Some home automation lessons I learned as I made my home smart
Over the last few months, I started a project to automate portions of my life at home. One of the first challenges I faced was the lack of a goal - other than for the fun and novelty factor, why was I doing this?
The Present - where am I with home automation?
Setting a goal
I answered this question very late in the day and it probably would have changed the decisions I took and the equipment I purchased. So looking back, these are the problems I solved with home automation that I use on a day to day basis:
Turn off all the things in the house when everyone is out of the house
Turn off all the lights when I’m cosy in bed
Turn on/off the lights in a room using voice (useful when I'm not physically in the room or my hands are full)
Adding things to my shopping list by voice as soon as I realise I need/finish anything when cooking
Having lights automatically turn on in transit areas of the house (staircase/corridors)
Easier access to music, especially when waking up or going to sleep or when busy (for example cooking)
Heating/cooling a room before I go into it (really useful to heat the bedroom before we get home to sleep at night)
Checking if there was motion in the house when no-one was supposed to be home
Setting timers for water heaters (geysers) with the ability to also switch them on from the sofa before going for a bath/shower
Creating different lighting scenes in a room - dim lighting for the bedroom/living room for movies etc.
Broadcasting voice messages to other people (Caroline :D) in the house - really useful when I’m about to serve food
I no longer need to find the remote control for air-conditioners (which continually used to get ‘lost’ in the kitchen or living room)
What does my setup look like today?
Google’s own devices provide automation and voice control. I have 1 Google Nest Mini in the living room, entrance and bedroom. I have a Google Nest Hub in the kitchen which is useful for watching some videos/recipes and also provides assistant. I also bought plastic holders for the minis which make them very easy to place around the house.
I use Sonos speakers in each room for Music streaming. You can group devices by room and set the Sonos as the default speaker for music. Assistant will still reply from the Google nest device.
I use Philips Hue for mood and transit lighting. Their dimming capabilities, especially just the way the lights turn on/off gradually adds a nice touch. They also integrate well with their motion sensors so all transit lighting is a mix of hue bulbs and sensors. It also has wireless switches so instead of moving wiring it was really easy to install a switch in a different location in the room. You can get these on Amazon, but they are also stocked locally by Astral. Some items are almost the same price, but some items such as the E27 Colour Ambience bulb can cost much less on Amazon depending on offers (£39.99 vs €59.95 at the time of writing this)
Sonoff wifi switches control lights. These were a replacement of existing light switches and use regular bulbs. These use the eWeLink app on the phone which is quite good. You can buy the full range directly from their site (ships from China) or else Amazon UK have the modules I bought in stock, shipping from UK. These modules are very well made and reasonably priced. Plus I think they look pretty sleek and emit a very faint glow at night which makes them easy to use
FreeLeben water heater switch bought from Amazon. I chose these because water heaters need a dedicated high current switch and the reviews were good - but mainly because it uses the eWeLink app.
Sensibo Sky devices control my Air conditioning units. They are really easy to set up and have a pretty good (but ugly) app. They are a bit pricey at circa 70eur each but they work well and even realise when you used the remote control. I bought mine on Amazon UK: Link
What changed really?
Initially I was tempted to remove everything and to go back to dumb devices. However with different ways of interacting with the system, the way we used it change. The old chain of events for going into a room used to be: first go into a room, hit the switch, lights, happiness. Now I can switch them off before I get there or after I leave. These things become really easy if you add routines to your system which can really reduce the number of commands, and in some cases, completely remove the need to switch on your brain - for example my routine “Hey Google, Lights”.
The Past - If I could go back in time, what would I do differently?
Upgrade my Wifi sooner
I had a pretty solid wifi system at home. This was made up of a central router, with various access points around the house linked via ethernet cable. This was however installed 10 years ago and as always, technology moves on. IoT devices and in particular Sonos devices are VERY picky about their wifi settings. After a few weeks of trying to identify why various bits and bobs were failing, I removed my existing setup and changed to a Ubiquiti Unifi solution. Since then, I have not had a single connectivity issue.
I got 3 Ubiquiti AC Pro and connected them to my existing PoE ethernet switch.
[Thanks Edward] Another thing to keep in mind is that networking decisions you make early on tend to become harder to change as you add more devices to the mix. So if for example you want to put all your devices on a separate wifi network (remember that they will want internet access for updates and remote access) - this is something you should do from the start.
Here’s an article I found about the topic: https://billfish-security.squarespace.com/how-to-protect-against-home-automation-hacking
Sonos One vs Google/Amazon speakers
My first decision was to use the Sonos One smart speaker as the backbone of my voice control/automation. I didn’t mind paying a bit more for better sound quality as well as the ability to switch between Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. Whilst it’s great to not be tied to either system, the undocumented truth is that you don’t get all the features of either Alexa or Google Assistant. This alone is a deal-breaker.
The most obvious omission is voice match for Google Assistant which means that Google will not be able to differentiate users’ voices. Apart from the slightly higher security risk this poses, it meant that my wife was not able to reliably trigger commands on the device, despite the better hardware. Happy wife = Happy Life, Unhappy wife = death to the home automation project so that needed to be fixed.
