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Moey posted:Good enough for me, will pull the trigger on one. I would prefer full functionality even if the internet dies, which apparently ST doesn't offer. It does support offline capabilities, obviously devices that integrate over the Internet probably won't work. I'll give this a test tonight to see how well things go. My Lutron and Ecobee stuff probably won't work but who knows.
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Feb 16, 2017 21:31
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Three Olives posted:Lightbulbs, yes, the Hue color changing light bulbs in my opinion are horrendously overpriced as far as the utility goes. The dimmers? I dunno, a Leviton dimmer will set you back $20 and for the utility it seems very worth it to me. My house is plugged into in-wall touch screens, Google Home and my smartphone, don't underestimate how nice it is to come home and hit one button and all the lights in your house turn off or go to bed and say "Hey Google, turn my house off" and have all the lights in your house turn off only to wake you in the morning automatically. I just don't leave lights on all over my house and it seems to work out ok.
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Feb 17, 2017 04:18
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HEY NONG MAN posted:I just don't leave lights on all over my house and it seems to work out ok. I guess I had a different childhood than these people because yeah, I just have one light on at a time ever. It turns out I'm only one person and can only be in one place at a time. 
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Feb 17, 2017 04:55
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LastInLine posted:I guess I had a different childhood than these people because yeah, I just have one light on at a time ever. It turns out I'm only one person and can only be in one place at a time. I basically life in a loft, the bedroom/bathroom is enclosed and I have a galley kitchen but my living room, former foyer and dining room are one giant room which means when I come home or wake up in the morning that involves 6 light switches
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Feb 17, 2017 05:21
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Many modern cars have replaced the key with a RF keyfob that allows you to unlock doors by just walking near the car with the fob. Are there any door locks out there that can do the same for your home?
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Feb 17, 2017 05:36
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I think Kwikset Kevo locks use your phone as a fob, or you can get an actual fob, instead.
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Feb 17, 2017 06:04
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I wouldn't say we're 100% to that yet. You inspired me to read this: http://www.techlicious.com/guide/5-futuristic-smart-locks-for-your-home/ Basically there are a lot of ways you can unlock door via touching something, or, the lock, or even asking siri to do it (uhh...that doesn't sound so great). You could probably come closer to touchless entry with older tech. At my last place of work we had proxmity locks and I just needed to wave my wallet in front of it to unlock (although, it was more reliable to touch it). I wonder if the sensor would have been a bit lower or if I was quite a bit taller or more athletic if it wouldn't have worked by just leaning against it while in my pants.
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Feb 17, 2017 06:04
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I figured Steve was just mistaken a bit. I've seen lots of cars with keyless entry, but they all require a touch, not just proximity.
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Feb 17, 2017 06:11
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WithoutTheFezOn posted:I figured Steve was just mistaken a bit. I've seen lots of cars with keyless entry, but they all require a touch, not just proximity. What? No, there are plenty of cars which unlock by proximity. Like, shitloads.
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Feb 17, 2017 07:55
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Yeah isn't that how a lot of car thieves are breaking into luxury vehicles these days? With hacked prox as sensors?
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Feb 17, 2017 08:09
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Did not know that. My bad. Which brands, out of curiosity? To clarify: I know of a lot of cars that have keyless entry with a fob, but they don't actually unlock until you touch, say, the inside of the door handle while the fob is near. WithoutTheFezOn fucked around with this message at 08:36 on Feb 17, 2017 |
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Feb 17, 2017 08:25
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Here is the article the NYT did on it in 2015: https://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/04/16/style/keeping-your-car-safe-from-electronic-thieves.html
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Feb 17, 2017 08:41
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That's not touchless, though. In particular, I know from experience the Prius mentioned in that article requires you to touch the inside of the door handle before it unlocks. It's a silly distinction to worry about now that I think about it, sorry for the derail.
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Feb 17, 2017 08:51
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WithoutTheFezOn posted:I think Kwikset Kevo locks use your phone as a fob, or you can get an actual fob, instead. You still have to tap the lock (I have one).
