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wolrah posted:Rigging an IR receiver and transmitter to a Pi and controlling it all with LIRC is pretty easy: https://www.hackster.io/austin-stanton/creating-a-raspberry-pi-universal-remote-with-lirc-2fd581 Seconding that setting up something like this isn't too difficult, especially if the IR codes for your device are already available somewhere. Initially I set up a similar project on a Pi 0 but opted to move it to an Esp8266 since I was just using MQTT to communicate over wifi and a full operating system wasn't really important / was fairly inconvenient when reconnecting after dropping from wifi occasionally. e: This is definitely a DIY type project though so it requires some learning up front. Ledif fucked around with this message at 21:02 on Apr 25, 2018 |
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Apr 25, 2018 20:59
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FogHelmut posted:I believe the Nest Aware is priced per camera. Where with Ring you can have infinite cameras for $100 per year. Oh wow, yeah, if you do 3 cameras and 5-day history with Nest, it's $110 a year, if you do 5 cameras with 10-day history it's $300 a year. I guess it depends on how many cameras you want, and how valuable it is to have always-recording coverage (Ring could conceivably miss an important moment before/after the motion is tripped.
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Apr 25, 2018 21:13
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So its been a month, here is my thoughts on Arlo: If you want to keep tabs on a single spot that you can't run a wire to, its great. Looking at your door, or inside of a room in the house its perfect. But if you want it to watch a wide area outdoors, don't. It will struggle to detect a person 10 feet away but will constantly blow up your phone when the grass sways. Shadows from trees swaying in the breeze, reflections off windows, bugs, all of this will set off your alarm. When we had cameras looking across the front yard and backyard we could tell when the wind was blowing cause both cameras would constantly go off at the same time. The camera I had looking at the walkway to my door I had to tilt it and lower its field of view so it wouldn't see the bush and go off every time it swayed. The one we have above the garage door in the backyard had to be tilted so the shadow from the neighbor's trees wont set it off. Now we aren't being blown up every minute, but I'm afraid that by limiting its view so much means that the motion detection wont fire off quick enough before a person is back out of view. I ultimately returned the 2 I got and got a second Nest, now that my brother stopped being a wiener about drilling into the garage. We'll get a full view of the backyard and front yard and will just use the ones my brother got for the garage and front doors and inside the house.
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Apr 25, 2018 22:14
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Zero VGS posted:Oh wow, yeah, if you do 3 cameras and 5-day history with Nest, it's $110 a year, if you do 5 cameras with 10-day history it's $300 a year. Yeah this is a concern, but most of the issues with Ring seem to be on their battery and solar powered units. Their plug-in and wired units don't seem to have this issue. This has to do with battery saving features, while the wired ones do not have this concern. IIRC, the wired ones are constantly recording to a cache, so they already have a few seconds prerecorded before the motion detector activates. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyTGVaZlFSk&t=370s
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Apr 25, 2018 23:02
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I suffered through Arlo Pro issues for a year, which really are mostly Wireless Camera issues. Finally got a Ring Pro and Ring Floodlight and the experience is immensely better. Arlo still has some benefits of the flexibility of wireless, but wired is so so much better.
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Apr 26, 2018 00:25
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wolrah posted:Rigging an IR receiver and transmitter to a Pi and controlling it all with LIRC is pretty easy: https://www.hackster.io/austin-stanton/creating-a-raspberry-pi-universal-remote-with-lirc-2fd581 This is cool and useful and I might finally have a use for the RPIs I have sitting around being not useful.
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Apr 26, 2018 14:33
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Zero VGS posted:That makes more sense in your use-case... might want to look at Nest as well. I think the monthly rates are about the same, but if I recall correctly, Nest will record every second 24/7 where Ring still only does motion-trip/doorbell-press recordings. Someone correct me if I'm wrong. I have a nest outdoor and it’s crystal clear and records 24 hours. And night vision is clear like day Oh and I get a text a second after something like motion or a person comes into frame.
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Apr 26, 2018 14:38
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Hopefully this is the best place to ask. My godmother was diagnosed with ALS a couple of years back and it's taken away the use of her arms completely. She can walk, but it's dangerous as there can be times (fewer now thankfully) where she is between assistants and her husband getting home. A couple of times she's fallen and had to wait hours before someone found her. She has an iPhone but is thinking about setting up a smart home system (which I am doing for her). Controlling the lights and TV are essential but so is the ability to make a call and hang up the call. Also 911 calling if possible. She has Siri but sometimes it doesn't work right and often she can be away from her phone (she can't pick it up naturally). Based on my own experience I was starting to setup a system of an Echo Plus, hue lights, dots in each room and a harmony hub for TV control. I'd love to just get anyone else's thoughts on alternatives, things I'm not thinking of, etc.
