Full Home Automation - For Peanuts

Posting after along time here - Got an unexpected call from Joe Radhik today morning which brought back old memories of this community and the friends I made here
Thus the thought of putting up this post which will hopefully inspire the younger ones here to take up doing things the old fashioned way - i.e. DIY

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We recently moved into another house and I thought of checking with local system integrators for setting up an automation system - After being appalled by the exorbitant costs, general lack of knowledge and the fact that the solutions offered would require a significant amount of recabling and time, I decided to do it on my own.

The idea was to ensure the following
a) Absolutely no recabling/retrospective fittings & fixtures
b) Ability to support existing discrete items (I had a couple of Wemo switches and LIFX bulbs)
c) Low cost but scalable solution - Ideally open source

Eventually settled on the amazing open source Domoticz platform and a week worth of tinkering, I finally ended up completing it
Currently, the system supports 12 lights (all rooms except Kitchen and some outdoor lights), a couple of wall outlets, 4 temperatures sensors, 1 barometric sensor, 1 motion sensor (Wemo) a LIFX light, 3 IP monitoring cameras and integration with the existing XBMC entertainment setup (Living room)

The last bit is the best party trick as the lights dim out to a light purple/blue hue in & around the living room when I start watching TV and switch back to full bright white when I pause/stop TV.

Needless to say, the system also checks for the sunrise/sunset status and ambient light and switches/dims/brightens the lighting in and around the house

I was also able to create event based rules (e.g. send me a mail notification alert if motion is detected in the porch when no one is at home)

The next step is to create a wireless mesh network of additional sensors (Soil moisture sensor, garden temperature and humidity, utility sensors ( House Power consumption , gas consumption)
And maybe, just maybe @Joe Radhik, add a dust sensor to auto activate a Roomba to clean the house when it gets dusty :p
Also need to wall mount an old iPad to act as a fixed physical controller since it is sometime a pain to look for a phone when you need to manually change something

The best part - All of this was done through cheap off the shelf components
- The central controller runs on a Raspberry Pi
- The entire system leverages the existing wired/wireless network (except the weather sensors)
- The weather sensors run on the 1-wire protocol meaning I was able to use the existing telephone line cables that were already there in the house wiring)
- The lighting system uses the brilliant low cost 2.4G network Milight RGBW bulbs
- The overall cost I incurred was a small fraction of the quotes I had originally got
- The learning curve was steep but I derived the satisfaction of having learnt something new each day all along the way

As mentioned earlier, I hope this inspires some of the members around here to take up what was for me an immensely satisfying project
 
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Nice. A few questions...
Is this all done in India with all parts bought in India?
Can you list the components involved in a table with their approx cost.
And if required can you post details if anyone would like to implement this....
I have both wired and wireless connectivity in all rooms of my apartment. I am interested in this.....
Thanks.
 
@superczar this is fantastic and I am extremely inspired by this, in fact last few days have been reading about the best RPI projects, and the home automation intrigued me the most, could you elaborate on your setup and also share any reference material you used? The other constraint is that all my house wiring is done, not sure if I can implement this well enough, but I am determined to try this out.

Thanks for sharing!
 
All parts sourced from India (except the pre existing LIFX bulbs and Wemo switches - However you can easily do without them)
Rough part list , source and apprx cost
- Raspberry Pi - ebay - 3K
- Milight RGBW bulbs - enrg.in - approx 1200 each - buy as many as you need
- Milight wireless controller - enrg.in - approx 1200 - 1 can control upto 4 channels and each channel can have multiple zones- I ended using 2 as I needed 7 zones in the house
- 2 LIFX bulbs - I had brought iit in the US .. around 6K each- Believe it is available locally also - The light is definitely brighter and better (offers white temp control and more granular color changes) than Milight , not sure if its worth 5 X though
- 1 actuator (power switch control ) is through a Belkin Wemo that I already had
- Other Actuators (switch control) are based off Arduino Pro Mini (250 each) running mysensors (open source) and 433mhz connectivty via nrf24L01+ radios (100 each) and optoisolated relays (single channel boards are around 150) - All off ebay
- Temp and weather sensing is via 4 DS18B20 1-wire sensors - around 100 each, 1 BMP180 (200/-) hooked to the I2C port of the Pi
- Motion sensing is through a Belkin Wemo Sensor (but that is because I already had it), a cheaper solution would be to use a PIR sensor hooked to an Arduino/nrf24l01+ combination - I intend to add another to the garden
- XBMC integration does not require any additional hardware

The best way to go about it would be to start off with a Rasp Pi loaded with a domoticz image (domoticz.com)
Happy to answer specific questions on the implementation as and when you run into a roadblock

Also, It would be great if someone could point me to a cost effective curtain control actuator available in India - Unable to find anything so far

Reference sites - www.domoticz.com (main controller implementation), mysensors.org (arduino/nrf24l01+ mesh network implementation)
 
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Can you please share information on camera's that you used? Most of supported cams I see on Domoticz page are little costly.
 