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Feb 17, 2017 10:03
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WithoutTheFezOn posted:That's not touchless, though. In particular, I know from experience the Prius mentioned in that article requires you to touch the inside of the door handle before it unlocks. My ex's Subaru BRZ was by proximity, I would have assumed it would be true of all Toyotas but if it isn't true of the Prius then who knows. Like you said though it's a trivial difference, even if the lock unlocks when I'm near or it or just when I touch the doorknob, it's functionally the same thing. Of course the bigger problem is that I put my keys near the door, so that would mean the door would never lock. Due to what HEY NONG MAN was saying, we ended up buying Faraday bags to keep the fobs in because it's easy enough to buy a cheap repeater/amplifier and just walk up to a car and it will unlock if your keys are in the house.
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Feb 17, 2017 10:50
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WithoutTheFezOn posted:That's not touchless, though. In particular, I know from experience the Prius mentioned in that article requires you to touch the inside of the door handle before it unlocks. When I walk up to my car the door handles come out and it unlocks, I just pull the handle to enter. It locks when I walk away.
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Feb 17, 2017 13:53
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Hmmmm.. The Kevo looks like it would fit the bill. Was mainly looking for something so I didn't have to dig my keys out of my pocket when walking up to the door carrying stuff. Recently bought a car that does this, and I really like it. Walk away from the car for more than 10 seconds and it locks. Walk near the car and you can unlock it by just pushing the button on the door handle.
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Feb 17, 2017 14:39
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The Electronaut posted:It does support offline capabilities, obviously devices that integrate over the Internet probably won't work. I'll give this a test tonight to see how well things go. My Lutron and Ecobee stuff probably won't work but who knows. I pulled the trigger on one, will be here next week. First order of business is new lock for the front door. I have been eyeballing a Schlage Sense unit, looks nice and can program codes for guests and whatnot.
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Feb 17, 2017 19:42
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Moey posted:I pulled the trigger on one, will be here next week. Hold up on the Sense. It's their Bluetooth lock which I can't see any compatibility info for. I have Schlage Connects which are Z Wave powered.
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Feb 17, 2017 22:14
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The Electronaut posted:Hold up on the Sense. It's their Bluetooth lock which I can't see any compatibility info for. I have Schlage Connects which are Z Wave powered. Ah yeah, it was the Connect I was looking at, just got confused with the name. Model BE469
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Feb 17, 2017 23:06
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Looking for suggestions or a place to read on building a small but future proofed camera set up for home. I have a server in my home-office that's on 24/7 with about a dozen TB of free storage. It's running a hypervisor so I'll add a new VM running whatever host. I'd like to place a camera looking out a window within 5 feet of the server. I'd like to be notified on motion to a smart phone (optionally not all the time) and be able to watch the feed from a phone tablet. I'd like the system to be expandable to other cameras eventually but at the start only one is needed and it can be directly connected. Being able to add in Wifi cameras would be a plus but not an initial requirement. What I'm looking for basically is: What's a good wired camera that can be used for security like this. What's open source / low cost DVR software for the camera And how does phone/tablet get brought in as well?
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Feb 18, 2017 00:38
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Hughlander posted:Looking for suggestions or a place to read on building a small but future proofed camera set up for home. You're looking at any Hikvision camera from recently. Also look at the Dahua Starlight series cameras. Blue Iris is the standard recording software. You can buy it for $50 or less. Blue Iris has iOS / Android apps also. It can do almost anything you'd conceivably want. Once you start running a very large number of cameras, you'll want dedicated hardware, since virtual machines likely won't let Blue Iris use QuickSync for hardware acceleration. You could do a handful of WiFi cameras, but they'll be banging away at your network 24/7/365, and CAT cables are cheap.
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Feb 18, 2017 01:53
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Get a dahlia starlight varifocal turret. Combo with blue iris, done. ipcamtalk is a good resource.
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Feb 18, 2017 04:46
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What do people use cameras for? High theft areas? General paranoia?
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Feb 18, 2017 15:12
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Porch camera to catch package thieves. Driveway camera to catch car prowlers. Back door camera to catch potential burglars. If you live in an area with really high property crime, it's nice to be able to get a face to put to the crime.
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Feb 18, 2017 16:32
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Anybody have any issues with iOS10 Home app and automations not triggering? My "Turn everything off in the middle of the night" and "turn lights on at sunset" isn't working, but if I trigger anything manually it's all super fast.
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Feb 18, 2017 17:47
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Just got a smartthings up and at the moment IFTTT integration is offline for a bit. Ugh.
