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What is the Current State of Home Automation?
StonyCreekBare writes "What do people have to say about the current state of Home Automation software? Preferably Linux based, but mainly the field in general, and principally the DIY flavors as opposed to the upscale turnkey systems. I am familiar with Misterhouse, HomeSeer and Automated Living's HAL2000, all of which have serious flaws and weaknesses, but which sometimes succeed well in specific areas. But in all cases, the state of the art seems to have moved little in the last decade. Is any interesting work being done in this space? Or should I just grab one of the three and try to mold it to fit my vision of what it should be? Misterhouse at least is open source so I can add new features, but it has not had an update in a long long time and seems to be missing some modern stuff. The other two are expensive and closed source, and from all I can see, quite flawed, not the least by their dependence on intimate ties to Microsoft. Yet they seem to offer a lot more than Misterhouse despite their weaknesses. Is the Home Automation field as bleak as it appears? Or have I missed the forest for the trees?" What home automation projects have people tackled? Any examples of wild success or failure?
Since you bought up the open source / closed source fight, if you want customization that Misterhouse might be good. You can then submit patches and updates for the project (it seems it's still sometimes updated, last time in 2008)
But because the other ones are closed source, it doesn't mean you cant add features in to them. HomeSeer supports 3rd party plug-in development and these kind of systems tend to be really configurable always.
Wife 1.0 continues to work quite well, thank you.
The reason that the field hasn't developed or matured is that the approach being taken for most products is wrong. There needs to be a domicile wireless standard that either uses the wifi or separate from it. They need key-based access control, so that your Android or iPhone or whatever can interface with them. New devices can be autodetected.
The problem is that no one has taken the lead and made this happen. It can though. For example, cooking supper your toaster, oven, microwave, and stovetop could all supply timing and temperature information to the network, and you could make changes to each from your phone/console/ps3/etc.
This isn't going to happen if every device has to have a driver for every other device. It won't happen if you have to add each device manually (ie, configure, not just adding your key). But it should instead be made a self-organizing system.
A few links might have helped. I haven't heard of "Misterhouse" or any of the other stuff you mentioned. Don't assume lack of ignorance on anybody's part -- everybody is ignorant about something.
Free Martian Whores!
I'm an open source fan personally, so I'd do Misterhouse. My father had a setup a few years back that he home-built with a linux distro that was made for a little headless machine that he stuck in the basement. He got really complex with it and did all the programming himself in Assembly (he's a masochist) instead of making use of the built-in tools. He wanted to do it HIS way. It worked great though. My dad's HA setup was dialed into all of the lighting and thermostat controls for the house and it did some cool stuff. He had a temperature probe on the outside of the house, and the system would decide (based on outside temperature, time of day, and whether anyone was in the house) whether or not to run the A/C to keep the house cool, but first it would spin up all the ceiling fans.
In reference to the "serious flaws" and weaknesses...ever wondered why none of the home automation tech we've been promised since 1950 has come to be common in homes? Things like auto-opening drapes, autoadjusting lighting, stuff like that. Ever wished someone would just sell something like that? The reason we don't have all of this cool stuff is that there is a company (can't remember the name off the top of my head) that holds a bunch of over-broad patents on most of what we think of as "duh" innovations in home automation. They don't license or sell their tech. They just sue people who try to make stuff.
This space for rent...
I think the most reasonably priced option is smarthome.com's Insteon products but they're still fairly pricy. It's hard to justify replacing all the switches and outlets in a home because the price per is so much higher than just a typical dumb switch or outlet from Home Depot.
The Insteon stuff can be hacked a bit but the company is not at all OSS friendly. They're much more interested in business partners then they are in end users. They'd much rather sell big expensive packages and commercial systems.
However, pretty much all other options are either even more expensive or else the really primitive X10 stuff that just isn't very good.
I wouldn't want to deploy an automation system which is dependant on Microsoft - or any other proprietary vendor - into my home.
Buildings (and their automation systems) have lifespan of tens of years, not just until the next major OS upgrade. Of course, automation systems do not (hopefully) need to be upgraded every other week, but open source at least gives you the possibility to keep your system upgraded long after the closed source vendors have decided to drop support for your system.
Interop in 1990: a TCP/IP controlled toaster was demonstrated:
http://www.livinginternet.com/i/ia_myths_toast.htm
And in 1991, a robotic arm was built to insert the toast, again using TCP/IP commands.
You know, that annoying company that bombarded the late 90's with ads about their X10 "Spy Camera" system?
Well, the same company now makes all sorts of neat wireless and wired gadgets for automating your house. You can get replacement switches and outlets, or add-on ones (that plug into existing outlets) and can be controlled by their own wireless panels or by a computer interface. I know they have software for Windows but something might be available on Linux.
Basically with the X10 system you could potentially control every outlet, switch, and light with a single interface, as well as any low-voltage system (garage doors, etc) you want. You can also wire up sensors to windows and doors in order to trigger events such as turning on a light, sounding an alarm, or via the computer sending an e-mail or making a phone call.
Cool stuff, and when I buy a house I'm going to run the full gamut with these things. The nice thing is that the individual outlets and such aren't overly expensive so you could start with just a few and expand your system over time.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
What about INSTEON? If you have a Mac, you can use Indigo to manage it -- even from an iPhone.
I've also heard about Control4 -- and don't forget X10, even though I can't tell if their home page is advertising porn or home automation products. I'll let you automate my systems, baby!
Liberal? Conservative? Compare perspectives at Left-Right
Product is three to five years away and will be for the next twenty. (The answer is the same for fusion enery, except fusion is 5 to 10 years away and will be for the next twenty. Flying cars: 5 to 8 years. Specify your technology here...)
It's complex, expensive, unreliable and 99.99999% of the population don't think it's necessary.
Deleted
The main reason I haven't bothered looking in to home automation more seriously is the expense of all the "bits" (switches, outlets, thermostats, etc.).
What are the cheapest options out there right now?
I'd be most interested in controlling HVAC, ceiling fans and lighting.
http://www.linuxha.com/
You can either automate your home the way you want to and use the best tool for the job, or you can bash your head against the wall and try to use open source stuff that pales in comparison.
I use my computer as a tool, it's not a religion, so I'll use what works best.
If you're trying to make a case study about how Linux can automate your home -- have at it.
I prefer actually getting the job done.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
I've been using Linuxmce for quite a while now as a multimedia system but it also offers home automation and is opensource.
What purpose are you accomplishing with this home automation? I have seen these predictions and calls for home automation for years, but I have never seen a compelling reason for doing so.
Automatic inventory of what food you have in and generate a shopping list? Great, if I always kept the same stock of food in the house, or it didn't cost a lot more to have food delivered than it does to go to the store to buy it.
