My Five Home Automation Improvements By Value

My Five Home Automation Improvements By Value

I began looking into home automation about a year and a half ago. I was going to do some upgrades to my apartment. Naturally, it seemed like a good time to make it a little smarter. Here are the things I installed then which I still use today.

1. Smart Lighting With Zigbee

Fine control over lighting is important for every day health and comfort. It’s not just about the brightness level. The color temperature plays an important role in our functioning. It can help people feel better in winter time when there is less natural sunlight. In addition, I can modify it to a softer glow in the evening to help us prepare for sleep. Different rooms in our home will also benefit from different lighting color. To expand, here is a nice text with some graphs. Finally, the Zigbee protocol is fully open and allows me to pair devices from different manufacturers using the same Zigbee dongle attached to my Raspbery Pi.

2. Heating control with Zigbee

My home has uses a gas powered boiler and radiators to provide heating. It used to be controlled with an analog thermostat that I would set manually. Nowadays, it’s another Zigbee device. To explain, It’s not just about remote control. It’s also about the ability to program your own heating schedule however you want it. As the system is connected to OpenHAB I can write any type of automation code I want. It can be triggered by occupancy or time of day, for example. As a bonus, Zigbee provides good security and reliability. It uses a protected frequency inside EU teritory.

3. Zigbee based senors of all sorts

Whether it’s temperature, humidity, air quality or motion, you can find a cheap Zigbee-based solution. In combination with a system like OpenHAB or Grafana, I can visualize and reviewed the data through time. In addition, I can set up alerts if something goes wrong with the living conditions in my home. Moreover, I can optimize for cost over the long term and keep my family healthy without breaking the bank. Finally, my wife and I have resolved many arguments amicably by looking at a chart and identifying the cause of our frustration.

4. Cameras and tablets

Did you know how cheap WiFi capable IP cameras are today? They can go as low as 30 $ USD. I use them for multiple purposes in my home. For example, I have some on the outside for security and so I can see if my guests arriving. One is a baby monitor. Another I use to have better VOIP calls with my parents. At the same time I can prepare lunch and have a nice conversation with them. The same is true about tablets. If you don’t need a graphic design workhorse, you can find something under 200 $ USD to hang on the wall. I use mine for VOIP, as a way to talk to Google Assistant and as an OpenHAB console.

5. OpenHAB and Raspberry Pi to bring it all together

As I’ve mentioned above, I use OpenHAB as a platform to integrate all of these components. It’s hosted on one of my Raspberry Pi servers about which I am writing in my series on the DIY data center. OpenHAB is open-source and free. Much like WordPress, it has a vibrant community of developers that provide new functionality. OpenHAB is a control center and dashboard for my smart home. It has a scripting engine which I use to ingest data from sensors and toggle appliances. In addition, I plan to connect it to external services like Google Assistant, Finally, it will graph data from any sensors conected to it.

Ivan Šarić

Engineering Blog