- 48 Things, 308 Items, 8 systems (homematic, avm, hue, tradfri, tinkerforge, piface, Plain GPIO (4 pi’s 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
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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 I’ve 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.
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im in the uk too
it looks like alot of you are using z-wave for your sensors how painfull is the setup process
I basically posted my setup here:
https://community.openhab.org/t/lowes-iris-zigbee-questions
Some more additional:
- DIY Google Assistant
- DIY Alexa
- DIY Siri
- DIY Cortana
- RTL-SDR
- 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 “Ring” 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 ‘category’
- 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 “Some one is at the front door.”
- 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
I’m 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 don’t 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).
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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.
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still “hiding” 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
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so far about 150 EUR
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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 doesn’t 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 don’t care so much about the power but my water meter would be very interesting to monitor like this. I’ll 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, 20’ or more in my house).
I’d 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. I’ve degrees in all three.
This posting has a description of the typical heating/cooling for houses in most of the places I’ve 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 heater’s fan. When the top floor temp is at or below the target temp I turn off the heater’s 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 didn’t need to go DIY but I had these Arduinos and RFM69HW transceivers sitting here…) 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 don’t need to install it for now. We will probably eventually get central air for other reasons (e.g. you can’t 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.
Our home is an off-grid house on a small rural property (80 acres) in Queensland Australia. The focus is on energy efficiency and self sufficiency.
The system originally ran from a few Arduino megas running my own code including custom communication protocols (because I had not heard of MQTT.) These have now been updated to use MQTT and OpenHab.
How big is your system (Sensors,Switches ect)
About 70 sensors/input devices in all. These report on normal things like temperature and humidity, but also things like the depth of water in our bore (800m from the house) and the level of water in our tanks. The solar power system uses Morningstar controllers that support MODBUS and a victron battery monitor outputs data to a custom (esp8266 based) serial to MQTT relay. Most of the lights and power points have Sonoff devices behind them (running my own software).
16 cameras and a watering system that looks after about 55 fruit trees. OpenHab, Weewx and Mosqueeto on a Pi3.
How long have you been working on your setup
I started with the Arduinos about 4 years ago. Discovered OpenHab about 2 months ago.
How many lines of code run your rules (Total Lines of all files)
About 1600 - I’m a PHP/C++ programmer - so not very good at this scripting javascript like code. Others would probably look at my rules and wonder why I’m doing it like that 
Whats the best feature your system has
Voice control from Apple Watch is cool. Ability to automatically turn electrical loads off and on as solar power permits. Turn generator on locally or remotely by voice if required. Ability to monitor the bore and automatically alter watering of fruit trees accordingly. Oh and the cat flap automatically tracks each of the two cats in and out - and prevents them from exiting after sunset.
What are you adding or doing next
Currently building an interface to get data out of our solar water heating system - this will provide data to help decide when to dump surplus solar electricity into the water heater element.
Does everyone in your house like your system
The word “tolerate” comes to mind 
How much has it all cost
Almost everything has been built on low cost hardware (sonoff devices, arduino etc). I would guess around US$600
My job - well I started life as an electrician before moving into IT. I am currently semi-retired but still doing a little web development etc.
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1600 doesn’t sound too bad. I love helping people improve their rules if you ever have the desire to look for improvements.
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How big is your system (Sensors,Switches ect)
did not count, but about 40 (~15 Hue lights, a few sensors, 6 outlets, 6 squeezeplayers, etc); rental apartment so there are limitations on what I can do…
something like 250 items
How long have you been working on your setup
Oh my, 3-4 years I started with one of the earlier 1.something versions of OH
How many lines of code run your rules (Total Lines of all files)
somewhere a little under 400
Whats the best feature your system has
Having 20 some lights coming automatically (thanks to the great DP from @rlkoshak) and cute little good night messages for my wife when all lights are switched off
what are you adding or doing next
Presence would be nice, but failsafe presence detection is difficult to achieve…
does everyone in your house like your system
very much (my wife loves it and guests are dutifully impressed)
how much has it all cost
probably around 1500 USD
4 Years and least 2 Years with OpenHab…
round about 100 Aktor’s / Bulbs and so on …
(Homematic/Hue/Tradfri/Z-Wave)
On my OpenHAB Raspberry 4000 Lines of Code …
Little NodeJS Apps / Bash Script / CEC Commands on certain Raspberry Pi Zero
A lot of Money … but the IoT and Programming is just my Hobby
WTF … Every Wall One Tablet installed ? 
Thanks Rich. I appreciate the kind offer. You have already helped more than you know. Your posts and comments here have been a cornerstone in developing my rules.
Many thanks for your contributions.
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Take a look at GitHub - bemasher/rtlamr: An rtl-sdr receiver for Itron ERT compatible smart meters operating in the 900MHz ISM band. Make sure your meter support ERT. If not, I suggest you use PG&E’s Green Button API (assuming you’re on PG&E)
I’ll see if I can come up with a tut for this. I haven’t touched my blog in ages
Basically, Im using a small raspberry Pi zero wireless with a camera on it. Then a WebRTC to notify subscribers (browser or my android app {not in Google Play}). I hooked up a small ESP01 on the doorbell chime to detect if someone pressed the door bell. The rPIZero then ‘calls’ my phone. The app I made pushes a notification to the phone also and when I click the notification, it connects to my security camera on the front door. The camera has 2-way audio, and that’s how I can ‘answer’ people from anywhere.
