
Ask HN: What technology/products do you use for home automation? - sk2code
I am very new to home automation and would like to implement the home automation for controlling:
Lighting (Indoor&#x2F;Outdoor),
Home Security &amp;
Thermostat<p>Finding a lot of material related to home automation on the internet and I am not sure which one to use:
Home automation protocols : Z-Wave, ZigBee, Insteon ;
Home Automation Hubs: SmartThings, Wink, Vera<p>Also very interested to know if someone has worked on open hardware for home automation using Raspberry Pi&#x2F;Arduino. Are there any good websites&#x2F;blogs to learn more about all this?
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dangrossman
I have z-wave door locks (Schlage), a ton of zigbee light bulbs (GE and Cree),
two wifi garage door openers (Chamberlain), the Nest thermostat and the Nest
Protect CO/smoke detector. I used to have some sensors and other security
stuff, but it was unreliable compared to a hardwired system, and wasn't worth
the effort for me to build my own security system. I sold them off on Amazon
Marketplace.

I used to use a Vera hub. It has an ugly, difficult to use UI but exposes an
API, and doesn't require going through the internet, which is nice. Once I got
tired of tinkering and building my own dashboards (e.g.
[http://www.dangrossman.info/wp-
content/uploads/home2-1024x51...](http://www.dangrossman.info/wp-
content/uploads/home2-1024x517.png)), I just bought a Wink which ties together
all of the wifi/zigbee/zwave products in a very nice mobile app that everyone
in my home is happy to use. Sold the Vera.

I have a cheap Android tablet mounted on a wall that has it open. My Amazon
Echo also connects to Wink, so lights and switches can be voice controlled.
IFTTT also has Wink channels.

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pjungwir
I have a Raspi and have been researching how to control my sprinklers with it.
The old sprinkler control box is flaky, failing, and inflexible, so I'd like
to replace it, and it seems like a good excuse for a Raspi project. I have 13
lines, each controlled by a 24 VAC solenoid. The Raspi GPIO pins put out 3.3
VDC. So I need to convert 13 GPIO signals from 3.3 VDC to 24 VAC. If it were
one line I'd buy a relay and be done, but I don't want to buy 13 relays. I
_think_ a couple of these will do the trick:

[http://www.ti.com/product/uln2003a](http://www.ti.com/product/uln2003a)

[http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/uln2003a.pdf](http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/uln2003a.pdf)

But I'm pretty fuzzy on electronics stuff.

If anyone wants to confirm that I'm on the right track that would be nice. :-)

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tmuir
If you're looking to program this stuff yourself, node-red (nodered.org) is a
good place to start. You can run it on raspberry pi or beaglebone, in addition
to any desktop platform. Its a browser based programming environment that
allows you to interface pretty much anything to anything. There are all sorts
of built in nodes for all of the big names in IoT, like Hue, Wemo, Insteon,
etc. There's also a ton of networking protocols built in. Additionally, you
can access the shell, which means you can have it run any
program/script/whatever you have local to your machine.

The end result is that it's every simple to do stuff like make make GPIO
changes trigger SMS/email/Push/HTTP etc, as well as the inverse, have network
traffic change the state of GPIO.

Best of all, its all javascript, so it should be very easy for most HNers to
get started.

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dirktheman
I made a self-watering plant container a couple of years ago: a moisture
sensor senses the moisture level in the soil. When it gets below the treshold
it sends a signal to a small pump, which extracts the water from a little
container in the pot. I had plans to make a water level sensor so that I would
get a SMS when it was time to fill the container, but I never got around it.
Arduinos rule, BTW!

~~~
koliber
Hook it up to a water line and you never need to worry about refilling your
container.

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TimLeland
I wrote a post on wirelessly controlling power outlets. This works great for
lamps. [http://timleland.com/wireless-power-
outlets/](http://timleland.com/wireless-power-outlets/)

~~~
saintfiends
That's a nice and easy setup. Is there a similar product for wall
switches/plates?

~~~
Someone
I recently came across
[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dobots/crownstone](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dobots/crownstone).
Looks very good to me, but will not be on the market for a year, and the
marketing may not 100% reflect reality.

I also haven't found how much power such a switch uses. It shouldn't be much,
but for such devices, I think it should be tiny, way below 1W, and that is
kind of hard to achieve (the electronics isn't the problem, but doing AC to DC
conversion and transformed nog down may)

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hyattjon
My wife does most of it for me...

