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    Home Automation What kind of switch do I need to automate this?

    September 28, 2020

    Home Automation What kind of switch do I need to automate this?

    What kind of switch do I need to automate this?

    Posted: 27 Sep 2020 04:12 AM PDT

    WAF - just had to share this one - window blind automation

    Posted: 27 Sep 2020 07:47 PM PDT

    Background: I have been dabbling with home automation for 20 years from X10 to SmartThings and now Hubitat... my wife has been along for the ride for the last few years. When we first moved in to our latest house 2 years ago she refused to allow me to automate the blinds because she didn't trust it and wanted to still do it manually if needed but you can't once you connect a motor. Anyway, I recently tried an Axis in my study and it worked so I talked her into putting one on the main blind over the sliding doors to the kitchen/lounge. I set up a rule in Hubitat to automatically open at sunrise, lower to 50% in afternoon (when sun comes in) and lowers all the way once dark. It has been working for about 3 weeks.

    Wife just said without being asked... "It works exactly how I want it to. It is perfect - I don't even notice it, I don't even think about it anymore."

    It is out there guys... sometimes technology will finally work and even our wives will like it. :)

    TLDR: my wife is tough to please but she finally approved of automating the window blinds and how it made her life easier. Enjoy the moment when technology works and those important to us recognize it.

    submitted by /u/jonathan34562
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    Why I'm going back to SmartThings after trying Hubitat C7

    Posted: 27 Sep 2020 11:52 AM PDT

    I'm just posting some of my experiences as a ST user trying out Hubitat.

    I've been on the HA scene for over 5 years now. I started with a wink hub and after several months figured out that it was way too limited for what I wanted to do, and so I got a ST hub and have been on it up until several weeks ago.

    My setup consists of:

    6 Z-wave linear dimmers

    3 Z-wave GE dimmers

    1 Zooz Z-wave plus dimmer

    2 Zooz Z-wave plus double switches

    2 Schlage Z-wave locks

    1 Linear Z-wave plus garage door opener

    3 Z-wave motion sensors

    1 Zooz 4-1 Z-wave plus sensor

    3 zigbee door sensors

    1 zigbee outlet switch

    2 Ikea tradfri zigbee 5 button remotes

    I can't say I had any real issues with ST. I never really experienced any of the downtime that people speak of, and for the most part everything just worked. I only had really had 2 issues with it:

    1. It's awkward that it was so dependent on a phone/tablet, with no real computer access for controlling it, but then any sort of complex rules would have to be done on webcore and couldn't be changed/controlled through that same phone/tablet (I'm not going to use webcore on a 6 inch display)
    2. While I didn't have any downtime, I didn't like the fact that it was so cloud dependent.

    So with these two issues, I took a look at Hubitat and thought I'd give it a shot. It seemed like a relatively open platform which much like ST allowed for custom Device Handlers and Apps, some of which could even be ported over. Everything I read about it made it seem like it was like all the good parts about ST and non of the downsides.

    So I jumped in head first and got a C7.

    With the very first device I tried to switch over to Hubitat, the device would be seen but would not include into the hub. After banging my head against the wall for some time I finally moved the hub away from ST thinking that maybe the radios were interfering, and only then was I able to add it. I continued this way until all my devices were switched over.

    I then discovered that non-plus z-wave devices don't report their states back to hubs. Meaning that if i manually turn off a switch, the switch doesn't tell the hub that its off. For the hub to discover this, it continually asks the devices their status, by "polling" them. This was something that was completely transparent to me as a ST user since the devices just worked as I expected them to.

    As I said, one of the draws of ST and Hubitat for me was the fact that anyone could make a device driver. If something wasn't supported, you could still make it work with some effort. That is until I discovered that my IKEA tradfri buttons not only didn't work with the Hubitat, but would likely never work because the Hubitat didn't support them on a protocol level. These buttons worked fine for me on ST so this was just baffling to me.

    On ST I would use the hub and sensors along with my phone to arm and disarm my house as a security system. Hubitat had many of the same options albeit it was a tad more clumsy to setup. But after it was setup it would take very long periods of time to arm after I left the house. Sometimes it wouldn't arm at all. Sometimes it would arm when I was home, and sometimes it wouldn't disarm when I got home. I found out some people used Life360 integration to handle presence sensing, but wasn't the whole point of Hubitat that it wasn't cloud based and that you wouldn't need to pay another company or use another service for what should be core functionality?

