Home Automation

[durendal]

Anybody here into home automation? Care to share how you started?

I've been intrigued about home automation and voice command for a long time, so early this year, I thought I'd start by getting an Amazon Echo 4. I started with only the Echo 4 and a smart plug, which just turned on the fan. I added a few switches, and then some lights, then followed by IR sensors and thermostats. The way I setup my home automation is that I'm utilizing the Smartlife/Tuya app, and connected to my Echo 4 as a skill. Even my front door lock is connected. My CCTV is currently connected to my NAS, so I have no plans of integrating it into my home automation. Most of my devices are also a combination of Zigbee and Wifi. So if my internet is down, voice command also goes out the window. So far I'm happy with my setup but still thinking if I should go further by switching to Smart Things, which will allow me to do my automation offline and without the need for cloud. But I'm currently dependent on voice command, and it's something I'm not sure if this is available in local automation.

So, how does your setup look like? Maybe I could learn a thing or two.

 

[howarmat]

I started with wink and then transferred over to smartthings. Very happy with having smartthings base as many devices can utilize its hub. It uses zigbee, wifi and Zwave which means it probably connects to over 90% of the devices out there. I have window and door alarms, lights several fish tank functions, temperature and motion sensors and leak detection all running through it. I do have security cams and Nest thermo stat which connect as well but dont operate them through the smartthings hub as my choice.

Most all of these devices also connect to alexa via smartthings and can be operated with voice as well.

 

[Dunt Dunt Dunt]

Alexa Skills is what I ended up using....

Have a number of devices, some with their own App, other that integrate with SmartLife. In the end all have options to enable Alexa Skills and have found using voice controls along with Alexa Routines gets what I need.... automated.

Would really love for one manufacture to offer it all...

 

[durendal]

Alexa Skills is what I ended up using....

Have a number of devices, some with their own App, other that integrate with SmartLife. In the end all have options to enable Alexa Skills and have found using voice controls along with Alexa Routines gets what I need.... automated.

Would really love for one manufacture to offer it all...

Since you use routines, I'm curious if you're using them for automations. For the life of me, I find the Alexa routines to be so limiting. You only get to have one condition. I prefer to use the Scenes from Smartlife. An example would be a sensor, a fan and the lights. I need the fan to turn on if the sensor detects motion and the lights are on. I can't seem to figure out the routine to do this, but managed to easily execute this in smartlife scenes. I'm basically limiting my routines to voice commands, but not everyone in the household is inclined to use voice commands.

 

[howarmat]

Alexa would be very limiting in those types of things I think since its meant to be more a voice enabled control not automation with many inputs and such. That is where the Smartlife or Smartthings would excel.

 

[durendal]

Yeah, I know. But that's the thing, I want to trigger automation using voice commands with specific conditions. Like if I say, Alexa turn on lights, the light will turn on but the brightness will depend on how much light is detected on the light sensor. I'm actually very close to considering switching to Home Assistant, but I currently don't have a dedicated server for that, and my Synology NAS doesn't support docker.

 

[spARTacus]

A while ago I looked into IFTTT a bit for with TP/Kasa plugs, because of the claims of wide interoperability and massive potential.

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[howarmat]

A while ago I looked into IFTTT a bit for with TP/Kasa plugs, because of the claims of wide interoperability and massive potential.

Smart home automation ideas that'll make your life easier

Check out our best home automation ideas and learn how you can set them up in minutes with IFTTT!

ifttt.com

IFTTT - Wikipedia

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IFTTT was great when free but I have very little connected to it since they started charging. The KASA devices and cheap and really work well with smartthings. Would recommend them to anyone looking for plugs

 

[spARTacus]

Not really true home automation, but the other day I put a Kasa/TP plug in for some of my exterior Christmas lights. Then setup a schedule via the Kasa app. It worked great the first day, but then kept turning them on/off in apparent contradiction to the schedule. Couldn't figure out what was going on. Eventually, we figured out that we had an almost exactly contradictory on/off schedule for the same plug via the Alexa app, for a different use of the plug during summer. Kasa would turn the lights on/off and then soon afterwards Alexa would turn them off/on. For now, all "schedules" we now only keep in Alexa.