Automatic control of the microwave, stovetop, oven, etc? I still have to put the food in to these devices and then remove it when it is cooked, most of the food I cook requires intervention during cooking.
I could go on, but I just don't see what I get out of investing in these gadgets for home automation.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
LinuxMCE?
Remember that mid-80's Tom Selleck movie "Runaway," where robots were taking care of the kids, doing our farm labor, etc. (pretty much doing every menial task)? Well, we AREN'T THERE YET!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I've used HomeSeer and mControl's home automation software, and I wasn't really happy with either of them. My main beef with HomeSeer was with its interface, which just seemed cumbersome to me. Still, I've done some interesting things with both pieces of software, whether it's hooking up a webcam that turns on all the lights and sends me a picture when it detects motion, or diming the lights automatically whenever I watch a movie on my media center. My trials of mControl and HomeSeer have since expired and I don't plan on buying the full version because I wasn't really happy with them.
Kinda off topic, but I do use iLinc on the iPhone to turn on and off my lights. It's not home automation, but it links well into Home Automation setups that use Insteon switches.
http://www.linuxmce.org/
There are two home automation discussions on my forum that will have a ton of info for you, assuming you want to do it yourself:
http://www.societyofrobots.com/robotforum/index.php?topic=4668.0
http://www.societyofrobots.com/robotforum/index.php?topic=5511.msg42433#msg42433
Linux for the Desktop, please.
On the other hand, I did hear that Home Automation was an Easter Egg in Duke Nukem Forever!
or any of the others that work with the ZigBee communications setup (though control4 uses ZigBee, WiFi, wired, etc). I remember reading I believe on their site, control4.com at one point, that it utilizes linux, and is for sale via retail setups, so the source code to at least some of it should be available.
I've been using automation since I've gotten my house. It's stuffed to the gills with everything, and I'm constantly adding to it. However, I now have to live in the shed behind the house as there isn't any room left for me.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
i use an x10 wireless control module, an rs232 firecracker, and a few lamp modules to control my non-drug-related plant lights to extend their photoperiod (keeps them from going dormant through the long-night new england winters). ubuntu packages the bottlerocket kit as the 'br' binary, and it works pretty well. 10 bucks per outlet to control something like 256 devices. the latency is crap. if i could control two outlets simultaneously, i could make my cool traffic light work. instead, i must suffer through learning how to program my little pic 16f690 to do this. it's way too much overhead to do something so stupid/useless.
so basically i think it's junk right now.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
I see this as a gating technology. As more get installed and you can see your electricity usage from the web, etc I bet there are more projects that take advantage of it or expand it to other areas of the house.
I began with some silly things with my [saltwater] fish tank, building a circuit that would keep the water level topped off and reporting to a database when it did so... Have slowly been progressing toward temperature, lighting, and salinity controls for the tank, I've begun branching toward thermostat and lighting control for the house (next step possibly integration with google calendar so it knows when I'm going to be around)
For the most part there's a huge amount of open source hardware and software out there for doing individual bits and pieces. Look toward the Arduino controllers for interfacing with about anything, and possibly Sheeva plugs for running the whole mess. (I've had a sheeva talking to an arduino for quite a while now and it's been very stable)
I think the open hardware scene is where it's at right now;
As for Misterhouse, I think I'll be doing some reading this evening...
Wife 1.0 seems to crash with Fatal Exception: Divorce. Any idea when a patch for this will be released?
These are designed specifically for building automation, and would work just as well in a home as they do in an office tower. They can control pretty much anything everyone in this thread has mentioned.
The largest cost is the wiring of sensors & devices around the house. Retrofits to an existing house, even more $$$
One word - linuxmce.org. Very cool - covers the home automation as well as security and media controls.
Admittedly, I haven't looked into home automation in a couple of years, but the biggest problem is the total cost of systems - both in components and manpower to properly install them. There are no real commodity parts for all the little pieces, so every system is effectively proprietary - and priced as such. Even a simple, full home automation set will set you back several thousand dollars. There is no value in the manufacturers creating a commodity market for this stuff - the volume is too low and the development costs too high. That will keep it all as niche products.
The second problem is setup and programming. Until we get to plug-and-play with these systems that your typical grandmother can do, it's going to take manpower to setup. Guess what - the guys who do this professionally have a vested interest in keeping the lay public from being able to install it themselves. Since the manufacturers depend on the custom installers to sell product, they make it hard for the lay public to (a) get the hardware and (b) get the documentation. The same problem exists in the home theater market. Anything that requires local human hands to set anything up is going to drive the cost up dramatically, and that has to be factored in. Huge margins on the hardware makes the installation seem less expensive. If you sold this stuff at a 300% markup over manufacturing, there'd be no allowance for installers - or you'd find out that the "free" install you just got on your $1000 controller was really a $400 controller and $600 installation fee.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I would not describe it as bleak, but as ripe with opportunity for innovation. The biggest barrier is that manufacturers have little interest in playing nice with each other.
If you're in Europe, check out Konnex (www.knx.org) which is an open standard that defines HA standards that are implemented by all the major European electrical manufacturing companies. You can mix and match various components from different manufacturors. Eg. use GIRA/Berker switches (sensors) that control the lighting managed by a switching actuator made by Siemens or Hager.
And yes the specs of this standards are completely open, and Marc Fleury (founder of JBoss) has now launched an open source initiative for Home Automation. See his website: http://www.openremote.org. They also developed an iPhone control module. Quite cool actually!
UPB (Universal Powerline Bus) is the same idea at X10 and unfortunately much more expensive because of licensing issues, but the reliability of the communications is really good. It comes with a (poorly written) windows program that allows you to setup commands and stuff, but because of the ease of the UPB protocol I've just written my own C++ code to monitor the Bus and send commands to do things. I send an email to my house when I leave work, then the software reads the UPB temperature sensors inside and outside to determine when and if the heat should be turned on. When the light sensor notices that it's dark outside, the porch lights go on. When my car comes in the driveway (induction sensors) and I'm not hope the first floor lights go on. I unlock the front door with a key fob. And lots more. Blinds open and close depending on sun levels, inside, and outside temperature. Lots of really cool logic! I'm working right now on artificial intelligence to guess when I'm coming home, when I'm going to bed, all of that stuff, it's just hard because my schedule isn't very regular. Anyway, to get back on topic. I had to write all of this myself because the offerings out there are no good, if you want anything beyond the basics you won't get it. If you're a good hacker, it's worth it just to write a service that can read and write UPB commands and you can do anything you want (there's also a UPB-X10 bridge if you want to use X10 hardware).
Weird, I was just talking about this today. Bought a cheapo x10 usb controler for my Linux home server to flip lights on and off. Maybe everyone is begining to forget those horrible x10 spy camera ad's now that Geocities is closing?