    There were a lot of other minor issues, but what really put the nail in the coffin for me was this. Devices would just go offline and wouldn't respond no matter what I did. I would repair the z-wave network and sometimes it would help and other times it wouldn't even find the devices. Only a device shutdown and power unplugging seemed to bring the devices back. Some say it's because of the C7 and its new 700 series chip. Others say that I have old non-plus Z-wave devices and that polling makes things unstable, obviously something that never happened with ST

    I don't know what the reason is, but this kind of unreliability makes Hubitat useless to me. I hope they address these issues as I would LIKE to use Hubitat. But for the time being I'm going back to SmartThings.

    submitted by /u/hapoo
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    Picked up an Ecobee (5th gen) at Home Depot "brand new sealed". People suck

    Posted: 27 Sep 2020 11:26 AM PDT

    WiFi thermostat setup? We bought a Honeywell T5+ smart thermostat to replace an old mercury dial thermostat. More details in post. Thanks

    Posted: 27 Sep 2020 03:40 PM PDT

    Looking for a smart mortise lock to replace my current lock NEED GUIDANCE THANKS

    Posted: 27 Sep 2020 12:29 PM PDT

    Smart vacuum for hardwood floors?

    Posted: 27 Sep 2020 03:14 PM PDT

    Recently bought a house and changed all the old carpets to laminate hardwood. It's great but with a kid and 3 dogs it tends to need cleaned pretty often.

    It's all on one level with a couple of floor transitions like into the bathroom, kitchen, and one of the bedroom. Being able to clean against the wall is big for me because that seems to be where most of the dog hair winds up.

    Does anyone have any recommendations on vacuums for this?

    submitted by /u/oliver_onion
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    Just bought a house with TP-link smart switch connected to a lot of things that I suspect are Lutron caseta lights. Didn't find a Lutron bridge. What am I looking at here?

    Posted: 27 Sep 2020 04:45 PM PDT

    Do they make any of these but >30 meters?

    Posted: 27 Sep 2020 01:34 PM PDT

    Setting up home automation for someone else

    Posted: 27 Sep 2020 02:11 PM PDT

    A friend asked me to setup his home automation based on SmartThings and Ring. Rather than spending hours configuring everything at his place I prefer to set it up at home then just install it.

    This does pose a few questions? Should I use his email account to setup all the devices? Question on security and his privacy while is am setting things up.

    Or should I create a new, seperate email account, then hand it over with the hardware?

    Any thoughts?

    submitted by /u/chodtoo
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    Smart Plug Inside Gun Safe

    Posted: 27 Sep 2020 04:04 PM PDT

    Hi everyone, I am looking for some advice on a smart plug. I have a gun safe and I have an amazon branded smart plug inside to charge some electronics weekly (radios, power banks, etc...), however the devices' routine wont work because of a lack of wifi inside the safe. I thought about putting the smart plug directly into the wired outlet outside the safe, but I have other stuff inside that needs to be on all the time (dehumidifier rods, lights and some other stuff), so that wont work.

    ​

    Does anyone know of a smart plug that has an external antenna that I could fish through the hole in the safe, or any plugs that could be modified to take an antenna? The hole in the safe is too small to put another surge strip wire inside, but I think an antenna wire will fit.

    ​

    Or am I missing something completely, and there is another easier solution I am not seeing?

    ​

    Thanks!!

    submitted by /u/b3nny0
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    Recommendations on best Smart Light switches for Amazon Echo Home

    Posted: 27 Sep 2020 11:39 AM PDT

    I've counted about 30 switches in my house that I'd like to make smart, the house has recess led lighting and my wife likes being able to use a switch to turn lights on/off so I've decided smart switches over bulbs. We primarily use Amazon Echo to control our smart devices.

    I have several single poles and a couple 2 ways and two 3 ways. I would prefer that the switches all work off of a hub or some array so there are not 30 new connected devices on my wifi, the least amount of connected devices is best since we are working from home and all that.

    Thanks!

    submitted by /u/TechNTaco
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    How to power bathroom temperature and humidity sensors without easy access to mains?

    Posted: 27 Sep 2020 12:39 PM PDT

    I'd like to control a fan meant for sucking damp air out of three bathrooms based on humidity and temperature sensor readings and an OpenWrt router.

    The problem is that two of the bathrooms have no outlet and the light switches are on the outside.

    So I need to run cables (AC?, DC?, PoE?) for power supply for ESP's or I2C or whatever sensors to each bathroom in one case even through the vent tubing.

    My question is what is the minimal way of doing this. Ideally, it would not rely on Wi-Fi, so just use parallel I2C connections with long wires (the longest one being perhaps 10-15m away).

    submitted by /u/chimp73
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    Need help with smart switch wiring (3-way)

    Posted: 27 Sep 2020 12:06 PM PDT

    The audio is behind the video.. any solutions?

    Posted: 27 Sep 2020 07:29 PM PDT

    My guess is that my wifi connection is the issue. My room is approx. 35 ft away with two walls in between me and the wifi box. But are there any solutions within the settings of my wifi or tv that can fix the audio/video lag?

    submitted by /u/OGKittyGirl7
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    Possible to make Google Home Hubs as an intercom system between each other? or video chat?

