how smart has your home gone?

Semple said:
Yes i've got this set up mostly as you describe in Home Assistant - although i haven't bothered with the timing schedules, although i do know it's an option. As you mentioned, walking into the house isn't so much an issue as triggering another motion sensor that'll switch the bulb off after some time. I've got an automation script in Home Assistant that runs once the hallway bulb has been switched on to switch it off after three minutes - if the front door is opened again, or the motion sensor is activated again then the timer is reset.

Edit: I should add that it might not be possible to set that up in the Echo Plus - i'm not sure of its capabilities.
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Thanks I'll investigate based on what you've said

Cheers
 
So not really been too heavily invested in the Smart Home section, but I have now invested in a lot of Sonos, Drayton Wiser Smart thermostats plus a Ring Doorbell, Chime, Floodlight and 10 piece alarm.
Just have to wait to move now so I can fit it all!

The only other kit I had was a 3 piece Blink camera kit and 4 smart plugs
 
Ordered a Eufy 2K Doorbell last night just before the prices went back up, have been wanting one for a while. Always thought I'd go with Ring but I have read horror stories of them recently, the Eufy seems to get very good feedback. About 70% of the houses on my street have a Ring Doorbell so I'll be the odd one out.

This morning I noticed the 2K indoor cam was reduced too, so grabbed that to replace a Blink Mini, might as well have them in the same app and the Eufy has local storage instead of cloud subscription.
 
Anyone use a smart thermometer that is compatible with Alexa to turn a remote plug socket on/off based on a combination to times/temperature? Not a central heating thermostat but to control an oil filled rad.
Thanks
 
You can do it with smartthings as most of that stuff has temp sensors in it and you create sort of IFTTT setups.

Bit expensive to start with though like Hue but once you're in it's cheap to expand.
 
GSXRMovistar said:
Anyone use a smart thermometer that is compatible with Alexa to turn a remote plug socket on/off based on a combination to times/temperature? Not a central heating thermostat but to control an oil filled rad.
Thanks
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Sounds way too complex for a voice assistant hub. In most cases they can only accept controlled/pre-programmed responses. So you could easily ask it to switch the radiator on. But afaik Alexa wouldn't have the ability to read data from a temperature sensor, and make a judgement based on the current time as to whether to switch the radiator on or not.

I feel like i'm promoting Home Assistant a lot lately - but you could do exactly what you're after very easily. It's just the initial set up costs that put most people off.

Unfortunately your average "smart" user will be happy with just basic functionality, where you can ask Alexa/Google to switch something on or off. If you want to add in specific routines, and conditions based on sensor states, then you need a hub to manage all the smart stuff.
 
Semple said:
Just curious on your usecase for this? and why'd you'd opt for a 2-way switch over smart lighting instead?
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Presumably cost. Smart switching makes a lot of sense if you have (for example) a lot of GU10s in an area. For us, we have 24 spot lights in our kitchen/family room area and I could either get Hue, and pay £30 a bulb or a smart switch and pay a fraction of that. That said, we went with LightWave rather than that in the link.
 
Basher said:
Presumably cost. Smart switching makes a lot of sense if you have (for example) a lot of GU10s in an area. For us, we have 24 spot lights in our kitchen/family room area and I could either get Hue, and pay £30 a bulb or a smart switch and pay a fraction of that. That said, we went with LightWave rather than that in the link.
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Fair point, although you lose a lot of functionality when controlling just at the switch. The missus was adverse to colour bulbs, but we do make use of dimmable bulbs, so the kitchen/dining area gets dimmed in the evening when we're not in there.

24 lights must cover a vast area, you could use the tradfri bulbs @£6/ea which would give you a total bill of £144 and give you much more functionality than the smart switch can provide. i.e. when you're eating you could have the kitchen/dining area bulbs change to max brightness, whilst your family room area is dimmed. Then later in the evening it can be reversed, or even split into zones, so the kitchen could be dimmed while the dining area is off whilst the family area is on max brightness. Combinations are limitless :).
 
