The Fun Irish (House)

Looks good.

 

What wall switches are you using with your smart lighting ? I have still to buy some retractive ones and am interested in what others are using.

 

Are you automating any electric roller blinds ?

 

I will be starting to move to Home Assistant soon as I find different manufacturers are still implementing certain features in incompatible ways. For example I am using some sonoff relays, but they have implemented the detached mode in a way that hides switch presses from non sonoff ecosystems. I have implemented a work around but HA seems like it should be the bees knees and avoid such things.

 

What are you using for presence sensing and do you have eny experience of the extent to which it may be usable through plaster board ?

Will be interesting to follow the Home Assistant journey so please keep us informed.

 

I've just started playing with HA as an experiment while I wait for our build to start.

 

It's been a useful exercise as it's helping to shape my thinking between 'need/want' and 'necessary/just for the fun of it'.

 

I haven't fully decided on the way forward yet but my thoughts are trending towards the following:

 

• Keep lights and other household stuff 'normal' - eg lights/light switches to be mains powered and wall mounted.  Yes, having multiple scenes and lighting setups might be sexy but I imagine we will soon tire of them and revert to using the forefinger as the primary method of switching lights on/off.  Also, we don't plan on selling the house at any point but having all the lights etc operated in a familiar way will avoid future owners having to learn how to use HA or whatever).
• Flood the house with Cat 6/Cat 8 ethernet points at appropriate places (ideally Power over Internet).  This is to deal with stuff that will benefit from being plugged in to permanent power and benefit from faster speeds (security lights, gate intercom, wifi extenders, etc).  
• Use HA sensors in a secondary manner which doesn't impact the structure of the house.  So, temp/humidity/vibration/presence sensors where appropriate but not where they are vital to the basic house functions.  Smart plug adaptors can easily be used for floor lamps/side lamps can easily be put on smart wall plugs.

 

It's unlikely that our house will become the poster boy of smart home integration but it should be enough for us.

I got a few Aqara light switches to start with - they do Matter/Zigbee and take a neutral which is what I was after. The fixings/screws were tiny, the electrician dealt with them but not as robust as I'd like. 

I have a standard 3 gang switch in the hallway which does porch, hallway and landing, I just bought some zemismart matter wifi smart switches (3 gang) and plan to replace this with one of them so I can trigger the porch light when my doorbell sees me. The others I'll install in my bedroom / elsewhere as even though there's only 1 light I can use the other switches to trigger an automation and do something else. I had a long look around other light switches, the aqara dimmer one is really nice, the two gang above not so much, looks flimsy but is working well enough, zemismart TBC. I've a 4 gang switch in the living room, but no one seems to be making smart ones of these. Something for down the road! 

Getting switches to fit UK back boxes can also be tricky. I have a smart screen but it needs a EU backbox - but that doesn't fit behind plasterboard! The zemi below has perfect screwhole placement though for a single gang: 

 

I bought a zemi roller blind motor but it was 28mm and the blocout blind I got for my bedroom is 32mm. I found a 3d model on the web and printed it the local library but it didn't adapt correctly. Instead I purchased a couple of Aqara roller shade E1 drivers.

I fitted this a few days ago and have the automation working fine tied to the sunup and sundown times. Must change it before the Spring!! It's a heavy blind but works well so far. I'll do the same with the other blinds as I buy them. Would have preferred the driver inside the roller itself but this is the next best thing. I have vertical blinds on a cord for the kitchen and even though there's no beads, just a string, this product can apparently handle them. I just can't find the other 4 E1's I bought, probably in a box somewhere.....!!! I've Luxor Perfect Fit honeycomb blinds for privacy and then the blackout blind for total immersion in the summer! 

 

I went with a load of Shelly Relays for the floodlights, towel rails and stairs LED but Sonoff for other things - presence detection, PIR, Door Sensor, push button remote, water sensor. It's been an interesting mix. I've two presence detectors in the bathrooms, one gets me in the shower 99% of the time behind the glass. There's no room door currently and when I exit the front door it triggers also which is weird. I don't expect it to penetrate plasterboard - I'll know more after the door goes on but it's facing into the bathroom so unlikely to pick anything beyond that I would think? Not sure of a use case for it....! I use a unifi poe to usb dingle to power it which is neat inside a double gang backbox and a blanking plate! 

 

Retrofit is a bit different to new builds so I get the need to keep things familiar. You really need smart switches to deal with legacy users. All my bulbs are non smart / traditional - they just dim etc. If you find a nice switch it's an easy win. It's the LED's around the kitchen etc that have more options / control requirements that need more than a switch can provide. I've only automated some lights to on / off via presence detection but I want to get it to dim the lights in the wee hours when they come on, that would be really nice. I was able to CAT6a around the house which worked well. 