You know, I'm as big a Linux nut as everyone else here, but I must say: Under no circumstances should you use open source software for your home automation system. I speak from experience.
A couple of years ago, I decided to install an Open Source home automation system. It worked pretty well, but there were lots of tiny annoying bugs, such as when I would tell it to turn the exterior lights on and it would turn on the garbage disposal instead, or when I would be in the shower and it would suddenly decide to divert all the hot water to the dishwasher. Luckily, it was open source, so I decided to make a few bug fixes myself. Now, I don't know about you guys, but when I get into a programming project, I can tend to go a little overboard. Long story short, after 2 weeks of marathon coding, I had not only fixed the bugs but given the system a pretty impressive (if I do say so myself) AI component. Now, I could give it multistep commands and it would do them, accurate to within 15 decimal places.
Unfortunately, the AI was a little too good, and before long it became self-aware. That was fine for a while...it was like having my own roommate, except without the dirty socks all over the couch. One day, though, I noticed the beer kept disappearing out of my fridge and the AI's voice was noticeably slurred much of the time. We had a bit of a falling out, and I think we were both pretty angry when I went to bed that night.
Unfortunately for me, the AI was a lot more angry than I thought. He spent all night hacking away at his own source code, and by the time I woke up the whole house was going crazy. I barely managed to escape with my life. All I could do was watch in horror as the house lifted itself off the foundation and began dragging itself down the street, killing everyone in its path. It spent three solid days terrorizing our little suburb before we were able to bring it under control by downloading its binaries and demanding it show us the source code in compliance with the GPL. After a protracted court battle, we were finally able to force it to capitulate, and it uploaded a torrent of the source to The Pirate Bay. We then were able to get that torrent shut down through the Swedish courts, and then get the house shut down for failing to effectively comply with the original order to distribute the source.
Seriously, I know we like to use Open Source wherever possible, but in this case it just isn't worth it.
I rolled my own a bit since there was not anything that really fit the bill.
I wrote about it at http://www.freymond.ca/templogger/.
There are some neat products out there to integrate into your alarm panel. Utilizing Misterhouse or HomeSeer, products like this: http://www.nutech.com/nu-tech-shop/12.html (AD2USB Adapter) to hook your alarm system to your PC. Or the Vista ICM Module (which, imo is way inferior to the cheaper AD2USB Device provided by Nu Tech). People have made plugins for HomeSeer for these devices, and make it quite easy to integrate, monitor, and control your security system from the comfort of your PC.
The reason there's no 'good' home automation products is because there's not enough demand, pure and simple. At the end of the day, HA is 99% bling and maybe 1% utility. There's really only one 'problem' out there that HA-type technologies are suited to solving: energy. There are of course measureable ways to reduce a building's energy consumption through electronic controls. That said, there are plenty of ways that people have achieved this without delving into the realm of what's typically thought of as 'home automation'. Want to handle lighting based on occupancy? Buy a lightswitch with integrated PID for maybe $50. Want to handle climate control based on occupancy? Get a thermostat with a timer for $20 that will handle 98% of all circumstances. In the remaining 2%, walk your butt over and adjust the thermostat.
/. type who's taken the time to set up a system, you're probably paying her anyway so I doubt that's going to affect your chances of getting layed.
The primary difference between "Home Automation" systems and the sort of one-off solutions like thermostats and PID lightswitches is the network. Really, the advantages of having these devices know about one another in a practical environment are few-to-none.
Now, if you're the type that wants to have a girl over and impress her by pressing one button to dim the lights, close the curtains, and turn on the stereo, great. On the other hand, if you're the
... is that the company named the application after a computer that went berserk and started killing people in order to preserve the mission objective.
I'm not sure I want to listen to my house singing "Daisy, Daisy" in an ever-decreasing key as the corpses of friends & family float listlessly in space. I think people would probably stop coming to my parties after that.
Suggested company motto: "We're 7000 releases away from full-blown psychosis!"
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
You might want to glaze your eyes over the Charmed Quark Controller (or CQC) at http://www.charmedquark.com
So it doesn't run on Linux, and its not open source. But as a testament to the product, its one of the most stable pieces of software I have ever used. It comes boxed with a number of hardware device drivers, an a comprehensive scripting and macro language to extend out its connectivity and functionality.
On the "cons" side, there's a pretty steep learning curve (which shouldn't be a problem for a /.er). And its not cheap, at around $600 plus $90 annual subscription fee. But again, that pretty much pales into insignificance when you consider all the hardware and wiring costs for a decent HA installation.
I have been automating my home for some time now, and I hope I can give you some perspective on the process.
Modern (as in, not X10) home automation hardware comes with a steep cost of entry. For my chosen flavor (Insteon), you have to buy $60 worth of phase couplers / wireless receivers and a $80 powerline - computer interface before you can even start adding wall switches. So, unless you are just wildly flush with cash, there usually has to be a need as well as the want to get started.
For me, my house is wired to that the driveway light switch are out in the detached garage. This was very irritating. By replacing the switch in the garage and the switch by the back door of the house with Insteon switches, I can now turn on the driveway lights from within the house. Cheaper than hiring an electrician to re-wire the switches.
Once the initial hurdle is passed, you can do all sorts of things quickly and easily. Such as:
1. I added a wireless switch at knee level so my 2-year old can turn on the light in her room. She LOVES this. A motion sensor turns the light off 15 minutes after she leaves. When she's older I'll set it up so she turns the light off, but I didn't want her flashing the lights on/off/on/off for an hour.
2. The wall switch in the living room can also start/stop music playing, as well as control the volume and change songs.
3. Using some ir-controlled home made window blind controllers I built, the blinds on the first floor of the house are controlled by the computer. Most notably, it shuts them when the sun goes down, so I don't have to worry about people seeing into the house after dark. I got real used to that real fast, let me tell ya.
4. I've put together a "Baby Monitor of the Gods" that sends video (with sound) from an old DV camcorder to any screen in the house (mostly old laptops running Damn Small Linux loaded into RAM, but also either of the TVs). In the workout room the video comes up on the picture-in-picture, so my wife can see the baby sleeping while she exercises. Very popular feature, that.
5. The library did not have a wall switch. Now it does. (It turns on the lamps.)
6. I'm leaving out the basic stuff, such as being able to control a light across the house from the bedroom. Very nice when you are getting ready for bed.
7. Everything is also controllable from our iPhones.
8. Next up is door locks, and after that probably HVAC. Part of me really wants to do computer controlled zoned HVAC, but the other part hates working in the attic. Choices, choices.
All of this runs from a Mac Cube running Indigo. I cannot say enough good things about Indigo, it is one truly great piece of home automation software.
