Number of devices isnāt really a good measure because at least half of my system deals with Web APIs, presence detection, etc.
1 light switch
7 outlets
1 dual relay wired to a Raspberry Pi
1 IP camera, also connected to a Raspberry Pi
1 Nest
3 Smoke/CO alarms
1 whole house power meter
5 door sensors
2 DIY Multisensors
19 devices, which makes up around half of the total home automation.
You didnāt ask, but the number of Items/Things might be a better measure:
33 Things
214 Item (plus or minus a few)
3 years ish. I havenāt kept track. Since OH 1.6 or 1.7.
701, though I go to great lengths to make my rules short and concise. At their max I had over 2000 lines to do less than I do now.
Coolest feature: When I get to the corner of my street, a popup appears on my phone asking to open the garage. Can also say āOK Google, ask autovoice to open the garage.ā (could probably create a shortcut for that but havenāt)
Most useful: Treat my whole house fan like an air conditioner in the summer (seriously do not understand why Nest doesnāt already do this). We donāt have central air but pulling the cold basement air to the upper floors can make a 5-10 degree F difference.
Playing with a Google AIY Voice to control the system and perhaps use to make announcements. Iām not sold on voice interfaces in general so Iām mostly just playing, but my four-year-old LOVES asking questions of the āOK Google Boxā.
Yes. I purposefully build the automation so that it is transparent. The family primarily only notices when it is not working.
Hard to say. Iāve added to it little by little over the years and I already had a lot of stuff already. And Iāve only purchased things on steep discount so it is hard to back into the overall cost. Iād be surprised if Iāve spent more than $1000. NOTE: The Nest was free from my power company.
misc sensors for well level, water pressure, septic tank, water temp, custom whole house reverse osmosis system, filers sensors, propane tank, air quality monitors, driveway sensors, etc.
Working on setup for about 3 years
I wish it was less, but I suck at programming, 28 rules 2836 lines, sitemap is 2303 lines.
I like the tablets in every room, kids love the echos, wife likes that the appliances can SMS her when done and the whole house RO system.
I already have multiple directional driveway sensors that announce when someone enters (but not leaving) the driveway, but I would like to add OpenALPR and some rules to announce when a known car make / plate enters our driveway.
approx 400 items in total including 201 switches, 30 dimmers, 38 zwave devices, lutron, powermax alarm, 5 IP cameras, quite a lot of other things
Three years
4000 lines
when someone rings the doorbell the sonos speakers sound a notification, a notification goes to our phones, we get an image of the person outside and the ability to let them in or play them a message instructing them to leave a parcel.
150 devices, thereof 126 Z-Wave in 3 different Z-Wave networks with 3 USB-Sticks connected by USB over IP (dimmers, switches, thermostats, motions sensors, roller shutters, power plugs), some D-Link-Smarthome devices, network devices, Fritxbox, Sonos, Synology etc.), 786 items
2,5 years. I built a new house and moved in one year ago. Before I did a lot of testing in my old house and played around before deciding to use OpenHab and Z-Wave as my main backbone in the new (smarter) home.
About 2.000 lines of code
Self inspection features: If any of the 3 Z-Wave controllers is not updating any item for 15 minutes (mostly because of some temporary LAN/WLAN issue) I get informed by mail and the system itselfs restarts the Z-Wave binding via Excec-Binding to heal itself. Before this feature reliability was an issue.
Also nice is the auto dimming level for motion sensor triggered lights depending on the time of day. During the night time only a very shady light is activated (Dimmer about 10%, so if the kids go to toilet or move to the parents bedroom they are not woken up completely by intensive brightness).
More Door/Window sensors and more automation rules.
My wife is not amused about the enormous amount of time I spent in the new hobby but likes features like the night dimming level of lights
As I built a new house and furnished every switch, thermostat roller shutter etc. as a new device the costs are quite high at about 7.000 ⬠. However the alternative smarthome offers I had from the electricians all based on KNX and would have summed up to 20.000 tom 25.000 ā¬. If I would valuate my own spent time aganinst this it might be the same after all but half the fun
about 80 ZWave and 30 other radio devices plus a number of smart devices (such as TV, AVR, mower, ventilation unit,ā¦), about 600 items
three years as well (started when we`ve done a major house extension)
current count is 4818, including some non-production code. I like āverboseā programming style, though, plus Iām too lazy to do anything about it.