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Apr 27, 2018 17:11
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Sounds like that's the kind of thing Life Alert is for, but I'm not certain if she'd be able to press the button. There are probably other products or mechanisms that could serve as a dead man's switch, like if she's stuck somewhere, she wouldn't be able to disarm it. Edit: If she could keep an Android phone on her person, the "OK Google" functionality can fire off texts to people through dictation. You could set it up so no button presses are necessary. It's pretty reliable in my experience. azurite fucked around with this message at 17:43 on Apr 27, 2018 |
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Apr 27, 2018 17:40
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BonoMan posted:Hopefully this is the best place to ask. A smart switch system like Caseta or Insteon might be a more affordable alternative to hue lights (depending on the number of lights / switches). Smarthome.com has some multi-packs you could look at for budgeting. They also have some combo packs for switches with Google Home/Home Mini devices
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Apr 27, 2018 17:52
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https://www.amazon.com/Echo-Connect-requires-service-smartphone/dp/B076ZRFP6Y I haven't used this, but looks like it is designed for 911 calls in mind so might be great to look at. Being able to yell at alexa to call an ambulance sounds pretty cool.
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Apr 27, 2018 22:08
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Siri can call hands free, can't it? Not an iphone user, but recently there was the story of the boy pinned by a minivan seat that used Siri to call 911 a few times while trapped. Side note on Alexa. Alexa has a "drop-in" feature you can enable across households. Linking households can be pretty creepy, my siblings have no desire to link our households, but we are all linked to our parents for that "just in case" situation. Has not been creepy as I'd have thought, has actually allowed the grandparents to talk with the kids a heck of lot more.
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Apr 27, 2018 22:42
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So I went down the home automation rabbit hole and now I'm hopelessly dazed and confused. After spending what felt like countless hours on guides, product reviews, spec sheets, etc. I decided on the following setup: SmartThings for zigbee and z-wave support. Alexa for voice control of everything connected to SmartThings Does this give me "full" coverage of all home automation stuff? Meaning, will there be products that won't work because of unsupported protocols etc.?
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May 6, 2018 03:06
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enraged_camel posted:So I went down the home automation rabbit hole and now I'm hopelessly dazed and confused. Philips Hue is zigbee but as far as I know they only work with their own hubs, but otherwise it looks like you have the bases covered. Did you pick a automation controller? Alexa works well for the most part but something like OpenHAB or Home Assistant would probably be helpful to tie it all together
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May 6, 2018 14:13
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ickna posted:Philips Hue is zigbee but as far as I know they only work with their own hubs, but otherwise it looks like you have the bases covered. Did you pick a automation controller? Alexa works well for the most part but something like OpenHAB or Home Assistant would probably be helpful to tie it all together That's what smartthings is.
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May 6, 2018 16:32
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enraged_camel posted:So I went down the home automation rabbit hole and now I'm hopelessly dazed and confused. This gives you 'full' coverage of device types - there are probably specific devices that aren't Zigbee or Z-Wave that won't work with SmartThings, but you can just buy another device that is to fulfill that role (e.g. if you want a smart garage door opener, you just need one that is Z-Wave, and to confirm it's supported by SmartThings). Also note that both Alexa and SmartThings support many 3rd-party APIs and can control things via the internet instead of local z-wave control. For instance, I have a Kasa smart plug that is wifi only. I created a Kasa account, used their app to set it up, then added that Kasa account to Alexa and am able to control the plug seamlessly through Alexa. ickna posted:Philips Hue is zigbee but as far as I know they only work with their own hubs, but otherwise it looks like you have the bases covered. I have a Philips Hue bulb that works fine with SmartThings, including color and brightness. Alexa can control it through SmartThings. I had to change the device handler to make it more reliable, but the information is easily Google-able. I'm sure there's some limit to the number of Hue bulbs you'd want to control with just a SmartThings hub, though. ickna posted:Did you pick a automation controller? Alexa works well for the most part but something like OpenHAB or Home Assistant would probably be helpful to tie it all together
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May 6, 2018 16:49
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Sorry, I didn't know SmartThings was that involved. I thought it was more of a hardware bridge than an actual controller.
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May 6, 2018 17:44
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Which is better: SmartThings or Home Assistant? I write code for a living. Main reason I'm starting to shy away from SmartThings is because each request is being sent to the cloud and then back first, which I'm told adds some delay to the command/action. I also don't like the idea of my automation routines not working if I'm having an Internet outage or something. At the same time, I don't want some amateurish open source project in charge of electronics and doors in my house. How good is it from that perspective?
