Smart Home & Home lab
Electrical Closet
- Verizon Cable Modem
- Rachio Sprinkler Control
- Aeotec Energy Meter
- Cable TV Distro
- Telephone Distro
- UPS
Server Rack
- Synology RackStation RS1619xs+ (Obie)
- HD Homerun Prime with Verizon Cable Card
- Beelink S13 (Nathen)
- Bealink S13 (Manirva)
- Bealink S13 (Home Assistant)
* UPS
Network Connections
- 30 1g Wired Network Connections
- 2 10g Network Connections
Beelink S13 (Home Assistant)
- HAOS
- HACS
- Node Red
- Music Assistant
Hubs
- Insteon (9 Devices)
Table Lamps
- ZWave (60 Devices)
Wall Switches
SmartWings Shades
-Zigbee (15 Devices)
Window Sensors
Flood Sensors
- Philips Hue (21 Devices)
Landscaping Lights
- YoLink LoRa (3 Devices)
Gate Sensors
Wifi Devices
- Xiomi Home Air Purifiers (5)
- Ecobee Thermostat
- Sensibo Remote Thermostat (2)
- August Locks
- Samsung Smart TVs (3)
- Google TV (3)
- Sonoff Fan Control (1+2)
- Mysa Baseboord Thermostat (2)
- Subaru
About it All.....
I enjoy learning new things, especially about technology. This has caused my hobby to become building a smart home with all sorts of cool tech. Often not needed, sometimes just annoying, but often just cool. Above the the layout of all the gear with lots of links if you are interested in the gear. Below is some explanations, thoughts and picture. I am by no means an expert, just a tinkerer in my free time.
Principles
When choosing the equipment to use I try to keep the following principles in mind to guide my decisions. Unfortunately the devices do not always exist to fit these principles but it is at least a starting point.
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Devices are preferably local control and stay within the homes network. (When the internet is not working it should still work withing the house)
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Devices that work even when all network fancy stuff is down (A light switch will still turn a light on and off)
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Avoid walled gardens, use devices that work within established standards. (When a company goes out of business I should not need to buy new gear)
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Devices should be very friendly with Home Assistant, the more control the better.
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Devices should be out of the box ready and not need tinkering, rewiring or flashing custom software.
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Devices should be financially responsible. Not necessarily the cheep thing, but the reasonably priced thing.
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The gear should be easy or clear to use for the non-tech person.
Home Assistant
After using Homeseer for a few years and not being very happy about its cost a stumbled on Home Assistant. When I started using Home Assistant I was impressed with it power and sheer number of device it could talk to. And as the last few years have gone by I have been impressed with how much better it gets each month. It is defiantly not the easiest software to work with. As there are many things I have had to spend hours researching to get parts of it to work but it can do about anything.
I have used Node Red to do some of the advanced automation and Music Assistant for connections to Youtube Music and Plex for media playback. Some of the Automations are:
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Away Mode - Locks all the doors, turns on interior cameras (to watch the dogs), turn some lights on and some lights off and adjust the thermostat.
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Homecoming - Turn a few interior lights and the porch light on to be ready for us to walk up and into the house.
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Status Lights - Change colors of status lights in select switches (Homeseer HS-WX300) for items such as yard gates, Washer/Dryer running, and windows open.
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Holiday Lighting - Changing the exterior lighting colors based on the holiday as well as turning it on at dusk and off at 1:00am
Stream Deck
The newest addition is Elgoto's Stream Deck run by Bitfocus Companion. At my desk and at each of the night stands will be a unit that will allow fast button control of various devices. It will also allow us to quickly bring cameras up on our TVs or change the setings of our Heating/AC.
The units will connect via Elgoto's Network Dock to Bitfocus Companions running on one of the computers in the server rack. That will then talk with Home Assistant to complete the requested actions or create the feedback to the deck.