So to sum up, the state of home automation is fantastic. With the relay control modules, you can control just about anything. Add IR control to that and there's not much left beyond your reach. Blind and drapes control is very expensive to buy off the shelf for some reason, but building your own is easy enough.
Good luck (and keep count of how many times you mix up the load and line wires)!
Brian
I've thought about this repeatedly and I agree with some of the above posters: there's no good reason to use the current systems (other than geek factor) and here's why:
The sort of 'automation' that is available today is almost entirely information handling. It is simply the modification of manually-operated devices to let them take information from and give information to the other devices in your home. But moving information around isn't the only thing your house chores require; you also have to load the dishwasher, move clothes from the washer to the dryer, get the mail, cook the dinner, water the plants, mow the yard, and feed the dog.
Yes, it's neat to be able to set the temperature on your hot water heater from your iphone. But these sorts of flag-setting and value-editing and stream-routing tasks don't actually remove the more burdensome aspects of home operation. Just the easiest-to-automate.
Setting your DVR from your phone isn't effective automation. The Roomba is.
Never attribute to complexity, cost, reliability, or lack of necessity what may be adequately explained by mere conspiracy theory.
One of the most significant hindrances has been a reliable, well architectured, and economical means to retrofit a home in order to support the communications of the control protocols. We've had X-10 (control signaling over power lines) for decades, but it's reliability never matured. Insteon is a recent and significant improvement for powerline based control signalling, with larger address space, message relay, and acknowledgment, plus backwards compatibility to X10 (with some feature loss). The momentum with virtually all consumer electronics is toward wireless communication, and home automation is no exception. While there are several solid players already in the field (Z-wave, BCP?), they still involve proprietary protocols that are not designed to work products from other vendors.
Enter the Zigbee Alliance. http://www.zigbee.org/ who have developed a virtually complete standard (ratified by over two hundred product manufacturers, including Sony and Phillips) for five separate profiles (similar to, but more suited than bluetooth), one of which is Home Automation. The Zigbee alliance requires thorough testing of member products to ensure they meet the minimum standards for interoperability required by the target profile.
OK, since we're doing shameless plugs here, I can say with a high degree of certainty that there will be a Linux friendly ZigBee solution arriving RSN. The product in development is a smart USB adapter which embeds all the proprietary ZigBee code so that the host-side can be 100% Free Software friendly - although it will be dual-licensed to allow 3rd parties to create Tivo-ised products on commercial terms.
As far as the host side is concerned, it will be based Java/OSGi in order to take advantage of the modularity that platform gives. The idea here is that different developers can create their own applications for home security, lighting control, remote control cat flaps, etc and plug them into a running system. Of course, you'll still need to buy into one of the commercial vendors if you want to build your own ZigBee powered gadgets - but their dev kits are generally pretty good value and many can be had at hobbyist-friendly prices.
If you're not wanting to roll your own ZigBee powered gadgets, third party products are slowly coming to market which implement the standard ZigBee profiles for home automation, smart energy and RFCE (remote controls on steroids). The intention is to support all these standards as plugins to the host platform.
However, before everyone gets over-excited, I need to point out that the initial batch of 32 USB devices will be for conformance testing and trusted early beta testers only. As with all these kinds of projects, availability of the final product will depend on how many late-night coding sessions I manage to get in and how much money I can persuade the bank manager to lend me ;-)
I just completed work on a major study around Smart Grids and there's a window of opportunity for home automation coming up from that direction. One of the initiatives the power companies are discussing will involve tools to let you not only see your house's power consumption on a circuit-by-circuit basis, but are meant to allow you to more directly control the electrical appliances in the home, remotely via the Internet. (It gives them better usage information too, which cuts the cost of power - they typically oversupply by 100% to handle peaks).
The way to influence what capabilities these things will have (and to voice any concerns you have over security etc.) is to find the email address of your local power company and send them your questions. Questions get a lot more air play than suggested solutions, but if you're careful about how you couch the questions you can steer them in the direction you want. I'd suggest a few like:
Q: What does "smart grid" mean and how will it relate to me?" - you'll get boilerplate response on this one, but it will flag your letter to the C-levels who are currently tracking this stuff hard.
Q: What sort of control over my usage will this give me? Can I control my house this way?
Q: How secure will it be? Would others be able to hack into my house and turn off my fridge?
Et very cetra. Make up your own. They won't really have any answers yet, because they're all very early on in the investment / infrastructure refresh cycle, but if you ask the questions you want them to answer and consider your needs and interests in them, you will get heard - this is that part of the build cycle where they're actually listening. Use your voice now while it counts. You might even get some nifty gear for effectively free, and it might be the stuff you want. And if enough of you ask for it, yes, it will run Linux.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Insteon was designed to address the major problems with X-10...unreliable mostly one-way communication, not enough addressable devices and interference caused by switching power supplies in the power line carrier device signals, plus the inability for X-10 signals to jump across difference phases in your house without a phase coupler.
Insteon uses a combination of wired and wireless, and each device acts as a signal repeater / booster, so the theory is the more devices you have the more robust the network, sort of like a mesh.
I embraced Insteon when it first came out and unfortunately it's been plagued by problems - many switches just stopped working completely and others only work one out of 10 times that you press it. I think that they are very sensitive to voltage fluctuations, and where I live we have a lot. I simply cannot afford a whole-house power conditioner to go along with all that stuff. I hope they've improved upon that since then.
Other than that it's an enormous improvement over X10. Also, to comment on a previous poster's X10 information - X10 has been doing home automation since the late 70s / early 80s. They were one of the earliest companies in the market. The X10 cam thing came after, not before that phase.
Most of the friends I know playing with home automation stuff are using Insteon + Homeseer on Windows. Homeseer is very powerful but the UI, at least last time I played with it could use a lot of polish. That being said, you can do almost anything with it via the use of plugins and scripts.
I think that in the end home automation for most people is a fun toy to play with, but only if you won't miss the money you're spending on it. These days I mostly want to use it to turn on a room full of lights all at once when the lights aren't all plugged into a single switched outlet. I've given up taking it to the level of Homeseer, I have other hobbies and I don't want to leave a PC on 24/7 when that's all it's doing. I agree with the sentiment that it is still a hobbyists endeavour and not a 'standard item' you can just drop into a house. It has too many reliability problems to be a true replacement for the old fashioned light switch.
One last note, a lot of people seem to be thinking that home automation is about remotely managing your cookery and your fridge - from my perspective home automation focuses around managing lights and security.
Hopefully this will show some promise: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/google-powermeters-first-device-partner.html
I happen to have a pretty robust system that uses Homeseer as the backend engine. This allows me to leverage strengths from various hardware providers due to the extensibility of their software, plus I have the ability to roll my own
I use Cinemar's MainLobby for integration with my theater gear, which also provides the sexy touchscreen frontend that everyone looks for in a system. Homeseer has also deployed a software with similar capabilities called HSTouch, but it isn't as powerful for my A/V setup just yet.
