home automation

cjd1965 said:

I think the biggest obstacle is resale of the house if you go overboard on the automation, especially custom devices.

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Agreed, there needs to be a cost-effective system that sits on top of the existing electrical system. Maybe someone has come up with this idea already but add a "Master" controller like an rPI, and allow it to directly connect to a home electrical installation so it can be used as a network bus. Install addressable electrical outlet/light adapters where you want, then program away. If you could run I2C over the distribution outlet/light adapters would just need a small package with a relay and chip. Seems entirely plausible. I'd use Codesys on the rPI for the programming and visualization through my phone/ipad.

If I sell the house, I take it all with me!

Looks like these guys are onto something, although wireless...

This looks interesting: http://www.opto22.com/site/pr_details.aspx?cid=4&item=OPTO-P1-40P

TWS said:

This looks interesting: http://www.opto22.com/site/pr_details.aspx?cid=4&item=OPTO-P1-40P

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Thats radical!!

jvdcande said:

A couple of colleagues of mine automated their homes with a PLC some 20 years ago. Over here the regulations were the biggest problem. PLCs don't meet the regulations for home systems, so you'll need interfacing relays which do. Att that time it was almost the biggest investment of the entire system. They also provided their systems with override switches in case the system failed. Suppose the processor halts and you're unable to switch on/off the lights. I however don't know if they ever had to use those overrides.

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Out of interest, who comes round to check on your home in Belgium?

Paully's5.0 said:

Agreed, there needs to be a cost-effective system that sits on top of the existing electrical system. Maybe someone has come up with this idea already but add a "Master" controller like an rPI, and allow it to directly connect to a home electrical installation so it can be used as a network bus. Install addressable electrical outlet/light adapters where you want, then program away. If you could run I2C over the distribution outlet/light adapters would just need a small package with a relay and chip. Seems entirely plausible. I'd use Codesys on the rPI for the programming and visualization through my phone/ipad.

If I sell the house, I take it all with me!

Looks like these guys are onto something, although wireless...

Click to expand...

I was thinking wireless along the lines of a Pi with an Xbee hat like this one.

I have the new wink hub. It seems to work better than the last one that I sent back after about a day. I plan on doing some water sensors and perhaps a zwave valve to shut incoming water to the house if a sensor detects water. My house flooded because of a stupid sink hose popping off and I dont want it to happen again.

The main issue I find with these types of systems is that IT type people program it and give you limited ability. It would be nice to be able to write your own code and have it do what you want.

I also think there is some potential to make money installing these. they can be very sophisticated. I have mine tied to an amazon dot and can control everything thru voice commands. Its a wow factor that people will pay for. One advantage of these precanned systems is that they can integrate with your phones gps and can do things like turn off or on lights when you leave, etc. I think doing things like putting a valve and water sensors on a new build house can be very beneficial. You could even put a sensor to monitor the secondary pan on your AC(for those of us in the south).

How about a $9 computer?

C.H.I.P. with WiFi, BLE, 1GHz, 4GB storage, 512MB RAM
https://nextthing.co/pages/chip

No, it's not a RTOS but for home automation I think we can wait a few milliseconds.

You guys might be interested in these platforms:

https://home-assistant.io/
http://www.openhab.org/

They are both software automation platforms that can connect with various commercial home automation systems. IE phillips hue, wink, zigbee, zwave. I think home assistant even talks modbus tcp, so you can connect to PLCs too.

You can run them on basically anything, RPi etc.