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Why Are Smart Homes Not?

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Consumer home automation is shaping up to be a battle of barely-functioning walled gardens. To the enterprising hacker, home automation can be incredibly fun and rewarding.

A few years ago, I started out with a Raspberry Pi and a 433 MHz USB adapter pre-programmed for the proprietary Home Easy protocol. Over time, I added a CUL transmitter capable of speaking the HomeMatic bidirectional protocol, as well as hooked different things up to the GPIO pins.

While the software is kind of clunky to administrate, it comes with an easy-enough front end UI which is accessible via WLAN and is also permanently displayed on wall-mounted el cheapo mini tablets. The things I have hooked up are primarily lighting, heating, and the external window shutters – and on the input side there are thermostats, motions sensors, and wireless buttons disguised as ordinary light switches.

I grant you that being able to control these things from any computer is kind of gimmicky, but automation is where the real value lies.

Now the house has a daily routine, like an organic thing: Shortly before the sun comes up, the window shutters open and the external lights go out. The heater in my office comes to life a bit before that. When I’m away, the house enters into “away” mode: turning off all unnecessary devices. Towards the evening, minimal internal lighting comes to life, then external lights, and after sunset the shutters close automatically. When I go to bed, I switch the house to “sleep mode”, which again turns off all unnecessary devices and opens the shutters in my bedroom (I like to sleep with an open window). When Openweathermap shows stormy winds in my area, the shutters automatically close to protect the windows from debris. There are motion sensors to activate lights when someone is passing through a corridor and the light level is too low. When a smoke alarm goes off, all shutters open and all lights are turned on, so the house is prepped for emergency intervention if necessary.

Here’s the software side of the project: https://github.com/Udo/HomeOverlord though it’s not exactly fit for public consumption (there’s a lot of cobbled-together WTF code), the repo has a pretty good overview of what the system can do.

All this has been totally fun. I have to admit, when the system breaks it can be unfortunate at times, but it runs relatively stable and I know exactly how to fix things. No commercial system would ever be able to tie together all the different home automation standards and protocols, and of course programmability is the end-all-be-all solution to everything. I’m looking forward to adding more HA-enabled devices to my home. Right now I’m working on an IR diode option that allows me to control the AC units. Over time I’d like to incorporate more presence sensors so I can phase out wall-mounted switches.

I’m less optimistic about the pure consumer aspect of home automation, they are already ending up with myriads of remote controls and apps and little boxes everywhere, none of which talk to the other, and all of which have to be constantly tricked into sort-of doing what you want.

 


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