nayr's home automation build out...

[nayr]

Summon me from the dead why dont you? Guess this would be the thread that could do it..

That firefly board is stupid expensive for this role, might as well build a pc for that price.. I think the cubox would be much better option, your really going to want that sata port for a big hdd if your recording video.. Truthfully it dont look that much more capable than a Rasbery Pi2, and you can get those for $50

and oah yeah ive extended it much further.. just havent been around here in a while.

lets see, I got a couple mini-super nvr's for like $30 and put them on my bedroom and living room TV's with no storage, just set to display my cameras in a 4x4 grid in realtime.. now I just change inputs to see a live h264 feed and not some 1FPS jpeg refresh I was getting from an AndroidTV app.

put a contact sensor on my gun safe next to my bed, when I the safe door springs open it turns on my bedroom lights to 15%, all other lights it can to 100%, turns on the living room TV and bedroom TV's and switches inputs to external security cameras.. then it auto-awnsers the voip phones in each room on speakerphone and tosses them in a conference so I have hot microphones throughout the house.. For those bumps in the night you have to investigate, Smart Guns? Meh, Smart Gun Safes? Yeh!!

Put Energy monitoring switches on the Washer/Dryer/DishWasher and Microwave.. now they all notify me when they are done doing what they are doing.

Wife and I's phones have GeoFencing presence detection, if you take the phone more than 100y away from the house it automatically marks that person as away.. if both me and my wife are away then it arms the security system automatically and then disarms when we return.. An RFID Tag on the bedstand will automatically night-arm the security system when I sit my android phone on top of it, and then disarm when I pick it up.

Flood sensor in basement now shuts off the clothes and dish washers if it goes off.. likewise the smoke alarms shut down the furnace/swamp coolers when they are triggered.

Door bell now triggers TV's to auto-display cameras, found the easiest way to detect door bells ringing.. simply open your door bell chime, locate the electromagnetic coil that fires the ringer, and stuff a wireless door/window magnetic contact next to it.. when door bell rings the magnetic coil causes the contact switch to "close".. the door bell now also turns on porch lights, mudroom lights and fakes some activity so it might look like someone is there but just unwilling to answer.

Ive got an amazon Echo on order, next up will be talking to the house and getting it to respond to me.

and Ive got a SolarCity guy on my roof right now preparing a quote, if we go that route I am sure I can find all sorts of fun things to tap into.. plus have unlimited backup power for security system.

Also developed a new theme for my automation systems, mmm eye candy.

 

[GBot]

lets see, I got a couple mini-super nvr's for like $30 and put them on my bedroom and living room TV's with no storage, just set to display my cameras in a 4x4 grid in realtime.. now I just change inputs to see a live h264 feed and not some 1FPS jpeg refresh I was getting from an AndroidTV app.

Epic stuff, man. This thread is so fun to read through, even for an amateur such as myself

You mind sharing what $30 mini-super NVR you speak of? I'd love to have one in the living room and one in the master bedroom since my phone app seems to take eons to load when things go bump in the night.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

[nayr]

Ah there all over the place, in black and white, 4ch, 8ch, and with wifi.. but I think they are all pretty much the same, maby some with newer firmware. they all say: Super Mini NVR on them

above is a white 4ch one, I got a black 8ch one and configured it as 4ch.

Its really simple, I wouldn't ask more of it than displaying some cameras in a grid.. but if you have ONVIF compatible cameras it works fine. It detected my four dahuas with no problem (guess its a 2x2 grid but it will do 4x4 with an 8ch) when I put it on the same vlan as the cameras. Once configured it boots up and loads the cameras just fine without a mouse, but you will need a usb mouse for setup.

I intended to build a RasberyPI to do basically this, but this was cheaper and quicker... now to figure out if it has an API or hack into it and see if I can change the camera being displayed, that would be tits if I could switch to front door camera full screen when the doorbell rings.. thats the only thing a DIY solution woulda provided me, no big deal at this point.

It wont do really high bitrate nor >1080p, I had to lower my bitrates and resolution from absolute max on some cameras to get the NVR to take the feeds smoothly.. its okay for me, was not a dramatic change.

If you search for Super Mini NVR on youtube you'll find some demos if the interface..