    Posted: 27 Sep 2020 04:17 AM PDT

    I'm moving to a new house, and my kids rooms are on the bottom floor, while I'm on the top. They're young, and its a lot of steps for them to come up in the middle of the night if they have a bad dream/need water/etc.

    I'm wondering if its possible to set up an intercom type system from their rooms to ours, via Google Home Hub or some other way. Any ideas / recommendations?

    EDIT: I'm aware you can easily say "Hey Google" and broadcast on a standard google home, but the "Hey google" is cumbersome when trying to have a conversation. Be so much nicer to just click on a button.

    Thanks!

    submitted by /u/CatsupKetchup
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    Can you guide me through swapping out this AC plugs' mechanical relay with a solid state one?

    Posted: 27 Sep 2020 08:38 AM PDT

    There's this guide where someone did something similar which I wanted to use as a reference for this post and ask about the things that were unclear to me but I can't find it anymore (tried hard).

    It linked to the sparkfun page of this solid state relay kit but that's out of stock so I wonder what I should buy instead.

    Since I once talked to someone who knows stuff about SSRs I know that I can choose an SSR for devices with less than 15A.

    I bought a soldering iron and here's a picture of the plug opened up. It's an EU plug and the big black box on the left should be the mechanical switch because it says Omron.

    What should I do now?

    submitted by /u/ars4l4n
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    I need to monitor some parts of my home when I away, I will purchase a 360 IP Camera likely Hikvision or Dahua. However I know it raises some security issues. Without having any other systems how can one make it secure for remote use? Some older posts mention VPN connection.

    Posted: 27 Sep 2020 07:36 AM PDT

    I hope this is not too Off Topic.

    Also I do not have an Intel Nuc or any other hub to use the camera with. I will just plug it through Ethernet Cable into the modem / router as it seems safer then connecting through Wifi, right?

    However nor my PC nor any devices will run while I am away. I wish to check it from my phone, however I am not sure if I am content with the possibility that one may join through a backdoor or something and also control it.

    Can someone please explain what is the best method to secure it but still access it remotely when it is needed?

    ​

    Thanks!

    submitted by /u/Aztekee
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    Can you help me find a topology? I need to light up the car shelter for winter. I'd like to have a sensor that lights up when I walk/roll in (on a schedule) AND be able to manually turn it on from home.

    Posted: 27 Sep 2020 04:05 PM PDT

    Newb Question about the new setup with the least amount of redundant "bridges"

    Posted: 27 Sep 2020 06:38 AM PDT

    Looking to get into automation (in UK), specifically I need to get the blinds, lock and lights, but everywhere I look each of these products from different vendors has its own "hub", "bridge" or "gateway". At first I thought I can get SmartThings hub and control everything, but apparently not. I now wonder If I should just get a new Echo with the hub built in? Can anyone recommend a setup? I know every brand want you to toss a coin for their bridge, which makes it so hard. Here is what I would like to achieve:

    I have 1x echo show 8 and small apartment - I would like to use it as interface.

    - I have Eufy robovac that I can control already.

    - I want blinds (shades - currently don't have any) - so looking either at anything pre-made smart blinds (but they ALL have hubs!) or the motorized box that attaches to the cord.

    - I also need smart lock, looking for the Yale Connexis L1 becasue it is the type of dumb lock I currently have. It needs a HUB!

    - And finally I would like some light that I can control. I get that e.g. Phillips work without hub, but what does it mean, can I e.g. dimm them? Looking to replace existing bulbs and maybe add light strip or two. Also - maybe it would be better to get smart light switch instead? I am lost here.

    I just don't want a ton of bridges to sit in the cupboard - fiber terminator, modem/router, Smartthings, Hub for lights, hub for blinds, hub for lock, and Echo in the living room. Plz send help!

    submitted by /u/codexo3
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    Need advices to cleanup my "smart" mess.

    Posted: 27 Sep 2020 02:46 AM PDT

    Hello!

    TL:DR I made a mess with my gear and I'd like to ask you for your help.

    I decided to clean up a mess that I have right now. Some of my gear was bought when I didn't know what I wanted, some of it was bought by my parents/family as they wanted to surprise me and some of it was bought based on my research. I am looking for a way to simplify everything as much as possible and by that I mean control stuff from single (preferably) app rather than have this and that.

