Tell us about your home automation!

I've been playing with a wemos esp card running ESP Easy. Its a relatively cheap and easy way to add functionality to Domoticz. My first project is a garage door opener/sensor. I'll start a thread as soon as I'm sure it's working reliably.
 
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So since my last post, we replaced our dining room blinds with some Hunter Douglas power blinds. Added the PowerView hub and was able to add some programming to my Automation controller to control them. Also added an Amazon Echo, and can now voice control almost everything the automation system can control, including the blinds.
REALLY hoping they will add the ability to push audio outputs to Alexa, so it can say "garage door open", or "motion detected on front camera" etc.
 
I have no automation yet but interested in seting a new system.

Advice on the best system for smoke/gas/carbon monoxide detectors?

Thanks.
 
Mlda said:
I have no automation yet but interested in seting a new system.

Advice on the best system for smoke/gas/carbon monoxide detectors?

Thanks.
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I would say go hardwired. They're cheaper, more reliable, and can work with practically any automation system.
 
Mlda said:
You mean hardwired for power supply anf WiFi for communication is that it? Thanks.
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NO.

I mean hard wired sensors that are designed to be connected to an alarm system. I quite literally mean running wires to the sensors from a central location. Any automation system worth using has the ability to interface with wired devices or with things like a real alarm system.

You don't want life safety systems to depend on the cloud/internet. :banghead:
 
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tangent said:
I mean hard wired sensors that are designed to be connected to an alarm system. I quite literally mean running wires to the sensors from a central location. Any automation system worth using has the ability to interface with wired devices or with things like a real alarm system.

You don't want life safety systems to depend on the cloud/internet. :banghead:
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I agree with your last statement. As a matter of fact, I make it a rule for myself that neither my security system or home automation system may rely on any external service (on the outside of my router) to work.

However, you paint the picture as only being black or white - hardwired or depend on the cloud/internet. I believe it is more colorful than that. I'm fine using devices within my local network that communicate in ways other than wires. I have wifi devices that work just fine. Mostly I am positioned on Insteon which is wired but I would have no problems introducing z-wave if the use case would benefit by being wireless. I do have some wireless door/window sensors as well as wireless motion sensors. I live in a log house so running new wires can be a real pain.
 
tangent said:
NO.

I mean hard wired sensors that are designed to be connected to an alarm system. I quite literally mean running wires to the sensors from a central location. Any automation system worth using has the ability to interface with wired devices or with things like a real alarm system.

You don't want life safety systems to depend on the cloud/internet. :banghead:
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I got it now. I'll search for it. Thank you.
 
Here's an example CO detector: CO1224T / Products / System Sensor" - System Sensor

This does get a little complicated. Generally it works best to connect this type of sensor to a traditional alarm system and interface the alarm system with other things if you want.
Alarm systems are designed to handle things like resetting the detector.
 
tangent said:
Here's an example CO detector: CO1224T / Products / System Sensor" - System Sensor

This does get a little complicated. Generally it works best to connect this type of sensor to a traditional alarm system and interface the alarm system with other things if you want.
Alarm systems are designed to handle things like resetting the detector.
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Thanks again Tangent and Logbuilder. That is useful information.

My alarm system is rather old and has all 16 zones occupied but is very reliable. What I intend to do is to wire the sensors to the alarm voice communicator with a relay, so that whenever the sensors trigger I will be notified. I will not be able to tell each one was triggered, but I can live with that. I will probably sitck to battery operated CO sensors because it's more important to hear the alarm when I'm home and only wire the smoke/heat sensors to the communicator, since I need to be notified of a fire, also when I'm not home.
 
Mlda said:
My alarm system is rather old and has all 16 zones occupied but is very reliable.
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Not sure what brands are common in portugal, but expanding it or upgrading the alarm system may be easier than you think. Though that discussion may be better suited for its own thread, just throw an @tangent in to get my attention.
 
I'm not handy writing script and programming. I have to find stuff that works together. All the home automation that I have right now is I have an Amazon echo, with 3 dots throughout the house. I have 9 VeSync wi-fi wall outlets that I use for my lamps. I have 1 Kasa wi-fi wall outlet. I have it because it came with the Echo. I also have 1 Kasa wi-fi wall outlet. I have an Ecobee 4 thermostat. That's about all right now. I have a 2 way switch in a hallway that I want to replace. And a 3 switch gang that I would love to replace. But the wifi wall switches are wider and I'm unsure I can replace them. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
 
EZFrag said:
I'm not handy writing script and programming. I have to find stuff that works together. All the home automation that I have right now is I have an Amazon echo, with 3 dots throughout the house. I have 9 VeSync wi-fi wall outlets that I use for my lamps. I have 1 Kasa wi-fi wall outlet. I have it because it came with the Echo. I also have 1 Kasa wi-fi wall outlet. I have an Ecobee 4 thermostat. That's about all right now. I have a 2 way switch in a hallway that I want to replace. And a 3 switch gang that I would love to replace. But the wifi wall switches are wider and I'm unsure I can replace them. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
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First thing to check is if you have a neutral wire at the switch you want to replace. Older houses tend to not have a neutral wire at the switch, just a hot wire. Almost all wireless switches need a neutral wire to work, I know of one lutron zigbee switch that doesn't need the neutral. Because otherwise, if you don't have, it means pulling wires, or using a wireless lightbulb.
 
