I definitely second that
And take into account all kind of wiring, data, power, DC, AC, CCTV…
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Agree.
This is the most complicated part. Most often wirering depends on the actualy devices chosen. So it would require somekind of strategy before hand.
In our house, all our wall switches are “low” power (24volt max 4amp) switches and centralized, using low power cables.
This mean I can not change the switches to using high power (230volt 10/13amp) system, even if I wanted to, unless I rewire everything. Our thermostats in each rooms is suffering from the same problem.
Second, the panel boxes (in-wall) are LKs (Fuga), which mean, they´ll have to be changed as well, if I want to change to anything else than LK´s Fuga… (Euro standard uses other kinds of in-wall panel boxes).
Bulding a new house trying to cover every situation is very complicated. It would need a clear strategy and probably some compromises.
I built 15 years ago 6 points of cat7 in every room and every light or gpo in a star config back to a hub controlled by dmx I am currently using openhab to control it thank you openhab it’s great!!! If I had to do it again and I am currently rewiring the lighting to 5vdc. I would run DC wiring to the lighting and gpo Purley as a energy saving and because it can easily be powered by solar and battery and then I can go off the grid in the near future good luck with your build all the best steve
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absolutely! I started to read into wirering a bit and I liked the idea to have a low-power house, most devices I have don’t need 240V anyway and cable is always more “stable” then wireless.
But: the house we bought was already pre-designed with fix-price. I had little influence on the electricity / wirering. And on the other hand, I like changing things, and cable in the wall are somewhat permanent 
So I will do most “smart”-things wireless, z-wave, homematic and wifi.
the wemos borads (esp8266) are worth looking at if you dont mind diy
Hi Philipp,
I welcome your intension and I will follow you with Interest. I hope I can also contribute something. I am just rebuilding my house and I want to use OH as an integrating system and supplierer of smart funktions. The basic functions of my house (switches, windows,…) are currently controlled by a Siemens PLC. New functions I have to integrate differently and mostly wireless. ESP8266 is looking promising to me. Let’s see where it lead us. Have you already opened a space on github?
Hi Robert,
great! Thanks for the reply, I do hope we can solve some challanges together by sharing our experiences!
Yes, I started on GitHub now. I have no much online yet, but I do have outlines the projects that I will work through over the next year as well as my first Wiki-Page with an Hardware/Software/Networking Overview. Please enjoy with care, as I am still building the repository.
Hi, what is your idea about communication with all items?
I’m doing the same and I’m using modbus, so one single cable (Ethernet cat 5e ftp) where two cables are reserves for modbus communication and the others are used for power distribution (15V). Items are sensor or actuator connected to Arduino where a dedicated board is used for power voltage step down.
Hi Philipp, as you know my current installation is wired. But all comfort function I‘ll realize with OH similar to your intension. I‘ve read the advises obove. Maybe I found a device that can support your dream working without any wire and mine as addition to the current wired solution. After my vacation I‘ll order some and test them. With new firmware (add MQTT) the device could be used als sensor or light switch or both in every room. What do you think about this possibility?
Here is the link to order and to the sources (software, hardware): https://www.tindie.com/products/squarofumi/badgy-iot-badge/
An altrnative could be, that your “relais” are programmed as “normally closed”. I have this in my home. That has the effect, that in case my home control system is “down” or “off” or " “disconnected” all lights switch “on” automatically. You can switch it off via the fuses in case it is not fixable immediately.
You can also combine your extra switch with it. Possible advantage: in case the control system breaks, lights go on automatically and you do not have to search for the special swicth in the dark.
Hi community,
coming back to my original question of this thread - “how / where to do the documentation” that is,
Thinking realisticly, I probably don’t do videos I will stick to the writing…
I have put some stuff on GitHub and think that is a good place to store everything. In addition, I will post in the community here when it fits… like just now what do you think about the “structure” of my Github repository?
The wiki will be my major location to store the documentation.
Configurations, Scripts and stuff will be stored on the “code”-part.
