every day several companies like Belkin, Fibaro, Philips, Nest and more release new hardware that can interact with OpenHAB through bindings.
Unfortunately the some of them are very expensive although cheaper solutions work the same way. When building your home automation setup, a price difference of 10 EUR/sensor matters if you need more than just one.
Iâd like to use this thread to collect cheaper alternatives to the pricey components.
Probably the most interesting components are:
Light bulbs
Thermostats
Smoke/Fire sensors
Door/Window contact sensors
Surveillance cameras
Presence detectors
Weather stations
Wall Switches
Roller Shutter
Can you recommend cheap component alternatives (based on your own experience)? Also please provide the communication standard they need (zWave, ZigBee, BidCoS,âŠ).
In order to decrease price for home automation, Iâm agree with you that alternatives are also interessant, as we donât need special app or web interface to control one device especially, because we have off course OpenHab to control them all.
My shopping list :
First All, Iâll talk about the IPX800 from GCE Electronics. Itâs the best value for money for wired home automation. e.g. : 8 outputs (10A, potential free), 8 digital inputs (pull up), 4 analog input (with sensor like T°, Humidity, light âŠ), Dyndns, ping, timers, preset, web interface, tcp, notifix, push, mail ⊠all that for ⊠180âŹ, and made in France I will soon documented a entire realtime Integration in openhab, with items and rule to manage TCP Push among others (need time), or make a special binding for it (need skill !)
Under KNX Protocol, Zennio sell good products with many features, at low price. for the rest of KNX devices at cool prices, look at EibMarkt
Light bulbs : no idea, all are around 50âŹ/pc, whatever communication standard it use.
But if you want RGB effects, DMX device are quite cheap, with strip you can build nice effects.
Thermostat : wired IPX800 can do that, adding a 5⏠temperature sensor, and hysteresis control.
Smoke sensors : Fibaro in Zwave, wireless, Schneider Electric has a wired 220V smoke detector with live state return (MTN547519)
Door/window contact sensors : wired sensors are very cheap, wireless are more expensive, wireless and batteryless (EnOcean with solar panel) are coherent.
It exists cheap cameras, but quality is not there (poor resolution and stability). Synology servers, with their âsurveillance stationâ are very efficient
Presence detector : Zennio in KNX protocole (small device diam40 + inbox interface), 12V detector at GCE to the wired side, Fibaro âeyeâ to the wireless side, Eltako for wireless and batteryless (EnOcean)
Wall Switch : KNX switch >120âŹ, standard Switch : 5⏠+ wired input to the IPX800, or Fibaro, Eltako, etc. ~65âŹ
Roller Shutter : KNX Hager : 100âŹ/rollershutter, 40⏠with Zennio ⊠20⏠with the IPX800, but without easy position monitoring.
Wirelessly, Fibaro, Qubino, Aeonlabs do the trick
Wifi actuator : I bought a wifi plug with power mesurement 20⏠at Aldi France ⊠equivalent Belkin
Sorry for my poor english, now the french version :
Voila pour une petit panorama de ce quâon peut faire, Ă savoir quâĂ titre pro, je propose ce que jâappelle la âdomotique Ă mil eurosâ imaginez comment ça peut plaire !
One low cost board I can not talk enough about is PoKeys57E from [PoLabs][1]. They are under $100 and provide:
Ethernet 10/100 with DHCP client or fixed IP support
TCP connection with device
55 digital inputs with pull-up resistors
55 software controlled digital outputs
7 analog inputs (12-bit) with adjustable low-pass filtering support
Up to 26 encoder pair inputs (3 high-speed encoder inputs, 1 ultra high speed encoder input)
3-axis 25 kHz or 8-axis 125 kHz Pulse engine
Digital counters on specific digital input pins
Up to 16x8 matrix keyboard
Two 8x8 matrix LED display support
Up to 6 high-speed fully configurable PWM outputs support (25 MHz PWM timer)
HD44780-based character LCD support (up to 4x20 characters)
Modbus TCP support (access to digital IO, analog inputs, encodersâ counters, digital counters values, PWM outputs, LCD display, LED matrix display, PoExtBus devices, matrix keyboard status)
Support for up to 10 sensors on I2C bus, up to 10 sensors on 1-wire bus and up to 7 analog sensors
Works out of the box with OpenHab using Modbus, http, tcp, or udp bindings.
[1]: http://www.poscope.com
I have been slowly playing with Arduino boards and wireless comms⊠All from âMySensorsâ.
For now I have 4 Temp/Humidity sensors and 3 open/close sensors all talking wireless to another arduino which has Ethernet and an MQTT broker which OpenHAB listens to. All this for about US$50 which is pretty cheap!
You do have to be comfortable with soldering, diodes, etc which I am not so there is a steep learning curve.
