nayr's home automation build out...

[nayr]

nice, thats a good deal.. Ive been using these new generation units since they were on the drawing board.. I am quite happy with em.. the Lite units are perfect for distributing throughout the house without breaking the bank, like you should do if you want best coverage.

I am going to be putting these in my relatives houses to upgrade the old UniFi PicoStations I put in place.

 

[nayr]

moved onto some bathroom automation.. Wife wants to repaint and remodel it so I figured I'd get the sheetrock busting over with.

Ripped out old dead and rusted original bathroom fan, replaced with a whisper quiet Panasonic unit.. old one was round, new was square, go figure.. still gotta sand all that shit smooth

Installed a Z-Wave Dimmer and Leviton Humidity Sensor and Fan Switch

New fan is so quiet cant tell its running, I cut a half inch off the bottom of the bathroom door to get more airflow and did some testing.. cranking shower up to sauna levels and closing the door the fan kicks on within a few mins, well before mirror starts to fog up and then runs until about 10mins after I shut it off.. completely automated.. no more humidity issues, time to replace all this rusted out metal in the bathroom hehe; I had to take the hinges off the door to cut it, the pins are rust bonded.

as an added bonus the MiniMote on my bed will now turn off the bathroom light..

I also hooked up the doorbell to the automation system, posted that in a howto in this forum.

 

[tangent]

The key to a good drywall repair is in the prep and building up thin smooth layers with a wide blade/knife (8"+). You'd be surprised how little sanding the pros do. I've got the name of a good drywall guy if you need it, though this is probably a bit small to justify it.

 

[nayr]

yeah I was doing it hard and heavy with a cheap and thin plastic blade standing on the toilet, as Confucius say.. man who mud on toilet is high on pot.

Ive got more drywall work to do, but I'll probably borrow all dad's nice big metal blades for that job.. the one stuck to the top of the mudding can was pretty much shit heh.

*edit* on second thought I'll just prep it all and have dad mud it, he has the touch down and can get everything done in no time.

 

[c hris527]

Wow Impressive,

Can I ask when you have time to sleep, I'M 52 with a 6 yr old and I think I take on a lot of innovation and tinkering with stuff,,,,but geeze...looks like good stuff you got going on there.. I enjoying following this.

 

[nayr]

 

[Jack B Nimble]

Wow Impressive,

Can I ask when you have time to sleep, I'M 52 with a 6 yr old and I think I take on a lot of innovation and tinkering with stuff,,,,but geeze...looks like good stuff you got going on there.. I enjoying following this.

Well I am glad to meet another guy in my boat. I'm 51 with a 5 yr old - congrats ! Agree Nayr seems to have an extreme energy level even with the weed. I have two pages on my need done list just for outside before we head into -30c this winter.

 

[nayr]

Im a kid in comparison, 35 years old w/6 year old heh

 

[nayr]

found a couple HP ZR22w's on craigslist for $40 each, replaced both of my security displays with em.. and oh yeah, the IPS display much better.. and these are really 1080p 16:9 instead of 1680x1050 16:10 so everything is scaled correctly.. the wide viewing angles means my son and wife can see better images off the display next to the front door.. from my son's height the image was basically unusable due to the angle and I dont want to tilt it down.. The anti-glare is much better and the light in the mudroom is no longer reflecting off the screen.

they also run off much less power, and are energystar compliant.. so they sleep much better and wake up quicker, I can now use a motion sensor to wake the one by the front door without waiting forever.. (2s now vs 10s before).. only complaint I have is they really fuck w/my polarized sunglasses unlike the previous monitors.

now I have a few extra spare monitors laying about, this will really help my raspipc project that im going to pick back up here in a little now that my outdoor summer projects are coming to an end... just the new front door to be installed and then that's next on the list.

installed a new roof top swamp box, with ducts to each bedroom, lpr camera and server, another parking camera, z-wave door lock, outdoor speakers, speakers throughout the house, solar panel and radio in my adventure trailer, updated network infrastructure, rewired my patch panels, exhaust fan in bathroom, replaced all water damaged sheetrock in hallway from previous leaking swamp box, installed a card reader for security arm/disarm and probably a bunch more lil shit I've totally forgotten about.. and still had time to go on a couple road trips, camping trips, family reunions.