 

[SteinwayTransitCorp]

I started with wink and then transferred over to smartthings. Very happy with having smartthings base as many devices can utilize its hub. It uses zigbee, wifi and Zwave which means it probably connects to over 90% of the devices out there. I have window and door alarms, lights several fish tank functions, temperature and motion sensors and leak detection all running through it. I do have security cams and Nest thermo stat which connect as well but dont operate them through the smartthings hub as my choice.

Most all of these devices also connect to alexa via smartthings and can be operated with voice as well.

Since you seem deep into this, can I ask a few questions?

1 how is security across all the devices?
2 any issues with one device not playing nice with another?
3 what would you change now that you have it set up?

 

[howarmat]

Since you seem deep into this, can I ask a few questions?

1 how is security across all the devices?
2 any issues with one device not playing nice with another?
3 what would you change now that you have it set up?

Most items use standard established protocols so while fairly safe but I am not going to slap a digital keypad on my front door anytime soon. They have their random vulnerabilities that pop up every so often in the tech news. The apps usually do have 2 factor as well that helps

Most will automate together fairly well. All my water leak sensors can easily trigger my water shut off valve for the entire house. I can easily open the valve as well if its a false alarm. I think I have 3 different brands of sensors and even the shutoff valve is a different brand yet. 3 different kinds of window/door sensors with no issues and same with smart plugs. The smartthings app doesnt care and it meshes it all together into 1 big system that works perfectly.

Hard to say what specifically I would change. I do like the kasa/tplink brand as they are cheap and work very well but they do require a seperate app to setup then link to smartthings. The biggest thing when I started I used the Wink system and that was a mistake as it was not as open as Samsungs ecosystem is. I used Wink for a year before getting a great deal on the smartthings unit and most all my devices also worked on that so it was not a hard swap

 

[SteinwayTransitCorp]

Most items use standard established protocols so while fairly safe but I am not going to slap a digital keypad on my front door anytime soon. They have their random vulnerabilities that pop up every so often in the tech news. The apps usually do have 2 factor as well that helps

Most will automate together fairly well. All my water leak sensors can easily trigger my water shut off valve for the entire house. I can easily open the valve as well if its a false alarm. I think I have 3 different brands of sensors and even the shutoff valve is a different brand yet. 3 different kinds of window/door sensors with no issues and same with smart plugs. The smartthings app doesnt care and it meshes it all together into 1 big system that works perfectly.

Hard to say what specifically I would change. I do like the kasa/tplink brand as they are cheap and work very well but they do require a seperate app to setup then link to smartthings. The biggest thing when I started I used the Wink system and that was a mistake as it was not as open as Samsungs ecosystem is. I used Wink for a year before getting a great deal on the smartthings unit and most all my devices also worked on that so it was not a hard swap

Thank you very much for the in-depth response. I have been back and forth if I should jump in especially with the water detector and automatic water shut off valve.

 

[durendal]

Most items use standard established protocols so while fairly safe but I am not going to slap a digital keypad on my front door anytime soon. They have their random vulnerabilities that pop up every so often in the tech news. The apps usually do have 2 factor as well that helps

Most will automate together fairly well. All my water leak sensors can easily trigger my water shut off valve for the entire house. I can easily open the valve as well if its a false alarm. I think I have 3 different brands of sensors and even the shutoff valve is a different brand yet. 3 different kinds of window/door sensors with no issues and same with smart plugs. The smartthings app doesnt care and it meshes it all together into 1 big system that works perfectly.

Hard to say what specifically I would change. I do like the kasa/tplink brand as they are cheap and work very well but they do require a seperate app to setup then link to smartthings. The biggest thing when I started I used the Wink system and that was a mistake as it was not as open as Samsungs ecosystem is. I used Wink for a year before getting a great deal on the smartthings unit and most all my devices also worked on that so it was not a hard swap

I also don't think it is wise to hook up your front door lock into you home automation. I have a Yale digital doorlock, which I use independently from my home automation. My security cameras are also setup separately from my smart home.