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Like some other people here, I use Domoticz running on a Raspberry Pi. This controls,

Zwave devices via an Aeon USB Stick
Philips Hue
One-wire temperature sensor to monitor the network closet

and an RFLink device to allow all sorts of 433Mhz devices to work with Domoticz.

The RFLink allows me to use a bunch of generic wireless temperature sensors. I don't use the 'legacy' 433Mhz for any switching, just one-way sensors.

The only link the Domoticz setup has with my IP Cameras is that I use a Z-Wave Fibaro 'eye ball' motion sensor to send alerts to Blue Iris when it detects movement. I record 24x7 so use this more as a notification to check things.

The motion sensor has been outdoors in a sheltered location for over 2 years and has a very low false positive rate (mostly due to positioning).

The biggest problem has been resisting the temptation to turn off/on all the 433 Mhz switches I can see in other people's houses :)
 
EZFrag, If your looking for a reliable, mid priced lightning dimmers for HA, I recommend Lutron Caseta. No need for neutral, you may create a 3-way by just adding a battery gang wall/pedestal wireless remote (Pico). But you may need to consider a maximum of 50 devices per network, it must be connected to a network bridge (PRO series for third party integration). Since the switches do not repeat the signal between themselves, it should be included inside a 30FT radio. A new product, RA2-Select allow you to add repeaters (up to four) for maximum coverage and up to 100 devices for larger areas, including 2 and 4 buttons keypads for scenes/control
 
I too run Domoticz on a Raspberry in combination with 2x RFlink (433.42 and 433.92), Mysensors Gateway, ESPEasy sensors, and a Milight Gateway. I can also send updates to Telegram.

I have multiple temperature sensors, PIR sensor, Doorbell, Door sensors, and camera's.

Recently installed a PTZ (SD1A203T-GN) on the frontdoor which will use another preset when the doorbell rings, and then sends this photo through Telegram so I can see who is at the door anywhere.
I also receive a message when the frontdoor lamp motion detector is activated, and also send photo's of who is snooping at the frontdoor. If it is night I first switch to dayprofile, since the frontdoor lamp gives more then enough light for a good picture. I switch the camera to day and night based on sunset / sunrise.

I plan to also have a mailbox detector, so I can also send pictures when the mail is in.
 
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raymondkoppen said:
I too run Domoticz on a Raspberry in combination with RFlink, Mysensors Gateway, ESPEasy sensors, and a Milight Gateway. I can also send updates to Telegram.

I have multiple temperature sensors, PIR sensor, Doorbell, Door sensors, and camera's.

Recently installed a PTZ (SD1A203T-GN) on the frontdoor which will use another preset when the doorbell rings, and then sends this photo through Telegram so I can see who is at the door anywhere.
I also receive a message when the frontdoor lamp motion detector is activated, and also send photo's of who is snooping at the frontdoor. If it is night I first switch to dayprofile, since the frontdoor lamp gives more then enough light for a good picture. I switch the camera to day and night based on sunset / sunrise.

I plan to also have a mailbox detector, so I can also send pictures when the mail is in.
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Hey Man, I'm running domoticz also and I'm not great at scripting, mine is working, I managed to cobble it together with help from @nayr who seems to be MIA lol it's very basic right now, but I recently saw they changed the way their lua stuff is and now you can do it with dzvents, are you using that? I started trying to re-write my door contact sensor script but it didn't work when I tested it yesterday, in the log it said it was looking for a module with the name of my script file, which is weird, the file has an underscore in it so maybe that won't fly, would you mind taking a look at my script in a PM if I send it to you? I literally just started learning about the dzvents stuff yesterday but I think I am very close, maybe just a dump syntax error. Thanks!
 
I'm using bash scripting for my camera related actions. It's easy for me to debug and test, and I haven't gotten round to using dzvent nor lua. So if you want I can still take a peek at your stuff, but don't get your hopes up to much. :lol:.
 
I've transitioned from Domoticz to Home Assistant.
Home Assistant has a larger user base and more active development, so it has more and newer devices supported. It takes a while sometimes for new devices to be supported in Domoticz. HA also has a more active forum.

Took me a couple weeks until I was ready to turn off Dom, and bring HA online. But about one week of that was figuring out how to implement MQTT, and interface my ESPs with HA over MQTT. Also took a little bit to figure out YAML, and how to customize HA with YAML.

But for the most part, it seems to be easier to do things in HA. I also have node red running, with a few node red programs running.
 
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