 

[Kawboy12R]

Fantastic project. I love that the flood sensor can shut off two of the most common causes of floods. That makes me wonder if a solenoid on the main house water inlet would be a more comprehensive solution that would also protect from burst pipes, slowly running toilets that get plugged and walked away from (that one got my brother's house), forgotten running faucets, etc.

 

[nayr]

Yeah Ive thought about that also, shutting off the Dishwasher/Washingmachine were a simple effect of having the ability to turn them on/off due to the energy monitoring switches. The main intention was just to notify me when cycles were complete, then I realized I could shut them down in flooding, lightning storms, etc.

I found this little device that has my interest: http://www.amazon.com/EcoNet-Controls-EBV105-Installs-Automatic/dp/B010MG372E

If I can get my shutoff valve to operate smoothly and easily I'll give that a try.. then I can have the water main simply shut off when we are on vacation as an extra precaution...

You know what, Growing up in a basement that flooded out on me a few times for the stupidest of reasons.. likely got me thinking about home automation at an early age back in the 80's and 90's.. 10 year old nayr: "I wonder if I hook a pump up to a clapper if it'll turn on when water pours down the stairs"..

Yes, my first HA device was a clapper I got when I was about 5.. was awesome to Clap-On my big tube TV that looked like a dresser.

 

[Kawboy12R]

That's a neat add-on for ball valves. Is yours a ball or a gate? Great for DIYers who don't want to call a plumber and/or call the city to shut off their water to replace their current one, although adding an automatic one after the manual one wouldn't be too complicated. "Here", all of the whole-house water main shutoffs that I've seen are gate valves. I'm not sure if that's just the ones I've seen and used or if it's a code thing. A ball valve, when it freezes, either pops the side out of the valve or breaks the whole housing because of the water trapped inside the ball. Some people have the city shut off their water when they go away for the winter but remembering to open and then close the valve to drain the ball after the water's shut off is another detail. If you've already got home automation though, an add-on 12v ball valve is a lot cheaper than that z-wave gizmo you linked to if you can just run power wires to it from a controlled relay elsewhere.

Gotta love those old clappers. Corny but I bet they were handy. My parents and grandparents would've been more like "Get off your lazy butt and turn the TV on yourself!" And paying extra for a remote control to change channels? Forget it!

I had a bunch of great ideas as a kid too, like timers to shut the power off for power car windows a few minutes after you shut the key off. Shame I didn't patent that one 40 years ago. Everybody's doing it now.

 

[nayr]

My main comes in a basement wall about 3ft off the floor then goes right up into the joists above, on that vertical stretch is the main shutoff and a fork for the sprinkler system.. if that ball valve freezes then im in for some deep shit, because the main below it is going to be frozen too and I'd have to go outside and dig up the man hole cover.. I do have them wrapped in insulation, just incase.

Yeah I was pointing that out for the ease, sometimes its worth the money to get it over with and done, especially when working in home automation.. but given my experience turning those valves manually, I doubt I can get them to glide easy enough something like this would even work.

More than likely I'll get a pair of wired ball valves and solder them in after the existing ones, I'd really like a shutoff on the sprinkler system also.. Ive had cold snaps in late spring that blew my backflow device apart and left a nice frozen mess, its now covered in a nice insulated jacket but my sprinkler system can easially cope with a master valve so might as well do em both at the same time and in the same spot.

This will have to be one of those opportunity installs, like next time we do a massive cleanout of the basement and I can afford to spill a bunch of water on the floor... right now most of the work would be trying to keep our storage safe while I am cutting into water pipes... I hate pluming, I might have to wait until my Dad is over for a visit and just convince him to do it.. his pipe soldering skills are much better than mine and failure is not an option.. would hate this to backfire and cause the flood im trying to prevent.

 

[Kawboy12R]

Two biggest issues when soldering (apart from the very basics)- no residual water allowed in the pipes and don't cook the plastic bits in the valve. If it were me I might hire a plumber just so I wouldn't have to listen to my wife on the off chance I didn't get it quite right. She doesn't like floods.

 

[kmatt]

Nayr, I have a random request... would you be willing to share any of your code?

