Smart home & automation

adbo · 2022-07-25T12:10:30+00:00

Hey everyone! I'm wondering if anyone here is into smart home products and automation? Personally I've slowly been trying to make everything in my house "smart" while trying not to splash out too much cash at once and keep overall costs relatively low 😄 https://s3-nothing-prod.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/2022-07-25/1658752583-122734-simpsons-beer.gif Current setup is Philips Hue and Smartthings hubs with quite a few Hue lightbulbs, 2 generic Zigbee LED strips, a Philips Ambilight Android TV, smart Samsung washing machine, a Eufy doorbell, a few Zigbee plugs & motion sensors, and 5 Google Home Minis around my house. 👀 My favourite automation I've done so far is a really simple one: motion lights. We have a 3 storey house and the hallways get dark, especially in winter. It's nice to be able to walk up or down the stairs and the lights come on automatically on each landing, then go off again after no motion for 60s. Just makes life a little bit easier by not having to worry light switches, especially if you're carrying something up the stairs! They also come on at 80% brightness through the day and 10% brightness during the night, which helps if you need to get up in the middle of the night for whatever reason. I recently bought a Raspberry Pi 4 and Conbee II stick and I plan on implementing Home Assistant (as soon as I get some spare time!) to be able to condense the two Zigbee hubs into one and harmonise everything even further. Hopefully I can then get around to doing some more complex automations too! https://s3-nothing-prod.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/2022-07-25/1658752330-140014-oooh-zigbee.gif So if you're into home automation, what devices do you have, what would you like to buy in future and what's your favourite use case/automation you've done? Would love to get some new ideas! ✌️ P.S. I guess we could also think about how Nothing could add to the home automation scene in future. I'm sure they could make some great looking smart home products.

Court

I have smart speakers and displays throughout my apartment. I only have a few smart lights but once I find a home that I’ll be settled in for awhile, a goal will be to have almost every light a “smart light”.

Back in the day when we used to turn settings off when leaving home I used to have NFC tags stuck to walls and doorframes to turn on or off certain settings.

Rob ⚡️

Court haha I remember that period of time with NFC tags stuck on things, humble beginnings!

Court

Rob ⚡️ I always felt like a tech god when people would visit. They always wanted me to setup theirs too

sean (1)

10% brightness at night is a great idea. Is there a blue-light filter too?

I’m planning major building work on my house this year and will certainly be looking at the benefits of installing an IOT.

adbo

Kastello the homeassistant app is able to track your position and do stuff based on this

yessss that’s something I’m looking forward to when I finally install HA! Would love to be able to turn everything off automatically when we leave.

Louis ☕️ What are the lightbulbs like, as in would you consider them worth the cost? Do they last a long time?

I opted for Hue even though they’re more expensive than other Zigbee bulbs because I’ve heard of other brands (like IKEA) having connection issues or dying after a year or two. I’ve had some of my Hue lights for 3 years and they’re still going strong. They’re meant to be rated up to 25,000 hours so should be good for a long while yet! Hue also have great features like remembering state during power loss, whereas a lot of smart lights turn on when powered - which isn’t great when you have a power cut in the middle of the night!

I’m also trying to ensure all of my smarthome devices operate on Zigbee, which again is a little more expensive but is more stable and reliable than wifi and it’s also a mesh based network, unlike wifi, so is expandable without more hubs/points too.

Louis ☕️ weather/time/news) plus to play music throughout the house

I do take my Minis for granted sometimes! They are powerful little things aren’t they. When they work, that is. Sounds like you could do with switching to Alexa since you have Ring products though?

Louis ☕️

adbo Sounds like you could do with switching to Alexa since you have Ring products though?

Yeah, I originally had the Google stuff, then the Ring came later before Google had even developed their own cameras…Sigh!

sean (1)

Considering there are widgets planned to control Tesla cars, I expect there will be something similar for smart homes. There’s a good opportunity there.

Ru773LL

I’ve a few Smart lightbulbs, 2-3 smart plugs and a couple of Echos.

I don’t really take full advantage of them as I recently moved to a new flat and haven’t got round to setting everything up properly.

Once Nothing starts building its IoT network etc I’ll probably take more interest.

RobIgo

I have smart plugs and lights that are triggered by sensors and/or time of day. I also have two outdoor cameras that when triggered by “people” record but if it’s after dusk will turn on by downstairs lights for 5 mins (this is only the back garden camera). I have 3 google speakers which I love (and works will all the plugs and lights).

