What have people done with their existing openhab setups when moving to a new house? Did you show off your automation system when selling your house? Did you leave your entire installation for the new owners? Did you take some parts with you?
I used a raspberry pi for my setup. I use zwave for my lighting control (some smart bulbs and others, around 8 or so, wall switches). My openhab interfaces to my alarm system and my Nest thermostat as well. I don’t have any touchscreens mounted on walls.
My thought was to just not advertise anything regarding the home automation setup mainly because of the hassle with trying to give someone documentation on the rules and setup. I would take my raspberry pi (and zwave stick and alarm interface module) when moving. I would of course leave the wall switches installed (not worth the effort to remove and replace). The new owners could use smartthings or something else and control the switches or just use the nice dimming capabilities of most of them.
Anyway, I’m curious to hear what others have done when moving. Thanks!
While I am not in a moving scenario yet, I have had thoughts of this while drifting off to sleep.
I think I will take my OH system with me, but leave a Pi on prem with a demo HAPanel setup so the realtor can show the visitors that all the switches are automated and leave some of my basic rules in place (basement stairs hallway light turning on when the door opens).
But as for some door sensors, a single motion sensor, a dry connect inside my garage door opener…I will probably attempt to reclaim some of them to save some cost of having to get the next dwelling to how I want…Also need a plan on how I am going to get a data center rack out of the basement, as it didn’t fit down the stair well very easily, and has a lot of stuff that would have to go back up the stairs.
But as I probably have at least another decade in my money pit, the spouse and I will have time to look for the next dwelling (and hopefully not get screwed with another housing crash) and migrate slowly into the new place and clean up the current house without the day to day life happening.
When we last moved, the houses were only a couple of miles apart. We moved most of our stuff in one weekend but spent the next 3 months preparing the old house for sale. The biggest project way laying new flooring in many rooms. We then listed it for sale.
Most people do not have that luxury though because they need the money from the old house to pay for the new one. We did use a short term loan against a retirement plan to help. You are paying interest to yourself that way.
We did this about two years ago. While the house was on the market, we took out everything we could so we could use in the next house, mostly door contact sensors and z-wave switches. Everything else, like the cameras and appliances were easier to move. If I remember right, two z-wave switches were left behind because I ran out of time taking care of other things.
Our realtor was not savvy about home automation and I didn’t think it would have gotten us more money in the sale, so that and not wanting to buy everything again were the driving force behind taking everything with us.
I was fortunate enough to be moved into SAP Administration a few years back and added quite a boost to the yearly income; currently our house loan and a recent 10,000 loan we had to take for solar panel installation…we are currently setting extra money aside and paying extra on our principals to be rid of these. So hopefully I won’t need the profit from the old house to obtain the new house and can just use the profit to apply it to the principal of the next loan and be done a couple of years after signing the loan.
Actually, our oldest son lives with us. The old house was paid off so we were able to help him get the mortgage on the new house. The short term retirement plan loan helped bridge the gap between sales.
I’m going to be moving in the next year with the added benefit of seeking the house as a ‘smart home’.
So I’ll be leaving most of my stuff (except echo’s) and have already set everything up any ‘cloud based’ systems on a generic email so I can go… here you go… just got to make a small O&M manual to let them know what everything is.
I’d change some bits if doing it all again so may aswell get some dollar back in the sale, just got to market it right.
And it’s not like I can just take the air con with me (UK so not many have domestically)
I’d like to think it depends on the tech you’re using.
My own openHAB-installation only adds to the already existing “smart” solutions, meaning I have KNX for lights, shutters, and many other actuators. most other stuff is per se “on prem” (aka no cloud-only!) stuff, which openHAB keeps together and I can have rules over many applicances.
So in my case, it depends, if I’d sell this tech also: e.g. eKey fingerprinting, Nuki dooropener, etc…
Not that I’ll sell my house anytime soon, but I think I’ll strip down my items and rules to those tech I’ll leave behind. Perhaps remove some of the personlized rules (like presence on which mobile is in the Wifi, …) - but I’d leave the pi and everything behind.