 

[nayr]

already have: https://github.com/nayrnet

recently I got alot of my hacks merged upstream into Domoticz, including my theme.. so they are now all part of the main software.. so if you want my UI, go grab the latest Domoticz beta and your welcome

Ive got a few more projects I need to publish, but they are getting rewritten to be more general purpose automation tools using MQTT instead of HTTP.

 

[kmatt]

Damn, thanks Nayr! This is what you're running on your Cubox? Am I to understand you are also running Asterisk on there as well?

 

[nayr]

yeah its running on my CuBox, with Domoticz, Asterisk, Network Monitoring, and a FTP NAS to a 4TB Purple for my IPCameras.

Its got a Aeon Z-Stick for ZWave communication and a couple USB to RS232 adapters going to my TV and AVR for control of them.

Then the beaglebones run Domoticz Slaves and have IO apps on them that take the GPIO input and map them to domoticz devices... Ive got 3 slave devices now, One in the garage, one under the fish tank and one in the basement server room near the CuBox

 

[vincenttor]

Great to see this
so you are supposed to be my twin brother as icerabbit mentioned in my welcome/hello topic
I can see why haha, have you ever thought about using homeseer or any other software ?

 

[nayr]

I have to have the source code or I cant hack it, so no I have not thought about using homeseer.. besides none of my hardware is supported by HomeSeer (only linux arm platform is rpi2).

I started off writing my own software, then one day when I was looking for a nice easy interface to OpenZwave I found Domoticz, I since abandoned my interface and move entirely behind Domo.. It'd take a hell of a pice of software to get me to move off domo.

 

[vincenttor]

I see, it helps when you know how to code things.
I have used Domotics for a little while but since i wanted a nice interface on a phone , instead of a html page or similar and i do not know how to code anything i chose after testing some software Homeseer.
IT actually supports way more since it exists longer but there is a price tag hanging on it..
Plugins and VB scripts is what you can add yourself in this software.
I like HStouch myself the most since you can make your own screens in a wysiwyg editor.

 

[nayr]

im the opposite, fuck native apps.. thats the whole point of web-ui, its portable and will work on anything with a browser, now days thats everything.. plus I can change a webpage to any style or theme I'd like and have consistency across all devices.

think my UI looks pretty slick on a phone

but there are native iPhone and Android apps now for domoticz, I just dont find them worthwhile.. my html web UI is protected by x509 client certificates so i can securely access my system anywhere without needing a vpn.. native clients do not support this method of authentication so I couldn't use them if I wanted to.

And device support I'll call a wash, yeah there are a lil bit more things HS supports that domoticz dont right out of the box.. but then I see a ton of stuff HS dont support that domoticz does, and then even more htat domoticz supports out of the box but HS makes you pay for.

MQTT? Nope..
mySensors support? nope
Phillips Hue? yeah pay more, alot more ($70!!)
Arduino Connectivity? yeah pay more
NVR Connectivity? yeah pay more
Dallas 1-Wire Network? yeah pay more
OpenEnergy Monitor? nope
Plex Monitoring? yeah pay more
Pinger/Network Monitoring? yeah pay more
Kodi/XMBC? yeah pay more
Nest Thermostat? yeah pay more
RFXCom? yeah pay more
Somfy? yeah pay more
JSON API access so you can write your own apps/scripts? Yeah pay more!!! FUCK OFF last straw.

I could go on, just about everything HS wants you to pay extra for already comes free within Domoticz; and very few of the features they do have I think are missing in Domoticz.. Looking at another ~$300 in plugins I listed above just to start getting close to Domoticz's level of hardware support.

and aw crap, most of these wont run on an arm linux.. shux.. Ive got 100% device support on anything I can build this for, dont see any big holes in Domoticz line up except perhaps AVR remote control, that took me about 2h of coding to get tied in.. I'll release the code shortly and everyone will have Pioneer AVR and Sharp Aquos support for free; there is already tools written for the other popular AVR's they are just "plugins" by 3rd parties and not functional out of the box.. I bet most of the things you think Domoticz dont support actually does, its just you might have to find it as you cant grab people's scripts/apps from a built-in store.