I use 3 IP Cameras so support is not an issue
It could be a different story with wired USB camera though - Having said that, it should support the cheap RPi camera OOTB
 
Just an update -

Added MySensors Integration (Basically a mesh network of sensors/actuators that run off a cheap Arduino/Radio combo) and have added two more motion sensors , power consumption sensors and an additional temp/humidity sensor for the garden
The beauty of Mysensors is that its so scalable , removes cabling constraints and is yet so cheap

Also managed to do a physical mount of an old iPad to act as the central hub

Also added an IR receiver and programmed the Living room Logitech Harmony to act as a physical remote as well

Also spent some time writing scripts manually to enable some moderately complex automation

  • Monitor movement in the porch between 11-7PM on weekdays and send me a telegram notification with monitoring Camera pictures (My house help comes once in the day to feed my dogs and let them run around- This works as a check)

  • Sensor on ground and 1st floor that monitor motion in both directions and determine if any floor is vacant and which floor people are on to handle the ligting


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I have a question,
How to you go about IoT enabling switchboard buttons for light and fans?

Suppose we use a relay hooked up to an ESP8266 microcontroller (it has wifi).

Next steps would be to inline the relay board with one wire of the switch?

How to we power on the microcontroller board? Vampire off the AC mains through a AC to DC board (buck converter?)

Over all is it safe to hook all this and jam it into the wall box?

Any chances of fire hazards or such?
 
Wow, great work there . I am interested to implement some of the stuff and even ordered the raspberry pi. Tried searching for milight bulbs but they seem to only have prism ones , now to begin with could you please recommend a bulb to buy and do I really need a wireless controller, thanks in advance.
 
Wow, great work there . I am interested to implement some of the stuff and even ordered the raspberry pi. Tried searching for milight bulbs but they seem to only have prism ones , now to begin with could you please recommend a bulb to buy and do I really need a wireless controller, thanks in advance.
LIFX is what I would highly recommend
In fact I am in the process of switching over completely to LIFX at least for the non concealed ones
 
LIFX is what I would highly recommend

Thanks for the quick response.

I checked for the same and the price range that I could find in India is about 7k per piece (which would be a lot of money for me if I get four of these), is there a better source or an alternative that you could suggest please.

I also searched for a wifi enabled bulb on Aliexpress as well and got results for 800-1200 bucks a piece, any of them any good.

Also after getting a wifi enabled bulb do I need a controller?

Thank you very much for your assistance and sorry for asking too many questions.
 
I am also thinking of getting the Lifx. We can order it online from their site, they are charging flat 20$ for the shipping. This works out to be cheaper I guess.
They are offering discounted rates for a limited time on their site.
I was just wondering if we would be charged customs here for the same, which will increase the cost!
 
I am also thinking of getting the Lifx. We can order it online from their site, they are charging flat 20$ for the shipping. This works out to be cheaper I guess.
They are offering discounted rates for a limited time on their site.
I was just wondering if we would be charged customs here for the same, which will increase the cost!
yes
 
The best way probably would be to order from Amazon.com under their global shipping program
Duty on lighbulbs should be low[DOUBLEPOST=1478899078][/DOUBLEPOST]For what it's worth, the setup now includes every single light and all media devices in the house - including the ability to play music off commands (not the crappy shout into your phone forced command but rather simply asking to play say Eric Prydz in the kitchen while walking down the stairs to get my morning coffee and then transfer the stream to the sitout when the coffee is ready)
Have also added the ability to ask Siri to unlock the main door when I get home and have also added networked CO and smoke sensors in the kitchen and bedroom
 
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I need your assistance and hence writing on your thread , so I bought a pair of wifi bulbs from aliexpress, you can turn them on/off through the app and adjust color brightness as well, now how can I make them do more such as turn on automatically at sunset time for the day, link it to xbmc on pc, I have the Mac address, up address and their Android app code. Please let me know if it is possible and how, thanks
 
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