How Do You Use Home Automation?

[hernandito]

Hi,

 

I see all these home automation Dockers floating around, and I am very intrigued about it. Then I start to think, "how would I use this stuff". I get that one can turn lights on and off, set thermostats, monitor cameras, open window blinds, etc.

 

As much as I like the idea of doing these things, in the end, I think... is it really worth the effort implementing a system only to keep me from getting up and flicking a wall switch? Seems like its more trouble to dig out my phone, swipe, scroll to the app, press a couple of buttons, when I can just get up and flip the switch (or better yet, ask my wife to do it for me.... caveman home automation  ).

 

I truly don't want to sound negative or be old fashioned.... but do people out there use this? Anyone here use this stuff? If so, how...!! I would love to hear some real life cases rather than web pages flouting features.

 

I know this is vaguely a Docker discussion, but some of these things seem to run on Dockers.

 

Thanks.

[bungee91]

Maybe still a bit off topic to the already off topic that you're discussing (as mentioned we're in the Docker sub-forum).

 

However... I recently purchased a Nest thermostat, and it is da bomb!

 

Case in point (phone always listening/Nexus 6) "Ok Google" wait "Set temperature to 74" Ahhh... 

It's not just cool, it's easy, and that to me makes it beneficial. It is also smart enough to turn off when I don't think about it, and auto tweak it's schedule for what I do.

I'm more than capable of programming a thermostat, but that also doesn't mean that I will, nor will I likely change it again. It would likely be set in "Hold" mode most of the time, and then it isn't programmed anyhow.

 

Anyhow, just want to say it was worth it (to me), and I think it works very well.

 

To add a previous experience: I used to have a whole home automation system from Control4 that was cool, but expensive! In the end it was not worth the cost, and that they wanted only licensed people to be able to program it, so overall it became more frustration than useful. Originally I had a friend who was a dealer, so having a login for tinkering was there. However once he no longer was one, the login was dead, and I was basically locked out (of course it had to verify for login online). Fortunately I was able to resell it and make back all of the costs.

[hernandito]

Thanks for sharing.... these are the kinds of thing I want to understand.

 

 

[trurl]

I'm not using any docker for this. Don't really do much fancy with it. Remote control of lights. Scheduling of lights so the house looks occupied.

 

I can stand at my back door and turn on lights around the house or outside or out at the storage building. Can turn on outside and inside lights from my phone before I get home. Turn on the attic light when I pull down the stairs. Turn off all the lights when I go to bed.

 

Don't have any motion detectors or cameras or anything like that. I sometimes consider getting fancier with some software, but I always decide not.

[niietzshe]

Currently I'm running OpenHab 1.7 on an Ubuntu VM, but I'm making a docker for it (and will make a OH2 docker once the ZWave2 binding is released soon). Just struggling with getting it to startup when you launch the docker.

 

This allows me to control my zwave devices, but I've made the bindings folder visible on the share, so you can just drop whatever binding you want into there. For me OpenHab is the future, all the developers of community bindings from other solutions (MiCasa, Fibaro etc) have moved over to developing for OpenHab and it's looking really promising. But until OH2 is live, it is a bit rough around the edges for non technical users. OH2 should be able to auto discover things etc...

 

Have a look on the menu on the right for the amount of bindings they have already:

https://github.com/openhab/openhab/wiki/Bindings

 

Here is my OpenHab docker, but It's not ready for anyone yet, could do with a bit of help getting it working:

https://registry.hub.docker.com/u/christianwaite/openhab/

 

Thanks

Christian

[hernandito]

This allows me to control my zwave devices,

 

Thank you Christian! 

 

Would you mind elaborating a bit on how you use your zwave devices? I am curious as to how you use them in real life...

 

Going to read about OH2....

 

Thanks again.

 

H.

[niietzshe]

Erm while I have a pretty small setup at the minute. Been following Home Automation for many years, but been waiting until conditions were right before starting to do stuff.

 

So currently I just have our babies room setup. So I have two flipper switches on the wall, one controls the main light, one controls a little lamp. When we put our lad to bed a double tap of the switch turns it into "nightime mode", which will turn the main light off and the lamp onto 60%. Then over a period of 20 minutes the lamp will incrementally dim down and turn off eventually. If he wakes up in the night (motion detector) the lamp will come up to 20% so he can see around a bit. If it gets too hot in there (same detector, it's multi functional) then a fan will turn on etc...

 

Next step is to get our bedroom sorted so when there's a lot of motion our lights will turn on etc... So if he wakes up in the middle of the night, our side lights could come onto 20%, hallway lights up to 40% and same with his lights etc...

 

Posibilities are endless really. We're going to get some new tv stuff that are all IP controlled instead of IR. So when I start watching a movie in plex it will dim all the lights when it's playing, when paused it'll bring them back up etc. Also I hate ceiling lights, so the switches are repurposed to more ambient lamps around the living room etc.

 

As it pushes forward we're going to get a few Amazon Echo's so we can talk to the house (weird eh)... "Alexa... Play the next Bob's Burgers..." Would turn the tv on, amp, go into plex, play the next episode while also turning the lights on/off etc.

 

Or have a "away" mode. "Alexa I'm going out" and it'd just shut down the whole house, just leaving things on like the fridge and of course the UnRaid server.