Semple said:
Just curious on your usecase for this? and why'd you'd opt for a 2-way switch over smart lighting instead?
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if you have 2-way for the landing, then smart bulbs, need two switches, both registered for the same bulb, which is not trivial leastaway with zigbee (see earlier posts)
so that switch enables you to use the existing switches, for £10 !
smart bulb would be nice to have too, though, to be able to tone the landing light bulb down at night time, for any nocturnal toilet visits.
 
Semple said:
Fair point, although you lose a lot of functionality when controlling just at the switch. The missus was adverse to colour bulbs, but we do make use of dimmable bulbs, so the kitchen/dining area gets dimmed in the evening when we're not in there.

24 lights must cover a vast area, you could use the tradfri bulbs @£6/ea which would give you a total bill of £144 and give you much more functionality than the smart switch can provide. i.e. when you're eating you could have the kitchen/dining area bulbs change to max brightness, whilst your family room area is dimmed. Then later in the evening it can be reversed, or even split into zones, so the kitchen could be dimmed while the dining area is off whilst the family area is on max brightness. Combinations are limitless :).
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We're lucky in that we have our family room built last year, so have hard wired zones for the reason you mentioned. I appreciate that's not the same for many, though. We tried the tradfri bulbs, but for us they were pretty flakey.
 
if you hadn't looked - sonoff product wiring -
put it in back of any switch box, and, then have the best of both worlds for £10

50671302736_65763b5147_c_d.jpg
 
So jumped on the bandwagon of smart home, with a Nest which is now being fitted, and a Google Hub snagged in the google sale.

What do people recommended for lighting starting from scratch i noticed hue gets mentioned a lot any others to consider IKEA maybe ?
 
jpaul said:
if you hadn't looked - sonoff product wiring -
put it in back of any switch box, and, then have the best of both worlds for £10

50671302736_65763b5147_c_d.jpg
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I'm still failing to see the point, you could do everything you need with a set of smart bulbs and motion sensors.

FWIW that wouldn't even fit in the backbox on my landing. It's a double switch - one for the bathroom and a two-way for the landing. From memory it's got 6 sets of wiring from the lighting ring, so that's 18 wires crammed into the backbox. I already had to swap it for a deeper backbox as the switch cover was a slimline one and the standard (25mm?) depth made it impossible to fit everything in.

SPG said:
So jumped on the bandwagon of smart home, with a Nest which is now being fitted, and a Google Hub snagged in the google sale.

What do people recommended for lighting starting from scratch i noticed hue gets mentioned a lot any others to consider IKEA maybe ?
Click to expand...

Hue gets mentioned a lot because they're the best in the market. Unless you bought a set over the black friday/cyber monday sales then you'll find a starter pack rather expensive.

You can connect Ikea (basically any Zigbee) bulbs to the hue bridge so that you don't need multiple apps to control individual manufacturers.

My advice would be to first look at what rooms you want to put smart lighting into, then decide the type of lighting - do you just want basic dimmable bulbs, how about white temperature (ranges from an orange yellow glow, to an almost blue colour), or you may want to go full on colour. The latter end of that spectrum are quite a bit more expensive, so if you know you'll rarely use the colour bulbs, then stick with dimmable/temperature.

Next you need to decide how you plan to control those bulbs, you've got a few options:
- Switches (The hue ones are like a small remote that you can use to switch on/off, cycle scenes or adjust the brightness)
- Motion sensors (Ideal for things like hallways etc)
- Voice assistants (Google/Alexa)
- Schedules (I have most of my bulbs set to switch on an hour before sunset, and then some are scheduled to switch off at some point before/after going to bed)
- Location (you can use your phones location so that your lights switch off when you leave the house, and switch back on as you get closer to home)

There are a couple of other control options, but these require extra hardware.
 
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