Home automation, errr...

[Pocster]

Just now, Roger440 said:

 

Ive got a robot mower. That gets stuck.

 

Sadly, and predicatably, its gone wrong. Some electronic fault. Had to dispatch to the repair place.

Technology only works “ some “ of the time 🤣😁👍

[Kelvin]

1 hour ago, pocster said:

I think you need a robot vacuum. All good until it gets stuck or just does something twatish . Great fun to swear at though 😁

Like drive through a pile of dog shit which happened to a friend. What a stinky mess that made. He couldn’t bring himself to even try to clean Roboshit. 

[Pocster]

10 minutes ago, Kelvin said:

Like drive through a pile of dog shit which happened to a friend. What a stinky mess that made. He couldn’t bring himself to even try to clean Roboshit. 

I believe at least roborock are working on some image recognition so it doesn’t do that .

[Ralph]

A mate of mine got a robot vacuum and a puppy about the same time. It was like a dirty protest 🤮

[Adsibob]

Was just thinking about this further, and I wondered whether you have override switches that are easily accessible if you want to do the opposite of what is being done automatically. For example,

 

On 03/10/2022 at 22:00, joth said:

the relevant towel radiators automatically warm up whenever a shower or bath is used

but we never use the towel rails in our bathrooms in summer (or autumn, so far) and so it would be good to be able to interrupt the automatic control. At present, my electrician’s suggestion for how to control the zone valve that sends water to the two towel rails we have in the house is to have a smart wifi plug powering the zone valve (this is in addition to the local mechanical (dumb) TRVs on each towel rail, which could be left on at whatever temp you want). But the smart wifi plug would still need an input, which in a worst case scenario can be a flick of a digital switch on my phone, but as @joth points out, there have to be better ways to automate this. I could set it up to run off a schedule in the cloud, but we aren’t that regular in our routine. Curious how you did it @joth so it doesn’t bother you in summer.

[joth]

7 hours ago, Adsibob said:

Was just thinking about this further, and I wondered whether you have override switches that are easily accessible if you want to do the opposite of what is being done automatically. For example,

 

but we never use the towel rails in our bathrooms in summer (or autumn, so far) and so it would be good to be able to interrupt the automatic control. At present, my electrician’s suggestion for how to control the zone valve that sends water to the two towel rails we have in the house is to have a smart wifi plug powering the zone valve (this is in addition to the local mechanical (dumb) TRVs on each towel rail, which could be left on at whatever temp you want). But the smart wifi plug would still need an input, which in a worst case scenario can be a flick of a digital switch on my phone, but as @joth points out, there have to be better ways to automate this. I could set it up to run off a schedule in the cloud, but we aren’t that regular in our routine. Curious how you did it @joth so it doesn’t bother you in summer.

The Loxone server (in our house, not in the cloud) knows the time of year, the indoor and outdoor temperature, the forecast max temperature for the next 24 and 48 hours, and how much active heating and cooling has been used in the last day.

I wrap these up in some logic to create a estimate of the risk of house overheating and if that's too high I don't turn on the towel rads (or ensuite UFH)

 

The trigger to turn on is from a temperature sensor on the shower (or bath) detecting it's in use. That triggers the shower niche lighting to turn up a bit too

Edited October 5, 2022 by joth

[Pocster]

I use temperature in bathroom and humidity to determine things .

I could also put some sensors on the various water feeds e.g toilet supply and bath . In reality what I really want to do ( but not allowed ) is install a camera in the bathroom . Then I can easily see if bath / shower / toilet is in use .

Edited October 5, 2022 by pocster

[James R]

On 05/10/2022 at 07:19, joth said:

The Loxone server (in our house, not in the cloud) knows the time of year, the indoor and outdoor temperature, the forecast max temperature for the next 24 and 48 hours, and how much active heating and cooling has been used in the last day.

I wrap these up in some logic to create a estimate of the risk of house overheating and if that's too high I don't turn on the towel rads (or ensuite UFH)

 

The trigger to turn on is from a temperature sensor on the shower (or bath) detecting it's in use. That triggers the shower niche lighting to turn up a bit too

 

I was just trying to get my head around automation control for lighting, heating, blinds etc. and in jumps the notion of temperature sensors! @joth where did you deploy temperature sensors? Bathrooms, floor/screed, flow? Do they have distance limitations to get back to the server?

[joth]

4 hours ago, James R said:

 

I was just trying to get my head around automation control for lighting, heating, blinds etc. and in jumps the notion of temperature sensors! @joth where did you deploy temperature sensors? Bathrooms, floor/screed, flow? Do they have distance limitations to get back to the server?

 

Yeah I have a few in floor screed, the ones that came with electric UFH mats, one on each shower head / bath mixer, one in each room for air temperature (actually built into the light switch), outside temperature, UVC tank temperature, some on the heatpump flow/return. Probably a few more I don't recall right now haha

[SteamyTea]

10 hours ago, joth said:

Probably a few more I don't recall right now haha

What sort are they, DS18B20?

[joth]

5 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

What sort are they, DS18B20?

The ones I had free choice on are. The schluter ones with the electric UFH mats are analogue thermistors that I reverse engineered a resistance curve for. The heatpump and light switches are some digital interface that I have a higher level API to.