In terms of inter-operability, with the roll out of Matter, all the different ecosystems should now work together without issues. But I doubt that there will be 100% interoperability, since I believe that this is another marketing ploy to force you to buy more. Sure, they say that existing devices will be given updates to be compatible, but the question is how far back will the updates go? I have tons of smart life zigbees installed at home and I don't think they'll be given the Matter update, especially since they are going to use the newer "Thread" protocol. It'll be a totally different matter is they say that "Matter" will be compatible with older Zigbee devices.

 

[SteinwayTransitCorp]

I also don't think it is wise to hook up your front door lock into you home automation. I have a Yale digital doorlock, which I use independently from my home automation. My security cameras are also setup separately from my smart home.

In terms of inter-operability, with the roll out of Matter, all the different ecosystems should now work together without issues. But I doubt that there will be 100% interoperability, since I believe that this is another marketing ploy to force you to buy more. Sure, they say that existing devices will be given updates to be compatible, but the question is how far back will the updates go? I have tons of smart life zigbees installed at home and I don't think they'll be given the Matter update, especially since they are going to use the newer "Thread" protocol. It'll be a totally different matter is they say that "Matter" will be compatible with older Zigbee devices.

A friend has a Yale lock, my concern is the passcode is only 4 digits. Does your lock always look for Wi-Fi? If so that’s the weak spot. About two years ago I bought on line a device that was billed as a service tool for car key fobs. I hooked it to my laptop and it did a rapid scan within 20 minutes, any car that no longer used a key was doors open/ ready to go. I notified GM and never had a response, the unit was pulled from sale about 3 months later. Problem is how many of them had been sold to the wrong people.

 

[durendal]

A friend has a Yale lock, my concern is the passcode is only 4 digits. Does your lock always look for Wi-Fi? If so that’s the weak spot. About two years ago I bought on line a device that was billed as a service tool for car key fobs. I hooked it to my laptop and it did a rapid scan within 20 minutes, any car that no longer used a key was doors open/ ready to go. I notified GM and never had a response, the unit was pulled from sale about 3 months later. Problem is how many of them had been sold to the wrong people.

My Yale has has a 6 digit codes (also has fingerprint and RFID), and it's not directly connected to wifi, but connects to a separate bridge device via BLE. That bridge is the one that connects to Wifi. So basically my Yale door lock is not directly connected to Wifi.

 

[SteinwayTransitCorp]

My Yale has has a 6 digit codes (also has fingerprint and RFID), and it's not directly connected to wifi, but connects to a separate bridge device via BLE. That bridge is the one that connects to Wifi. So basically my Yale door lock is not directly connected to Wifi.

Interesting, the cars we opened have the same type of information. Then with the laptop and program we started most cars

 

[durendal]

Interesting, the cars we opened have the same type of information. Then with the laptop and program we started most cars

Yikes! That is scary. They might not be using proprietary technology on this and just got whatever technology is available in the market and slapped it in their car thinking not everyone is tech savvy. Either they're extremely careless or just plain lazy. That's the kind of scenario I wanted to avoid by not connecting my front door to home automation. Instead, I use a door sensor to let me know if the door is opened or closed. The Yale lock also has a log (via app) that lets me know who accessed it.

 

[SteinwayTransitCorp]

I think most issues in technology are because the company or design staff gets lazy. GM now has the optional check to order a truck with a real ignition lock.

 

[spARTacus]

Attention to detail isn't a characteristic valued as much as it was before, and all of that is probably also amplified nowadays by approaches that deem it acceptable to just let the impact and priority for problems/features/bugs/security-issues run their course in the real world and then be addressed (or not) via later updates and upgrades.

 

[SteinwayTransitCorp]

Attention to detail isn't a characteristic valued as much as it was before, and all of that is probably also amplified nowadays by approaches that deem it acceptable to just let the impact and priority for problems/features/bugs/security-issues run their course in the real world and then be addressed (or not) via later updates and upgrades.

Absolutely right! Today the public is the test track.