Wish I had more time to go Fishing and Shooting, had planned to get a bunch of that in sometime this summer but it just didnt happen.. sigh, always next year.

 

[fbnoise]

Never knew what a swamp box was until I just googled it after reading your above post. All I can say is I'm glad they're not a thing in our climate. I take it they solve a problem in certain climates but holy crap they look like nightmares.

 

[nayr]

yeah that was a hell of a project, nothing like working on a roof when its 100 degrees outside.. yesh

attached some pics of the project, before, after and durring.. like all my projects, I was the only one who did all the work.

the new one has a plastic tray so it wont rust out, and then even if that tray leaks its held downhill from the hole in the roof.. so I dont expect any more water damage.

 

[nayr]

goodbye old wooden pice of shit door, welcome new fiberglass, composite and stainless steel door:

this will be a nice security upgrade, instead of a full length piece of glass running down my lock side I only have it on the top 1/4.. and this is much thicker tempered glass, so busting it out to obtain access to the locks inside will be very impractical.

Got some automation wires to put in this of course, recessed contact switch and a pressure mat to aim the PTZ when someone's putting a code into the deadbolt or knocking on the door and not using the doorbell.

This has been on my todo list since i bought the house, glad to finally have it be the next project.. of course I will be hardening it to prevent kickins

 

[nayr]

Old:

New:

So that piece of plexiglass to the left of the old door, yeah I gave it a kick about as hard as a crippled child would kick it and it popped right out.

New door is secured with stainless steel 3" lag bolts, and I have a kit from kickproof.com coming on the way and it'll harden the frame even further.. the new door frame is all composite material wrapped in vinyl so its alot more dense than a wooden frame, but the steel should make it even more durable.

 

[motorgeek]

I started work to try to get Hikvision cams working, but the API is more of a pain than it should be and I gave up... it dont send any end of motion event that I could get, would trigger motion.. then never be told that motion stopped, so could only just time it out after a while.. i dont have hik cameras so i only had limited time to try to implement it, I thought it'd be easy like Dahua from the docs I read but it was not.

Domoticz has numerous ways to handle dry contacts, Raspberry Pi's GPIO's are supported out of the box, you could hook it up to a Z-Wave dry contact, RFXCom, relay boards with lan interfaces, MySensors nodes.. or some other way if you want with Lua, JSON, MQTT, etc.. suggest you go to the Domoticz forums and wiki for guidance.

In case someone is interested in using Hikvision cameras motion event, I configured the Hikvision cameras to send a FTP request when a motion event occurred. I just listened on the specified ports for the FTP request and toggled the dummy motion events as I needed. Hope that helps.

 

[nayr]

Pressure mat wired to Z-Wave contact switch, turns on mudroom light, front porch light and moves PTZ

Door frame hardening, you can see alarm system card reader in this shot:

So I have a recessed door sensor, mat sensor, doorbell sensor, package sensor, and indoor motion sensor all on my primary entry.. am I done yet? who knows hah

 

[patrocle]

Is there any way of adding 5 window sensors and a Siren ,and to be controlled by a ios app , and to get notifications when is open or closed on the phone,email,etc? I heard that z-wave may have some window sensors that will work with homekit on the iphone,not sure what they are... Will be nice if they can be adedd to BI,or maybe not.
I was looking at ecobee3 w/homekit and to buy some sensors for my 5 windows.
I may look at the Iris Smart Hub too at lowes...maybe a chance for the window sensors to add.
Any advice? Thanks

 

[nayr]

you need an alarm system.. I dont use z-wave for perimeter security; have no trust in wireless.