    Note: Right now I live in Poland so some stuff might not be available for me e.g. app integration, hardware and so on. That means difficulty level is hard :P

    Hubs:

    • Alexa: two Echo Dots with clock Gen3 and Echo Plus Gen2. Plan to have some more.
    • Hue hub (v2)
    • MiLight (non-Xiaomi gear)
    • spare RPi4/possibility to have virtual machine for hass.io

    ​

    Lights:

    • Hue: six white spot lights in my hallway (GU10), couple of standard white Hue bulbs (E27) and three Hue Playbars attached behind my TV.
    • MiLight (non-Xiaomi gear): led strips attached in my ceiling in my hallway (alongside with Hue spot lights) and my "entertainment"/living room (where my TV is).
    • Standard GU10 and E27 bulbs in the rest of the apartment.
    • Dumb led strip in bathroom

    I will need 3 lamps for my bedroom, office and dining part of my kitchen. I will stick to Hue gear (I know it is expensive) in terms of lighting. I plan to get Hue lamps or dumb lamps and get Hue bulbs. I will upgrade the rest of dumb GU10s to Hue white (bathroom, toilet, kitchen) and RGBW (living room). Any other ideas here? I heard Ikea's smart bulbs can be integrated into Hue environment but I am afraid to add more to mess I've created :D

    Also I will need light switches that will handle Hue lights so integration with Hue gear or maybe hass.io (those MiLight leds...) would be great. Maybe there is other solution for that? Right now I operate dumb lights and leds (I didn't integrate that hub yet) manually while Hue gear is handled via app and Alexa.

    ​

    Heating:

    I live in a apartment where I have communal or distric heating if you will. Basically that means there are two heating seasons (summer and winter) where, if specific temperatures outside are met, hot water starts to circulate in the radiators. All I can do is to switch it completely (valve outside my apartment) or control it with dumb theromostat valves attached to radiators. I am looking for smart thermostats that I can attach to radiators and temperature/humidity/extra stuff sensors that will integrate nicely with Alexa/Hass.io and would cooperate with radiators. I want to automate it to save some money on heating as sometimes I forget to turn temps down or when I am away and do not need 21-22*C.

    For time being I have no AC and don't plan to get it within next 12 months so I won't talk about it :)

    ​

    Electricity:

    My power provider has smart meter allowing me to connect to it via HANA and take the readings in real time. I plan to buy HANA dongle, connect to it and Grafana it. I wonder if there are sockets that are smart and can report power usage so that will help me to see what specifically is power hungry? I don't want to buy separate power plugs because there are places where I won't be able to fit them so I want to use power sockets that have that integrated.

    ​

    Home appliance:

    Samsung Washing Machine: SmartThings App. I've tried to add my washing machine to Alexa but device seems to be undiscoverable although I've enabled Alexa skill + SmartThings app sees it properly. I use it mostly when I need to wash my clothes and have them done whenever I am back from work which is not a case for obivious reasons right now :)

    Bosch Dishwasher: HomeConnect App. Integrated with Alexa. It won't load or unload dishwasher but I know when to move my lazy ass to unload it :D

    ​

    Entertainament:

    LG C8 TV: Unfortunately no integration with Alexa for me as it requires US LG account from what I saw.

    Xbox One X: Integrated with Alexa.

    PS4Pro: My research told me that it is possible to integrate it via Logitech's Harmony hub but I am not tempted to add more gear into my mess.

    I don't think I will want to have Hue Play box to integrate Hue Play bars and lights (soon).

    ​

    Misc:

    I plan to get:

    • Leak sensors to spots where I have water (e.g. bathroom, dishwasher, toilet and so on)
    • Doors/windows sensor mostly to use in winter time to stop heating while window is opened
    • Motion detector (probably just for hallway) just to use it during evening hours

    ​

    Network:

    I plan to migrate everything to another VLAN/SSID to separate it from my day-to-day network. I am using Ubiquiti gear (UniFi) so that will be another topic but for those poor souls in r/HomeNetworking :P

    ​

    Thanks for your help and apologies for such lenghty post!

    submitted by /u/Bits-Please
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    Please recommend me a smart plug, which I can integrate to HA smoothly, but I can also use standalone. What would be your pick(s)?

    Posted: 27 Sep 2020 03:03 AM PDT

    I need to automate my aquarium and possibly control when I am away, however I do wish to integrate it to HA later. (Do not have HA system currently)

    submitted by /u/Aztekee
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    Anyone experience with Omniablinds? (Smart blinds, Fyrtur like)

    Posted: 27 Sep 2020 12:49 AM PDT

    Does anyone have experience with https://omniablinds.com/collections/motorized-blackout-shades?

    I'm very interested to hear your opinion since the Polar Black Out 0009 fabric (https://omniablinds.com/collections/motorized-blackout-shades/products/motorized-blackout-shades-polar-bo-0009) looks very similar to Fyrtur's fabric and it will be a great way to get oversized (both in width and height) blinds that look similar to fyrtur blinds..

    submitted by /u/Frame1991
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    Answer NEST Hello without subscription?

    Posted: 27 Sep 2020 02:24 AM PDT

    Is it possible to answer the Nest Hello doorbell (Away from home) without a subscription?

    submitted by /u/Svgmr
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