Hi Thomas,
Thank you for taking the time to help me.
We just bought a house out in the countryside.
We were living in the city for the last few years.
My wife is a bit nervous about how dark it is when she comes home from work.
The house and the garden is in darkness.
So I want to control some lights outside the house (under the eaves) that will work on a timer.
I want them to come on at , say, 5pm, and go off at 11pm. Maybe they will come in the morning for an hour if its dark when we leave for work too.
So the lights are already installed and the wires for the lights are already in the walls/roof.
There is a conventional lightswitch that controls them located inside the house in the hallway.
So I was planning on replacing the conventional lightswitch with a timer or something that could control the lights.
Then, because I work in computers, I spotted OpenHab and started reading about it.
Hence the question now.
So if my initial OpenHAb setup is just a PC and one switch/actuator that can control a single lighting circuit then I will be very happy.
In future I would expand the set up to include another lighting circuit that has five lights along the driveway.
For this I would like it to be operated in conjunction with a sensor beam across the gateway… so a vehicle entering my driveway would cause the lights to come on. I prefer a beam to a PIR because I have a PIR spotlight that is frequently activated by cats and foxes … very annoying…
So, just to get started I would hope to have a lightswitch something like this one:
http://www.timeguard.com/products/time/immersion-and-general-purpose-timeswitches/wi-fi-controlled-fused-spur
That one would be ideal but its ‘closed’, it must be controlled from the manufacturers servers… and I would prefer to have better control of things myself.
I also want to be careful that I select a switch that is compliant with european electrical standards. I don’t want to have my house insurance people have any excuse not to pay out in the event of a fire.
Its funny you mention the WAF (though I define it as the Wife Acceptance Factor) because I always have to take this into account. She hates having more than one remote control for watching TV … heh… heh… So I put the Kodi app in her phone and now she’s happy…
My wife is computer literate so she would be happy enough to work with the OpenHab interface if needed.
But I think for the Irish winter I would just set the lighting schedule and leave it for six months …
Yes it looks like there is a wide choice with OpenHab… but maybe you can appreciate that for a beginner its not always a good thing to have so much choice It can me a bit confusing too eh?
Thanks again for your help
PJ