PHP, nice! I was affiliated with ClipBucket before they went open source. I miss PHP
Wow! I’ve been planning for a LOOOOONG time to get my masters, but even now, I just don’t have time 
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I know right HA can be had for cheap but for me, the biggest cost was the server I made for BlueIRIS. Not all of my cameras are H264 so there’s a lot of encoding happening. 20+ 2+MP cameras, recording only on motion and my i7 always hovers at 60%, with several cameras recording, it can spike close to 100% even with HW Acceleration 
Planning to upgraded to a coffeelake setup (don’t tell my wife LOL)
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That would actually be fantastic because it addresses a couple of ideas I’ve had that I’ve left on the back burner. How did you hook the ESP01 to the chime? I’ve some arduinos and now some esp8266s but I’m pretty sure the chime is not running at 3.5v/5v so did you hook of a regulator or something like that? Did you 3D print the cases or repurpose something?
Except for the camera and a case, I think I have all the parts I need to build this out. I’ve already a pretty good idea how I would handle the software side of things, I just haven’t had time to get on a ladder with a voltage meter to see what my current chime and button uses. I’m kind of hoping I can use the wires from the button, kind of like I did for the garage door opener. Failing that, I might use a sound detector and just report a doorbell for loud noises. It will be in the box with the chime so I should be able to tune it way down so it only triggers on the door bell and not for the dog barking at said door bell.
I probably would not have done either of my master’s if I had not lucked into them. Both were executive masters (no thesis) and specially taylored for my former employer. So that meant we met in the evenings and the professors came to us at work. The first one (Transdiciplinary Engineering from Texas Tech) had a master’s project (thesis in all but name) but the second one (Security Engineering from SMU) was just coursework. That was hard enough to work full time and get all the classwork done, and I wasn’t married nor had a kid yet. Had work not paid for it and made it easier to do, I probably never would have done either of them.
Some day I want to go back for a PhD, but I think I’ll wait until my four-year-old graduates college first. It will probably be hard to get accepted into a program though since neither of my master’s had a full thesis. But if I were to start right now, I’d definitely do something related to IoT security.
It actually measured ~16V
Using a voltage divider, I brought voltage down to ~5V, which feeds a relay that will bring the GPIO to ground. On LOW Interrupt, that’s the indicator the chime is ringing. For my 16V, it was a perfect for 16.5K and 7.5K resistors to bring it down to 5V.
Quick Tip: on your code, throttle your logic ( I set mine to 2 mins ) so you don’t get a notification for every chime (within that time frame). My sons love to play with the doorbell button I added the throttling logic purely based on experience. LOL
I 3d print my cases, but in this case (ESP), I didn’t need to. The ESP was small enough to fit inside the doorbell hardware itself. I reused the 16V to power the esp using a step-down converter.
For the “ring” camera, yes I printed the case. The rPi camera fits perfectly to the peephole (interior side). I didn’t remove the lens/glass, so it was like a free fish-eye lens hehehe
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How big is your system (Sensors,Switches ect)
I have 25 ZWave devices: Power monitor, motion sensors, switches, siren, Water sensor, hand-held remotes, Garage door Openers and Sensors. I also hooked up my 3 networked Onkyo AV receivers.
How long have you been working on your setup
A little over 1 year.
How many lines of code run your rules (Total Lines of all files)
Around 600 lines. The biggest chunks of code are scenes for my AV equipment which I can control via my 3 Amazon Echo Dot’s or using the remote controls. I’m sure it could be streamlined a lot.
Whats the best feature your system has
We have a Aquatic turtle, the lights in the tank go on and off automatically. We also have a TV mounted to the back of the tank and send videos from YouTube to it. My wife also is prone to leaving the doors that open into the basking area open by mistake and we had the turtle jump out (it’s 5’ up). So now I have a sensor on it that sounds a siren if it’s left open too long!
What are you adding or doing next
I have been experimenting with automating streaming YouTube videos to the turtle tank’s Chromecast. I also have IP cameras and might do some integration with them in the future. I also have some Alexa controlled Wifi switches that I want to integrate plus a Broadlink IR transmitter to control our Mini-Split HVAC that I haven’t done much with.
Does everyone in your house like your system
Yes very much so although my wife isn’t too interested in the technicalities of it.
How much has it all cost
I don’t have too much of an idea but I suspect it’s less than $500.
My Occupation
I’m a database architect and have been in software development for many years. I enjoy tinkering with the IoT stuff, definitely a hobby.
In OH2.x z-wave devices can be discovered and then setup accordingly. Coming from OH1.8.x which is entirely a text based config I wanted the same in OH2.x, however that’s not fully possible at the moment. So in my setup I created all of the items and assigned them to the discovered z-wave devices.
Not a difficult process. Also you get to learn a great deal about how it all works together.
Happy to offer you support where I can if you need any.
Garry