I split up the wiki into main sections, e.g. functions by room, where each will have an own page explaining rules and items for those functions in those rooms. I started this one so far
Any comments?
Thank you!!
It is amazing. Think i will start one for my home aswell. With codes and design papers and all. Even my manual for the wife
There are tons of places. You can keep it on GitHub. There is Instructables, I think MySensors got its start there. Make: Magazine has a community space similar to Instructables. If they like what you are doing they may include it in an upcoming edition. Hackaday.io might be a good choice. It might have more of a hardware focus than you want though.
I’m sure there are others but those are the ones I see come up frequently.
I’d like to see an overall design philosophy section of the wiki. What are your guiding principals? What are your deal killers and where are you willing to compromise?
I’ve also written this elsewhere on the forum, but I find a functional breakdown to be more useful than a location based breakdown. For example, the technologies, algorithms, and over all approach to your lighting is likely to be the same or very similar no matter what room you are in. So I would at least consider talking about each functionality as a topic and then if you need to you can document exceptions or difference in the docs about a specific room.
Hi,
my two cents about the issue. Are you familiar with Ansible automation? With ansible you could build the configurations for OpenHAB, separating the settings in configuration files and secrets, like passwords, certs and other private stuff. Once done, you can push all non-secrets to github for others to re-use and learn.
This way you prepare for the forthcoming catastrophies, like hw failures on ssd, raspi, whatever. They will break one day, or you will upgrade them. Then you get to reinstall it all by automation.
Another nice stuff is that all your settings becomes version controlled. It’s safe to test stuff, you can easily revert back.
I use it heavily to automate my personal servers, along with professional duties.
Good luck with your project, looking forward to read about it
:+1 for Ansible. I just made a long reply in another thread promoting it’s use.
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I looked into Ansible, but didn’t get it. Then @rikoshak reponded, i looked into it again, still don’t really quite get it. Is it really more than a “better-readable” batch file for ssh commands?
I wrote down my “installation procedure” on this GitHub page… maybe you can have a look and confirm that using Ansible would make sense in my scenario?
Thanks!
Thank you for the input. I know Instructables, but didn’t think about doing the documentation there. Thinking about it after your post and I like the idea… but maybe not during the “work in progress” phase
So I used your comments to further optimize my wiki-layout in that github page. I have added a more generic Concepts/How I do section and think that will improve the useability of the wiki.
My guiding princibles are a todo for the intro page I think.
Thanks
PhiL
The difference between wiki and Ansible would be that instead of listing instructions on how to do stuff, and manually doing them, or running bunch of scripts, you could just run ansible playbook and it would do all your setup, starting from installing the virtual machines and configuring them. And that could be run over and over again to configure the host and guest systems, and it wouldn’t break. Compared to script, which often would break on second runs. This gives you version control of system setup.
The first step to use Ansible would be “glorified ssh”, but then it really doesn’t bring much benefits. There is lot of power in templates and modules, that go beyond that. But never mind, it was just a suggestion. It might be too big step to start with, if you aren’t used to it.
BTW, I see you are using pfsense. I use similar, OPNSense (fork of it, really great on features), in front of OpenHAB, using it’s HAProxy feature to terminate SSL and do the authorisations. It has worked great. I assume pfsense is similar. But unlike you running them in virtual machines, I run OPNSense on dedicated APU2 board. I was looking for low power passive board. Then I run RHEL on similar APU2 board, and OpenHAB is there as a container. RHEL hosts other related containers too, like grafana and node-red. So no virtualisation involved.
But this is getting of topic, just wanted to give readers some ideas to support such setup. Good luck with yours, and great that you are documenting it!
I see you are using gitlab. For reference, here’s how such could be setup using Ansible. https://github.com/ikke-t/ansible-gitlab-aws
I used that while I needed gitlab. Instead of VMware, I used AWS.
But now this is totally off-topic, I’ll shut up 
No don’t.
Start a new thread or your own wiki and share your setup
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