Internet Of Things / IoT / Connected Home / Smart Houses

Current room use is:

Dinning room/office 4 days, 8hrs and x3 mealtimes 4 days.

Child no2 bedroom 7 days, 2hrs. But that will start decreasing once they start nursery.

All bedrooms low temperature in the evening as the upstairs warms quickly.

So soon we'll move to a situation where for half the week only one room needs to be heated in the daytime.

I could do with a Black Friday deal on Tado TRVs...

I would go with Hue - they're worth it for the quality and reliability. Prices vary a lot, so if you can be patient it will pay off. I got all of our stuff at the cheaper end by shopping around or waiting for prices to drop. Amazon can be very good sometimes, then the prices go right up again. E.g. I got an indoor motion sensor for £25, they are currently £35 so I'm waiting. Hue GU10 bulbs can be stupidly expensive, but I managed to get 6 for less than £9 each. Also got a bridge with an EU plug for £20 off eBay and used an adapter.

Fingers crossed for cheap Hue stuff come Black Friday...

In my mind smart central heating should save money rather than keep the entire house at a constant temperature.

In your case - presuming that you work in a room notionally labelled as study - you need a TRV in the study but if you use Tado you'll also need TRVs in your living area because otherwise when the study TRV requests heat you'll be heating your living area unnecessarily (this is my current situation because I'm waiting on an offer on TRVs).

I like Tado but it isn't quite smart enough for me - being asked to pay for the home/away assist grates (shakes fist) and schedules are all very well but our routine varies too much, so I reckon we're still paying to heat house we don't need to heat.

I'm planning on installing this to my Home Assistant to get free home/away assist:
https://github.com/sabsteef/Tado-home-away

But even then we'll end up heating rooms we aren't actually using. So I'm thinking about using Hue motion sensors to check someone is actually in a room, then if nobody has been in a room for a certain amount of time the Tado TRVs won't start heating it up, unless someone goes into the room for a little while (not quickly popping in), then they'll heat it for a bit before turning off again if they haven't detected movement.

I need to work out how to do this but it should all be doable in Home Assistant as the Hue motion sensors work well with it.

So I'm thinking about using Hue motion sensors to check someone is actually in a room

I'm sceptical about that approach. If you have a cold and draughty house like me then the time to heat a room is too long to usefully do something when someone starts using it. If you have a well insulated house then heating the room if someone is likely to use it isn't a big problem.

I basically want three modes:

1. Not in the house - heating reduced to very low level (eg 14)
   
2. Family in (weekends, after school) - all rooms heated to comfortable level (eg 20)
   
3. Working from home - just heat my study, rest of the house at low level (eg 16)
   

The issue you may find with this is that if you're sitting still the motion detector may not detect you.

I use a hue sensor to turn a TV (one of the frame ones that shows artwork) on via home assistant but if I'm just sat down it doesn't always detect that.

This looks like an interesting solution but I haven't had a chance to play with it yet as a tv occasionally not turning on isn't too important. https://www.room-assistant.io/

I'm planning on installing this to my Home Assistant to get free home/away assist:

It's fragile, as with most things HA*.

Then again, I've never used the Tado one, even though I have it for free (early adopter etc...)

* Although that could be down to my implementation being a bit overly specific.

You know that without paying it messages you and can switch to away mode manually? Works fine for me. Also means if I’m popping to the shops I ignore it.

Would this require the main central heating thermostat to be in your study? Trying to get my head around how I can achieve the same thing.

But that doesn’t achieve the goal of not heating the entire house while I’m working and only using one room from 9-5. In my mind smart central heating should save money rather than keep the entire house at a constant temperature.

This is why I use an electric air heater in the room in working, and the thermostat for the house applies outside of working hours... Though with Nest time to temperature meaning that it clicks on mid afternoon and slowly gets the house ready for the evening.

I bought one of these https://www.fenwick.co.uk/home-and-tech/home-appliances/fans-and-heaters/stream-heat-cooling-fan/2530020433895.html and it has a eco hearing mode which turns on full great below 18'c, mild heat below 20'c and turns off totally above that... This turns out to be perfect for my office space and the rest of the house is economical.

