(smart?) things that should be in every room

[MJNewton]

Yes, I'm keen on experimenting with some sort of miniature programmable board as I would like a smart dimmer that also has local control through a rotary knob (not push buttons). I've been trying to convince Allterco to add rotary encoder inputs to their new Shelly dimmer module and might be making some progress which would be great so I don't have to roll my own! 

[SteamyTea]

26 minutes ago, MikeSharp01 said:

I am experimenting with mesh networks, based on THESE

I bought a handful of a similar board (the ones that do MicroPython).

What I found was, and may be a bit obvious from my responses, is that I could not really find things I wanted to control.  So lost interest.

I do keep meaning to rig one up with a few temperature sensors on it, but as I already have a RPi Zero W doing this, I can't see what I would gain.

As for remote external lighting, I got a very cheap light from Poundland.  It goes on my keyring and for those rare nights when there is no moon, it gets me out a hole.

[DamonHD]

As with @SteamyTea in the past I've played around a fair amount with some of this kit (I have a small X-10 graveyard somewhere) and lost interest.

 

For gathering sensor data I use my OpenTRV / Radbot gear which is out of the way on each rad and does the (in this view) bonus job of saving a pile of carbon emissions.

 

My profile pic and the attached an example of the kind of data I collect (temperature, light, RH%, occupancy, ..) up to a sample per 2 minutes.

 

 

[SteamyTea]

35 minutes ago, DamonHD said:

light, occupancy

What do you use to collect that and is it just On or Off. Or a real unit reading.

Same with occupancy. How is that done and does it record None, Some or Many.

Or an actual number.

[joth]

1 hour ago, MikeSharp01 said:

I am almost sure we will use CAT6 to all our switches and power anything there with PoE if you used a deep back box you could get enough processing power behind an ordinary switch to do most anything! I am experimenting with mesh networks, based on THESE, and THESE self powered switches to see what I might make them do around the house.

It sounds rather like you are reinventing KNX, which is already the established international standard for exactly this sort of "one wall box in each room"

KNX has many drawbacks so I'm not entirely surprised it's never taken off (that said New Zealand and Australia have now integrated it as an option into their electrical code so maybe it's going to have another burst of life, well, before the Connected Home over IP project cannibalises it, even if they're currently wireless only)

 

Problem with anything home brew for this is some functions like light switches are mission critical to safely using a home, so I pity the poor person next trying to repair the custom designed system when it eventually fails. 

This is the deciding factor pushing me (somewhat hesitantly) to loxone: say I'm in hospital and the lights stop working, there is (today at least..) a local company that my family can call to come and fix it.

 

For the best future proofing against all eventualities, last time we did this conversation @ProDave made the great suggestion to put 1mm2 T&E and a cat6 drop into each switch, which is what I'm now planning. A future owner can then easily roll back to old school switches, or the latest whatever.

(I was actually going to use KNX cable as I had got a reel of it and Loxone would work over that fine, and perhaps benefit from the slightly larger wire gauge, and gives a clear KNX upgrade path if I want it, but CHIP gives me the hunch CAT6 is the way to go now. )

 

[puntloos]

2 hours ago, MikeSharp01 said:

I am almost sure we will use CAT6 to all our switches

 

Cat 7a exists - and isn't *dramatically* more expensive than 6. Would go for this one myself.

 

Quote

and power anything there with PoE

PoE isn't bad but perhaps slightly limiting for what you can put in said wall boxes.. Indeed what if I wanted to put some google home mini next to it etc...

 

Quote

if you used a deep back box you could get enough processing power behind an ordinary switch to do most anything! I am experimenting with mesh networks, based on THESE, and THESE self powered switches to see what I might make them do around the house.

 

Huh, interesting idea, those switches seem cool. Am I understanding correctly that you'd listen to these switches with the little PCB, and those will then trigger a relay as well as somehow communicating this status to the rest of the smarthome? It sounds great but I don't think I'd be up to manually wiring up those things... want a solution in a box! 

 

[edit - oh I didn't notice there were already comments to this  ]

 

 

Edited December 29, 2019 by puntloos

[Pocster]

21 hours ago, puntloos said:

Just a bit of an errant thought, but which things feature in pretty much every room, and how do you make clever use of this 'repeating fact'? I realise this might be a bit of a 'smart home' question but there could be other things too. For example:

 

- Networking cable, and perhaps a few "boxes in the wall" that can fit a router and allow me to open up an ethernet port here and there 'on demand'?

