Home Automation and Security Systems

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Inspect Your Gadgets > Home Automation and Security Systems

Mercurius: May 4, 2004; Amp it up.

blastron posted:

Hello, I'm looking to do some smart lightbulb stuff and have been completely overwhelmed by the huge range of options available.

What I'd like to do is have lights that are brighter during the day and dimmer at night, preferably changing color temperature so that I can have white lights during the day that dim to orange at night. I'm hoping to find something that I can turn on and off from as simple of a light switch as I can get. I've got a bunch of Apple products already so I figure that I'd be using HomeKit for programming and control.

(I'd also really like for my lights to not stop working if my internet (or AWS) dies, which I have heard is a thing that happens to some systems.)

Is this something that's possible, and if so, what kinds of things should I be looking for in order to get this set up?

I use HomeKit based IoT stuff exclusively. Most of my lights are from the Hue range and while they're expensive they'll do what you're looking for. Hue lights support the HomeKit Adaptive Lighting mode which attempts to follow the cycle of sunlight and is more yellow in the morning/evening and more white during the day so you may not need to do anything fancier than just get them to dial down the brightness automatically (which you can tie to Sunset with a HomeKit scene/automation to have it a bit more dynamic).

The dimmer switches are quite nice since the casing has strong magnets on the back so you can just stick it onto any magnetic surface. The actual dimmer part with the buttons is a small remote control that clips into the plate (also using magnets) and is just powered by watch batteries so it's easy to keep running. They default to being brightness up/on/off/brightness down for whatever light you tie them to but you can also program the 4 buttons independently to fire off HomeKit scenes so they're pretty flexible. I'll second WhiteHowler in that some plates of some sort to cover up your existing switches is probably a good idea.

If your internet goes out you may not be able to use Siri voice control but you should still use the Home app to control all your stuff. Automations are also cached on your Home hubs (HomePod, Apple TV, etc) so they should fire off regardless. The Hue lights are also nice in that you can configure what they should do in the event of a power outage.

You'll need both a HomeKit hub and a Philips Hue Bridge to get all of this working.

# ¿ Dec 15, 2021 00:49

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# ¿ May 5, 2024 23:11

Mercurius: May 4, 2004; Amp it up.

blastron posted:

I'm actually completely fine with (and would somewhat prefer) a dumb switch, as long as I can control the color temperature via an app or something similar. Would Hue bulbs support that, or do they need to be always on to connect to the network?

They use Zigbee which is a mesh networking protocol that the Hue Bridge acts as a hub for. Basically they form their own network automatically but it requires the lights to have power (even if the LED itself is off) in order to relay the mesh signal to other lights. You can turn them off physically but if you turn enough off you might find that some of the others that are a decent distance from the other lights that are on (or the hub) won't process any signals until the lights inbetween are back on.

Both the Home app and the Hue app can be used to modify the colours or if you get any of the Hue switches you can set up a HomeKit scene with the colours you want and program the buttons to run that scene.

# ¿ Dec 15, 2021 01:43

Mercurius: May 4, 2004; Amp it up.

blastron posted:

Sounds good. My condo is very small (500 square feet) so I figure that if I put the bridge in a central location I might not run into the range problem.

Thanks for the recommendation! You've given me a great starting point for more research.

Something to keep in mind is that the Hue bridge needs a hardwired Ethernet connection to your normal network so that may help you decide where you want to put it.

# ¿ Dec 15, 2021 02:38

Mercurius: May 4, 2004; Amp it up.

Hed posted:

Does anyone have hue lights but on their HomeAssistant only?

I have HA with both a ZigBee stick and the hue hub integrations but hue got a new Terms of Service and it�s a good inflection point.

I�m not sure what I would lose going to full HA. Automations are easy to migrate but not sure scene selection� I rarely change color except for gimmicks like red and green lamps for Christmas. Would doing that through Apple HomeKit selection or HA itself be that difficult? The rest of the time I just modify brightness.