I would not use HomeSeer if they gave it to me; I know better than to touch this vendor lock in crap.. Glad you like it, Only software I'll buy is video games, and I am sure in hell not going to pay near a grand for the same functionality I get for free.. I could buy a ton of devices for the cost of this, not to mention maintenance and support

 

[vincenttor]

Well, if you use a Arduino your fine with just a few dollars and your done
supports also 1 wire.
I am using only arduino that fixes most of my "problems"
Got everything wired instead of wireless crap, well i do have some wifi stuff but trying to get rid of all the wireless stuff i have left.
Always problems with interference especially when you practice another hobby Ham radio.
So for me the software is ideal.
Like i said, not everybody can write code or plugins so i understand why you want to use domotics but for me its more crappy and the looks are below 0 in my opinion.
Also not really interested to access my system from someone else there connection since i always carry my phone with me running a vpn (probably everbody these days haha)

 

[nayr]

What makes you think I dont have an equally impressive radio shack?

I dont use any of the 433ISM stuff because I operate in that band but the 900/2400/5200ISM dont bother me much given I am in a dense urban environment. I may bother them from time to time if I am transmitting at full power but thats rare.. I run an open wifi for all my neighbors, but I keep all my devices on 5GHz.. I have 1 AP on each floor set to low power and 2.4 turned off, then on the roof with my ham antennas is a 2.4GHz openwireless.org access point.. I get full 100Mbit internet to all my wireless devices, and anyone within a few hundred yards can get a few Mbit for free if they can tolerate a restrictive firewall.

Many of my sensors and outputs are hardwired, but there are instances where wireless is the best way.. Light Dimmers for example, the Z-Wave ones are extremely user friendly and cheap.. mailbox is another one, I need a new driveway and would love to put a vehicle sensor in the pad, but until that day a wireless sensor on mailbox will have to do because I cant trench under concrete.. Monitoring Laundry/Dishes/Microwaves was quick and easy with z-wave energy monitoring modules, wife would have never let me hack into the cords and attach a homemade gizmo to these high current devices.

73s N4YRE

 

[vincenttor]

Haha i didn't
Most fun ive had is driving with a RFXcom trough a street, picking up some insecure sensors and light switches in someone his house and make a flashy program
This is one of the reasons i won't use any 433Mhz stuff, although wireless does save time and allot of wires to hide and pull

 

[nayr]

I dont use arduinos anymore, Ive got BeagleBoneBlack's running full blown Linux, built in flash storage, with ethernet and many more GPIOs than I can put to use.. they have domoticz slaves running with local scripts so they can operate standalone without network connectivity.. one is in the Garage with the OpenSprinkler board, one is under the Fish Tank in living room running a PWM to Dimmer board, and another is in the basement with an optically isolated input board and relay output board...

these all connect to the CuBox which is the master Domoticz instance, so I only need to run wires to the nearest slave device.. then its Encrypted TCP/IP the rest of the way.

With ZWave at least I get some security from malicious script kiddies, and the new ZW+ protocol supports decent enough encryption I would actually use it for a few security devices here and there.. yeah RF is easy to jam but not having any monitoring is even worse... would you rather be defeated by a sophisticated attacker or anyone with a big boot?

Lighting is one of those things that need just enough security to prevent abuse, sure I broadcast every time I flip a switch.. but ive got windows, so if your in range to receive the broadcast your in range to visually detect the same event.. nothing that could cause actual damage or security issues is wireless, the thermostat will only let you go so far and then it'll ignore you to keep house from freezing/overheating.. fish tanks are wired, sprinklers/irrigation are wired, security/flood sensors are wired, smoke alarms & environmental sensors are wired, cameras are wired, etc..

Its a big balancing act between connivence and money, the less work I have to do the more expensive things get.. This weekend I had to cut an old electrical box out of the wall and replace it with a deeper plastic one so I could shove a few relays, a dimmer and run a new circuit in there.. alot of work with just a headlamp on and it really makes my wife nervous to watch me try to break a nail head off with a chizel and a prybar through a small hole in the wall.. took all day and a ton of blood/sweat/tears to add 3 more switches in a double gang box to the HA system. I coulda paid someone to do that for a small fortune; or gone with hue bulbs or some junk that woulda worked poorly with the existing switch.