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Feb 18, 2017 23:45
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Hughlander posted:Looking for suggestions or a place to read on building a small but future proofed camera set up for home. If you put a camera behind a window, then you don't want to use a camera with integrated IR. Unless your windows are very, very old they are generally going to reflect/absorb IR light depending on what they have been treated with.
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Feb 19, 2017 00:23
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smackfu posted:What do people use cameras for? High theft areas? General paranoia? Wildlife especially in the winter. I get a family with baby deer that nest under a evergreen in my front yard whenever it's really cold (they venture into town from the nearby woods). Also the Moose like to chill in my driveway. With that said I have my cams coming in the mail. I set up some cheap poo poo ones (early in this thread) years ago but could never figure out how to tap into their stream. Then the birds decided to build nests on them.
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Feb 19, 2017 00:48
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I live in the 3rd safest city in Oklahoma but still have cameras. We've had thefts in our subdivision. It happens everywhere. It gives a fighting chance of catching the bastards. Plus it's nice to flip on the entry camera when the doorbell rings to see if it's someone trying to tell me about Jesus.
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Feb 19, 2017 05:03
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Scrapez posted:I live in the 3rd safest city in Oklahoma but still have cameras. We've had thefts in our subdivision. It happens everywhere. There are three cities in Oklahoma?
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Feb 19, 2017 06:35
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And at least one is less safe than Tulsa.
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Feb 19, 2017 07:37
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Three Olives posted:I don't think such a thing exists, how would the switch be powered when the light switch is off without a neutral? From a while back (I only just caught up), but there is a Fibaro z-wave dimmer module which goes inside a light switch box, works without neutral wire and can work with any sort of bulb. You may need a matching "bypass" at the light end for some types of light or if they get annoyed by the small current which has to always pass through the circuit. http://www.vesternet.com/resources/application-notes/apnt-111 I haven't for any of these personally yet, but have a friend who is refitting an entire house and using these in the switches wherever possible and he has said they are great. Work with original toggle switches, momentary buttons or rocker switches, with various options as to how (and whether to support dimming or just on/off), but all seems pretty straightforward  3-wire light switches basically don't exist in the UK as far as I can tell, as even where friends have bought brand new houses the switches are all still 2-wire with no neutral. So this is about the only option here for smart switches rather than smart bulbs.
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Feb 19, 2017 15:07
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My condo is about to vote on installing cameras and I'm gonna say no because they're useless and will probably be used to fine people who aren't flatting cardboard boxes enough for whoever gets to watch it. Although I'd definitely get a Ring or something if people were trying to tell me about Jesus.
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Feb 19, 2017 23:28
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UnfortunateSexFart posted:My condo is about to vote on installing cameras and I'm gonna say no because they're useless and will probably be used to fine people who aren't flatting cardboard boxes enough for whoever gets to watch it. Honestly it depends on what kind of system you put in. I've been amazed at how many even brand new expensive apartment buildings put in absolute poo poo cameras, borderline useless and then brag about their camera security. Then something happens and the footage is absolutely useless. We have over six figures invested in dozens of HD IP cameras, storage and processing.  If you put cameras in do it right and don't put in a useless wide angle SD coax poo poo with a cheapass DVR that seems to be all the rage because it is cheap as poo poo now and you can claim you have camera security.
