's, and Alexa. They are pretty problematic, but they are the best solution I've found in my two lights, which are dim lamps that I turn on and off frequently when I cannot reach them.
• _0o6v 6y ago
  This has got me riled. 1. I hope all this electronic and plastic junk gets properly recycled. 2. Learn to be more prudent with your money. 3. £6k would have funded a lot of solar lights in developing countries through SolarAid or similar.
  • s_fischer 6y ago
    I don't disagree with point #1 but can you honestly say you've never purchased something that you truly believed would work better than it did? I'm pretty sure the OP did not intend to rip out his system and waste £6k when he started this project.
• summm 6y ago
  He had it coming as he chose a proprietary locked-up system such as z-wave.
• ggm 6y ago
  If his house is in Dick place, I delivered "the Scotsman" to former owners every morning before school for years in the 1970s. There was an albino blackbird living in the neighbourhood.
• mattlondon 6y ago
  I had almost exactly the same problems, albeit on a much smaller scale of perhaps 10% the size of this person's network. I spent years and a fair chunk of cash trying and failing to get a reliable zigbee and z-wave network set up using various bits of kit. To echo the article, the problem with zigbee & zwave for me was that things would stop working, and it was almost impossible to work out why. The only "solution" was to start the annoying repairing process as outlined in the article which was a huge ballache. In the end I also binned all of the zigwave & zwave bits and moved to a 100% wifi-based solution using MQTT & Tasmota firmware (1) running on very cheap hardware that is usually <10GBP per node. It is very reliable - I don't think I have had a single unexplained outage in the couple of years I've been running this now. Wifi + MQTT is mature and just works. It is also super easy to diagnose problems - you can see the devices on your network, ping them, subscribe to their MQTT topics, manually send messages on MQTT etc. Its a dream compared to the black box of zigbee & z-wave where you essentially had zero control apart from on/off. Wifi + MQTT + Tasmota appears to be the solution for me. My main complaint now is that HomeAssistant cant connect to Google Home/Alexa (so that I can use voice control), so I am using OpenHAB (which has a free integration that works). OpenHAB seems absurdly complex though, and they seem to be in a continual process of rewriting the software (some stuff is stored in config files, some in a databases, and the location of the config files is not in the docs/the docs have the wrong location so backups are hard, the docs are only for V1 (but don't say that they are only for V1) but the current version is V2 that is also deprecated because they are working on V3 etc, the recommended UI can't do everything you need to do to get the system working so you have to manually update stuff in a shell but the aforementioned docs telling you what file to edit are just plain wrong etc because the are referring to some different version, running OpenHAB in docker requires some odd permissions/user set up on the host machine etc - it is a mess). I am planning on ripping out OpenHAB and replacing with NodeRED at some point since that seems sane. 1 - https://tasmota.github.io/docs/ https://tasmota.github.io/docs/
  • timthorn 6y ago
    I use OpenHAB purely as a ZWave I/O engine for Node-Red which works quite well for me.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• imhoguy 6y ago
  I was considering "smart" home active lightining stuff but finally went with 120% wires (some extra wires left for some future needs, double lamps etc) and traditional 2 state mechanical switches. It is not about money but maintenance burden. I can't imagine where would be my marriage when I was gone for some week long business trip and all that "smart" stuff had failed that time for my family. So far for 8 years of use I only had to replace one switch which got punched too hard by kid.
  • flal_ 6y ago
    This. Every "smart" switch should also act/fallback as a physical analog switch any way. I don't understand why that's not the case... Edit : plus I don't want to pull out my phone or whatever device to switch the goddam light on
    • crooked-v 6y ago
      Well, there's two different types of smart switch: - The first type isn't actually connected to wall power, and is basically just a small remote that tells your lighting to turn on/off. - The second type is connected to the wall power, and works perfectly fine as a normal wall switch and controls the lights in the same way. Along with being a normal wall switch, it's a receiver and can receive commands from elsewhere (including the first type of smart switch) to trigger the normal wall switch functionality. The second type is an easy retrofit for existing homes with lots of lights, but doesn't play nice with smart bulbs that need to be always on for advanced functionality (like having automatic step-up/step-down lighting levels at sunrise/sunset). At the moment I feel like the best use of the first type are switches that fit neatly over normal hardwired wall switches (like the Lutron Aurora), or adding a spacer (see https://www.shapeways.com/product/35B9F36RD/philips-hue-dimmer-switch-spacer-plate-us-toggle https://www.shapeways.com/product/35B9F36RD/philips-hue-dimm... for one example) so that your smart switch can just be popped off to access the normal hardware.
• vr46 6y ago
  What is the point of trying to wirelessly link up a system that needs so much wiring in the first place, including electricity? This seems moronic, unless it’s for fun. And even then it’s pretty stupid.
  • jackweirdy 6y ago
    Retrofitting new wires to every light fixture and switch in a house is unenviable. In some cases, impossible. Laminate floors can deprive you of subfloor access of a whole floor, running cables through existing stud walls is difficult at the best of times... Wirelessly linked smoke alarms are becoming extremely common now in the UK because outside a narrow envelope building regulations want linked alarms (linked either wired or wirelessly) on every floor. Imagine converting a basement and attic of a 1800s victorian house, and having to find a way to run a new cable from the roof of the attic to the ceiling of the basement. So instead it's a relatively dumb chip which shouts 'fire' on an unlicensed frequency block and a great deal of complexity is saved. There is a chance you could do here what powerline adapters do, and use the ground wire to communicate. But they are notoriously inconsistent and there's any number of reasons it wouldn't work
    • hondadriver 6y ago
      And as I mentioned in another comment, many EU houses have concrete (internal) walls. Tubes for electricity wires come pre-installed in them so together with the other things mentioned, just running some wires can be hard to say the least.
    • jiofih 6y ago
      That’s why ZigBee in mesh/star topology exists. No wires except for the hub.