 

There's even ROS (Robot Operating System) so you can make robots to do what you want

[Leifgg]

I have been using Home automation for a number of years. The current setup is a VERA3 (MiCasa) controller with ZWave. All my wall switches are replaced with ZWave dimmers and lamps not controlled by wall switches have plug in switches or dimmers. I am also able to interface devices running on the 433 MHz band (temperature sensors) as well as controlling IR devices as well as a Harmony hub. The setup includes two wall tablets as well as remote access from my mobile. Controlling the system can also be done from my Harmony remote. Additionally the setup include door sensors, motion detectors, smoke detector, a camera as well as a power meter.

 

The benefit of using a standalone controller is that it is relatively easy to setup, it’s a matter of configuring things through a graphical interface (more or less). However the limitations becomes obvious when you would like to do more complex things like activities that are conditionally triggered. The VERA3 will allow for some coding on your own but there are still a lot of limitations.

 

Still the largest limitation is that you are limited to use the devices that the manufacturer has chosen to implement. It will take time before new devices are implemented (if ever) and the implementation is not always done correctly.

 

To get the system to do what I would like it to do has been a challenge (to put it mildly!) but at the moment it does what I should do.

 

All standalone Home automation boxes I looked at looks good when you read about them but it isn’t until you start building your system you actually find out their limitations…. And then you have already spent a fair amount of money (and time).

 

Haven’t checked out OpenHab for a while but I guess I couldn’t resist doing it if it popped up as Docker container  Just love the idea of bringing different technologies and interfaces together into one location.

 

[wgstarks]

I'm not running my home automation from my unraid server (using Mac software & Insteon/X10), but I use it primarily for outdoor solutions. Back door light is connected to a motion sensor in the driveway so that if I get home after dark the light turns on. I have a few lights along the driveway that remain on all night and the timing is automatically adjusted for local sunrise/sunset times. Irrigation system in my garden is controlled by Insteon device on a timer and co-ordinated with local recorded rainfall so that I'm not wasting money to water when it's not needed. About a year ago my neighborhood suffered a rash of breakins to storage buildings, so I setup my own security system on my shop building. Magnetic door switches trigger automated lights inside the shop and a relay connected to a very loud horn. An email notification is also triggered. I can turn the system on and off with a true/false variable condition.

 

I'm not sure if all these uses are easily supported with the dockers available in unraid, but I imagine they could be with a little work.

[hernandito]

It all really sounds very Star Trek like... thank you guys for sharing... niietzshe that really sounds practical... I gather that the 2 technologies are X10 and Zwave... w/ zwave being more "networkable".

[niietzshe]

OpenHab is agnostic, you can use anything there is a binding for. But you can mostly use this stuff on purpose built hardware like the Fibaro and MiCasa etc.

 

So you have zwave which is wireless modules communicating back to server through either a built in transmitter/receiver or a USB one (I use AeonLabs ZStick). It's a mesh network so the signal can be piggy backed through other modules to get to the far side of your house if the signal isn't strong enough straight from the server etc..

 

433mhz or LightwaveRF. Similar wireless thing, but it doesn't store the state and is not a mesh network. So you can send is signal "turn on", but can't go.. "what value are you, bring the brightness up by 5% from there". But a lot of people use a mix of LightwaveRF and Zwave

 

RS232 is a serial port communication to control old things like amps and tvs, replaces by more IP based stuff now. So there's Denon, Sony, Onkyo bindings that can just control those things over your network.

 

Loads of heating control stuff, if it's got an API you can control it.

 

Anything you can build with an Arduino

 

And internet services. I just set up last night to flash a light when the ISS goes overhead. Need to get a Sonos so I can play the opening theme from 2001 when it goes by!

 

My point being. Choose your protocol (ZWave or LightwaveRF to start), but you're not stuck with just using that and that only.

 

I'll get the OpenHAB Docker up next week hopefully when the wife and kid is away!!! Woo party time!

C

[niietzshe]

Ok thanks to some wonderful help on this thread I got the OpenHab1.7 up and running ready for testing if anyone want's to play around.

 

Of note, Bungy also has a OpenHab docker and he knows much more about this stuff than I do.

 

Where we differ in setup is I've added zwave binding by default and HabMin2, but no demo...

Also I've exposed some of the directories, so you can play around with configs and add new bindings by just adding them to the addon folder etc...

 

Add this repository and let me know of any problems.

https://github.com/christianwaite/docker-templates

 

I will be messing around with it this week while the wife and kid are away, so I'm sure I'll find a few things wrong. And I also have to add support for auto detection of a zwave dongle, currently you'll have to set that manually in the config.

[Squid]

Do you want that template added to the templates thread and be usable within Community Applications?

[aptalca]

Home automation is not just about avoiding flipping a switch.

 

I have a light that automatically turns on 20 min before dark so if I'm not home by then, my dogs don't get scared.

 

If we forget and leave the garage door open (happens often), I get emails on my phone, and can shut it remotely if needed.

 

My basement (mancave as I like to call it) has four light switches controlling different lights and they are scattered around the whole floor. I set up the amazon echo so when I'm going down the basement stairs, I can shout "Alexa, turn the basement lights on". Then I say "Alexa, turn the media center on" and the projector, av receiver and the htpc all turn on. When I start playback, I can ask Alexa to turn the lights off. I don't have to walk all over the basement to turn on and off four separate lights.

 

There is so much you can do, it's all about creativity really.

 

[niietzshe]

Do you want that template added to the templates thread and be usable within Community Applications?

 

Hey Squid, let me test this thoroughly and add some extra stuff in there, then I'll let you know.

Also I'm waiting on the next generation of the software to come up (days/weeks away) and will add that in as well.

 

Cheers

Christian