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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^^ You of course can - but the underlying idea remains the same - which is you need to have a central controller server to manage your rules (time based/location based/activity based etc)
There are quite a few choices for such central controller - I swear by Domoticz
In fact Domoticz acts as a lot more tha that

My place is now a huge mashup of all sorts of IoT devices and platforms ranging from Homekit (Apple), Smartthings (Samsung), Echo (Amazon), LIFX, Hue, Logitech, Z-wave among others as well as several cheap chinese IoT bulbs (Milight - which I assume is what you got) and switches - Domoticz acts as the central unifier for them all so they can all work seamlessly either through a single app or through Voice (On both Echo and iphone/ipad Siri) as well as be managed as a through a unified automated workflow (as if they were all on the same protocol/from the same manufacturer)

Here's something to add on to the previous video which may hopefully give you some additional inspiration to get started ASAP :)
 
^^Thanks for the reply, That is an awesome setup, wish to reach there someday.

I have bought these bulbs
http://bit.ly/2fOhgp2

I downloaded Domoticz today, Was prompted to enter hardware type but couldn't find the right choice in the list. I tried the milight option from dropdown but then it asks for a port number. These bulbs are controlled through an app so not sure how to get the port number. please help, thanks.
 
there would be a controller that you would have hooked to your network- Give it a fixed IP address and use that IP ..The port if i remember correctly is 8899 else just google for the port #
 
Hi, thanks for the prompt response but there is no controller, just the app, bulbs and wifi router. On the app you just need to select the bulb and say join wifi router and that's it, you can through the app add it to scenes like bedroom etc etc and control colour, brightness through it. Please suggest, thanks.[DOUBLEPOST=1479547809][/DOUBLEPOST]I can add screenshots of the app if that helps.
 
A scan shows port 5000 udp open|filtered (upnp) on both bulbs, thanks.
My best guess would be that the bulb uses ESP8266 with some variation of the NodeMCU FW
Unfortunately our Northerly neighbors aren't particularly good at documentation ..

Can you look up the MAC address of the light to check the wireless chipset?
If it is ESP8266, i believe you may be able to reuse some of the bash scripts people have created to control ESP8266 based RGB dimmers
 
Yes, the chip is from Espressif (who produce ESP8266 chipsets) and is running NodeMCU firmware (lwIP stack). I searched for some scripts and found this http://blog.quindorian.org/2015/01/esp8266-wifi-led-dimmer-part-4-of-x-configuring-domoticz.html. followed it, copy pasted the code on notepad++ and saved it with .lua extention in the scripts directory however nothing happens. I am running domoticz on windows presently and this was coded for Linux (Ubuntu) could that be the problem ? or after writing the script you need to point domoticz to the script ? Please suggest and thanks for all your assistance on this
 
Found this in a review

I guess quality is acceptable since it cost me only 15$. Solder work inside is ... not so good. There is no isolation between power supply PCB and surrounding metal heat shield (I'm guessing what it is). Top PCB with LEDs is silicon glued to heat shield body, but body itself is plastic outside, which I guess is not so good for cooling. I have not tested it yet, just looked inside. WIFI controller is ESP8266 which is good thing if you want to use your own firmware. There is four holes in small PCB under LED PCB where ESP8266 is mounted (+3.3V, not labeled, not labeled, GND) which may be is UART, and two more holes which are also are unlabeled. LEDs must be 12V since I see 3.3V and 12V labels on PCB. Memory chip is Winbond 25Q80BVSIG which is 8Mbit chip (1MB). LED Chip Brand: Sharp, LED Chip Model: SMD5050

Does this help ?
 
Yes, the chip is from Espressif (who produce ESP8266 chipsets) and is running NodeMCU firmware (lwIP stack). I searched for some scripts and found this http://blog.quindorian.org/2015/01/esp8266-wifi-led-dimmer-part-4-of-x-configuring-domoticz.html. followed it, copy pasted the code on notepad++ and saved it with .lua extention in the scripts directory however nothing happens. I am running domoticz on windows presently and this was coded for Linux (Ubuntu) could that be the problem ? or after writing the script you need to point domoticz to the script ? Please suggest and thanks for all your assistance on this
I have no experience with domoticz on windows so can't say for sure if Lua works on windows
I am presuming you have updated the IP of your bulb on the script - Just double check the port as well as implementations can differ between manufacturers at times
 
Thanks, yes I did and updated the port number in code as well but that does not work well, will try installing a Linux distro and domoticz and see if that works, thanks for your help.
 
Received my lifx lights, had to pay 3100 as customs! Have got a small working setup at home now, works good with google home, smartthings, couple of ihome smart plugs , and lifx as of now.
Looking to add few more motion sensors.
 
Received my lifx lights, had to pay 3100 as customs! Have got a small working setup at home now, works good with google home, smartthings, couple of ihome smart plugs , and lifx as of now.
Looking to add few more motion sensors.
For how many?
Amazon global shows 500 INR odd as import duty all inclusive for 1
 
Have any of you guys looked at Pert Automation products. By the looks of it, they are more VFM considering one can get a 8-node switch for just 8k. They also support dimming and are Alexa compatible. Thinking of ordering these and a 6-pack Echo Dot package.
 
Have any of you guys looked at Pert Automation products. By the looks of it, they are more VFM considering one can get a 8-node switch for just 8k. They also support dimming and are Alexa compatible. Thinking of ordering these and a 6-pack Echo Dot package.
Never knew they were Alexa compatible! I had spoken to them for the same and asked if they will be compatible with Echo or Google Home ect. they could not answer that at that time. If they can be voice operated, nothing like it.
 
Never knew they were Alexa compatible! I had spoken to them for the same and asked if they will be compatible with Echo or Google Home ect. they could not answer that at that time. If they can be voice operated, nothing like it.
Their FAQs now list exact steps to get it working with Alexa. Maybe they just added the support for Alexa recently. Still it would be much better if they could upload a video showing the exact steps as a proof that it does work as advertised.
 
I had ordered 5 , paid 20$ shipping + 3K customs.
I could not find them in Amazon global, do u have link. Thanks.
https://www.amazon.com/LIFX-Smart-M...i&ie=UTF8&qid=1479793103&sr=1-1&keywords=lifx

I have a few Hue bulbs , Hue beyond and a bunch of LIFX - The light output and the color accuracy on the LIFX is far better than Hue

Never knew they were Alexa compatible! I had spoken to them for the same and asked if they will be compatible with Echo or Google Home ect. they could not answer that at that time. If they can be voice operated, nothing like it.

CHeck with them if they would be willing to provide the API (or even a URL) to control the switches directly over LAN
If you can get that, you can configure HAbridge/Domoticz to handle voice control for them
 
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