    • wayoutthere 6y ago
      > There is a chance you could do here what powerline adapters do, and use the ground wire to communicate. But they are notoriously inconsistent and there's any number of reasons it wouldn't work This is exactly how Insteon works in conjunction with a wireless mesh. I'm extremely happy with my Insteon setup -- it's just a matter of replacing light switches and outlets with a bit of re-wiring on 3-wire switches (no new wires to run, just bypassing one of the switches so only one controls the light). The Insteon-branded hub is fine for a few light switches, but if you're doing a whole house and need something that can handle more complex configuration I would go for an ISY994 controller (don't know if anything newer exists but it's been rock solid for the last 5 years). All that said, it was expensive and probably not worth it. I spent $4k on a somewhat large house and I was able to justify it as a learning experience for in-home IoT device use cases -- but I'm not sure there's much benefit to doing a whole house with it over just a couple rooms.
• eps 6y ago
  So, has anyone used this Shelly 2.5 "WiFi-operated double relay switch" thingy? Looks pretty cheap and interesting in principle.
  • stdbrouw 6y ago
    Yep. Works as intended, easy to set up though as with most of these wireless technologies the initial pairing can be a bit fussy. The built-in software and smartphone app is good enough for me, but if you want you can flash new firmware and/or use HomeAssistant. I use it for roller blinds and for outdoor lighting on a sunset/sunrise timer. I'm not a huge fan of home automation and my partner hates the mere thought of it, so what's nice about Shelly is that these units have not just outputs but inputs as well. If you flip a physical switch you will still trigger your lights or appliances or whatever is connected to it. You're not locked into an ecosystem with its own remotes, switches etc. – it'll feel like the sturdy old system you already had, except that now you can program it and control it remotely, too.
  • hondadriver 6y ago
    I am using it for a zipscreen, it has never failed. Comes with good software & API, but you can flash your own if you want.
• VBprogrammer 6y ago
  I stayed clear of smart appliances for a long time for the reasons I'm sure we're all well aware of. However, recently we had our central heating boiler changed and my partner was very keen on having Hive. It's almost useless. I can't believe how incompetently it seems to have been designed. Essentially there are three parts, a receiver connected to the boiler, a network bride connected to the router and the thermostat connected to both. Within the first week of having it installed we had times when we realised the heating hadn't come on as scheduled. Checking the display on the thermostat would show no signal. In effect the receiver on the boiler had disconnected from the thermostat and as such you have no heating. After several occurrences of this I broke down and moved the thermostat to the closest reasonable place I could. The thermostat is now in the worst place in the house for taking a temperature reading but at least it vaguely heats the house up when I expect it to. However, it is now almost constantly disconnected from the network bridge which enables the "smart" part. The solution to this if I can ever be bothered is to run a network cable from the router to the same room as the thermostat. Why it was designed like this is beyond me. Why not have the schedule stored on the receiver, at least in memory. That way if it lost contact with the thermostat at least it could put the heating on full during the schedule. Why make the wireless bridge a separate part? If I could add my WiFi details to the thermostat I guarantee it would have a reasonable connection.
  • m4tthumphrey 6y ago
    I have to say my experience with Hive has been nothing but exceptional. All the way from having it installed back in 2016 (when we moved in) to this day when it came on for an hour this morning. The controller is right next to the boiler in the eaves of my house and is connected via ethernet through a TP-Link TL-PA9020P powerline adaptor. In all fairness the thermostat is very close to the receiver, in the landing, so maybe that's why it's never been an issue. I don't think I've ever once had a single issue with using the app, whether that's from downstairs or from the other side of the Atlantic. It will be the first thing on the shopping list when/if we ever move.
    • VBprogrammer 6y ago
      Thanks for the hint on ethernet over power. I can plug one in reasonably close to the thermostat and another close to the router and they'd be on the same ring main so should work pretty well.
• pengaru 6y ago
  It blows my mind that PoE LED drivers aren't an established dirt-cheap standard I can choose from multiple vendors supporting @ my local Home Depot/Lowes.
• jwmoz 6y ago
  This sounds like a hacker gone mad.
• bobobob420 6y ago
  This article honestly made me want to quit engineering and limit the amount of technology I am dependent on. You must have the patience of a god. Also your family definitely hates you
• stragies 6y ago
  I greatly enjoyed the article, love the Shellys too. +1 also for Homeassistant. Just wish (minor point) the author had chosen a font-color with more contrast to the background, like a slightly less pale shade of grey.
  • ThatPlayer 6y ago
    I love browser's reader modes to easily apply the styles I like to articles like this. Instantly dark mode and huge font to any article
• gubby 6y ago
  I have been gradually installing Shelly relays and dimmers in my place for some time, and they are excellent. They have a fully open and documented REST API, a simple but effective local web interface, and any Cloud connectivity is completely optional. I have never had one fail (N=25). Since installation, I have never had one drop off the WiFi or require a physical visit for any reason at all (one is installed in my boiler and it takes an hour to get it apart, so I really appreciate this!). I honestly don’t think a single one of them has missed a single rest API call in the time they’ve been running. When initially installing them, this can be done from a mobile next to the unit, at which point you join them to your WiFi. I’m not in any way connected with Shelly, just a very impressed user of their stuff.
• WalterBright 6y ago
  I wouldn't buy a house with such a system in it, and I doubt anybody else will, either. Who wants to become an expert on these systems just to turn the lights on? Not a chance. I considered these systems when my house was built, and am very glad I didn't get them. I turn the switch on, the lights go on, I turn it off, the lights go off. I replace a bulb now and then. That's it! I'm very happy with it. But what I did do was run cat5 and RG6 to every room in a star configuration, which has paid off very very nicely. I did all that work myself because the electrician didn't understand words like "crosstalk" and I didn't want to find out after I moved in that the wires in finished walls didn't work.
  • stinos 6y ago
    the electrician didn't understand words like "crosstalk" Can you explain what the problem is? I also run cat5 (or maybe even cat6, don't remember) to every room, most even multiple times, just put it in walls/cailings/whatever worked and all 40 or so sockets work just fine. I turn the switch on, the lights go on, I turn it off, the lights go off. I run a star configuration for switches and light points, where all switches are on 12V DC and use a 'patchboard' to hook them to impulse relays which drive the lights. Still switch on/light on, but you can select which switch does what, easily hook up miltiple switches to multiple light points etc. Not domotica, but still much more dynamic than traditional build-once-change-never.
