Internet Of Things / IoT / Connected Home / Smart Houses

Right next to a heater?

Ah, new page time. Carry on :)

You have great comic timing :)

Badum tish

interesting, may have to look into that. I really should take some photos of my setup, I have;

In cupboard upstairs
1 x Router
1 x 48 port switch
1 x 8 port POE switch (powers the on ceiling access points)
1 X master sky q box which links via cat6 to TV in lounge
1 x mini sky q box which links to master bedroom via cat 6
1 x mini sky q box which links to 2 x bedrooms, kitchen and office, via cat 6 and special splitter
4 x mini amps, each with a hardwired chromecast audio, each linking to a different room in the house via hardwired speaker cable

Then in my office I have a qnap 4 bay NAs with 32tb of storage, linked to a mac mini which works as my plex server.

Then dotted through the house are 3 x google home mini and one standard Google Home. Also have 2 x Nests, one controls hot water & middle floor, the other controls ground floor underfloor heating and loft room heating.

Smart lighting and switches are next on my list...

That's a hell of a lot of ports.

I chose to terminate the Sky boxes, they don't give you control over the DNS resolvers and I wanted to just get the Sky box in bridge mode except they don't permit that either. So instead I just replaced all of their hardware.

I really want to run CAT6 from downstairs, where my Virgin cable termination is, to the office on the second floor, at the back of the house.

Powerline is only giving me about 25mbps, which sucks.

The obvious way is to run CAT 6 round the outside of the house (we are end of terrace) then drill in through the wall.

What other approaches are there?

Yes, Sky is definitely the leaky part, will have to look into that at some point.

unbeleively I don't have enough ports on my switches... my patch has 60 live ports....

Mesh wi-fi.

The reason I bought the Ubiquiti Amplifi is precisely because I have walls that Wi-Fi couldn't get through and I couldn't trivially drill.

Tell me more about mesh Wi-fi. Is it as simple as getting 3-4 compatible routers (eg all ASUS aiMesh) plugging the most powerful one into the modem then strategically putting the others round the place in hallways etc or outside in an overpriced Tupperware box?
No cabling other than a power lead required.

Yes. Just that.

And the one I chose, the Amplifi, doesn't even use power cables. The sockets are the mesh repeaters.

Here's what it looks like when inspected... The different strengths are based on locations in the house. I'm currently at one end of the house and the lowest strength was all I was getting before adding the mesh.

1 Attachment

Amplifi looks good but do you need to go through another box to vpn/dns into iPlayer etc?

ASUS do open vpn support so simpletons like me can use it.

4 x mini amps

Which ones are you using? Are you powering the audiocast from a 5v rail in the amps?

Mesh wi-fi.

The reason I bought the Ubiquiti Amplifi is precisely because I have walls that Wi-Fi couldn't get through and I couldn't trivially drill.

I have three Unifi APs in the house, two of them connected via Powerline adapters.

Can I use them to make a mesh? Would it better if I can?

Edit: looks like a no.

So, I could sell all my APs and replace with a mesh HD system. Meh.

Amplifi looks good but do you need to go through another box to vpn/dns into iPlayer etc?

I'm not sure what you mean here.

You can run the Amplifi as a DHCP server with NAT and so forth.

Or you can run it as a bridge and no other NAT is introduced and all connections are direct.

Unsure where VPNs come into it.

Are you integrating sonoff into a hue system?

Most of my home has hue bulbs, but haven't bought any switches as they are so damn ugly.

I've read that hue will be introducing 'friends of hue' light switches manufactured by companies that specialise in lighting control.
Like this one: https://www.niko.eu/enus/article/120-91004
Still isn't a proper wired solution, you'd still have to blank off your switches or install key switches.

Are you integrating sonoff into a hue system?

I'm running Homeassistant - I use the Hue bridge as a dumb bridge for Hue (and Innr) bulbs just now, with HA doing the majority of the controlling.

Any Sonoff devices are being controlled by MQTT (currently embedded in HA, but soon to be a separate broker server).

Love how this has become a home network discussion!

I have recently dipped my toe into it as a result of moving my virgin hub to a different location and ruining my connectivity in the bedroom. I've started small, setting my hub to modem mode and using an asus ac68u as a router. I've got hue and raspi with hass.io hard wired but everything else is wireless, which is fine in our miniature one bed house.

Our long term goal is to move to a doer upper in the countryside back in Ireland, and I like to think I'll go wild with proper networking while we're working on that.

I'm running Homeassistant - I use the Hue bridge as a dumb bridge for Hue (and Innr) bulbs just now, with HA doing the majority of the controlling.

How is Home Assistant?

And isn't the Hue bridge always doing the controlling? I thought the way this works is that ultimately the Hue bridge is the controller but one can use other apps to orchestrate that control... i.e. it's the Hue bridge that controls the bulbs via Zigbee, but you can use any number of apps (inc Home Assistant) to orchestrate the Hue bridge beyond it's capabilities.

The only thing that made me hesitate to install Home Assistant is just that... that for something like the Hive heating, Home Assistant is still relying on the public internet APIs and so it's not like we've gained isolated control locally... all we'll have gained is centralised orchestration, and I'm still split on whether that is important.

Got there, you can set amplifi up with smart dns providers like unlocator so it’s a possibility for getting Wi-fi by the pool.

Basically I’m outside the UK but still want UK multimedia access. I can’t do networks bridges and all that malarkey so my solution needs be simple and out of a box with little fuss. I have a good ASUS (non-meshable) router but it’s not making the most of my 1000Mps fibre connection. In truth, wired direct to the modem I got only 950, but still if I’m changing the router I might as well extend the network.

Sorry missed this... I am currently using Lepy 2024a, not the most powerful, but for running cheap speakers for music to have on whilst doing over things they are perfect. Chrome cast are powered separately as I am using Ethernet adapters as the chromecasts didn’t play nicely with my Wi-fi.

Oh and I have just added a google home hub into the mix, has made a huge difference to usage, it’s on the kitchen worktop, and gets used all the time, and not just by me.

How is Home Assistant?

I like it.

There's a it of a learning curve, as I've never done indent delimited laguages, and had to rejig vimrc to stop me from going mad. But it's fairly straight forward, otherwise.

It is Hue that does the controlling (with the internet dependency) - HA can do both local & wide area APIs though, as far as I can tell, through MQTT and other interfaces.

In the case of Hue the bridge is doing the "controlling" but home assistant is sending the commands to the bridge to tell it what to do.

For the Hue I'm almost certain it's all on the local network, you don't need to be logged in anywhere for it. Same with some of the other devices such as amps, smart TV, etc.

Others you're just connecting to the internet APIs and you're basically just putting all the controls on one screen but not local control. Depends on your devices.

Ah, then this sounds interesting and I may see if I can set it up in the near future (not immediately as the system is all running smoothly right now and I'm happy with it).

Today's mystery is that I have something on my network that I do not recognise, but I definitely must have set it up as it's on my Wi-Fi and it's using the current strong authentication.

Every other device I've identified, and I've none missing. This one though identifies itself on the network as being manufactured by "Chiun Mai Systems" and the Mac address starts CC9F7A and I can trace that much down.

I suspect it's a secondary Wi-Fi system in an already connected device.

Connected devices to this particular part of the network include:

• Nvidia Shield
  
• Chromecast Ultra
  
  

But nothing else obvious.

I'm going to have to start unplugging things to determine what it is.