- Ceiling speakers? (not a fan myself but you know.. resale..)

- Water line? (with a small baby, can't express how useful a tap is in the baby room)

- HDMI cable from one wall to another? (so one could hang a TV on one wall and 'drive it' from another device?

- Switchable room power line (so you can turn an entire room off, and perhaps measure power usage -  "no dad, I'm not watching TV.... - oh really?....")

- Heating control? Is this even a thing with ASHP? 

- Window/shutter control?

- Box of Sensors embedded at a strategic place? I'm thinking primarily temp and humidity, perhaps movement, not camera. I noticed that putting a temp sensor on the floor is next to useless, so this box probably needs to be at 1m50 somewhere? 

 

Already installed a good deal of that 

 

cat cable to each room for multi sensor . Built in wardrobes have a double socket in them and 4 extra Ethernet ports .

Most stuff poe - to make life easier 

Stereo combined speakers in each room - pulse audio rc6 ‘s I think 

ufh controller by solenoids linked to HA 

raspberry pi per speaker 

Water ; a pipe per outlet .

Electric a ‘ring’ per room 

[Pocster]

1 hour ago, SteamyTea said:

What do you use to collect that and is it just On or Off. Or a real unit reading.

Same with occupancy. How is that done and does it record None, Some or Many.

Or an actual number.

Not really possible yet unless you use your phone and beacons to identify exactly where someone is in a building . 
Not worth the effort yet in my opinion 

[DamonHD]

2 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

What do you use to collect that and is it just On or Off. Or a real unit reading.

Same with occupancy. How is that done and does it record None, Some or Many.

Or an actual number.

Light is an uncalibrated non-linear 0 to 255 reading, but is very very roughly lux.  (Radbot learns the typical patterns for its location, so absolutes are less important.)

 

Occupancy is 'active' occupancy of the zone around it (ie someone is up and may be moving around) and is critical to OpenTRV/Radbot energy saving.  We're actually pretty good (eg as an F1 score), but always working on improving the algorithm.  You can see the OpenTRV reference code in GitHub.  The number isn't a count, but basically a live probability from 100% humans about down to 0% probably no one home but us chickens.  But OpenTRV/Radbot also uses its memory of recent behaviour to get a room warm if it thinks that you're usually around at this time, or likely to be soon.

[SteamyTea]

3 minutes ago, DamonHD said:

Light is an uncalibrated non-linear 0 to 255 reading

Similar to the light meters I have made using a LDR, and LDR and capacitor, and a webcam (I must get one of those going again as it was fun, but the local WeatherUnderground station with a good light meter on it has vanished, so can't calibrate).

 

[DamonHD]

The initial implementation was LDR + resistor, measured with an ADC.

 

Because of RoHS we picked a new photosensor, also roughly same spectral response as the human eye.

 

Rgds

 

Damon

[joth]

1 hour ago, puntloos said:

4 hours ago, MikeSharp01 said:

I am almost sure we will use CAT6 to all our switches

 

Cat 7a exists - and isn't *dramatically* more expensive than 6. Would go for this one myself

Why stop there, Cat8 is available and also not dramatically more expensive

https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/cat8-cable/1757241/

 

 

https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/opinions/category-7-and-7a-see-their-sunset/

 

[SteamyTea]

7 minutes ago, DamonHD said:

The initial implementation was LDR + resistor, measured with an ADC

That was what I first did, left the PC running for a few weeks.  Found out that it had done an auto-update and rebooted.  So no data.

Was then I started to look at Linux, and still struggle with it all, especially as they changed the way that programs can auto start.

[MikeSharp01]

2 hours ago, puntloos said:

Cat 7a exists - and isn't *dramatically* more expensive than 6. Would go for this one myself.

Yep - I know & CAT 8, but I have a 500m drum of CAT6 so that is what I will use.

Edited December 29, 2019 by MikeSharp01

[Oz07]

Interested in this thread. If I put cat 5 in to every box where my coax Ariel point is Would this offer any significant future proofing advantages or just a waste of money? I think I even see faceplates which have both points on them in single socket size. 

Waste of money or smart option?

[andyscotland]

4 hours ago, Oz07 said:

Interested in this thread. If I put cat 5 in to every box where my coax Ariel point is Would this offer any significant future proofing advantages or just a waste of money? I think I even see faceplates which have both points on them in single socket size. 