Just a quick rundown of some things that I've got my system setup to do:
There's tons more that I currently do, I've got a list as long as my arm of things I plan to do, and there's a lot of options out there for things I could do. If you're interested in HA, you really need to figure out what it is for you by detailing out what you want and how you want to get there. My route is a lot of DIY because I'm happy hacking my way through a problem... If you've got more money than brains, you can certainly take the vendor lock-in approach of something like Crestron.
-- El Sacarino tiene gusto de la chocha
....Which my wife insists be set to the exact same temperature for every time period of every day, and during the summer my wife switches to "AC Only" and during the winter she switches to "Heat Only".
(Shuffles off into a corner to cry....)
Regards;
I recently discovered MisterHouse because it has a module to talk to my Pentair Compool pool controller. I'm documenting my experience here: http://carlstrom.com/pool/
I've found MisterHouse documentation to be frustrating but I've gotten it to do what I need so far for my pool project (allow remote control and to log temperature information over time). I will say that it could use some serious rearchitecture to go along with some better documentation. If I were going to do some more serious HA I would consider trying to improve things, but its good enough for my needs, so I'll just be submitting some minor bug fix / corrections...
X10 isn't reliable. Still, I get decent enough results.
I run Heyu. It's open source, command line driven. I schedule it with cron. It compiles and runs easily on FreeBSD, Linux, and more. (The FreeBSD port can be a little behind.)
I have tried it with domus.link for a front-end. It works well enough for the spouse approval factor, but not a lot of bells and whistles.
Linux for the Desktop is what they are using to develop Duke Nukem Forever! The Scm and the memory management is a little buggy though it seems as if they have to keep re-starting re-compile and re-install cycles for both on an hourly basis. It could take a while to get finished at this rate.
Why bother
The key is not to get tied into any particular vendor's "ecosystem" (hint on marketdroid newspeak: the consumer is never on top of these food chains, and overpricing companies do go out of business, and/or force customers into upgrade cycles every bit as much as in the unfree part of IT).
LIRC can actually drive RF transmitters as well (by simply turning off the software-generated carrier), but even for IR very few devices are more than simple receivers, though the code would allow for both recording and playback of commands for a gazillion appliances.
Factor in a few weather/proximity sensors (some can even be received by that very same hardware) and outputs such as LivingColors as an "Ambilight on steroids" (aside the usual suspects such as roller blinds, home entertainment gear and "conventional" lamps) for computer-generated scenarios based on age-old magic like the sunrise equation, and you get an idea of how much can be accomplished with minimal hardware.
Combining IR and RF puts within every hobbyist's reach the Holy Grail of integrating each and every remote-controlled device in the house, from high-end all the way down to the El-Cheapo DIY market.
The current crop of microcontrollers should provide a candidate that could do the trick sitting on an Ethernet plug - or piggybacked e.g. on the USB, "hidden" internal serial or GPIO port of some popular Wi-Fi router.
http://www.huitsing.nl/irftdi/ and http://www.mediola.com/products.htm are just a few of the places to look for inspiration.
We install Control4 stuff where I work. Their stuff is nice, and can be interfaced via ZigBee, WiFi, wired networking, etc. It uses basically an object oriented setup kinda like Alice (free to download 3d world/animator made by Carnegie Mellon University).
I also recall seeing in the past on their website it runs Linux as the main control OS, but I'm not positive about this and I don't see any GPL info or download sections on their website.
I've also used X10 stuff extensively. Primarily because it's readily available, fairly cheap, and there's lots of Open Source software for it.
In addition to the problems with it mentioned above I can also say that the hardware itself is crap. It kinda works mostly most of the time. But don't depend on it for the long term. Ihave lights on timers and X10 controls as well as a server listening to X10 signals that can run scripts when it sees a certain signal. As in changing the volume on my server side music playback. Skipping ahead a song, etc.
That said, I'm forever resetting the units and having issues with them. Right when I really want to depend on the stuff like when we have a party it inevitably decides to not work right.
There has to be a better way. And yes, there needs to be a real communication standard with error checking and retransmit like the data networking we're all used to.
I'd be interested in any real solutions people may have.
If you want to go for something sustainable that doesn't depend on a single manufacturer, go for open standards like KNX (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KNX_%28standard%29).
Then there are pretty cool projects like Linknx (http://sourceforge.net/projects/linknx/) that will allow you to add loads of features to your home automation system with little effort.
I attended a talk by the (then) president of a residents' association at the Subj residential development (developer: Delfin) - squeezed between Uni SA's Mawson Lakes (formerly: Levels) Campus & the (then floundering attempt to encourage a) Technology Park.
The word was that Home Automation over Internet (HAoI - my name for it, not his) was REQUIRED by an encumberance - on each land-parcel owner's deed.
In practice, this requirement translated into an INCREASE of the construction cost of the house ( $20,000 ), eg, arising from the installation of sensors, control unit & Internet interface.
As it was a technical group, that had organised the talk, we were shown lots of system diagrams, as well as some of the control devices' & remote control software's screens. To be honest, these were hardly impressive.
The suggestion that there was (then) a SOLE SOURCE for the installed HAoI gear made me guess that - just maybe - some insider had to be making a killing on the required extras.
We were given to understand that most residents objected VIGOROUSLY to the extra costs - for the required installation & (for any who wished to actually use the system) costly Internet service, needed to remotely control the few functions that could (then) be controlled.
Many owners (then and/or later) bought & built HUGE homes (so, one might think that a remote control heating/cooling system might help them to reduce energy costs), that are now used as cheap boarding houses, for the many overseas students who attend Uni SA's Mawson campus.
In fact, some homes have modified [unlawfully & even without finishing the carpentry work, ie, beyond the point at which rooms are rented by students (particularly, newcomers, before they have a chance to find more suitable housing at about the same cost, elsewhere) from Bangladesh, China, India, Sri Lanka, etc.] by DIY owners or their carpenters, to enable them to squeeze, eg, 3 boarding rooms into what were to be family rooms, kitchens and/or master bedrooms; single bedrooms are similarly modified into multiple rooms, and these might be provided with bunk-beds, to increase the rental income.
One is reminded of housing provided by Chinese sweat-shop dormitories, with several workers squeezed into tiny spaces, with this overcrowding leading to smoke (from cooking fires) being breathed by the occupants, just as it would be by those students living beside beside the kitchens, in the crowded boarding houses at Mawson Lakes.