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May 7, 2018 00:47
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enraged_camel posted:Which is better: SmartThings or Home Assistant? I don't know that it's had any security reviews but I've seen efforts to try to keep things safe. If you don't expose it to the world you should be fairly safe. I do have it exposed and haven't had any issues, not to say it'd be impossible. Overall I've been very happy using home assistant. It's all python based, so if you want to implement something custom, or change existing functionality you're free to do so. They also provide a docker image which is nice to have.
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May 7, 2018 01:55
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I don't do this, but I believe you can cook up your own scripts for SmartThings in Groovy if you really wanted to.
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May 7, 2018 02:05
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I use SmartThings and HomeAssistant. They're both good in their own ways. HomeAssistant is more dicking around with config files or writing python code, SmartThings is more about using a GUI to do stuff. (though, you can write custom automations and stuff in Groovy...yech!) Mostly, I use SmartThings as a nice hub that connects my HA to ZigBee and ZWave devices. Also, SmartThings has stuff like the ability to use a custom device handler for my HomeSeer ZWave switches that lets me do stuff like make a double/triple tap up or down be treated like another button. Since I use a bridge that causes SmartThings to emit MQTT events, I can take those virtual buttons in HA and do stuff with them. For example, in my living room a single tap up on a HomeSeer switch turns on the main lighting. A double tap up turns on the lamps. HomeAssistant is very slick, well maintained, and well architect-ed. The lead developer recently got hired by Ubiquiti to work on HomeAssistant full time, so I imagine it will only get better. I can see one day moving off of SmartThings altogether and adding zwave and zigbee receivers to my Raspberry Pi that I have running HA, but I'm not really in any hurry to do so even though it involves my internet more than the system strictly has to...I don't have any appreciable latency in switches turning stuff on or off. If I were you, I'd probably start with SmartThings. It's the easiest to get started with and the hub is pretty cheap. Eventually you might want to migrate towards HA and you can integrate ST with it or do away with ST altogether. All (most?) of your sensors and controllers you use with ST will work with HA. Hopefully these random musings will be of some help to you. In related news, I added a domeha water valve controller this week. I have added some water sensors below toilets, water heater, etc, and if they detect water the water valve controller will shut off the water. I could have set up that automation in SmartThings, but I did it in HA as I'm trying to keep my SmartThings as dumb as possible and centralize everything in HA. Video of it in action: https://streamable.com/mge5c
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May 7, 2018 02:08
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Thermopyle posted:I use SmartThings and HomeAssistant. Thanks, I'll start with ST. I get the impression from your post that I can always add HA later if I end up needing more fine-grained control. Unrelated question: I'm interested in having my garage door open when I'm approaching my house, and have it close when I'm leaving. Is this type of proximity-based (and I guess direction-based) automation possible currently?
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May 7, 2018 04:19
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Home Assistant is better than SmartThings, imho--but the learning curve is a heck of a lot steeper. My setup is also SmartThings and Home Assistant with an MQTT server. My very first hub was a Wink Hub that was retired in favor of the SmartThings, but that got dusted off and incorporated into the mix as well. The Wink sits in an outbuilding and controls a few outlets, lights, and locks and thanks to Home Assistant and MQTT, you can't really tell what hub controls what--all the devices are interconnected and controllable via voice or phone. When it comes to scripting--Home Assistant wins hands down for both ease and complexity. Doing things like turning on the driveway lights as your getting close to home or controlling accent lights based on day of week, season, temperature, and weather--all easy to do in Home Assistant. Plus Home Assistant tends to support just about everything you can imagine. Camera systems, sabnzbd, stock notifications, media servers, milights--the cheap version of Hue bulbs--the list goes on and gets bigger every month. (https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/) The blog lists the monthly updates which no other platform that I know about comes close to--SmartThings might get an update or two a year. e: on the garage door question. Yes--both Smart Things and HA support presence detection. SmartThings has one method, HA has several. I switched to HA and OwnTracks but OwnTracks has been acting up so someday soon I'll pony up $5 and switch to Zanzito (android only though.) And some time when I have time to learn it, I'll incorporate FIND as well. https://www.internalpositioning.com/ (Just not sure if FIND will work around our house in a practical sense...) HycoCam fucked around with this message at 04:48 on May 7, 2018 |
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May 7, 2018 04:37
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HycoCam posted:e: on the garage door question. Yes--both Smart Things and HA support presence detection. In my experience, ST’s presence detection is about 90% reliable. I use it for turning lights on when I come home, but I wouldn’t trust it to close things behind me consistently. (I’m on iOS.)
