Putting the pieces together in anticipation...
It’s been a while since I posted here. Primary reason, I had a daughter last March. (my free time disappeared literally overnight). Now that we’re getting settled, it’s time to get back into the home automation game.
In anticipation to our upcoming move to our first home we’ll own, I am ramping up and have decided on the Z-Wave protocol as I don’t want to built my own everything from scratch, but instead I’d like to get a baseline on which I can build on top of.
Will I still hack around with the Raspberry Pi? I think so. More on that later.
The Base
As mentioned above, I decided on Z-Wave. (Other competing standards include ZigBee). I ultimately went with the Vera Lite controller that I kind of bought out of the blue the other day at the IT Show here in Singapore (it was discounted by 10%, but it’s still more expensive in Singapore than elsewhere because it is Singapore).
The kit included the controller (the Vera Lite), 3 Fibaro dimmer switches, and a motion detector. The dimmer switches will be used for connecting some of my downlights to the network (and I am sure I’ll need more later).
Lighting
I bought 12 LIFX bulbs a while back and they arrived a couple of weeks ago.
No, these don’t talk Z-Wave, but that will be a fun project for me, see below.
As mentioned earlier, I’ll be using dimmer switches (or normal switches) for my other lighting. Even though these switches are expensive (if they are Fibaro), the advantage is, they are small and should fit inside of the light switch socket in the wall (I haven’t confirmed this yet with our new condo, so fingers crossed).
My LIFX bulbs will be placed in both ceiling lights as well as lamps, but the final configuration isn’t yet confirmed (I still have about 3 not yet taken as I am struggling to find rail lights that fit E27 Edison screw bulbs. Tall order.
LIFX is planning to release an SDK sometime this quarter, they claim. Once they do, the hacking begins - I want to build a Z-Wave interface for LIFX, most likely using a Raspberry Pi with Z-Wave shield (it’s a shame that it’s bloody expensive though - more than the Pi itself!).
Aircon and other IR Devices
This is where the fun begins. I was thinking of continuing my previous project of the “ThermostatPi” (which I coincidentally posted about a year ago yesterday), making use of a Raspberry Pi and a USB Toy 2, but following a Singapore Home Automation forum on Facebook the last few months, a very interesting product out of China has stoked my interest, the Broadcom RM2. It’s a proprietary IR blaster (i.e. that doesn’t connect with any other Home Automation standard like Z-Wave), but the reviews promise it “just works” - something I am quite keen on. They are rumored to release an SDK for it in Q1 of this year. And this is where another fun project will come about as I plan to write a RaspberryPi interface to it, much like I plan to do with LIFX as stated above. The goal here is to control everything from single app (switching between apps is too much trouble and certainly not consistent with the whole Home Automation thing).
Curtains
I’m still researching this and will post more about what plan to do. It looks as though the mechanisms to control curtains is quite costly, so this may need to take a back seat for a while.