If I have a smart TRV on every rad (bar one) then I don't need a main thermostat. If any TRV is calling for heat then turn the boiler on and provide some.

I don't know if this is how off the shelf stuff works but in theory I could build my own with some ZigBee TRVs, a WiFI relay and a Raspberry Pi.

I might do some extra detail like bedrooms are warm first thing in the morning on a school day to encourage teenagers out of bed but then cooler until they get home and go and do some homework (yeah right, just heat the telly watching room).

Ok, sounds workable. What would the interface with the boiler look like?

Could be as simple as an ESP 8266 relay, I suppose.

This feels like something thats much better to buy off the shelf rather than DIY tbh.

Good point.

Tado will do all of this stuff and integrate with HA, I'm guessing.

Aww where is the fun in that!

"13A rated suitable for 3kW: Immersion heaters, 5A inductive load, 1000W tungsten, 500W LED, 100W CFL and 500W Fluorescent. "

From the specs. Is 13A or 20A rated typical for an immersion heater switch?

Depends on your boiler a bit. Some have fancy digital interfaces, mine just has mains present or not. Any mains relay rated at a couple of amps would work for me.

There are currently some decent deals on kits on Amazon. I picked up a Bridge, switch and 3 bulbs (white) for £63. Will try to get a sensor and second switch on ebay but that will get me most of the way there.

got a link, can't see anything that cheap

Here
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Philips-Starter-Button-Assistant-HomeKit/dp/B07SPHGTQY/

thanks.
(hadn't refreshed page)

took receipt of a small bundle of hue stuff today (3x w&c ambience w. bridge kit, w ambience w. dimmer, 3 white (non-amb) w. bridge and smart button only to find the move date for the new place has been pushed back 2 weeks minimum.

not sure the second bridge will be needed but was in a cheap bundle so better to have it and pass it on if not needed than have to buy one full price later on. the building is narrow and long though so not ideal for signal travel.

new place is 4 bed, 2 bath, 2 reception rooms so plenty of scope for having some fun with automation. it's a rental so everything has to be reversible so no heating fun but everything we use now will transfer to our own place when we buy again toward end of next year.

plans for our half-way house so far

• repurpose rpi3+ from my unused picade for a homeassistant server.
  
  • motion detection in hall and landing for timed light activation w/ dimming based on time of day (white bulbs)
    
  • white and colour ambience bulbs in study/home office, (board)games/loft room and living room. using colour to trigger alerts on things like my 3d printer through spaghetti detective green=done, red=run and see what just fucked up very quickly.
    
  • white ambience in rear reception/dining room so gf can work down there in day and make it cosier for meal times.
    
  • bedrooms and various lamps probably hue compatibles to keep costs low.
    
  • will set up some mixed lighting scenes in living room for gf to watch tv
    
  • setup existing google home minis for synced music throughout ground floor
    
    

hoping that this will sell my gf on the automation concept and get the ok for adding a ring doorbell, some free standing security cams for front and back ground floor rooms and a few more speakers for the upstairs rooms out of our "furnish our first proper adult sized dwelling" budget.

I also need to figure out a mesh wi-fi option on top floor and back of the house as my single uni-fi ap probably wont have 100% coverage.

You might be able to up the tx power on your access point.

not sure the second bridge will be needed

The bulbs act as repeaters for Hue stuff. So long as you don't have any bulbs miles away from anything then you'll probably be OK with one bridge. Can't remember exactly but each bridge can handle something like 75 things attached to it.

Also have a look at IFTTT and their preset routines, some are pretty useful (or you can create a few yourself on the free tier). My favourite is the Hue lights flashing when my kitchen timer on the Alexa is up.

The bulbs act as repeaters for Hue stuff. So long as you don't have any bulbs miles away from anything then you'll probably be OK with one bridge. Can't remember exactly but each bridge can handle something like 75 things attached to it.

my mums already intrigued by the idea of automatic hall lights and have the lights change based on time of day in her little flat so I think the second bridge will be put to use there instead.

Honestly... this is the #1 use-case.

Just automatically turn the lights on and off in the bathroom, hallway and entrance areas.

Then once they're addicted to this you can turn the place into a disco.