My cameras are by Hive who’ve just announced they will stop supporting them in 3 years so after that they will be bricks (great) - at that point I’ll probably opt for google cameras.

adbo

Did anyone see the Google announcement regarding the Google Home app recently? Basically they’re improving the app, upgrading their automation experience and making routines even smarter.

They’re adding a lot more routine “starters” (triggers for routines) such as media starts/pauses, doorbell presses and motion sensor activity as well as more actions too. For example, if someone rings your doorbell, you can automatically pause media while you go and answer the door.

They’re also implementing “home” routines, where anyone in your home can run/edit the same routine - finally! For anything you feel you can’t do within the routine UI, they’re adding a script editor for the more advanced automations, which looks very similar to Home Assistant’s script editor. Makes me wonder if they’ll be able to compete with HA!

To compliment all of this, they also announced a redesign of the Home app. It’s nice to see Google finally updating their app and improving the user experience with routines.

Sources: https://www.googlenestcommunity.com/t5/Blog/New-home-automation-features-to-make-your-smart-home-more/ba-p/248418

https://9to5google.com/2022/10/04/google-home-app-redesign/

RobIgo

I already use Google Routines so to know there is going to be more intelligent etc. is great news!

Court

RobIgo I love Google routines. Take some type to learn and setup some routines and it can be quite nice and feel futuristic when waking up and saying “Hey Google, good morning”

Surya_8055

Smart home and automation aren’t widely used in India as of now. It is getting into light from the past couple of years. I have Amazon’s Echo Dot and Syska smart LED’s around my home. I’m looking forward to install completely automated tech in my home in the coming months.

RobIgo

Surya_8055 the more I can get tech do for me the better! Currently I have cameras at the front and rear of the house and they are set to motion detection “people” (so animals or the wind blowing doesn’t trigger it to record and send me an alert). The rear of the house also has a routine where between 12 midnight and 6am if the camera is triggered to record my downstairs lights all come on for 5 mins (hopefully if this was somebody snooping around my back garded it would deter them).

I like the fact that in the future if your doorbell rings it pauses what you’re watching on tv (and can turn out an outside light etc).

Surya_8055

RobIgo Yeah, those are some cool features to have. Like its more futuristic and good to have.

adbo

RobIgo set to motion detection “people” (so animals or the wind blowing doesn’t trigger it to record and send me an alert)

Would love to know what brand of cameras you’re using to achieve that… I’m using Reolink and have it often detects pigeons, rain and steam from my boiler flue as a human 😂 My Eufy doorbell often thinks that the back of my car and the tree blowing in the wind is a person too. Would love to have the opportunity to provide feedback on their AI to help it learn

RobIgo

adbo I’m using Hive camera’s, they allow detection zones and also a people setting, it still occasionally gets it wrong (and I check the camera and there was nothing there). Hive have discontinued support for there cameras in 2025 so at that point I’ll be looking for a new camera system - I’m pretty certain I’ll go with google (as they also don’t need a cable - I hate cables so will be nice to ditch the power cable outside).

adbo

RobIgo Ahhh fair enough, I don’t have any experience with Hive cameras.. but as I say, human detection has a lot of false positives on my cameras in my experience. Not sure about Google though! I didn’t go with them due to having monthly fees and I wanted PoE cameras so I didn’t have to worry about changing batteries. You’ll have to update this thread in 2025 with your findings 😉 😂

‏‏‎Chris‏‏‎

Currently running an Alexa setup myself, and already had a lot of these routine features for years 😉 don’t have much in the way of smart home stuff at the moment since my current lights are all spot lights with several in each room so it would cost a fortune to get set up, and I’m in a flat so can’t really do much in the way of camera outside sadly 😢but where I lived previously I had all the rooms set up with Hue smart lights and managed to rig my TV system to be smart via a SwitchBot hub and a Fire stick so I could ask Alexa to do whatever lights or do whatever on TV. Couldn’t connect the lights to any motion detection but I rigged them up on a timer to go on/off at specific times e.g. to wake me up in the morning/prompting me to go to bed if it’s late and holiday timers to pretend someone’s home. And just because I also set up an Alexa skill to flash the lights dramatically (making them red where possible) with a ‘self-destruct’ timer when I triggered the skill 😂

Still got my TV smartified now and I’ve also rigged my computer up with a SwitchBot so I can turn it on remotely and log in via parsec whenever my laptop doesn’t have the proper power for something.

I’ve been looking at how feasible it would be to get a security camera system of Pis since I love little pi projects. But looking at the comments here with commercial cameras I’m starting to seriously doubt whether a Pi cam is going to be a reliable method!