Reply With QuoteOriginally Posted by rdesouza
I know people delight in over complicating stuff but playing a CD through a good sound system is all I and many others need.
No need to be beholden to itunes or any one else, don't need to ask Alexa for anything, just listen to the music.
Just because synths were invented it didn't stop people playing electric guitar did it?
Cheers,
Neil.
Cheers,
Neil.
It took me forever to rip all my CD's the first time.... I can't pretend that I'd be looking to do that again anytime soon! Oh well... looks like I'm buggered until I get spare week!
Edit -Thanks for the advice though... didn't mean to appear ungrateful!
I could have written that word for word expect I built and we moved in ours 13 years ago.
I have four zones on the ground floor and just modulate (19 as a base 24/7) as we use parts of the house at different times of the week.
I use Honeywell wireless programmable stats for each zone.
Pitch
I've just installed a Ring doorbell at the ancestral home so that my sister and I can monitor visitors to the elderly parents.
Seems easy to set up. I've not had any alerts yet, but it's comforting to be able to see who's calling on them.
I was considering Ring as it looks really interesting. There are quite a few negative reviews on amazon that put me off though
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Yes... a good product... I prefer Skybell... plus i work with them! it's a nicer design and works a bit better... ring have heavy backing and big marketing budget
But, often I've heard that sons/ daughters will use it to triage callers for elderly parents... a nice application for this kind of tech
I've also seen plugs that will alert you of the morning kettle hasn't been boiled to make tea... smart system will be designed to pick up anomalous activity/ non activity in homes...
Bit of a resurrect but I have added some hue lights to my house. Managed to get the e27 starter kit for £45 from Argos last month when they had 25% off. I've subsequently bought 2 more e27 bulbs and using adapters have them in my other room lights.
Love being able to control from my phone.
However, I always seem to get 'out of home connection' even when I'm sat where my router is? Any idea what this is? I've looked online a few mentions of it being due to using 2.4 and 5ghz wifi networks but I've played around with no joy.
I can still control as its as though I'm away from home but because of this I can't get voice control (siri/dot) to work regularly.
I've installed LightwaveRF light switches and sockets, a Harmony remote and hub and a nest thermostat on the way. I also have echo dots around the house for voice control of it all.
How do you rate the Lighwave stuff? It looks incredible for the money.Can you do proper scene control with it?
Can you rename one of your wireless networks, so that the 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz networks have different SSIDs? That may help.
http://huetips.com/help/i-am-unable-...my-hue-bridge/
They do (my 5G one has '5ghz' at the end). I've tried to give the bridge a manual IP (another recommendation) with no joy. Bit stumped to be honest.
EDIT. Noticed the routines seem to switching themselves off as well
Last edited by senwar; 13th February 2017 at 18:26.
Err would it, the only advantage of doing this would if wifi coveradge was a bit patchy at 5Ghz as it doesn't travel so far.
The Hue bridge is ethernet only.
You have created a Hue account haven't you and logged into it on your iDevice.
Last edited by Nogbad The Bad; 13th February 2017 at 21:42.
It is a recommendation though to change the networks. Although I already had
And yes I'm logged into my hue account on my app. Currently sat in the house about 10 foot away from my router/bridge but as usual have out of home connection.
Can you download the Fing app, and run a scan? The hub/bridge is acting like it can see the internet, but not devices on the local network. Fing will tell you if the reverse is true. If its found, your Hue hub will be identified as Philips or Philips Hue.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fing...430921107?mt=8
Thanks - downloaded. It didn't find it initially (was about 10 mins before it did) but even though I can see it, it won't ping. So something isn't right. I've tried my phone on both of my wifi SSID's as well
shall look that up as I have been looking for an automated light solution and it seems a lot more intuitive to go via the light switch rather than the bulb...
installed a new Home Automation device yesterday and think I have found my favourite device to date... it's a skybell that I simply stuck in to my current bell wiring (you need one that works off a transformer)
and it works a treat... already saved me two trips down to the sorting office and as it has an inbuilt PIR I know that my eldest kids are home from school safely
Also spent the day RGA venture studios and saw some massively impressive IOT start ups, all of whom had some really smart scalable ideas... I spent the morning interviewing 5 of them and loved what they were doing... The part of my job that I really love...
there were a couple of home related products too one IOTA labs uses Bluetooth measure proximity I.e. it know who's in which room with real accuracy, which has some real home automation benefits and have this concept around digital post it notes too... also met Den who have a really smart light switch concept where its a simple rocker switch which you can also automate...