Waste of money or smart option?

 

I would definitely put cat 5 (or higher) alongside every coax, at the very least. I would also duct all those points to make it easy to pull in alternative cables in future. 

 

The end of over-the-air TV broadcast is still a wee way off but could conceivably come sooner than expected. There's a lot of pressure on radio frequency spectrum for the rollout of high-speed mobile internet, and if streaming/catchup TV also continues to grow rapidly that's bound eventually to mean they can't justify keeping the spectrum currently used for traditional broadcasting. Aerials and coax will probably hang in there a good while longer, but I certainly wouldn't bet on them outlasting your house.

[puntloos]

On 29/12/2019 at 13:37, joth said:

Why stop there, Cat8 is available and also not dramatically more expensive

https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/cat8-cable/1757241/

 

 

https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/opinions/category-7-and-7a-see-their-sunset/

 

Ha, I should've googled "one more step". But indeed, I suppose I might go for cat8 then.. Frankly I didn't really research it too closely just yet, but it looks like cat7 also has some compatibility issues, I assumed it was all backward compatible with older stuff?

[puntloos]

Very much in general I'm with @joth that DIY is not a road I want to go down unless it has super detailed , simple instructions, fire and forget. 

 

Not one for the 'it needs a bit of tweaking'-gambit. 

[joth]

4 hours ago, puntloos said:

Ha, I should've googled "one more step". But indeed, I suppose I might go for cat8 then.. Frankly I didn't really research it too closely just yet, but it looks like cat7 also has some compatibility issues, I assumed it was all backward compatible with older stuff?

I was all sold on cat7 after reading loxone's praise of it:

https://www.loxone.com/enen/cat7-cable/

 

But that's 6 years old. Things have moved along since then, cat7 perhaps not caught on, loxone came out with their own 3pair "Tree" cable, GG45 connectors seem a pain to deal with etc etc.

I think cat6a is as far as I can bring myself for light switches, and *perhaps* splurge on cat8 for the media drops. (Terminate in screened RJ45 but gives the option to upgrade the termination in future if needed)

 

[MrMagic]

Posted this before I think but it's worth having a flick through the CEDIA guidelines on home wiring - http://www.cedia.org/files/file/smart-home-recommended-wiring-guidelines-eng-press.pdf - Even if it just gives you a little inspiration its worth a quick read.

 

Re: cabling types - for 99% of residential installs I expect cat5e is really more than enough but if I was doing it today i'd look towards cat6a, 10Gbit/s* over 100m should do most people!!

 

(Incidentally to achieve the full 'spec' of cat6a (and above) it has to be terminated properly and matched with the same category patch leads etc. It's not just a case of crimping on a RJ45 connector this time)

 

Heres some cable p*rn from installs I've worked on to inspire - 

 

 

[Pocster]

10 hours ago, MrMagic said:

Posted this before I think but it's worth having a flick through the CEDIA guidelines on home wiring - http://www.cedia.org/files/file/smart-home-recommended-wiring-guidelines-eng-press.pdf - Even if it just gives you a little inspiration its worth a quick read.

 

Re: cabling types - for 99% of residential installs I expect cat5e is really more than enough but if I was doing it today i'd look towards cat6a, 10Gbit/s* over 100m should do most people!!

 

(Incidentally to achieve the full 'spec' of cat6a (and above) it has to be terminated properly and matched with the same category patch leads etc. It's not just a case of crimping on a RJ45 connector this time)

 

Heres some cable p*rn from installs I've worked on to inspire - 

 

 

Messy ?

[puntloos]

5 hours ago, pocster said:

Messy ?

 

Hey, we are an open-minded forum, please do not judge people's proclivities for cablep*rn. 

[puntloos]

On another note, @pocster, what "sensor array" did you put together? I think I'd like some combination of smart:

 

- motion

- temp

- humidity

- light

 

for each room.

 

And *perhaps* have the motion ones wired, to avoid clever thieves with jammers getting away with my exotic gourd collection.

[ProDave]

5 hours ago, pocster said:

Messy ?

Tedious in the extreme to do was my thought on that, but very neatly done.

 

Very glad the average house does not have that much networked stuff.

[SteamyTea]

1 minute ago, puntloos said:

to avoid clever thieves with jammers getting away with my exotic gourd collection.

Would they not just pull the main fuse and leave the, what I assume is euphemism, behind.