Home Automation?

Shizelbs

Anyone in here use any sort of home automation products? Just curious what you use and what your thoughts are.

I've been looking for a universal remote to replace the clusterfest that is my collection of remotes and saw that some of the Harmony remotes can do automation stuff as well.

disneyjoe7

Ok I bit what are you trying to do?

Shizelbs

Nothing specific, I just am a total nerd, and I like the idea of automation for lights and security at the house and possibly having remote control over lights and temp from work.

disneyjoe7

Not knowing what you have for an alarm in your house DSC makes pieces for X10 control of lights and phone control where the any phone becomes a keypad. Also given you control when away by calling house anywhere.


Other then that look around http://www.smarthome.com/ can be on the low side of automation but it will give you an idea what can be done.

bobman1235

95% of what I've seen just seems to be stuff you can do for the sake of doing it, but it doesn't seem to provide you any real convenience. Just kind of a "hmph, t hat's neat" factor for the first month you have it, and then it'll probably stop working and/or become an annoyance.

Things like electronic door locks and the like....

disneyjoe7

The phone adapter from DSC for the alarm came in handy when I had one, since I would turn off alarm before someone needed to be there and I wouldn't have to give a code out.

brettw22

I have a remote for sale that can handle what you're wanting to do.......URC MX-700.........in case you're interested.

bradm6406

I have some home automation equipment and I'm slowly trying to add more to my system.

Here's what I'm using:
HAL 2000 software http://www.homeautomatedliving.com - the brains of my system, gives you voice control over your system. I can pick up any phone in my house and give HAL commands and have it do them. This includes saying things like "turn off all the lights", "it's movie time" (to get HAL to set the lighting appropriately for watching movies, at some point I will have IR control over my HT components and be able to have HAL turn on all of the components as well), "what is the weather forecast for today?", "play dinner music in the kitchen" (I have all of our CDs ripped to MP3s on my home automation computer. I still need to buy my whole house audio receiver to get this finished, more than likely a Russound CAV 6.6. Once that is done I will be able to turn music on and off and choose which CD/artist/genre to play in any given room.)

I have a bunch of Insteon light switches (http://www.smarthome.com/prodindex.asp?catid=74) . This is a new protocol that is much better than X10 (faster, more reliable, smarter). One of the switches they have has 6 buttons on it. I plan on putting one of these in my home theatre room and programming one of the buttons to be the "set the movie lighting" button. This will mean I can push one button and have it turn off the front two rows of pot lights closest to the projection screen, dim the 3rd row of lights fairly dim, the 4th row of lights a little brighter, and the 5th and 6th row of lights I'll probably turn off... I'll play with it and see what works best. When I get my IR control working I will be able to have that turn on my projector, receiver, DVD player, etc.

I also wired our house for motion sensors in every room so that once it is all connected HAL will be able to turn the lights off and on based on motion in each room. I can set it to do things like... if there is motion in the kid's bedrooms before their bedtime then turn the lights on if it is not already bright enough in their rooms, when there is no motion for 5 minutes turn the lights off, turn the lights on in the bathroom when there is motion possibly only turning them on to a dim level if it is in the middle of the night so I don't get blinded when I get up to go pee.

We're also planning on putting in a yard sprinkler system in the spring. There is a device I will be buying to control the sprinklers using HAL. I will be able to attach a rain sensor to the system (so the sprinklers won't turn on if it's rained more than a set amount in the last day or so) but I could also set it up so that if it hasn't rained yet but the weather forecast says it will probably rain to delay the sprinklers going off by a day.

That's an indication of the things I'm currently doing with home automation, or that I am planning on doing in the near future. Yes, a lot of it is just kind of neat.... but that's the point. It will be very convenient to be able to go to bed at night and tell HAL to turn off all the lights in case I forgot any on. It will also be great to be able to play music in any room in the house just by picking up the phone.

If it's something you're interested in learning more about I can help. I'm not an expert by any means but I have been doing some home automation for quite a while and I've read a lot about it.


Brad

PhantomOG

The Insteon stuff looks nice, but too expensive right now for me.

bradm6406

Yeah, they're not as cheap as I would like.

Their cheapest light switches are the "icon" line.
http://www.smarthome.com/2876db.html

They are $35 on sale right now for $30 (unfortunately they used to be $20 not that long ago, they just raised their prices). The main difference with the icon switches as compared to their V2 switches is that the icons are only rated to run 300W of lights where the V2 switches can run 600W of lights. There are a couple of other differences, but basically I bought the icons anywhere where I know I've got less than 300W of lights to run.

[Edit] I just looked at these guys: http://store.youautomateit.com/icdisw28.html
and they've got the icon switches for $25. I've never ordered from them before, but I've heard good things about them. [/Edit]

I had just heard too many stories about flakey X10 installations so I decided to go Insteon. I only have a couple of my switches installed so far, but they work great. Very quick response, and I've never had a command get missed yet.


Brad