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May 7, 2018 10:07
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HycoCam posted:e: on the garage door question. Yes--both Smart Things and HA support presence detection. SmartThings has one method, HA has several. I switched to HA and OwnTracks but OwnTracks has been acting up so someday soon I'll pony up $5 and switch to Zanzito (android only though.) And some time when I have time to learn it, I'll incorporate FIND as well. https://www.internalpositioning.com/ (Just not sure if FIND will work around our house in a practical sense...) I use GPSLogger set to passive for HA presence detection. It's free and accurate.
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May 7, 2018 16:35
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Thermopyle posted:I use GPSLogger set to passive for HA presence detection. It's free and accurate. Thanks for the tip! Looks to be really easy to implement, will give it a shot before Zanzito.
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May 7, 2018 20:06
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Thermopyle posted:I use GPSLogger set to passive for HA presence detection. It's free and accurate. I've been using the Ubiquiti Unifi plug-in to do presence detection based on whether the cell-phone is connected to the wifi. It's a limited use-case, but it's pretty rock solid.
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May 7, 2018 20:52
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Hubis posted:I've been using the Ubiquiti Unifi plug-in to do presence detection based on whether the cell-phone is connected to the wifi. It's a limited use-case, but it's pretty rock solid. Yeah, I used this at first and it worked well. I ended up wanting to get info on when present at other locations so I switched over to GPSLogger.
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May 7, 2018 21:25
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Hubis posted:I've been using the Ubiquiti Unifi plug-in to do presence detection based on whether the cell-phone is connected to the wifi. It's a limited use-case, but it's pretty rock solid. One of my goals with router based presence detection is to incorporate something like the dynamic playlists in Amarok with my guests. The idea being I'll ask friends that tend to come often to name ten bands they like and five they never want to hear. When HA detects their presence, a script will tweak the dynamic playlist so guests hear music they like while visiting. If I could do it with Spotify, I'd use Spotify, but writing a python script to modify the amarok files seems to be the easiest. Talking about might get me to spend the time needed to see if I can implement or maybe find out I'm trying to reinvent the wheel. So, anyone heard of a way to dynamically change the music playing based on who is around?
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May 7, 2018 21:30
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One other dream automation--connecting a Roomba to a central vacuum system. My Google-fu skills have uncovered lots of people that think it would be a great idea with theories of how to use a Pi or Arduino but nothing concrete. Anyone know of anything that would let a robotic vacuum use a retrofitted toe kick dust sweep into someway to empty the dustbin and charge the vacuum. This project seems a lot harder to pull off than changing the music based on who is around... Seems like it would take a commitment from a manufacturer due to the current design having the charger and dustbin on opposite sides of the Roomba.
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May 7, 2018 21:42
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I need some sort of automation routine for an old-school coffee machine. Basically, something that will take the filter with used coffee grounds out, clean it up, put it back in, then put fresh coffee in, then fill the thing with fresh water and turn it on. (No, I don't want a Keurig) Basically, something that guarantees my coffee will be ready in the morning without requiring me to remember to prepare the machine the night before.
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May 7, 2018 22:24
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Hire a barista.
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May 7, 2018 22:31
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Have a kid, wait 7 years.
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May 7, 2018 22:32
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enraged_camel posted:I need some sort of automation routine for an old-school coffee machine. Basically, something that will take the filter with used coffee grounds out, clean it up, put it back in, then put fresh coffee in, then fill the thing with fresh water and turn it on.  Not old school but at least they are full bean. 
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May 8, 2018 03:33
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These things are also quite nice. https://m.mieleusa.com/domestic/product-selection-of-coffee-machines-2513.htm#6
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May 8, 2018 03:38
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Jesus Christ. Who’s so loving lazy that they’re willing to pay three grand to not make coffee in the morning?
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May 8, 2018 15:34
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I'm pretty sure my bougie af friends have one. They also have Savannah cats and are looking at vacation property in Arizona.
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May 8, 2018 16:10
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Endless Mike posted:I'm pretty sure my bougie af friends have one. They also have Savannah cats and are looking at vacation property in Arizona. Hello get your friends an account and tell them to post the savannah cats on the cat thread. Also $3k for a bean to cup sounds insane and something I’d probably buy if it was half off and actually good.
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May 8, 2018 16:18
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My relatives had one installed in their newly built house. They are well off money wise and it looks nicer than having a coffee pot sitting on the counter. Makes some decent drinks.
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May 8, 2018 16:35
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Happy Noodle Boy posted:Hello get your friends an account and tell them to post the savannah cats on the cat thread. I have posted them!
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May 8, 2018 18:51
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