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Feb 20, 2017 00:49
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With the number of times my last place of employment had police just shrug at footage, I'm really not sure if they actually give you a fighting chance wen it comes to prosecuting property crime. They create a lot of false expectation of being able to solve every crime that happens (despite the camera system not having solved any crimes except for the mystery of "which employee ate the cake . . . oh it's someone we really like, let's just pretend this didn't happen" over five years ) by staff and members, and the general paranoia that you're always watching. I do think they act as a deterrent to people who choose to be honest when there's a possibility of getting caught, which I guess is what the real purpose for a lot of security systems is. It's also cool for seeing who's at the door, or watching animals. So they aren't totally useless. A lot of it is really a lighting and storage issue. Consumer night vision cameras suck, and it's expensive to maintain the lighting a camera needs in a lot of instances, and then it starts to get expensive to store high quality footage for longer than a few days if you do get it (which is better than "longer than a few hours" like it was five years ago). If you're investing tens of thousands instead of simply thousands maybe it's a different story. Three Olives posted:Honestly it depends on what kind of system you put in. I've been amazed at how many even brand new expensive apartment buildings put in absolute poo poo cameras, borderline useless and then brag about their camera security. Then something happens and the footage is absolutely useless. We have over six figures invested in dozens of HD IP cameras, storage and processing. I do agree with your sentiment. I quoted my last place 7 grand (after yet another unsolved crime right before we were purchasing cameras) for actually covering the building the way it needed to be covered, they spent 1500 and got another useless system, to bring it to three useless systems at three different locations. I'm told it helps their insurance rates, though. Rick fucked around with this message at 00:55 on Feb 20, 2017 |
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Feb 20, 2017 00:52
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You can design a security camera system that does a an excellent job of capturing evidence. But it generally takes sitting down and thinking about things before even selecting cameras. First you have to determine the level of evidence you're looking for. A camera I set up to get good shots of people's faces isn't generally going to be effective at giving a general overview of a parking lot and vice versa. And when you're looking at recognition you need to determine who is doing the recognizing. The level of detail I need to identify someone I don't know is different than the level of detail I need to recognize someone I do know. For a shop floor, I might be able to tell that's Larry because he limps and wears that lovely Affliction T-Shirt. Then you look at concrete metrics for what you're trying to accomplish. Saying "I want to recognize a face" is a start but you need to define where. Saying "I want to see a face five feet from the door" is better. Saying "I want to see a face five feet from a door while seeing the whole porch." is even better. Once you have that, you can start figuring out the metrics you actually need. Generally to figure this out we want to start looking at the number of pixels per foot that it takes to reach our level of identification. To get to the level where you can say White Male, ~6 ft tall, wearing jeans and a white t-shirt you want to start at about 10 ppf and go up. At 25 you start creeping up into recognizing people you know. Here is an example borrowed from IPVM.  From 40 to 80 you get into more identification shots. And here we get a little more subjective.  And there are standards for stuff like reading bills, license plates and so on. But once you decide what level you need for identification, then you can work out what you need from a camera perspective. So if I need to identify a person at 11' away with a horizontal field of view of 10' then I can actually do that with a 4 CIF camera. The general formula is horizontal pixels divided by field of view equals pixels per foot/meter. One thing to keep in mind is that there can be other factors in play like lighting conditions. The darker an area is, the more PPF you need to compensate for it. And that can be up to 2x as many PPF if you're using IR. And then you can get into situations where you need specialized camera features like WDR. Note that doing the above costs time and money. And in a lot of cases people just buy whatever is cheapest, throw it up on the wall and then piss an moan that it doesn't do what they want. For most home users, I tend to think that investing in stuff like this: http://www.homedepot.com/p/Safe-Door-Systems-Home-Security-Door-and-Frame-Reinforcement-Kit-SDSW2HN/202359356 or investing in laminated glass for your windows can be a better use of time and money. Cameras may deter some criminals but I've seen way too much footage of dumbasses getting right up close to a camera to spray paint it to think all criminals are smart enough to be deterred by all of them.
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Feb 20, 2017 02:39
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That's really good, thank you, I'm totally saving a link to that post in case anyone ever asks me to buy cameras again.
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Feb 20, 2017 03:03
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Three Olives posted:Honestly it depends on what kind of system you put in. Nah it really doesn't in our case. Crime is so rare here that police are underfunded and don't do anything. I've had one crappy old bike taken from my parking space in the garage in 10+ years, and we're in an urban area with 11,000 people per square mile. The camera idea is being pushed by panicky old ladies who watch too much crime drama tv. It's extreme paranoia. But yeah if this somehow passes I'm sure we'll get the cheapest garbage cameras we can get. UnfortunateSexFart fucked around with this message at 11:40 on Feb 20, 2017 |
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Feb 20, 2017 11:37
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I should have bought an Ecobee when they were on sale in Nov/Dec, but I figured they would continue to go on sale for every BS holiday like president's day. I refuse to buy at msrp since I know it will go down to $200 any day now! e: For camerachat, I have one of these in my carport: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B019INEPGO/ It works pretty good I suppose. Hooked up to an old analog DVR that uses a 3.5" IDE hard drive to record 
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