I would prefer to buy something off the shelf but when most of those cost at least $40 for a single sensor it starts to get very expensive.
I have over 3 dozen 1-wire temp sensors on my system connected to a single PoKeys57E, total cost, under $150 for the board and all the sensors. Rather then having them all on a single 1-wire bus, I home run each to an individual pin on the PoKeys57E, I found that it greatly improves reliability.
For my first OpenHAB setup I wanted to replicate a Nest thermostat. Nest cost about $230, and I needed 2 for both my upstairs and downstairs HVAC units. Total $460.
I figured with openHAB and by buying a Raspberry PI (CanaKit) $70 and a AeoTec 5 Gen z-wave stick $45 that I was well on my way to automating my HVAC system for less than the cost of 1 Nest. But, all of the thermostats where expensive. Until I found the Remotec ZTS-110 - Z-Wave Smart Thermostat. I bought the first one for $70, and the second one for $65.
For a total cost of $250 I was able to replicate the functionality of 2 Nest thermostats, and setup my Home Automation base platform.
Hi, can you please share with us the open / close OH settings (sitemap, items and rules)? I try to do this only that Iâm using the serial communication and no one answered me on Mysensors.
Thanks in advance!
I can recommend the Particle Photon as a functional programmable board with wifi connectivity for $19 dollars us. I have just completed adding automated control to my garage with this and am happy with the results and the cost. Also, Particle support has been responsive to my requests. It is supported by IFTTT, but i had issues with IFTTT handling a variable on the photon. I ended up using MQTT for the state changes instead.
I can also recommend the Kankun wifi power outlet for $22. Using the following guide i was able to get it up and running with relatively little fuss:
Some are hundred feet or so, I parallel some of them, but used a dedicated board with 55 1-wire interfaces for most of them. If I were you and had that many I would put a sensor on each pin rather then trying to build a large 1-wire network.
OpenHab reads the actual 1-wire sensor and exposes it via HTTM and modbus. As far as pulse counter, yes, I use one right now for my water meter.
Ok very interestiing - just so I understand correctly
Do you use the PoKeys57E as your "dedicated board with 55 1-wire interfaces "?
have you connected the pulse counter directly to the PoKeys57E ?
Do you read that via OpenHab simliar to 1 wire?
And save data to some database I guess?
Which inputs (digital/analog) on the PoKeys57E do you use for the 1wire and for the pulse counter?
are you using the 55 digital inputs or the analog inputs for pulse counter?
I am curious on how many pulse counters one can have on the PoKeys57E. If one have to use analog input then I guess it is 7 otherwise it would be all the 55 digital and then maybe it is more about how many pulse counters the board can manage without missing a pulse.
When using as pulse counter - can you save date and time with the latest counted pulse?
I have built an Arduino Gateway, 9 Arduino end nodes, connecting to a Windows 7 PC running OpenHAB 1.7.0 via MQTT. Gateway & end nodes connect via RFM69 wireless transceiver mini-boards. Most Nodes have a DHT11 temp/humidity sensor. Several nodes have solid state relays that can turn AC devices off & on via a node button, OpenHAB user interface switches or OpenHAB rules. Other node functions: open / close garage door & detect open / close state, Turn TV off / on. One node is a bare bones Arduino that can be powered by batteries. I developed rules to simulate home occupation thru toggling lights & TV off & on .
Iâm using a Fibaro zWave FGK-101 door/window contact together with a cheap sensor board. The Fibaro has a dry binary input and also allows for attaching a OneWire temperature sensor.
Thereâs a number of sensors available on eBay for as cheap as ~2⏠(or US$) to detect water, light, moisture, distance, sound, ⊠search for Arduino and âYL-38â.
The trick is to use the FGKâs output connector that is meant to power the OneWire sensor to actually power your YL-38 sensor board. You get 3.6V from the FGK battery which is just fine to run the board (itâs specâed to run @ 3.3 - 5V).
This combination gives you the freedom to place the sensor anywhere (e.g. in the garden).
Be aware, though, that this works for transmitting binary values only, and that you will eat battery if youâre transmitting too often.
The YL-38 boards have a digital and an analogue output, and they all include a potentiometer, so you can tweak the threshold when to trigger the binary output, but of course you cannot get analogue measurements that way.
If you want analogue values, you can use the Fibaro FGRGBW device. You need to attach it to a 12 or 24 VDC supply, and you eventually need to separately power the sensor (or add a voltage converter). The device has 4 input lines that you can configure to be able to connect 0-10V sensors to. Thereâs quite a number of those available, and of course the aforementioned YL-38 board based sensors can be connected, too. Note the trick to get it to work is that for each input you want to use, you need to configure an own association group (to include your controller) in addition to the âstandardâ association.
I will soon documented a entire realtime Integration in openhab, with items and rule to manage TCP Push among others (need time), or make a special binding for it (need skill !)