My Journey with Home Automation - 2023 edition
Home Automation has always been a fascination of mine. Maybe it was all the sci-fi i watched as a kid, but the idea of a light coming on when i walked into a room was just an obvious need. Right?
Do we need Home Automation? Really? NO.
Is it cool? Hell yes.
Favourite Automations
Here is a list of my favourite automations that i have running at home.
- Lights come on automatically when walking in the pantry and wardrobes. Lights stay on until no motion is detected, then switches off 2 minutes later.
- Pool temperature indicator from my home office desk. Yes.. on those days when the temperate needs to be just right to convince me to take a quick break.
- Know which bin goes out on bin night. I’m not sure why councils dont just pick up all the bins every week, but for some reason each alternate week is a different bin. This “Bindicator” is a 3d printed bin that lights up to the colour corresponding to the bin that needs to go out.. and the data is fetched from the council web site.
- Unifying lighting from 4 different manufacturers into scenes. My Media room has a bunch of lights I've picked up from all over the place.. Philips Hue, Ikea Tradri etc. Now they all sync into scenes and access at a press of a button. Same for the outdoor lighting and my home office.
- Have a single view of what's going on in my house, and in the world, with dashboards displaying everything from the temperature in various parts of the the house, to letting me know if i left the back door open, to knowing how long till its high tide, to how much fuel i have left in the car.
The Journey
Everything began with Belkin Wemo. Actually it began with those awkward on/off timers with the stupid pins that turn a lamp on and off at certain times, but it REALLY started with Belkin. Having a lamp that turned on at sunset.. And always adjusted throughout the year was great. Plus it had motion sensor support and a mobile app.
From there I bought into the notion of a “local hub” for a smart controller. Rather than building a smart home that relied on “the cloud”, I started with OpenHab as a local way of controlling devices on the local network. I quickly started expanding and using ZWave equipment and before long “SzulcHome 1.0” was officially smart.. But unreliable. I ended up ditching both OpenHab and the ZWave hardware.
Home Assistant was suggested by a colleague at Adobe and while first reluctant, I gave it a test and was soon a convert. “SzulcHome 2.0” was rock solid and the devices grew, and after moving location, “SzulcHome 3.0” has been very stable and the automations are growing weekly.
My current setup
- Home Assistant running on a Raspberry Pi 4
- Ikea Tradri Light Bulbs, Power Switches & Motion Detectors
- Philips Hue Bulbs and Led Strips
- Grid-Connect (Tuya) power outlets and bulbs
- Meross Power Switches
- Sonoff Temperature / Humidity sensors & Window / Door contact sensors
- ESPHome various devices