On the Google Assistant vs Alexa debate, having tried both on the Sonos (albeit with lesser functionality) I opted to go for Google Assistant. Alexa’s app is way better (Google Home does not show the state of lights for instance) but the voice recognition and more importantly the routines are way better on Google’s side. Voice match is a pretty good feature since it also personalises responses (eg calendars etc) based on the user)
Having said that, using it only as a multi-room sound system, the Sonos One is a fantastic product. Sound quality is truly excellent and the Spotify integration and app is pretty easy to use. There also very frequent discounts on amazon for these: I paid around £139 each, keep an eye out on this link: Sonos One on Amazon uk
Holder for the Google Next Mini to conveniently place on a 3-pin socket
Mixing 2 different lighting systems?
Going down the Philips Hue route was an impulse purchase, partly because of the slick experience the system offers (and also thanks to Kurt Borg for showing me all the cool stuff it could do). The pain point here is that unless I use voice, I don’t currently have a central app to control lighting. It also means that from the switches on the wall you can only currently control the non-Hue lights. The way I have separated the lights means I have 2 scenarios:
Either a section of the room powered exclusively by Hue with its own switch
Secondary lights in the room linked to a motion sensor, with a switch on the side (not adjacent to the Sonoff)
The transit lighting works really well, and the wireless motion sensors are convenient and easy to set up - plus they are small and unobtrusive. I am pleased with this set up since I now don’t even need to bother with lighting as I move around the house. However, you can achieve similar functionality by linking together with other systems such as SmartThings by Samsung. So if you are looking for a more unified experience, what I did will bother you.
Another problem with Hue is that you have to leave the switch on - It does not warn you if a bulb is offline. As such, I initially needed to tape all the switches which powered Hue bulbs in the "on" state, which looks ugly. I am working to remove them and wire them to be permanently on. This is nicer but will also involve having to switch off the entire circuit if I need to work on them. Be prepared to either buy covers (which can be used to attach Hue remote switches on top) or replace the switch with dedicated 3rd party options. It may mean that you have to replace all bulbs on that switch.
Coloured vs White Bulbs, Dimmable vs Non-Dimmable
Smart bulbs and switches can vary greatly in price - especially when choosing from the Philips Hue range. If you opt for the colour ambiance models, they can cost up to £59 per bulb, however if you opt for the cheaper white model, you can get 2 of these for £24 - a massive difference in price. From my recent usage, colour lighting is overrated and is fun to create a mood when watching movies for instance. For this use-case alone, I don’t think the price premium is worth it.
Dimmable lights on the other hand are very useful, and having a dim setting is ideal for times where you are just chilling or watching movies. You can either use dimmable bulbs (Philips Hue) or find switches capable of dimming lights, assuming you have compatible bulbs too.
Be very careful when adding/naming devices
With Google Assistant it is currently not possible to remove a single device. As such to remove things from being caught in blanket commands such as “Turn off everything” into a second house which I named “Black Hole” :).
Naming of devices is also very important - when you set up the device in its native app (eg Hue/Sensibo/eWeLink) including the room name or certain keywords such as “light” will cause Google Assistant to automatically add it to a room (even though it doesn’t show that it's part of the room in the app) and treat it as a light.
The Future - Where am I going with this?
There are currently very few quick wins available, however there are a few things on my to-do list which may happen sooner rather than later since Covid-19 has given me some extra spare time.
Regulate room temperature in an eco-friendly way
If you see the way the Malta Stock Exchange (Link) building is cooled - louvered windows are opened/closed based on the time of day. A subterranean water reservoir is also used to naturally cool the air.
Now whilst I am not planning to duct ventilation down to the well and back, there are some opportunities here. If I am able to measure the outdoor temperature and moisture and compare those to indoor values - this could be used to trigger windows to open and close. The main caveat for this is also to find servos/motors that can open the windows. The idea would be to open the windows when the inner temperature is higher than external, or vice versa if cooling/heating is required
More Routines
Google Assistant Routines are one of the killer features of the system. In a nutshell this allows you to create a trigger phrase - which then will execute a number of commands. The nice thing here is that you can either use pre-made individual actions or you can just wing it and use free text.
For example my routine called “movie time” will turn off all but 2 dim lights in the living room and turn on the tv (via the Xiomi Mi Box which integrates with assistant).
Routines are also aware of the device which is used to trigger them, which means it know which room it’s running in. So if you say something like “Turn off the Lights”, it will only turn the ones in that specific room off. To avoid the hassle of figuring out what to say i created a very simple “lights” routine which will toggle the lights in the room. So just by going into a room and saying “Hey Google, lights” it will turn them on if they were off, or turn them off it hey were on. This turns switching on/off lights in a room into a mindless phrase which becomes a reflex action with 0 thought necessary. To program this all i needed to do was to add the free text command “Toggle the lights” which makes use of room awareness, and also bulb state awareness to figure out what to do. I also created routines such as “I’m going xxxxxx” - “I’m going to the bedroom” will switch on the lights in the bedroom, and switch off the room i’m currently in. “I’m going upstairs” will switch off all lights/music/heating downstairs.
A second level of automation happiness comes in to play when you mix music and lighting - my “Good Morning” routine will shuffle play a morning playlist from Spotify and gradually turn on the lights to max to get me out of bed in a good room
Door Locks, Doorbells and Security
I don’t think I trust the current IoT level of security to put my door lock online, however I do already have an intercom system which works fine for opening the door. The system is a bit old and does not have video, and a very weak doorbell. As such I do think i will be moving to a smart doorbell which is able to reach out to my phone/devices when people ring the bell.
Smart cameras for perimiter security is also a current ‘thing’ i’m working on since our existing system could use a refresh. There are many options on the market and my main caveat is to find something that will not need frequent (or any) intervention, and ideally no extra wires.