See this post and my recent presentation linked to here (scroll down a bit).
trying to get the system to be more stable and reliable (fix OH, rule and config bugs)
overall yes, but ālikingā is an ongoing, constantly changing thing, and every new feature sets a new standard.
stopped counting at 5kā¬, probably 7k⬠altogether now. But thatās including 2 robots, several lights and other stuff.
But hey, just as @vossivossi said: it would have been 20+k⬠in KNX (let alone in an old house), and after all itās just for fun.
48 Things, 308 Items, 8 systems (homematic, avm, hue, tradfri, tinkerforge, piface, Plain GPIO (4 piās with mqtt))
about 3 years
1313
Technical: Central logging (graylog2) and monitoring (check_mk)
Operational: Outdoor lights controlled by astro dates, Shutoff forgotten indoor lights at night when TV or Computers pull no more power, Open carport gate from mobile early, so no more waiting in front of the opening gate
Integrate zoneminder, motorize window blinds
In principle yes. But acceptance for failure much lower than expected. Savings in power consumption and natural gas consumption are appreciated
Shortly Below 1K, but uncounted amount of time in making GPIO based sensors and actors by myself
1
hard to say. 9 rooms with at least 1 temp and humidity sensor, 1 light, 1 radiator, 2 window/door contacts per room.
Additionally lights outside.
Garden + 2 greenhouses a pond and an aeroponics system all controlled by openhab
My CV controlled by openhab.
Several kitchen appliances monitored by openhab. I am not that interested in remotely switching on a coffeemachine, but I do want to know if my oven and stove are OFF when they need to be. Similar for e.g. my fireplace.
Most of the hardware is Wemos or Sonoff, but I also use an Arduino and have incorporated my previous 433Mhz driven system in openHAB
2 9 mo?
3 a lot but not really a good measure as I am trying a lot. I will probably cut out a lot in future
4 When my son is home alone and he cranks up the heating, I can remotely just bring it back to reasonable proportions
5 largely just polishing/testing current system, but I am working on a completely DIY curtain opener, an MQTT controlled triac dimmer and a way to maybe monitor my sleep pattern
6 My wife loves anything I do as long as she can still use the remote for the TV
7 I have no idea 500 Euro??
Let me add that for now I probably have added stuff/functions that might not be really needed, but that was I guess for educational purposes. I will probably root out a lot in future
My interface could be smoother but am not really bothered by it that much by it because I do not want to interface with openHAB all that much. I knew I was on the right track when i realised that for the longest time i rarely touched a light switch anymore, neither a physical one, nor a virtual one
How big is your system (Sensors,Switches ect): Approx 50 devices (ZWave, X10, Hue & Nest)
How long have you been working on your setup: 18 months with openHAB but started small about 15 years ago.
How many lines of code run your rules (Total Lines of all files): About 500 lines of code and growing now that Iāve migrated to OH2.x
Whats the best feature your system has: WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor)
what are you adding or doing next: Announcements via Sonos for my train heading to work
does everyone in your house like your system: Toilet lights that switch on as the door is opened
how much has it all cost: £1000 and growing, we have limited choice in the UK so most devices are expensive.
DIY tea5767-based radio, that automatically turns on when I arm the house alarm, and turns off when alarm is disarmed
DIY Home security stuff
DIY āRingā type doorbell
DIY Samsung TV integration using Samsung Service port
Sprinkler automation (433mhz/ESP8266-01) and soil moisture sensor
All started from Security Cameras (about 5 years ago). Then started working on automation.
Too many to count since my rules are separated/organized per ācategoryā
Presence detection using PIR sensors, camera motion detection, device presence.
RTL-SDR-based smart-meter reading
PG&E Green Button API integration ( I think I should create a binding for this for others)
Human simulation (turn on/off radio randomly, turns off/on random lights)
But my favorite is this:
When someone is at my front door, my wall-mounted HABPanel will say āSome one is at the front door.ā
HabPanel dashboard switches to a page with the front door security camera feed.