    • mikro2nd 6y ago
      I'm curious to understand the advantages/benefits of being able to reassign switches/lights. Surely a light/group-of-lights needs a switch/set-of-switches, but once it's done, what's the imperative for change?
      • stinos 6y ago
        but once it's done, what's the imperative for change If it's truly done there's no reason for change. However getting there, to what for us is the most optimal configuration, is what was the main incentive for me. The way it is now it requires almost no ahead planning. I.e. for most rooms we had no idea on beforehand how we were going to pupulate them with furniture and which activity we'd do where, so I just went 'cable for lighting in the center, at the side on each wall, and some extra' and then put the switches in sensible places i.e. usually next to room entrance. Then during the next years hook up as needed and adapt if needed. E.g. couple of months ago we needed an extra desk for working form home and one extra for my GF's new hobby, so we just put some desks to a wall and instantly can get a light above it. With a fixed configuration you'd either need to think of that in advance, or use the light centrally in the room which makes you sit in your own shadow. or add lights you just plug in the wall socket but that's extra cable, and especially for desks it's hard to find a suitable one. Also throughout the years I've made small changes here and there to change things like being able to turn on the light in the bathroom from the bedroom, or turn on light in the kitchen from the place where we eat so you don't have to look for th kitchen switch in the dark. Sure those are just nice-to-haves but pretty convenient. I've been and lived in quite a lot of houses where the whole configuration was pretty akward. Though I get some people don't care about that.
• dwighttk 6y ago
  This ends up being anti-Zwave. He replaced his system with a Shelly WiFi system. I think I would have gone for wired.
• kxrm 6y ago
  I've been in tech for a while, and I am very reluctant to jump in on "smart" appliances. Having said that, I have dipped my toe into things by tackling things I can fully control and maintain. I also make sure it is simple to bypass as not everyone who lives with me is interested in learning or troubleshooting issues with something like a light fixture or thermostat. Cloud is absolutely out for privacy reasons and for the simple fact that no device should be dependent on my ISP functioning. So I keep the smart stuff to things like lamps or shades. All things that are easy to maintain and are not required to function to enjoy the home. Shades are on Z-Wave Plus and I have just 4 shades that are motorized and it's not easy to maintain. The only other thing I use is Tasmota on some cheap plugs for lamps and holiday lights. All of these devices are controlled by a web panel built on a NAS that has an easy to remember local lan address. Control via cellphone is easy so long as you are on the lan. I just haven't been totally sold on the idea that the convenience offered by IoT devices that are locked in or require cloud services outweighs the maintenance and hassle over the long haul.
• Maha-pudma 6y ago
  I don't get it. What's the point in these systems? Genuinely. Why would I ever need this? Just like a "smart" doorbell, fridge, meter. I would love for someone to be able to explain the benefits to me over the normal, cheap, completely working "dump" version. The only "smart" device I own is a TV and it is crap, worse thing I've ever bought.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • Fumtumi 6y ago
    I didn't get it either but now i'm doing even more. Our Lightsetup works really well and solves 'real' problems. In my corridor, there are 2 motion detectors and they switch those lights. At night less bright; That works flawless! And that shows how nice it actually can be if it works. I also use alexa quite often to switch between light settings; From Eating to watching TV to 'energize' where all lights on at 100%. and it gets more interesting after i hooked up alexa to our blindes. I wanted to control them with a schedule anyway and now i can also use it thourgh alexa. Honestly, i think alexa is a very interesting playground on how modern/future user interface might/will look like as it feels much more direct, nicer etc. Heating is also quite interesting: Make sure to only heat in winter when the outdoor temperature is cold enough. Alert when co2 is to high in a room. Sync up the work schedule of my wife to heat the bath room at 4 in the morning for an hour. What is the problem? The Problem is still complexity, cost and reliability. But this will become better every single day.
  • nucleardog 6y ago
    For me it started with a single wifi lightbulb. My wife often gets into bed with the baby. If the baby falls asleep before the light is off, she doesn't want to get up to have to turn the light off since it will wake the baby. Now she can just turn it off from her phone. Kinda just expanded from there. Now a good chunk of the regularly used bulbs in the house are "smart". Basically what it means is that if you turn a light on, it turns on like a normal bulb (or you can do a quick flick off/on again to turn it on at a dimmer brightness) but you can pull your phone out and dim it / change the temperature / etc. Closer to bed time? Easy to dim the lights and make them super warm. So that right there is already kinda useful for <$5/bulb. My workspace is a normal warm temperature at a reasonable brightness until I'm trying to do some soldering or something then I can instantly make it bright and white. From there I expanded out into adding a few basic sensors. Combination motion/temperature/humidity/brightness sensors. So now when I get up for a piss in the middle of the night as soon as I walk out of the bedroom the hallway sensor sees that someone's there and that the hallway is pitch black and turns the hall light on as a red light at ~5% brightness. When you walk into the baby's room in the middle of the night, same deal. Dim red light. If you go in in the daytime, bright warm light. Did a similar thing with some of the basement too. Now as soon as I walk into one end of the basement to take the dog outside, do laundry, grab a tool, etc... the lights just come on. They stay on for a couple minutes after the last time motion is sensed and then automatically turn back off. Especially since half the basement is on a single light switch, this results in a lot less wasted power. The lights in my office come on when I walk in if it's dark, and when I unlock my computer it shoots a message out over a MQTT broker which my automation takes as "someone is occupying this space now" and leaves them on. When I lock my computer, two minutes later if no motion is sensed it'll turn them off. I don't know that I'd ever add 500 different controls to my house (not sure what I'd even use that many for...), but as far as I've taken it so far it's super convenient. In the future I fully intend to get a smart thermostat (or replace my thermostat with some controlled relays) and use some "smart" air registers so I the temperature sensors I have can create a loop integrating the temperature sensing integrated in the motion/luminance sensors in most rooms with the heating to more precisely control the temperature throughout the house--if one room is already warm enough but the rest of the house is cold, can automatically close the vent to keep the temperature pretty consistent throughout the house.
• vasco 6y ago
  Spend a whole post writing about the mistake it was to invest in an overly complex solution in search of a problem and conclude by doubling down and redoing it all over again but with Wifi instead. Perhaps the problem wasn't with the protocol, but with the fact that something that just works became a months long project worth thousands. What a rabbithole.
