Internet Of Things / IoT / Connected Home / Smart Houses

We have five nest protects around our house, I think they work best when you have more than one, as you can be in one room and it will tell you where the smoke is

consumer smoke alarms are designed so they don't go off with all smoke types

Sure. But these were four fuses, of which only one probably triggered the nest.

That the nest triggered and the others didn't totally convinces me to go all in on them.

One thing to note about Nests is they won't necessarily meet the criteria for building control.

I had to remove mine as they had to be replaced with mains powered, hard-wired alarms (as I don't have fire doors). Radio connection wasn't sufficient for the regulations.

Makes sense. And if you're selling a spare nest 😉

I ebayed them a while back, they go for silly money on there.

Just something to consider if people are considering serious building work.

Anyone want a hue hub v1 (the round one) in return for a forum donation?

It doesn't do everything that the v2 does (although I can't say I really use many of the new features) but works fine to control/schedule lights, integrate with Alexa, HomeAssistant, etc.

In similar fashion I've migrated all of my rf stuff to zigbee now that I've got zigbee2mqtt up and running so will swap my rf stuff for 4 cans of craft ipa and a forum donation:

Sonoff rf bridge with tasmota
Rf door sensor (with on/off codes)
Wireless doorbell
3x rf 2 button switches

With homeassistant I had these set up to do the following:
Notify my phone when someone pressed the doorbell, and also send an mp3 door chime through my google home mini and chromecast audio
Notify my phone when front door opened while I'm not home, and turn on living room lamp
Rf buttons to control philips hue lights

Yes please! What sort of donation are you thinking - £20 /£25?

Whatever you see fit :)

I've got 3x philips hue b22 plain white bulbs that have a few months use and in original packaging if anyone is in the market for some? Say £30?

I've been using them with zigbee2mqtt and home assistant but almost never use the dimming feature so switching to smart plugs instead.

Has anyone routed ethernet cable through a ceiling?

Is this a bad idea?

I want to run 2 pieces of cat 6 gigabit ethernet from one end of the house to the other via the loft. I see that the loft is clear, so how to get up there? Through the ceiling!

Is this going to be as simple as it looks? Just drill holes in both ceilings, put some conduit through the holes and then push the network cable through and ta-da!

I did a similar thing at my parents' house a few years ago but just had to go directly through the ceiling to the floor above. No conduit so used some dowel to guide the cable. Really straight forward assuming you know you're not hitting any other wiring or pipework.

Should be pretty simple

There are things a bit like drain rods to help guide the cables

That's what I did to get from the cupboard under the stairs to the office. Been fine for a few years since. Plastic conduit and cat 6 inside

Can you get into the loft? Should be pretty simple if so

Guaranteed not to hit any wires or pipes... there are none up there.

I'll buy some conduit pipe like https://www.screwfix.com/p/tower-conduit-heavy-gauge-20mm-x-3m-length-white/6282p and will run it behind the TV and book cases containing the cables... drill a 2cm diameter hole, poke it through the insulation in the loft... repeat at the other end. When done, use hot glue to cap off the loft end so it's not a chimney.

Conduit isn't necessary in the loft, although it may be a bit tidier (depending on whether you have flooring up there, and which way the joists are running).

What are your walls covered in - It may be neater to go behind it they're stud / plasterboard.

Routing from top down is also easier than bottom up.

Also, with cat6, you don't need to run the shortest route - signal is good up to 100m, iirc. Meaning you can route wherever keeps it out of the way.

Through the loft it will be bare wires, but instead of just having wires dangle from the ceiling I think tucking them into a conduit of some kind will be tidier.

The rooms are 15m apart, and there are 3 brick walls, 1 chimney, and 4 doorways in between. Hence... just go over it all.

The loft is very accessible, so the only thing I really have to do is drill a few holes in the right places.

My dad did it to run coax around so it'll be fine. Just bag up the ends properly so they don't get damaged. I'd have said "watch the length" but 15m is nowhere near the limit .

...it will be bare wires...

Read a tip somewhere (may have been AV Forums) that suggested avoiding this where possible when routing cables and using conduits all the way as all it takes is an inquisitive rat/mouse/creature and you have to do it all again.

I'm buying 50m outdoor cat 6a.

Should be good enough. Great tip on bagging the ends.

Azure Sphere MT3620 Starter Kit going for about a fiver here. Way too complicated for me but may interest some of the other IoT bodgers on here.

https://www.element14.com/community/groups/azuresphere

Did you get the UK hot deals email too?

Indeed. I like to spend 5 minutes a day clicking on shit that I don't need and won't buy but is cheap so I'll look just in case.

Sorry if this is way too specific...

I'm trying to connect some LIFX bulbs at work. The IT dept. are a little snowed under and their IOT wifi doesn't seem to actually have any internet connection, so I'm having trouble setting them up.

Is there any way that I can get them to work on the staff wifi, which requires a username and password? it's the username portion that I can't seem to give within the LIFX app.