Before sharing my setup I would first like to express my gratitude to the OpenHAB user community, especially Kai Kreuzer for founding OpenHab and Rikoshak for the deep insight and support he provides to the community. Without their help and insights provided throughout these forums, I would not have made the progress that I have.
This is a bit of long a post so my apologies in advance. I have been working with and using OpenHAB for about 5 months now. I am a chemist by education, an engineer by practice, and Manager/Director by profession at a Fortune 500 Company. Eighteen months ago I decided to retire after nearly 40 years in R&D, so I have some time to play now… Being an avid AV and Home Theater hobbyist, I am somewhat familiar with developing home control systems having built and used them for my AV setup. Also I have had the opportunity to use a Crestron installation in our executive conference room when I was working, and at several vacation rentals over the years. However having a ‘frugal engineer menatlity’ I could never justify the cost for my personal use at home. In March of 2019, having just returned home from an extended winter holiday wherein our rental condo had a Crestron system installed I decided to again take a deeper look at Home Automation Control, believing I could do at least as well, if not better than what I just left. At this point I looked at both commercial systems and Open Source solutions. I decided on OpenHAB because of it is hosted locally (no cloud),and its longevity, stability, extensibility, hardware support and active user community. Security and stability were and still are a top priority for me. My design approach is one of redundancy so that the system can be fully operated in a manual mode(wall switches and physical buttons) or an automated mode.
In parallel with my OpenHAB adventure, I also moved my whole house AV and dedicated Home Theater from iRule to DemoPAD control since iRule sold their control software to Kramer Corp, and iRule was no longer going to be supported. This was a lot to tackle and I had many long days and nights over a 3 month period learning (both had steep learning curves initially) and working both systems to achieve an integrated solution for both Control and Automation. Between both, I probably have invested more than 500 man-hours and while both systems are fully functional, there are always some tweaks and bugs to squash but the heavy lifting is done. Being able to focus like this during the early spring months was a benefit of being retired.
I am running OpenHAB in a Docker on a dual parity 30TB UnRAID Linux server that hosts all of my AV files (Movies,Music,Photos, HomeVideos, etc.). The UnRAID Sever also uses a BTRFS cache pool to increase the perceived write speeds to the server. OpenHAB resides on the SSD cache pool, and is backed-up to the UnRAID HDD weekly using automated scripts.
I have approx.
40 Insteon Switches, Dimmers, and Outlets
2 Insteon Garage Door Relays with Contact Sensors
2 Insteon Leak Detectors
Insteon/Venstar Thermostat
ISY994i Hub with PLM Insteon Interface which is my Bridge to OpenHAB
GlobalCache WiFitoIR for the few AV/HomeTheater devices that IR only
I use 3 preowned (eBay) iPad4’s in wall mount Kiosks to support OpenHAB HabPanel access in Kiosk mode. I use the iCab app for this.
I have 3 table top iPad Mini 4’s running DemoPAD for home Theater/AV control, and they are also selectively linked to HabPanel Dashboards rendered through DemoPAD WebPage Frames (ie HomeSecurity)
I have a 30 Yr old 3500+ sq ft Home that I designed and had custom built, and it was prewired for whole house AV, a dedicated theater, and home security. As part of my move into Home Automation I upgraded the Home Security using Konnected Alarm Panel INTERFACE and added a few additional relays. This allowed me to keep my wiring and panel box intact, but I am able to Arm/Disarm and Monitor status remotely as well as automate via OpenHAB rules to send notifications in case of an alarm. So while the Alarm System has 40+ sensors and switches, smoke and fire detectors, I have a single device interface to OpenHAB through the Konnected Binding.
I have about 375 lines of code in my rules files, with extensive use of Groups and Design Patterns (Thanks Rikoshak)
Approx 70 Things
Approx 300 Items
This includes some select items from the AV/Theater Systems such as Kodi, Denon/Marantz Amps/PrePro, but not all features nor the full system. That level of granularity and control i don’t believe is well suited for nor needed in an automation system. It is better reserved for a dedicated control system such as I have implemented through DemoPAD.
It’s likely that over the next winter I will take a crack at refactoring some of the code/items/groups to optimize and improve efficiency further.
I think the coolest feature I have implemented is Presence awareness. Using my Home Network Ping, iCloud and OwnTracks GPS taken together for redundancy, our iPhones have become Presence beacons. I have established GeoFences that trigger rules when we cross them, such as arming/disarming the security system and turning on/off house and perimeter lights depending on time of day, whose arriving/departing, etc so that we don’t enter a dark house or forget to turn off lights when we leave.
Not including the UnRaid Server and the AV/Theater Hardware which goes into the 10’s of thousands I have only invested about $1500 US tops for my OpenHAB Automation System. That’s a far cry from the $35,000 to $50,000 US for a full blown Crestron implementation, which while excellent isn’t functionally any better than what I have with my OpenHAB implementation.
As for next steps, I’m really not sure as I currently believe I am reaching a point of diminishing returns. I’m not a big fan of voice control or video feeds inside the home. I’m not likely to implement such in the near term. Perhaps a door lock or 2, motorized roller shades and more Insteon devices. Perhaps some AV upgrades with an Automation focus. I’m sure something will come along and grab my attention.
Bottom-line for me, OpenHAB is a GREAT Home Automation Platform to build from and I look forward to more great things in the future as the community continues to grow and OpenHAB gains additional capabilities and robustness.