• WalterBright 6y ago
  I installed an automatic sprinkler system with several "regions". I struggled with that thing for years. Programming it required reading a hefty manual. The user interface was near the worst I'd ever seen (the worst is on my automated cat feeder). I was constantly repairing the lines, the heads, the valves, the control box. I'd winterize it, de-winterize it. The coyotes would chew on it. Finally I simply turned it off and let whatever would grow without constant watering grow, and the rest died. Makes me a much happier man.
  • dkarp 6y ago
    I've looked into automatic sprinkler systems with scheduling based on the weather or moisture sensors, but they to have too many failure modes: moisture sensors corroding, incorrect weather readings, blocked outlets. I'm now planning to use a simple drip irrigation system. A long hose with nozzles plugged into the mains water that has to be manually turned on. It may not be automatic, but turning things on and off when I need them isn't the problem, like using light switches isn't the problem. There aren't any coyotes around here and the winters are mostly frost free, so I'm hoping this doesn't become a burden like the tech you mention!
    • WalterBright 6y ago
      You're right, a drip irrigation system is much better. You wouldn't have to run regions, either, just one system. But watch out for squirrels and other fur-bearin varmints chewing on the pipes. I'd consider copper pipes. I was thinking about digging up my whole sprinkler system and replacing it all with copper pipes, but then just opted to abandon the whole thing.
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    • lostlogin 6y ago
      I couldn’t understand how smart watering systems were so expensive. I bought a TP-Link smart plug and a solenoid that defaults to off. It took 48v so I got a transformer, plugged it into the smart plug and wired up the solenoid. Once this was done it was just a matter of making it smart. I set it to water for 10 minutes after sunset in Home Assistant. I’ve always intended it too hold off if it rains, but our weather forecasting is too inaccurate for that so have been messing about with soil moisture sensors, but haven’t had success yet.
• sdflhasjd 6y ago
  I use Shelly devices with Tamota, they talk to my Home assistant setup with MQTT. When I can get power (with a neutral wire...) to something then WiFi is the best, but uses too much power compared to Zigbee and Zwave for running off batteries. I have some climate sensors in each room to control heating, they're too awkwardly placed to get power to, so I use Zwave for these - they were just as big of a pain to setup as TFA describes, but at least I only have to replace the batteries once a year
• physicsguy 6y ago
  Stuff like this is the reason the only smart devices I have got so far are a Chromecast Audio, a Chromecast TV and a 2nd gen Google Home Mini (free from Spotify Premium). Those things are low impact if they don't work properly, and they do stop working with alarming regularity. I have spent less than £80 on the set up. The Home mini has trouble with my regional British accent. The Chromecasts are within 2m of my router, and still manage to get disconnected randomly. I'm not anti-smart home, but the stuff has to be 99.9% reliable for me to consider going forward with it. I've never had a light switch fail on me...
  • pydry 6y ago
    I don't think we'll start getting reliability like that until manufacturers 1) stop trying to hook them up to the cloud 2) default to wired and 3) implement failsafes (you can still turn off the light switch manually). Until then it's the internet of malware infested broken toasters.
    • p_l 6y ago
      There are vendors who do just that, in various combinations. Hue uses non-wifi wired protocol and offline-first hub. Lacks failsafe though. A local vendor does the above, but instead of "smart" lightbulbs, offers smart switches - which still operate as physical switches when directly used. But they don't have huge marketing or anything like that, they appear to mostly sell to integrators (with their gateway then being integrated into popular solutions like HomeKit etc.)
• IkmoIkmo 6y ago
  I bought one of the philips wireless lights working on wifi or bluetooth, can't remember. It worked fine after 2 minutes of set-up, and then stopped working about 1-2 months in. The light still works with the regular switch, but I can't get the connection back whatever I try, to turn it on/off with my phone. Definitely won't be coming back to this until 5 or 10 years to see if the tech has reliably moved.
• bleepblorp 6y ago
  Never send a consumer IoT (where the 'q' stands for 'quality') product to do the job of a commercial lighting control system. The right tool to automate a house with 100-150 lighting fixtures is something along the lines of a Crestron system.
• Fumtumi 6y ago
  My Philips Hue stuff in my flat works very very well and i like it. When i will buy a house, i will put in cables as i still think cable controlled is more reliable. Nonetheless, i like my system but it could be better especially the heating: It is actually quite useful to control my radiators digitally. It also makes a lot of sense to let my radiators measure room temperature and let it detect open window. Normally when i activate a radiator, in 2-3h the room is always way too hot and i do only put it to the middle number (3). Is this critical? No Is this important? No Can i live without it? Yes But i do think its here to stay and in the long run, IoT will become the default. Light atmosphere actually works very well when you can activate it by one click Light switches are were you need/want them Voice command feels much more natural and is quite useful I like to think how my future house could incorporate something like alexa (a smart agent) in every room but 1. with powersavings 2. privacy in mind. Something like the line in I, Robot where the main computer can see everthing.
• z3t4 6y ago
  The trick to smart systems is to have it consist of dumb closed loops. So that the central hub becomes redundant. And also manual override so it becomes 3 way redundant.
• flal_ 6y ago
  Is there a smart switch system based on CPL somewhere ?
• fyfy18 6y ago
  Does anyone here have any experience with KNX? It seems like the best wired system (without being locked into a single manufacturer), but from what I understand it's expensive and not aimed at DIYers. For context I'm in the process of building a house and like OP am considering Shelly modules, but it seems a bit silly to go wireless when I am doing everything from scratch.
  • gog 6y ago
    I don't have hands on experience, but I read about it a lot. Yes, it is not meant for DIY, but in Germany there is a big DIY community, unfortunately that also means a lot of hands-on experience is shared in German forums and Youtube channels. The main issue is the ETS software you need to configure KNX devices. Full license is around 2k€, but if you have up to 15 KNX devices I believe there is a cheaper license. Next apartment/house i buy will probably be wired with KNX for roller shutters, heating/air conditioning and for lighting either KNX or KNX-Dali Gateway. There is an interesting channel on Youtube if you are interested: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnGAZMA4wzOYx_P7aXTRc7A https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnGAZMA4wzOYx_P7aXTRc7A
  • hhhc 6y ago
    Hi, I have built my house using KNX. Actually, the fact that it is mostly cable based makes this system super reliabe. It also combines various trades, lighting, heating, etc and is supported by 500 manufacturers. Together with a friend who has more than 20 years experience, we published an ebook on how to get started without any prior knowledge. There is a free version at https://knxtutorial.com/knx https://knxtutorial.com/knx Contact me if you have any other questions.