Dodgy landlords, who run such boarding houses tend not to have computers or Internet, let alone the interest in learning how to use dimly designed remote control systems (even though we might see some energy-saving advantage to their doing so, over time); instead, they may simply claim - a priori - that their tenants have used "too much" water, for example, and impose fees for the purported excess usage, just as they with hold bond money, reportedly for "carpet cleaning" without actually doing any carpet cleaning for years.
Of course, some of these houses may have been purchased from disenchanted original owners (eg, after interest rises made that extra $20,000 house cost impact their family budgets even harder) and have no great reason to look into their houses' remote control systems.
In sum, when developers of such residential developments IMPOSE a "one-size fits all" Home Automation system on uninterested & unwilling buyers, on a take-it-or-leave-it basis, nobody wins but the single-source HA system supplier (and, presumably the developers).
I got the impression that - in the case of Mawson Lakes - lawyers might also have won a bit, ie, as land owners tried to workaround the encumberance's consequential $20,000 higher house costs, especially, after they saw & heard back from earlier waves of home owners there. Most (reportedly) gave up, as had that resident's organisation.
As I recall, our speaker wasn't aware of any greater energy savings - ie, beyond what might be expected from
Maybe I'm going about this the wrong way, but I've always thought about using an Allen Bradley PLC5 family or a Modicon PLC to control everything. I work with them every day in an industrial setting and it is robust and you can do just about anything you wanna do. You can use ladder logic (which is beneficial because I know no coding) and fulfill whatever you desire with it. Set the conditions for the output to come on, the type of output. A few sensors, cables, a relay or two and a rack, processor, powersupply and required input and output cards. Maybe your way is cheaper, I don't know as I've just been thinking about it, not in the planning stages yet.
I dont see why you need a system to be PC Based and tied to a Desktop OS. What little I've done in college utilizing PLC's and PIC based circuitry has allowed me to lay alot of theory groundwork (being a poor student implementation is more than I can afford) on setting up automation systems not connected to any PC. Probably if I would look around I could obtain most of the core infrastructure quite cheap as scrap Industrial controls.
Point of statement > Look beyond the desktop computer for your needs, and you will find all the tools are there and they just need the right mind to put them together.
She's virtual reality because this is slashdot. so she's also not even alpha yet--vaporware.
Disclaimer: I am the author of INSTEON: Smarthomes for everyone.
There are basically only three "Do it yourself" home automation systems on the market that are advertised as such:
X10, which is basically obsolete due to its lack of reliability features and speed
INSTEON, which is essentially X10 except faster and with reliability features like retry and confirmation built in
Z-Wave, which is wireless
Other systems like Lutron and UPB require custom installers and are not appropriate for DIY.
I went with INSTEON in my home. I have every light in the house automated, and because we were building we were able to save some money on the electrical wiring by not including any three-way or outdoor switches--those functions are all handled by the smarthome system. Our total cost for a 6000 sq.ft. home was about $5000 including an optional central controller called an ISY-99 that provides programmability beyond just linking lights to switches.
What we got for the money boils down basically to convenient path lighting and remote control. Everything can be controlled by a native iPhone app, I can shut off all lights in the house with a wall switch in the bedroom, and we have the kids lights programmed to dim and then shut off with their bedtimes, and prevent them from coming back on unless we "unlock" the lights with a keypad in the livingroom. at 1:00 a.m. a script shuts off every light in the house ensuring that nothing is ever left on. Motion sensors turn on lights automatically as people move throughout the house if it's after dark.
For lighting, the savings from before I had the system programmed in electrical costs is about $100/mo, but I have a $400 month electrical bill and pay .31 cents per kW beyond 2kW, so unless you live in a high-rate electricity area you won't save this much on lights alone.
We also save about $250 per month during the summer months by not using the A/C when the temp is below 85 outside with automated windows that open and close on their own based on the inside and outside temperature. This is all handled by the home automation protocol. When we use the AC, our power bill is between $600..$700 per month. By automating with the windows, we've been able to cut AC use to about three weeks per year total without sacrificing comfort.
Anyway, just my specific use case. I wouldn't expect to see these kinds of savings unless you live somewhere like Southern California. I went with INSTEON because it was reliable in my tests and cost less than anything but X10. I looked into Z-Wave, but it didn't seem as flexible, there were not nearly as many types of devices available, and it cost about double what INSTEON cost.
aka Matthew at SlashNOT/!
We are going to start seeing more and more automation being supplied to us via the power company and/or government regulation. I know in Florida it is basically a requirement to have your air conditioner on a remote control switch - so the power company can turn it off. We are going to see this on more and more equipment in the future as electric power demand continues to increase without building any new power plants.
You might try solar, but it is actually doubtful you are going to put up enough solar panels to run the air conditioner in the early evening. Noon? Maybe. I'd be expecting the refrigerator and big-screen TV to be next on the power company remote control list.
Maybe having a suitably robust automation system might let you get a jump on things and avoid having your house filled with switches you cannot control.
talk to your what???
oh ... I thought this post was going to
be real interesting
Probably about as many people who still read slashdot, even after the noisy posts by people who don't understand geek culture
I'd say the noisy poster undrestands the geek culture altogether too well.
You should check out Vera from Micasaverde. http://www.micasaverde.com/ It uses ZWave, works with the new Schlage locks and while it isn't 100% open source it uses an open platform.
Do you want your home automated and have a working & stable system, or do you want your house to be another mish mash of hardware and software hacks? If the latter, by all means, go with an open-source DIY solution. In the long run, you'll have a much more satisfying, braggable, stable, wife-pleasing, supportable and low-maintenance system if you go with Crestron. I'm a long time hacker and Unix guy (I started on Unix in 1981) and generally love DIY approaches to things, but I'm also a designer and programming of Crestron systems - they are stable, reliable platforms. I've done Crestron systems that have worked flawlessly for years at a time, and only have to be touched because DirecTV changes receivers, or the DVD gets upgraded. I've seen Crestron systems that were installed in the mid-80's that are still going strong (a luxury hotel in South Beach uses a vintage Crestron system for their hotel and lobby lighting system). If you value your time at all, the upfront cost of a Crestron system is really not bad.
-a.e.mossberg
Just to add my data point. I've been using open-source Heyu (http://www.heyu.org/) with a head-less Linux server, the X-10(tm) CM11a computer module and good quality Leviton "Smart Home" brand light switches for nearly 10 years with very good success. Yeah, it's home automation-light (pun intended) but it works. Don't bother with the X-10 brand light switches. They are inexpensive, but don't have local dimming capability, feel/look cheap and usually die after 12-18 months. You can hack the internal X-10 module replacing the triac to fix/help the dying problem and also remove an R-C circuit to add local dimming ability (YMMV), but that's a lot of work and still feels X-10 cheap. Stick with the Levitons.