I�ve got mostly Hue lights that I use almost entirely through HomeKit (although I�m using the Hue bridge rather than HA with a ZigBee stick) and they work fine. They support all the normal stuff that HomeKit lights do so the only things I use the Hue stuff for is a few specialised scenes off HueLabs.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2022 21:49

Mercurius: May 4, 2004; Amp it up.

Wibla posted:

First question: It makes little difference, I listed SMF on personal preference. With costs continuing to drop and SMF increasing in popularity for LAN-type applications, I don't really see a point in recommending MMF.

Second question: no, this is purely to have a solid, future proofed network. FTTH / cable bandwidth is only increasing, and copper is less than ideal for >1gbit.

We've got a significant amount of 10g over cat6a between hosts through the walls at work and it works perfectly fine. Heck, even cat6 works okay at 10 gig if the run is short enough.

I don't personally feel that we're at the point where future proofing a house with single mode fibre has any real benefit over just using good quality copper for the same thing. Multimode fibre is a whole different kettle of fish and more understandable for actual future proofing but is also more expensive and still overkill for what you're describing.

# ¿ Apr 20, 2022 00:05

Mercurius: May 4, 2004; Amp it up.

Motronic posted:

Actual futureproofing looks more like conduit and pull cords to all of your low volt rings.

This is a very good point, yes :v:

# ¿ Apr 21, 2022 04:36

Mercurius: May 4, 2004; Amp it up.

slurm posted:

I want to run cat6 in my house but where I have the switch etc how do I take like 20 cables into the wall at that one point properly?

You basically have two options: terminate the cable runs in a patch panel or get them wired into several multi-port outlets.

Terminating the cables to a patch panel is certainly neater if you're comfortable with using one and you've got a rack to put it plus the switch in but it's going to be annoying for the next people if you sell the house.

Multi-port wall plates usually end up looking messier with cabling but are significantly easier to use if you don't want to rack-mount stuff (plus they're easier for anyone who buys the house if you sell it). If you get the cables run through conduit you can theoretically use them as guides to pull through replacement cables and just switch out the plates later on.

# ¿ Oct 11, 2022 09:57

Mercurius: May 4, 2004; Amp it up.

wolrah posted:

For 20 I'd definitely do a patch panel rather than wall plates. Presumably that means a 24 port or larger switch will be in play, which generally means 1U rack size anyways.

Hang some variety of wall mount mini-rack along the lines of https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Bracket-Equipment-Mounting-WALLMOUNT6/dp/B0B9M5LMYM/ and then you have a place for the patch panel, switch, and whatever other equipment you want to put there.

I prefer the keystone style patch panels for small installs because they're easier to modify in the future and can support other kinds of connections like coax if you feel like cleaning up other wiring. 110 style is a bit quicker for bulk installs but much harder to work on down the line.

Curious what your logic is here, how would a patch panel in a mini-rack be annoying for the next owner compared to 20 jacks worth of keystone wall plates? In both cases you end up with 20 ethernet jacks in a small area, but the panel/rack setup gives you a place to put other equipment that probably needs to go right there anyways.

I suppose it might be different outside of Australia but here you have to get licenced cable installers to do any data cabling work and most of the time that's done by standard electricians who have a cabling licence. They tend to be quite capable of terminating cable into wall plates since they're used to doing so with power cable but they're not telecommunications people and most of them aren't familiar with terminating stuff into punch down blocks on a patch panel.

I've never seen anyone here leave any wall mounted racks or communications equipment in a house when they sell it. Most people would take the rack/patch panel with them so they simply cut off the cables and leave a bunch of tape over the ends of the cables which just leaves a mess for the next people who move in to deal with.

Data outlets are at least still going to be there on the wall regardless since they're terminated completely differently.

# ¿ Oct 11, 2022 20:50

Mercurius: May 4, 2004; Amp it up.

wolrah posted:

In the majority of the US anything "low voltage" (read: POTS voltage and below) is basically unregulated beyond plenum-grade wire being required in certain locations. I generally have a reaction of fear if I hear someone had their electrician install data wiring.