  • BennyInc 6y ago
    We built our house with KNX this year. While our electrician did all the wiring, I did the programming myself. It has a steep learning curve, but if you're in IT, you'll probably get the hang of it pretty quickly. The system is very robust and offers a lot of flexibility. Almost all our componenents are from MDT (https://www.mdt.de/EN_Start.html https://www.mdt.de/EN_Start.html). They build really great products and are quite affordable. Compared with components from other manufacturers we use (Theben, Weinzierl, Steinel) I think their applications and manuals are also far superior. I have since connected the system to my home assistant installation, and enjoy the added flexiblity.
• sfev 6y ago
  I’ve been using lightwaverf for around 10 years now and find it to be a decent solution. I originally bought a light switch and some of their pass through plugs, but recently I’ve been expanding with more light switches and a relay, mostly to control hard-to-reach-the-switch things like outside lights but now I’m thinking about replacing more indoor lights and sockets for a more complete solution Lighting-wise their dimmers just replace your regular dimmers, though they are push buttons rather than switches and they have led indicators on them (that you can turn off). They work without the hub, not that the hub has ever failed for me I’ve never had a problem with range like tfa suggests, even in places that struggle to get a wifi signal and out in the garden (125 year old Victorian terrace over 3 floors) Their stuff is fairly expensive but my oldest equipment is maybe 10 years old now, still works well and is compatible with the newer generation. My wife is even coming around to it - being able to say “Alexa turn on garden lights” instead of trudging outside in the rain to turn them on has convinced her I think! If/when we move I can mostly just put the old light switches back in and a) keep my kit for the next house and b) not have to subject the new owners to my home automation addiction
  • thom 6y ago
    This is exactly the sort of system I was picturing while reading the article, glad to hear it exists and works well!
• kalleboo 6y ago
  Our ceiling lamps and mini-split air conditioners are all IR remote controlled, so I just got a couple of IR blasters and set them up with Homebridge, so I can control the aircon/lights/TV with my iPhone or Apple Watch. If the smart stuff breaks down, I can just throw away the IR blasters and everything returns to how it was before. The only negative is since IR is one-way, you can't see the current status of things after you've manipulated it with a manual control.
• bartread 6y ago
  I don't want to come off as unduly harsh here but I could feel my blood pressure rising the more I read of this article. I got to about point 4 and had to stop. Why, you might ask? Because I am "fortunate" enough to live in a house where the previous owner bodged and kludged every single home improvement and DIY job he attempted. He did it in a different way to Mr Dobson (who at least employed a professional electrician) but, nonetheless, the point stands. In my place even the most basic jobs have been done in a way that is incorrect, sometimes unsafe, and usually adds significant time and expense in fixing or making modifications beyond what would reasonably be expected. I am gradually correcting all of this but it's slow and frustrating work. This article contains numerous sections that would be absolute red flags, at least to me, for buying this house if and when Mr Dobson chooses to sell it. Here are a couple of examples: > To this day I have a spreadsheet with around 500 lines (around 3 lines per circuit) which details all of the lighting circuits in the house, the circuit breaker they are connected to, the type of device that controls the circuit and its location. Unfortunately I wasn’t 100% successful in getting the control point of all the lighting circuits in one of these five locations and there are actually at least three units lost in the walls somewhere which respond to Z-Wave commands but don’t seem to control anything I can find! > I have now gotten to the stage where I dread some modules failing. The one that controls a water-feature in the garden is in a sealed box, the one that controls an out-door heater is in a small loft area that can only be accessed by a rickety ladder, the one for the guest-room extractor fan is in a crawl space, etc. This can’t be the right way to do things can it? That last sentence nearly floored me: no, it clearly isn't, so why have you done things this way? This is an absolute horror show and I have little confidence that anyone who approaches home improvement with Mr Dobson's mindset is going to do a better job of whatever the replacement ends up being. [EDIT: I have now read the conclusion which, at least in my view, bears out this statement pretty well.] You can obviously do whatever you want with your own home but if you're going to go nuts on the home automation front, especially if you tend towards early adoption and want to attempt something very ambitious, you might want to consider what effect that could have on your ability to sell your home again in future. Homebuyers are going to become a lot more savvy, and a lot more sceptical, about these kinds of systems and modifications as time goes on.
• topbanana 6y ago
  I saw all this kit on ebay!
• draw_down 6y ago
  You know... light switches ain’t so bad. All this pain in the ass and expense, I don’t understand it. I want less of this in my life. These piles of shit we make with computers are worse than useless. We just make more and more mess.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• 627467 6y ago
  Can someone list productive smart lighting features? I mean: I get smart heating. I get smart ovens. But smart lighting? I can't think of non-gimicky functionality that can be solved by a occupancy sensors.
  • davidgh 6y ago
    The main thing I like about smart lights is the concept of programmed “routines”. I have a large family so perhaps that makes it more beneficial. Morning routines that run automatically: - Turn on the bedroom lamps at a low dim level around the same time the alarm goes off. This provides a bit of light when you first wake up without being annoying. - Turn off all exterior lights. Most are probably off anyway, but this catches any they might have been left on, or any that were scheduled to be on through the night. - Turn up the nightlights / stair lights to 100%. In the dark winter months, this makes it comfortable to navigate from bedrooms and bathrooms without having to turn on the full hallway lights, which can be jarring and perhaps annoying to others who aren’t quite up yet. (A bit after sunrise these go off for the day). - Turn on a few lights in the main living areas (kitchen). Evening routines that run a bit after sunset: - Turn on outside lights - Turn on nightlights and stair lights at 50%. - Turn on the bedside lamps at 50%. This provides a relaxing light level in the bedroom through the evening. Before the smart switches we never really seemed to use the lamps. (The hassle of walking to both sides of the bed and setting them at the right dim level I guess was just enough to prevent us from using them I guess). Bedtime routines that run automatically: - Turn off all but one exterior light. The other thing I like is being able to control lights from my phone. When we are in the backyard playing with the kids on a late summer evening, we can turn on all the backyard lights without having to go back to the house. If the kids have left a bunch of lights on in the basement, they can be turned off with Siri “turn off all the basement lights”. I also like it from a security perspective “turn on all the outside lights” which would normally take walking all over the house to hit all the various switches. I also have appreciated being able to add light switches literally wherever, with no wiring or holes in the wall. Want a bedroom light switch next to your bed? Peel and stick and you’ve got it, and from the outside it looks and acts exactly like a real switch. If you move the bed to the other wall one day, you just pull the switch off and stick it in the new location. For a long time I resisted anything “smart” in my home. I found the added complexity more than offset any benefit. But with the lights, we can just use them as normal (all the switches look and act like they always did) but the automated routines add convenience and comfort while also reducing our energy usage.