 

I have a few smart sockets in strategic places that will come into their own in the coming months. I can move these around as I figure things out. Sometimes just a double socket with USB is fine. Just bought a raspberry pi and mounted a monitor in my room so I can put my cctv picture up there and turn it off at night but have a push button to turn it on if I get an alarm. I've hikvision cameras and NVR but looking to move to unifi as I can't get the HA integration to work so I can trigger floodlights etc on people detection / line crossing. That said I did get the tumble dryer to send me a notification last night for the first time when the load had finished! Some success, some head scratching. I also want Sonos voice alerts but haven't figured that out yet either! Really happy with the HA Dashboard though! 

 

I'll post an update in a few months here around HA stuff and any questions let me know. New to this myself too! 

I have put in 47mm back boxes everywhere for the light switches, and a number with backboxes twice the size of the cover plate to provide plenty of room for switch/dimmer modules. Despite this my sparky seems to belong to the abstract spaghetti school of smart module wiring.

 

I find it frustrating how the manufacturers are so focussed on the retrofit market, there seems to be a big gap to be filled with products for people doing new builds and total renovations. Having smart things on show is all very well, but I do think the ideal smart home would have the devices hidden from view. Nobody seems to have worked out how and where to integrate in presence/motion detectors etc. Lots of things in white plastic boxes only. I like things like the Sensative strips that are invisible when installed.

 

Have you integrated smoke and heat alarms into HA ? Because the England regs require wired detectors which is a PITA and seems to preclude all the smart home solutions that are almost universally retrofit battery powered and don't meet regs.

 

Also are you using anything for smart control to turn the water mains supply or gas supply on/off - such as the robots that will turn a lever arm valve ?

 

Are you using LED strips under your kitchen counter tops, and if so what type, and are they surface mounted or in routed channels ?

 

(It is amazing just how many lights you can end up with. I have 8 dining spots+9 sitting spots+3 entry spots+10 kitchen spots+5 pendants + 7 led strips + 3 under cabinet pucks + 3 accent spots + 3 picture lights + 1 wall light = 52 individual lights in one open plan room, with another 11 external lights (6 soffit, 4 wall, 1 step). I guess I am as mad as mad jack mcmadman from madsville.)

 

 

 

Edited 5 hours ago by Spinny

33 minutes ago, Spinny said:

I find it frustrating how the manufacturers are so focussed on the retrofit market, there seems to be a big gap to be filled with products for people doing new builds and total renovations. Having smart things on show is all very well, but I do think the ideal smart home would have the devices hidden from view.

 

Amen! There is Loxone and KNX at the 'low-end' and moving up there are companies like Lutron and Control4 that do stuff (been a while since I looked so might be out of date). Nothing really accessible unless you want to spend fortune on it along with specialist installers and maintenance contracts.

 

I'm seeing a lot more commercial building solutions so maybe these filter down at some point but not getting my hopes up. The market will be dominated by Matter/Thread

 

33 minutes ago, Spinny said:

Nobody seems to have worked out how and where to integrate in presence/motion detectors etc. Lots of things in white plastic boxes only. I like things like the Sensative strips that are invisible when installed.

 

I've seen people plaster in mm-Wave sensors to the ceiling though can't find it right now. Some smart light switches have presence sensors behind the switch (again dont have a link). Saw this most recently whose features seem attractive, but it's not hidden (ceiling mountable though and the visible PIR sensor is removable). https://shop.everythingsmart.io/products/everything-presence-pro

 

33 minutes ago, Spinny said:

Have you integrated smoke and heat alarms into HA ? Because the England regs require wired detectors which is a PITA and seems to preclude all the smart home solutions that are almost universally retrofit battery powered and don't meet regs.

 

I wouldn't trust these sort of things to HA anyway. Best bet in my book is add monitoring to the alarm signal wire in traditional wired alarms. That way your HA system can get notification of an issue (to send alerts if you are out of the house or whatever).

 

33 minutes ago, Spinny said:

Also are you using anything for smart control to turn the water mains supply or gas supply on/off - such as the robots that will turn a lever arm valve ?

 

Not currently building but I certainly plan to have water leak detection and automatic shut off would be good.

1 hour ago, -rick- said:

That way your HA system can get notification of an issue (to send alerts if you are out of the house or whatever).

However what you also want is the ability to silence the alarm remotely.

29 minutes ago, Spinny said:

However what you also want is the ability to silence the alarm remotely.

 

This surprised me. I assume you are thinking you want to avoid the need to get steps/ladder to silence the alarm after accidentally setting it off? Can't say I've ever set off my fire alarms since I've been living here >10 years and that involves some occasionally smokey cooking.

 

If it's been a problem for you, maybe consider if your alarms are set right (heat alarms in cooking areas, etc)?

Keep seeing these threads, and still see zero point with most of what people do with automation. Waste of time and money. But fill your boots. 

 

My current lighting scheme, is side lights in the lounge from a normal light switch and 3A wall sockets. Don't need home assistant or shelly or any other smart relay. Got a box of them, all removed, in my cr@p I bought box and was waste of money.

 

4 years in house, no smoke or heat alarms have ever gone off. They will all be binned at year 10 and replaced with new. If they go there's an issue. Heat alarms in kitchen don't react to you burning your toast.