I mean, I wouldn't leave behind a full size rack but a 4-8U mini rack like I linked installed in a home I'd consider along the same lines as a structured wiring cabinet and just leave behind.

When I move big racks I at least try to unhook the patch panels and leave them behind if possible. Sometimes that's not practical and it's getting cut, but it'd be a real dick move to do that over a single patch panel and a cheap minirack.

I'm suggesting the use of a keystone patch panel, so termination is identical. Either way the wire goes in to a keystone jack, the only difference is whether it's going in to a single 1U plate on a bracket or a minimum of four boxes worth of wall plates.

That makes more sense and also explains a bunch of the horror stories I see here about wiring in American houses :v:

. Here you're required by law to have licenced people working on house wiring (and insurance companies will cheerfully throw you under a bus if something goes wrong and you don't) which explains the difference in approach.

# ¿ Oct 12, 2022 06:30

Mercurius: May 4, 2004; Amp it up.

Boris Galerkin posted:

I mean� what hub do you connect the nanoleaf bulbs to if you skip over the matter/thread compatibility thing?

As far as I understand it, Thread replaces Zigbee? I understand what Zigbee is cause that�s what Hue lightbulbs use to talk to each other. And IKEA�s lightbulbs too, I think.

Not sure what precisely �Matter� is though. Sounds kinda like seeing a �Matter� logo is more or less like seeing a �HomeKit� logo, to let me know it works in the ecosystem?

Yeah, that's about right. Thread is essentially a 5GHz alternative to Zigbee (although I think it can also do 2.4GHz) that provides the actual mesh connectivity between IoT devices. Matter is the overall standard that will (in theory at some point) provide a full standardised framework to allow all supported devices to talk to each other.

I believe the idea is that if all your devices support Matter then you shouldn't need a specific bridge (e.g. the Hue bridge) since everything should be using the same standardised commands and API calls and hubs/bridge should be effectively interchangeable. As others have said it's an absolute crapshoot at the moment since on top of Matter you've also got HomeKit/Google Home/etc that still have to translate the Matter stuff into something that the control systems understand too.

# ¿ Aug 16, 2023 00:15

Mercurius: May 4, 2004; Amp it up.

KOTEX GOD OF BLOOD posted:

I'm just starting to get into HomeKit and like it. I also have HomeBridge set up so I can have a couple of Dyson fans on it too.

I have a hydroponic pump scheduled to run throughout the day. I'd like to set it up so I can override that schedule if a certain scene is set ("movie mode", so the pump isn't running while I'm watching a movie) but of course you can't set multiple conditions in the Home app. Is there a way I could do this with HomeBridge?

HomeKit actually has a bunch more built-in functionality that isn't exposed in Apple's Home app that does let you include additional qualifiers along with more fine-grained control e.g. you can actually just set the power state for a light as on/off instead of having the 'off' state save the colour information like the Home app does.

I'm sure there's a whole bunch of apps that you can use to get to this stuff but I personally use Controller for HomeKit as it has both an iOS and Mac version and works great. There are a few things that it's not able to do because they're reserved for Apple only but you can always just use the Home app alongside it when you run into that stuff (it'll tell you if it can't do something that's reserved).

# ¿ Apr 22, 2024 02:53

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# ¿ May 5, 2024 23:11

Mercurius: May 4, 2004; Amp it up.

KOTEX GOD OF BLOOD posted:

It sounds great but I was hoping to do this without spending $65 on a single automation if it's possible

Like I said, I'm sure there are other apps that can do the same thing since it's all supported by the HomeKit API. Looking around it seems that the Eve app (doesn't require you to have any of Elgato's Eve products to use and the iPad version can run on Apple Silicon Macs) can set up multiple conditions on rules so I'd imagine you can just add a 'scene is not active' in there.

# ¿ Apr 22, 2024 04:26

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