• andrewaylett 6y ago
  Since lockdown started, we've gradually converted most of our house to Hue. A key feature is that _all the light switches still work_. We just don't use them all that much, unless something's failed. From reading Matthew Garrett's exploits, I'm pretty sure we don't want WiFi IoT devices. We have Hue switches next to the physical switches, which don't depend on WiFi being up; Smart control works with only local networking. Add more smartness for extra control (SmartThings, remote access, Google Assistant), but it's no less functional than a non-smart system when the smarts are offline. The killer feature for me is the ability to adjust the colour temperature and brightness of lights in each room -- I've got a 50W panel above my desk which makes my work-space brighter than it is outside at the moment (Edinburgh, UK, 1pm with rain) but automatically fades down to a warm, dim light as the evening progresses.
  • eyvindn 6y ago
    Would you mind sharing what panel this is?
    • andrewaylett 6y ago
      It's a Hue ceiling panel that I'm not sure they make any more. https://smile.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07FXT4XH6 https://smile.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07FXT4XH6
  • rkangel 6y ago
    For those who don't have Hue, one nice feature of the design is that if the power to the bulb goes off and then back on the bulbs default to 'on'. This means that if you have a power cut, the lights come on automatically afterwards without the controllers being needed, which is useful at night so you don't have to wait for wifi. But it also means that you can turn them off and then on again at the normal light switch and they'll come on.
    • Someone1234 6y ago
      > For those who don't have Hue, one nice feature of the design is that if the power to the bulb goes off and then back on the bulbs default to 'on'. After a recent update this is now also configurable. You can still have them default to full brightness, but also off or any other mode.
• yayr 6y ago
  my opinion: z-wave for lights only is not efficient - it mainly can give you dimming capability, no control over warm/cold lights or even color. plus everything is an unfortunate combination of wiring and rf. zigbee based lamps like hue or others are much better here. however, for controlling things like heating or blinds I find it very effective in combination with sensors. It is quite simple for everone to do simple things, like setting schedule based target temperatures. and reasonably simple for a dev to do complicated things, e.g. to control blinds based on exact position of the sun around the year. plus you can always use actuators that work without the base controller, so the base controller is just an option.
• gtm1260 6y ago
  I'm so confused why he didn't just go Phillips Hue?
• dkackman11 6y ago
  Jesus. All of the cost and complexity of managing complex IT infrastructure... for light bulbs. Is this satire?
  • dkackman11 6y ago
    https://thedailywtf.com/articles/The_Complicator_0x27_s_Gloves https://thedailywtf.com/articles/The_Complicator_0x27_s_Glov...
• aldanor 6y ago
  There's also systems like Loxone where you have to wire everything but it avoids a star-like system as you can connect switches and lights in a tree-like fashion (ie, to connect another node, find the nearest node already connected and wire to it, that dramatically reduces the amount of cables).
• beervirus 6y ago
  Wireless lighting control is an inelegant solution to a nonexistent problem.[0] How many years of his life has this guy wasted in order to save himself the trouble of spending 2 seconds using a wall switch a few times a day? [0] https://www.theonion.com/horoscope-for-the-week-of-october-31-2001-1819593236 https://www.theonion.com/horoscope-for-the-week-of-october-3...
• petre 6y ago
  I don't understand why there are no powerline network industry standards fir home automation other than the aging X10 and we have to rely on wireless comms. Maybe the PRIME or G3-PLC industry alliances will change this and come up with something useful. This is also needed for smart grids. It would eliminate the need to run parallel wiring for automation or use wireless tech. Separation could be done at the circuit breakers with lowpass filters and cable runs could use shielded cables with the shield connected to earth in order to eliminate crosstalk and prevent the power network become an antenna and pollute the radio spectrum with RF noise. Today's network tech for smart homes is immature and relies heavily on WiFi and industry standards designed for computer networking when in reality what is needed is something like a powerline bus for flipping switches, reading meters, remote controled power factor correction and so on.
• vonnieda 6y ago
  I use Insteon dimmers and switches in my house. These replace the wall switch but look basically like a normal wall switch. They use a combination of power line networking and RF mesh networking for automation. This is the second house I've had entirely outfitted with them and I love it. IMHO it's critical to maintain control at the wall switch - if I am walking into the kitchen and want to turn the lights on, I just hit the switch like any other house. But when I'm in bed and ready to go to sleep I can press one button in the app and all the lights turn off. Anyone with basic electrical skills can replace a switch in about 15 minutes. I did them all myself in my first house over the course of a few months, and when I moved I hired an electrician for a few hours to just do them all. The switches and dimmers are about $50 each, but they are highly reliable. I've had one failure out of about 40 total installed over the course of the 12 years I've been using it.
  • adanto6840 6y ago
    I did this on a prior home and then removed almost all of them just prior to moving. I haven't re-installed them in the 4-years we've been at our new home simply because the "failure rate" was so frustrating to me. I don't mean hardware failure, I mean "intermittent, rare command failure" -- I've never experienced quite the same level of annoyance/rage from anything else, versus hitting a switch and having it either not turn on/off or having it be delayed by 1-second. Granted, that was relatively rare, but having a wall switch not work even just 2-in-100 is enough to give me serious pause. I did love & do miss the ability to turn all lights off from a bedside switch, to run scenes, etc. -- but I'm just not sure it's worth the trade-off.