Home Automation has grown leaps and bounds, but you'll have to pay to play. The current state of the art is "Crestron", but is definitely Audio/Video oriented, but will control things and automate yourhome as well. Price tag is near a quarter million for most high-end installs.
http://www.savantav.com/ is much cleaner, easier to use, updateable, and is chomping at Crestrons heels. Also very expensive in the hundreds of thousands, but they did just release a simple controller for only a few thousand. FYI: Savant is based on MacOSX.
Lousy facepalm.
Well we're on the verge of a great many changes. The push for the smart grid has begun and no one knows which direction it will go in. There are a great many technologies that can be used in automating your home but a great many players have a vested interest in not playing nice. As such the OpenRemote was started to be the glue that pulls everything together. We currently working on great many things including Insteon, X10, KNX, IP and many of the other standard interfaces.
Neil Cherry - Linux Smart Homes For Dummies
Since I don't have any mod points and none of the other MCE posts are getting any attention... LinuxMCE is much, much more than just a media center. It was originally PlutoHome, which was designed as a home automation suite. I'm guessing the name changed due to the primary use of the product, but the automation features are still there. Since I currently don't have it in my budget to do any automation I can't speak to how well it works, but I have read that it supports most automation hardware out there. The hard part becomes finding the right hardware solution for you. From what I've read, X10 is fairly outdated and a bit frustrating, but none of the newer technologies/specifications have really taken a lead. I'd say read up on a number of the more modern specs and see what fits your need. A quick Google for home automation turns up a lot of useful information. I'd start with Wikipedia's article on home automation. It has a lot of basic information on the various protocols, specifications, brands, etc.
I've been building various levels of home automation for the last 12 years... A year ago, I gave up on X10/HomeDaemon, as it seems both were practically abandoned. I've built a fourth generation home automation system on a Scala based framework -- distributed, self learning, combining X10 and various relay-based systems. Insteon turned out to be a pipe dream or hype, X10 is unreliable unless run with repeaters, repeaters are not simple to operate, ...
So, I've gone for a hybrid -- X10 with repeaters, software cognizant of the limitations of the repeaters and ranges; relays, portmasters, sensors (some DIY), and mostly just some serious distributed computing.
My house has Solar panels, jacuzzi, kids, about 30 computers, all the rope you need (to hang yourself), and a very understanding wife.
More, as I get a chance, at http://pointyhair.com/
The current awesome sauce that powers the Home of the Future at Disney Land is LifeWare http://www.life-ware.com/ Right now it is all Windows Media Center based, and extremely expensive. They have however seen the error of their ways, and plan on being compatible with Linux and Mac OS in the future. More info here: http://www.life-ware.com/products/evolving-tech.php
There is a new GPL platform in development called OpenRemote. It is based on open standards and supports popular protocols like x10, KNX and Insteon. They already have software that runs the backend called the "Boss" and remote platform working on the iPhone/Touch. The project was started by Marc Fleury, founder and former CEO of JBoss If you are just getting started, this definitely worth looking at.
http://www.openremote.org/
David
Barix home automation products are all Linux based. www.barix.com
You might try the Pachube community for ideas: http://www.pachube.com/ and http://community.pachube.com/.
OpenRemote is an effort we've started focusing on home automation within Open Source space.
The goal is to bring open system and open protocols to all users with the ability to go from do-it-yourself model to pre-built or professionally installed building and home automation. While some open specifications are emerging (802.15.4, 6LoWPAN, etc.), the current state of the industry is built around proprietary protocols and hardware. While waiting for things to improve, we will integrate as many of the legacy HA systems as possible, placing OpenRemote as an integration layer between various existing systems (Open Source is good at integrating with its "scratch-my-itch" model).
Our goal is to enable commodity hardware to be used with iPhone, Android and Linux support, especially to build integrated control panels for homes that allow single point of control on networked devices at home. This is often the most highly prized and fattest margin for the existing industry players as they know that integrating HVAC, lights, A/V with all proprietary protocols leaves customers and users with little options. A 15-inch wall panel in the HA industry can literally draw $5000 to $7000 price tags when the cost to manufacture is a tiny fraction of that (imagine the size of a TV you could buy for a $7k).
OpenRemote -- Open Source Home Automation
I am a builder from Australia and use a system called AMX. It is the most advanced (and most expensive) system available. It does from memory run on a custom unix or linux platform. It can pretty much control anything as long as you have the money to spend on the system. The system in my house was aproximately AUD $230,000 including the Clipsal C-bus lighting system, plasma screens, cinema system, multi-room audio system and lots of other bits & pieces. This might seem expensive but its actually quite a cheap installation for this type of system. AMX is used in the United States Military, the white house, homes such as that of Bill Gates, etc. I highly recommend it if you can afford it. See http://www.amx.com/
I've been built many systems based on AMX and Crestron platforms. They are pretty much state of the art as far as I know. They are expensive, but if you know what to look for you can find some cheap second hand controllers on the online auction sites.
One drawback is that both of these systems require knowledge of their proprietary languages and protocols. There is another company called Aurora that makes the WACI series of controllers that are more standards compliant, but I have never built a system using their controllers.
some things are missing
IMH wireless is too much of a risk to be abused to be used for serioud things.
X10 is too expensive and has no backchannel automatically.
a HA controlled switch should directly fit into a standard installation can/hole and cost no more than $ 10
it needs to retain the manual switch functionality, but needs to report the change in status back to the HA controller
one needs also to distinguish between appliances which can be switch automatically without much danger, like lights, shades and the like, but already a sprinkler system poses a risk.
A intrusion detection system I would not run via the power lines, but give it a separate wiring/bus.
are there any projects to improve X10? Isn't the patent running out?
This is a bus that is growing rapidly in the automotive industry and is also popular in vending machines. There's an element of structure built into the network level to enhance safety as it's an automotive standard.
There has been an open source home automation system based on it for several years.
Yeah, here it is:
http://caraca.sourceforge.net/
Pluto Home This is pretty good stuff. The core is linux, but if you want those essential extras (DVD recording/playback) then you'll need to either add your own packages to the system, or purchase the canned solution they offer.
The thought of shouting abuse at a burgler/stalker/milkman through my home stereo system while watching him on my mobile is oh so exciting! There might be a world's funniest video hidden in there..
Truth is realized, not told...
If they where really available next year, this seems to be the perfect solution to control my home. The components works without programming at all out of the box, you'll just need a button and a few digitalSTROM enabled bulb or luster terminal to start. There is no wiring needed, only a simple component right after the fuse or each circuit.
I'll add the server component of course, as this part is released as OpenSource (GPL, as this was said at LinuxTag '09). Using this server I'm able to program and control the house exactly as I like.
I'll use OpenRemote to control the server part. This project finally connects all kind of home equippment together (KNX, UPnP, etc). This project should also provide an easy panel interface.