If TV is turned on, it will activate a PIP (picture in picture) with the front door camera feed. This is done though the developer terminal port (found in most Samsung TVs). The feed is connected to the coax cable (since you can only have 1 input + coax on PiP). The feed to the coax is from a (orange pi zero) with Chromium launch (with the feed) through an RF vga modulator.
Favorite runner-ups
I arm/disarm my alarm system using NFC mounted inside the garage.
LORA garage remote (think 1 mile lol)
Text notification that garage was left open
Iām trying to incorporate EAS (emergency alert system) to HABPanel.
Trying to automatically cut-off gas line to stove when alarm is armed (no one is home!)
They donāt have a choice LOL
a lot
I want to add to the list of questions:
What do you do for a living?
Software Engineer/Developer since 2003. Been in software/tech since high school.
Hi @rlkoshak, could you be more specific how this works? I have also been thinking about something like this. I have a house with 3 floors, the lowest one is basement with cold air. We have 2 independent chimneys and in the first one (the main) 4 pipes, one used for smoke coming from coal automatic kettle, second pipe used to pull bad air from kitchen and two are not used. The other chimney with 2 tubes, not used. So I thought to use it to get cold air to a third floor.
Thanks
And to be a little on topic:
1 x RPi, 3 x ESP8266, 2 PIRs, 1 x relay power outlet, 1 x ultrasonic sensor, 2 x temperature
about half a year
few hundreds
I have that automated coal kettle (maybe not the best translation) here is a picture:
And in the back container I have to put coal, which is autoatically transferred to the left side and burnt. And as I am lazy, I sometimes come too late, when all the coal is burnt and fire is off, house getting cold, family pissed at me
So I put the ultrasonic distance measuring sensor to the top cover of the container connected to ESP8266 and measuring distance to the coal and sending via MQTT. The longer the distance, the less coal. And some rules in openhab and persistence makes it all to percentages as well as estimation (= my deadline :-)) when the coal will be empty based on change in last 24 and 48 hours. Sending me summary to mobile twice a day. I also added outside temperature to graph to see relations to weather.
Green dots is the measurement in cm, the area chart remaining coal in %, red and blue = temperature outside (red above zero, blue below zero).
more PIR sensors (build DIY sophisticated alarm system) as well as cheap magnetic sensors and some power outlets to command water pump for garden, something about swimming pool (temperature, maybe the PH measurement) etc.
still āhidingā it from others, I mean most of the features used by myself, but this will change but needs to be well tested and perfectly working
so far about 150 EUR
working in administrative )no relation to programming and developing, that is just my hobby, started by VBA macros in MS Office, moving to a simple android app, over to openhab and Arduino platform. With ESP I also started with electronics and I love it more and more.
Pretty easy, at least it was for me. But when it doesnāt work it can be a pain. How it works is a little opaque.
I missed your post but just saw this and became intrigued. I donāt care so much about the power but my water meter would be very interesting to monitor like this. Iāll have to try this out (once I get my Google AIY project going, BTW, the stereo mic that comes with the AIY Kit has very impressive range, 20ā or more in my house).
Iād love to hear more about the approach you took.
If on linux: wc -l /etc/openhab2/rules/*.rules will give you the line count.
Currently a Computer Security Engineer. Started my career (1999) as a software developer, moved into systems engineering, and finally moved to computer security. Iāve degrees in all three.
This posting has a description of the typical heating/cooling for houses in most of the places Iāve ever lived in the US.
Given this, it is really pretty simple. I have a DIY temp sensor in the basement and a DIY temp sensor on the top floor (Nest reports temp for the main floor). When the top floor temp is greater than target temp (plus some for hysteresis) and the outside temp is greater than the target temp, and the top floor is warmer than the basement I turn on the heaterās fan. When the top floor temp is at or below the target temp I turn off the heaterās fan. The fan draws air from the ground floor and basement and circulates it throughout the house.
Except for needing to build the sensors (I probably didnāt need to go DIY but I had these Arduinos and RFM69HW transceivers sitting hereā¦) it is really quite a simple setup. But it makes enough of a difference that my born in Alabama wife who could not fathom a house without central air to agree we donāt need to install it for now. We will probably eventually get central air for other reasons (e.g. you canāt open your windows when the mountains just to the west are on fire) but it works for now just using the fan.
I have no idea how to make something like this work with your setup.