    • vonnieda 6y ago
      Are you saying you would hit the physical switch and it wouldn't activate? I don't think I've ever experienced that. Early on, I would have command failures when the dimmers were powerline only, but with the dual band ones (RF mesh + powerline) that they have been selling for the last 5+ years I don't think I've ever had an error.
      • 6y ago
• snapetom 6y ago
  I have a similar set up using AeoTech Z-Stick on a Raspberry Pi running HomeAssistant with Jasco light switches. I'm ready to toss the whole setup, too. First off, HomeAssistant is not as easy as people claim. They love to release breaking changes. You have to read the release notes or else a routine pip update will foobar your whole system. In the four years, I've run it, they have 1) Introduced and then retired a recommended install method. 2) Completely redone the web architecture. 3) Completely redone the Z-Wave architecture. 4) Routinely release UI features that are just placeholders and useless. It's completely maddening. The problems are exasperated by the Z-Wave devices themselves. The light switches may be branded GE or Honeywell, but they are all made by Jasco. The first generation has been complete garbage. I've had a 40% failure rate over these five years for them. They will randomly die, or fry during a power failure. Knock on wood, so far no failures with the 2nd Gen so far. HomeAssistant has tried to be more end-user friendly and have the UI be able to handle all aspects, but this is limited by the cooperation of the devices themselves. It's like herding cats. "Heal Network" never actually does anything. Try actually deleting a dead node through the UI. You can't. It never actually works. You have to ssh into the box, delete the entry from a JSON file, systemctl restart. How a non-linux user can manage a HomeAssistant setup is beyond me.
  • rootusrootus 6y ago
    Sounds like you have a similar setup to me. I'm running HA with mostly Jasco switches. It's been okay, but there have been hiccups. Z-Wave devices can be annoying -- ESPECIALLY door locks. I've gotten them all working, but the setup was finicky, mostly due to the security requirements. The only way I deal with HA breaking changes is that I don't update often. About once every couple years I've gone in, dedicated a couple hours on a Saturday to doing a major update. And I keep everything in git so I can roll back if something goes pear shaped. I'm probably sticking with HA, but my latest batch of light switches have been TP-Link Kasa WiFi switches and I really like them. Very fast to respond. Easier to setup than Z-Wave.
    • snapetom 6y ago
      Yeah, I'm probably sticking with HA for the time being mainly because I don't have the time to redo the whole thing right now. It's just frustrating to hear people recommend HA to complete home automation noobs with little or no linux experience. Related to that, I keep the HA configs routinely backed up. I should probably switch to nightly backups because HA now manipulates those config files when setting changes are done through the UI. Every once in a while, I shutdown the system and completely clone the Pi SD Card image to save elsewhere. I (thankfully) haven't had to restore from this in a while, but before switching to a durable SD card, I had to do it with every power failure. Backsups, cloning, industrial cards. Again, I have no clue how a non-linux user could even begin to use HA. I'll checkout the TP-Link switches. Thank you!
• rootusrootus 6y ago
  I'm going down a similar path, although I have been doing it differently from the beginning. My home is still predominantly Z-Wave, but I never got on the hidden-relay bandwagon for lights. All of my lights which are on the Z-Wave network are wall switches, so they work as dumb switches if the controller is down. Number 1 rule, do not ever rely on the controller for basic on/off operation. But I agree with his points about maintaining the network. It's a pain to add new devices. I bought a bunch of new switches, and they're all Kasa WiFi switches. Easier to set up, more responsive than Z-Wave, and a lot cheaper. Perhaps the one downside is that a WiFi device by definition has one less (really big) hurdle to become Internet-connected. So I did have to be careful with my WiFi configuration and firewall rules. But I'll take that trade-off. The experience has been far superior.
• satisfaction 6y ago
  My home was built in 1927, I would never retro-fit with a system like this.
• laacz 6y ago
  I've been thinking and experimenting with making my home smarter. There is one main rule. When building such systems one thing must be done always. It must work when there is no smart component to that system. For example, if your smart home stops working or startes to glitch, it should still be possible to go to a switch and turn that light on. This can be easily done when building a house or doing renovations. Retrofitting, however, very much depends on way your switches, lights and other related things are wired and installed.
• deeblering4 6y ago
  I truly do not understand the desire to complicate simple things like lighting. Especially considering the state of “smart” appliances. I’ll stick to my physical dimmer switches, and “dim to warm” LEDs
• hamandcheese 6y ago
  The ONLY wireless lighting system I will ever use is Lutron Caseta light switches. They are magic and don’t require a neutral cable, unlike just about every other smart dimmer, which means they can be swapped in place of literally any light switch in any home. If the Lutron hub is unplugged, the switches continue to operate as normal light switches. They also operate as normal light switches at all other times. So no need to teach every guest how to control the lights. They are HomeKit compatible, so you only have to deal with Lutron’s trash app when pairing new switches with the hub.
  • rewtraw 6y ago
    100%. I've been using Lutron Caseta switches & hub for over 5 years and have never once had a single issue -- no matter how minor. The dimmers work like normal even if the wifi is down, and they don't need internet in order to work with HomeKit. I've never once had a switch not work or fail to respond with HomeKit. I have friends with Z-Wave/Zigby/Phillips/etc and they are always talking about how they are finicking with Home Assistant or Smart Things, or how the lights all returned to full brightness after a power outage in the middle of the night. I want to install my switches and have them work, always. If my wife even once complains, that's a total failure. If a guest can even tell that they are anything but normal dimmers, that's a failure. With my Caseta system, my wife has never complained -- only asked me to install more of them. And h/t to HomeKit and Home.app. I've tried Google's version (Home) and it's absolute garbage in comparison.
  • abstractbarista 6y ago
    ZWave switches and dimmers also continue to work fine without the hub. I do enjoy Caseta's smooth dimming and "nice touch" switch controls however.
  • crooked-v 6y ago
    What I'd really like to find is some variety of smart switch with a mode change between 'control the wall circuit' and 'leave the wall circuit always on and send commands over the network', so that the same switch hardware can be used everywhere but you can change the mode for specific circuits that have smart bulbs. I have no idea how one would design this in an intuitive way, though.