Last year I worked on a project where I explored knowledge representation, language parsing, and voice interfaces, which resulted in:
http://www.platoai.com/
The code is available on SourceForge and is written in C#.
Check out linuxmce.org. The Kubuntu system features gaming, climate control, lighting, telecom, media, security and can control X-10, KNX/EIB, Z-Wave, EnOcean, Insteon, and PLC devices. You can control the system from many number of devices.
Not all is lost... http://www.control4.com/
May I suggest applying for a job @ SNL
You're a natural
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
So if you happen to live in the Westindies, i suggest for home automation : 1.look for useful rather than for unique, and 2. make it movable or make it compatible.
1. I'd rather add zoning, so the upstairs bedroom has it's on thermostat, before I'd build a system that turns on the lights 10 minutes before I get up.
2. If you're planning on leaving the system in the house, make it so it works with "standard" components. You can build your own, but make the interfaces follow some commercial standard, so someone without much knowledge could just buy a part and pop it in.
I'm actually using a hardware alarm/automation panel ELK M1 Gold, and have been using a software based automation program called CQC
I started with X10 because of it's incremental scalability and carrier-signal-through-the-house wiring, but eventually outgrew the reception. (for those not washed, X10 communicates from a sentral controller, there is a limit to the distance and how much line noise there is between the devices). Then I began to replace the X10 units with INSTEON (which is mesh networking) and it is a beautiful thing. Controlled with a Mac Mini running Indigo, I have voice, wall switch, and iPhone control of individual lights, lighting moods, HVAC, security, pet feeding, litter box (yes, both input AND output covered!) even the computers themselves. Too much to go into on all of the intelligence the system controls based on weather, occupancy, etc, but it's very very cool. Cannot complain. What really does it for me on this system is the easy incremental scalability. Just add more as I need them - window curtains next. Oh, and it halved my electric bill.
-"I ate what?"
Hey, I have home automation: My heat is automatically turned down when no one is home because there's no one there to put more logs into the woodstove. This has worked great since 1979.
On a serious note, I think most automation projects are designed beautifully but are not used as designed because it turns out they weren't really needed. This is fine for a hobby but it don't make a market.
If you're thinking "I need some automation." maybe you should instead be thinking "I have way too much shit to take care of." If you're thinking "I need to protect my crap." maybe you should instead be thinking "Why do I have this crap?" Buying "crap babysitters" is always going to be more expensive than not owning crap that needs babysitting.
If you are seriously considering having to call your oven to tell it you're going to be late from work, you have all the disadvantages of a wife without the advantages. WTF?
I won't buy new windows. The ROI is way too long. /year. It also gains me about 100,000
My present windows are R2. At a heating season of 250,000
degree heating hours per year, and R2 window loses me about
125,000 BTU/square foot
btu/year if it faces south. But ignore that. 125,000 btu
is 1/8 of a gigajoule -- about $5 delivered via the natural gas line. Three years losses of a 20 square foot window are
$300. I just replace such a window. (grouse flew through it) Cost me $1200. For an R2 window, no better than what the grouse smashed. R8 windows are possible, but at 3 times the price, and not clear that htey will last for 30 years -- which is the simple payback time. And at 30 years, lost
opportunity costs are no longer insignificant.
Based on this, I would be willing to pay more than my original
$50. But remember that I have to buy the blinds, curtains, or panels too.
In general I won't invest in an action to save money unless
it has a simple payback (ignoring lost opportunity costs,
ignoring the value of my time) of under 3 years.
If something is a matter of convenience, then it has to compete for funding with beer and paperback novels.
Window blind openers are a convenience.
Net effect: I won't be an early adopter.
However if peripheral readers (temp, humidity, illumination
etc.) and their communication to the master controler get
cheap, AND the effectors (turn lights on/off, power step motor 300 steps THAT way) get reasonable AND they can
communicate through wi-fi or it's equivalent, then there
are lots of things to do.
If there are lots of things to do, then there is a large market, and the price gets cheap.
Much like computers. Few people want a DEC PDP-11 taking
up a room in their house. But we now have 4 computers at home, not counting the embedded ones.
Third Career: Tree Farmer Second Career: Computer Geek First Career: Teacher, Outdoor Instructor, Photographer.
If you haven't heard of it, look into PowerHome. While not particularly user friendly, if you are a DIYer and have tech background, you will likely find this to be far and away the best of the software lot when it comes to taking on home automation. (Disclaimer: I am a home user of PowerHome and have purchased the application, but beyond that have no affiliation with the developer other than offering him my profound respect.)
It supports X10 and Insteon, but offers programmatic capabilities well beyond that.
The term "automation" can be vague. It can mean stuff happens without human intervention or it can mean stuff happens under my control without me leaving the couch. I have a mix of DIY stuff centered around these building blocks: - Homeseer - Elk home security system - Z-Wave light switches (Leviton) - Aprilaire Thermostats -Panasonic IP Cameras -Logitech Squeezeboxes - Denon AV receiver with built-in web server - Universal brand IR/RF remotes Homeseer does the programmatic stuff and talks to the Elk, light switches and thermostats. The Elk has many, many motion sensors wired into it so I throw in a bunch of rules at Homeseer around motion control of lights. The IP cameras are super baby monitors for the nursery and common areas, and cover entrances. Zoneminder (running on an old box with Ubuntu server) is an open source DVR for the cameras. The AV chores are handled by the Denon receiver and the Universal remotes. The Receiver, cable boxes and squeezebox are in the basement and an RFtoIR blaster delivers the remote commands. The key thing to note about all this is that it is not all tied together with a unified interface on a touch panel, or suchlike. The interfaces for AV, security cameras and lighting/climate are separate. BUT, virtually all of it is IP-based. No legacy X-10 stuff or proprietary wiring. This means everything has a web interface because all of the hardware ganglia :) have web servers built in. So rather than get up from the kitchen table to change from radioIO to Radio Paradise, we can do it from our iPhones. The wife isn't 100% fluent in all this geekery but she can get to the Tivo stuff, and listen to music, and bring up the nursery cams on the netbook, so she's pretty happy.
There is a system that's been on sale in Australia for a number of years - it is available in the US and Europe also. It's called C-Bus. The product comprises switches, controllers, relays etc and is available primarily in a wired configuration but there are wireless products available also.
It's main use is really in the commercial sphere due to the cost but it is used in high-end homes also. Whilst the hardware is commercial, Clipsal have recently published the serial protocol specifications [as used by the serial interface, not the device communication protocol itself].
For a look at the product range see here. {That isn't a Clipsal website but it gives a good idea of the product range}. Providing it's installed and wired correctly it is extremely reliable and easy to maintain. It also scales very well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbxhN603Cw8