 

[patrocle]

Yes, i have ADT for down stairs, but the idiots wanted $450 to install 5 sensors (up stairs windows) and the tech call to come and install them,and when i told them that no in hell will be paying that they dropped to $299 special discount,and while running my mouth more..long time costumer,bla,bla,bla he said okay ,will do it for $200, and i said will think about it! I only paid $200 for the system , wireless ,plus 7 glass braker sensors and 4 standard sensors,and the pulse app.
Then after doing some more only research i notice that if you have the "automation & schedule" tab in their app enabled, you can add z-wave sensors and other things directly in the adt pulse app,but because i did not have those there , i called again so they can enable the tabs for me, and they try to charge me $175 to come over and put a hub or bridge, and the tech call few..and running my mouth again he got it down to $25 for that hub and free tech call,but he wants me to sign up for other contract 24 months, and i said NO. Don't need any contracts right now...had adt for over 8 years and no thanks for any hand tight up in case i want to leave.
Anyway, i guess i may have to leave the up stairs windows as it is for now.

 

[tangent]

Yes, i have ADT for down stairs, but the idiots wanted $450 to install 5 sensors (up stairs windows) and the tech call to come and install them,and when i told them that no in hell will be paying that they dropped to $299 special discount,and while running my mouth more..long time costumer,bla,bla,bla he said okay ,will do it for $200, and i said will think about it! I only paid $200 for the system , wireless ,plus 7 glass braker sensors and 4 standard sensors,and the pulse app.
Then after doing some more only research i notice that if you have the "automation & schedule" tab in their app enabled, you can add z-wave sensors and other things directly in the adt pulse app,but because i did not have those there , i called again so they can enable the tabs for me, and they try to charge me $175 to come over and put a hub or bridge, and the tech call few..and running my mouth again he got it down to $25 for that hub and free tech call,but he wants me to sign up for other contract 24 months, and i said NO. Don't need any contracts right now...had adt for over 8 years and no thanks for any hand tight up in case i want to leave.
Anyway, i guess i may have to leave the up stairs windows as it is for now.

Your typical Honeywell or DSC wireless alarm doesn't exactly have the most secure wireless sensors or keyfobs (DSC Neo is above average), but they're good enough for most people (kind of like garage door openers). I wouldn't be too interested in ADT's home "automation" options or really ANY automation system that requires a monthly fee. In theory automation as a service (AAAS <- that's pronounced with a very loooong 's') would give the company capital and incentive to actually support the product long term, in practice they don't want to expend any resources that would reduce the revenue stream. There's also typically very little that's automatic in the automation systems peddled by your phone, cable, or alarm company; automation != remote control. If you want automation, something like smartthings is a much better investment than AAAS. I'd avoid iris like the plague.

The catch with ADT is how much you pay in monthly fees. They like to nickel and dime you like crazy, lets say pricing starts at $30 / mo. You want a smoke detector that's an extra $10 / month. You want a freeze or leak sensor another $10 / month. You don't have a landline and want cellular monitoring there's another $10 / mo. You want their AAAS pulse service, another $10 / month...

When you're ready to move to a better alarm company you can probably reuse most of your current system. 5 more wireless sensors would run you $100-150 in hardware, but that would be a discussion better suited to it's own thread in the alarm sub-forum. They've fallen out of favor because of ease of installation, but I definitely prefer hardwired sensors.

 

[nayr]

I have both wired and wireless sensors on my doors, only because the z-wave contact switches can talk directly to several z-wave light switches without the controller.. this turns the lights on when a door opens instantly with no noticeable delay.. its nice opening the doors late at night and having the porch lights come on so quickly.

I also have wired sensors going into an alarm panel I designed and coded; both work together and independently.. you might look at something like Elk's offerings for home security and domoticz/openhab/smarthings/etc for home automation and then piggy back your security system into your automation system so the security sensors are also avilable for automation use.