• abstractbarista 6y ago
  Wow, this guy is either willfully ignorant of ZWave technical realities, or just doesn't have as much knowledge in the realm as he purports to have. Basically every gripe listed has to do with using old original ZWave devices. If you started a 150-node mesh today with strictly ZWave+ devices, an Aotec ZWave hub, and perhaps Home Assistant to control and automate it all, you'd have a much more consistently positive experience. So I'm left boiling down the complaints to "I was an early adopter, so I got stuck with the crappy stuff, boo!" Also, if you're paying >$50USD per common ZWave fixture (like a dimmer, stuff like pool controllers can be more), you're seriously doing something wrong. Oh well, to each their own. I have a mesh of about 50 nodes across 2 stories, and it all works great. Can't remember the last time I had to turn a light on when I entered a room. Among many other nice touches, which I am fine expending a bit more effort to upkeep than normal 'analog' dumb homes.
  • gorbachev 6y ago
    The thing that stuck out to me in that article was complaining about failures. I would think, if you have 150 components of anything, you're going see failures on a fairly consistent pace, especially as time goes by. For example, I'm replacing LED lights that were supposed to last for decades every 6 - 18 months in my house, and they aren't even the smart kind. The one thing I'm not happy about my small z-wave setup is the HomeAssistant upgrade cycle breaking things way too often. It's gotten better in the past year or so, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to see that happen again in the future. Definitely would not recommend HA for anyone who doesn't like tinkering.
    • crooked-v 6y ago
      At that scale, personally, I'd really want to just be looking at good dimmable LED bulbs, and put any 'smart' hardware purely into the wall switches, so that there are far fewer devices to worry about.
    • seized 6y ago
      For Home Assistant, look at ZWave2MQTT. ZWave devices use that as their hub, Home Assistant is a client. Now restarting Home Assistant doesn't cause problems. I was ready to ditch ZWave or Home Assistant until I switched.
• mdoms 6y ago
  I have just never felt like flicking a light switch was a problem in need of a solution. It works just fine for me.
• VLM 6y ago
  I have 30+ zwave devices on my homeassistant and some years experience going back to the X10 and insteon days and here's my comments on the article and other folks comments: 1) TLDR does not like the effort required for hard wiring. Solution I used? Never hard wire end devices. Makes it easy to take it all with me if I move. Pairing is insanely simple and done in infinite comfort in my office chair not on top of a ladder or whatever nonsense. Then once it all works I plug it in the official place. I hated replacing my hardwired insteon switches. Obviously wall switches have to be built in, but why would I have to climb a rickety ladder with a laptop per the linked article to access a wall switch? And I've had ridiculous good results with RF switches and with automation based on presence and timers I don't "need" wall switches nearly as often. There's no point in rewiring a wall switch for my driveway and side door lights if the lights are now near 100% controlled by elevation of sun and position of garage door and some software timers. Honestly I'm not entirely sure where my physical garage light switch is... 2) Never had a problem with healing 3) Yes I too ran into scaling problems where I have a "large" number of zooz Zen15 inline switches and they work great but the out of the box homeassistant config had them spamming the current voltage and current ... current like every second. Which looks nice when you're demoing one device. Not cool if you have 20 of them spamming the unholy hell out of homeassistant. There are config options to fix that and suddenly my network works better including healing. You uh, do know you can have multiple zwave systems? I mean zwave the protocol only supports 254-ish devices off a stick, but another stick is like $15? And to some extent with MQTT and some virtualization you can have "infinite" HA servers running? I was amused with the idea of running a separate HA instance for every ROOM in my house on docker. Its not hard to pass usb access thru docker and the sticks work fine. I would imagine if I ran long USB extension cords and multiple zwave sticks each with only like 10 devices that network thruput and healing times would be AWESOME. But I'm lazy to set this up and I only have like 30+ devices so... 4) See my virtualization idea in #3. If an aeotech zwave stick failed (note, never happened to me nor heard of it happening to anyone) then I'd cry some if I had the protocol limited 254 devices to re-pair, but with only 10 in a room or whatever, eh who cares something to do for a half hour while listening to a podcast or something. 5) Hate to repeat myself see virtualization idea in #3. Again, if my entire system died I'd be sorely inconvenienced, but if my living room virtualized dockerized server died I'd only be out my automatic fish tank lights, my automatic presence detected and temp controlled ceiling fan, and some area lighting effects based on roku and other TV device status. 6) Seriously dude I lived thru Insteon AC line caps blowing every year or two, you have no idea how good you have it with zwave. But see answer to #1 again. Have a zooz zen15 ready in backup and its like 5 minutes work to swap them out. 7) I have not had a dead node problem. Interference related? Only when the microwave oven is on? Honestly I donno. It sounds anecdotal along lines of "Don't use Verizon worldwide because my local tower sux" 8) Confused what short lifespan Chinese outdoor christmas lights have to do with automation. Like if your christmas lights burn out too much it doesn't matter if you don't control them, or timer them, or zwave them. 9) Yeah well CLIs are user friendly they're just a bit selective about who they're friends with. General public maybe not, HN type people will be fine. 10) What price safety, convenience, security? So the "light switch" for my basement stairs is the door, making it impossible to stumble down the steps in the dark, isn't that worth something? Building code requires a light over my entrance door which is practically never used, but now my icy steps in the winter are at least very well lit. I think the biggest problem OP will have with his esoteric wifi light system is theres maybe 1000x as many casual zwave users and eyes on zwave hardware. Bug strikes down zwave then HA development goes in crisis repair mode with excellent support on the forums. The one install in his state of this guy's wifi thingie goes down, well... reinstall zwave or be very very patient? People who hate the upgrade process on home assistant: Dockerized HA and tar or whatever snapshot strategy you want. Life's a lot easier than "misterhouse" back around 2000.
• xellisx 6y ago
  I noticed no one has brought up X10.
• dusted 6y ago
  I'm glad to see that he chose to do it himself, I'm building a house and am also leaning toward a DIY solution, because then I am in control of component quality, and I can have a fully documented system which I know I will be able to hack as I see fit, and for instance, design in such a way that even if the controller is down, the wall mounted switches still work as expected. So, great, comforting article!