if i were you, i'd figure out what you want to do and put everything in while it is being built to avoid ripping it all out, re-wiring and re-plastering.
a friend of mine did the wiring himself and plumbed cat5 everywhere for the control signals. actual control was done by CAN bus.
That's basically it as far as I can tell. We have a box of some sort next to the router in the basement with all sorts of connections to the various rooms in the house. There is a big wire leaving this box going to each room to control heating, blinds, lights, Internet, TV etc.
The switches and thermostat for heating in the rooms just look like regular switches and the cabling is behind them. From what I could see during the building process it was installed just like regular cables.
It was about 6000 chf altogether.
The switches in our bedroom look like this. You can use them manually from the room or remotely using the control panel. The light on the switch tells you if the light is on or off ( as if you couldn't see that anyway) red is on and blue is off.
The heating thermostat allows you to manually adjust the temperature in the room. If the bedroom is set for 21 degrees on the control panel for example and you want it cooler you can turn it to -1,-2 etc and it will adjust it to 20 or 19. The control panel will show the settings for each room on the display.
Edit :And just for you slaphead, I tried rotating the image but it still came out sideways on here.
Seems there is an online shop for all things Automation and Z-Wave here...
BM, thanks for the information!
Reviving this thread...
StirB- Did you manage to find something as i have just started on renovation of our chalet and super interested to have automated lights/garage door etc.
Is anyone suing Nest here and experience?
Been checking and le grand has a kit available with a touch screen etc.
Appreciate inputs and costs associated.
Cheers
Hi aamsy,
I'm afraid I let it slide - I was too late to get anything built into the apartment, so it will have to be an aftermarket job - will look into that once I've moved into the new place around start of Q2 next year...will update with anything I find.
Please let us know how your Chalet renovation goes too.
We replaced our home heating a few years ago, and the need for these sorts of things was removed or at least dramatically reduced. There are no room thermostats, but the system works with the outside temperature (via a sensor) to determine if any internal heating is required to achieve your set temperature. Parameters are adjustable to allow fine-tuning.
And it works very well indeed, with our mix of under-floor in some rooms but only rads in others. Reduces the heating water temperature as well, so if it's just getting cool outside the radiators are perhaps just slightly warm to the touch, but if it's freezing they'll be proper hot.
There's also a Holiday function that allows you to have the heating on a reduced temperature setting (if you want it, e.g. for plants, pets, etc.) for the period you're away and then turns it back on when you tell it to, i.e. before you arrive home. Yes, it's not remotely accessible, but unless you're cutting a trip short it's sufficient.
I kind of did the same for our electric heating system. I used an Arduino board to monitor the six floor temperatures, the outside temperature, the demand the system requested and the energy that the whole system used. All of this was monitored every five minutes with all the data stored in a MySQL database running in a raspberry pie. The key data was displayed on an LCD and I used a commercial reporting tool on my iPad to show a dashboard and trends.
Took a while to do, and proved very useful in setting up the system, but that was all. Now I just monitor the energy usage (and for that I use a current cost device, linked up to my pie, and I can see the energy usage on a website)
I also built in a "We're on holiday" switch, which reduces the heating level by 40% or so (programmable).
As for home automation, I picked up a few of the magazines on this topic, but they're shite. They just show prestige installations that must have cost eye-watering sums of money and having no doubt involving extensive teams of experts...
reviving an old thread
but it seems that it would be better to share all Home Automation experiences here, instead of any other google/amazon related home automation device threads...
So as I have read on any other thread;
Seems like I'm gonna skip Philips Hue lights, I would be checking Samsung Smartthings as mentioned.
It was interesting to re-read some of the posts.
I quite like Belgianmum's setup where she can press a button when they go out to close shutters and turn off lights.
I'm going to put one of those in as I want that to set the alarm sensor monitoring, do the shutters and perhaps turn on a couple of lights.
I don't need a control panel, just a big button by the door as I can use the finger-print entry scanner on re-entry to turn off the alarm etc.
It would be interesting for those in a planning/improvement stage to have feedback from those who have had systems running for some time about what has worked really well and what has been a waste of time/money, and what they wish they had additionally installed.
Just as an update, for my aftermarket installations, I replaced all my spots with Philips Hue bulbs and replaced the Underfloor Heating thermostats (one per zone in the new place) with Tado, as it seems Nest does not support (Swiss?) underfloor heating in multiple zones.
With lots of new control apps...Harmony, IFTTT, etc being integrated into Alexa and Google Home, a lot of my switching should soon be voice controlled...My Google Home should arrive in the next few days, so hopefully I can get the setup done during the holidays and report back.
What you going to do with the wife afterwards ?
is still ebay the best option to order Google Home ?
or Amazon.co.uk ?
Question is; are Google Home and/or Alexa and/or other voice controlled devices compatible with steckerpro ?
There's a compatibility list here:
http://www.steckerpro.com/pdf/compat...steckerPRO.pdf
The answer's no.
I like the Steckpro GUI - it looks better than OpenHab but then one of the real points of home automation is that once set up, you really don't need to see or use the interface much anyway.
I'll probably try and find one with all the spare time I'll now have!
I get the feeling that at this stage it is more for people who like to tinker with the technology rather than for actual usefulness. I imagine the technology will mature and become more consumerised over the next years.
But I have to wonder really how useful it will really be. It's certainly nice to be able to remotely monitor and control stuff, but personally, I don't see the need to voice control my lights over just using the switch.
I agree with your sentiments to a degree but to elaborate on the usefulness - I'm installing some stuff to save energy and money and I also want some security and safety improvements. I don't really have any of this stuff so far so when buying or making it have some compatibility to some common system makes sense to me.
On the tinkering side of things - that's definitely one reason why I'm interested!
I'm also interested in the tinkering side and had started (until life/lack of free time got in the way) building my own devices together based on the ESP8266 chip.
As regards to security, I somewhat expect adding these 'smart devices' will decrease security overall.