Last edited by Wolfie; 14th February 2017 at 13:36.
I've had no problems with it other than in the kitchen. The dimmer switch didn't like any of the dimmable GU10s I tried. There's a compatibility list but I couldn't find any of the bulbs on it. Most were discontinued megaman models. I gave up in the end and reverted to a standard switch.
Other than that it's great. They call scenes moods, all you do is set all the lights how you want them then create a new mood that can be recalled at any time.
I'd look at your router's configuration, and see if its blocking UPNP or multicast DNS traffic.
HIVE - got free as a sweetener for a new boiler installation from BG
Sonos - get them now before they raise their prices 25% in March!
Apple TV - mostly used for watching NBC sports for premier league tbh, and Netflix
Samsung Smart TV - never used the smart features so that was a waste of time
I did a search before starting a new thread...and found this one. I've 6 pages to catch up with; in the meantime, does anyone have a link to a site that lists / compares the various options for apps / protocols, please?
I think that Belkin Wemo is compatible with Nest and Amazon Alexa/Echo but would appreciate it if I could read up somewhere about the pros and cons of those and the other systems.
Thanks...
There are loads of places to get information, but very hard to work out the pros and cons of each system.
We went for Energenie to work with Nest and Alexa and it works well, controls lights and heating, with zoned rad valves. Shop around as Amazon were cheap for bits and screwfix for other parts. However you can't dim lights with the wall switches which is a shame and under development. Hue would be a good option for that, but also others look a good choice. At the moment IMHO no one company offers the perfect solution they all have some strengths and short comings. IFTTT is also useful to build scripts for them, e.g. At sunrise turn on this group of switches or at xxx time turn off these. Stringify also looks interesting but no integration with Energenie Mi home.
Take a look at this... looks like a pretty good control hub
Commissioning and controlling systems is unnecessarily complex... would be nice to find a better way of doing it!!
https://ncubehome.co.uk
I'm meeting the CEO/ Founder on Friday, so, if you have any specific questions, let me know
Ben
They look like they've taken on board the privacy and security considerations; I've never really understood why people would happily send information willingly to one of the world's biggest retailers or the world's most prurient search engine. Of course it may just be lip service but this is the first product I've seen that could persuade me to move in this direction of travel.
Thanks for the replies AndyMilts and Wolfie...it does seem to be a not uncommon problem. nCube offers support to a wide range of devices but I don't see any mention of anything from Amazon.
That leaves me wondering (still) how many different protocols are out there and if there is any prospect of them becoming compatible / integrated? Perhaps that's something you could clarify with nCube's CEO, please, Wolfie?
https://xkcd.com/927/
Ben,
Like the look of what they were doing and did consider buying one, but as you need a control hub from all the manufactures I could not see why you would pay £150 for them to add another hub to control the hubs. Plus IFTTT and stringify are free and offer much greater levels of complexity and integration with many more products. Would be good to understand, what they think is unique other than the no data in the cloud as if you still need the manufacturers hubs it's still there anyway, although the encryption and management should mitigate most of the risks.
Yep... keeps everything out of the cloud and locked within a proximal network, which gives you the added bonus of having it work without Wi-Fi
Should help with any latency issues too? Will ask more...
What specifically did you want to see it work with from Amazon? Are you referring to Alexa?
there are multiple protocols (the consumers and ultimately the manufacturers biggest issue), hence the reason why these control hubs are being developed. The primary home automation protocols are Zigbee (Stronger in Europe) and Z-Wave (Stronger in the USA) and alongside of that Wi-Fi (cloud integration) and Bluetooth. There are also any number of proprietary protocols and Apple require manufacturers to install a Homekit chip (MFI chip) locking everything to Siri/ Apple
Ben
I need to ask on the first point as I am assumed this hub replaced them all (that was just an assumption, so, could be wrong). But, what it does do is aggregate them all and mean that you don't have to have separate apps for different activities and also prevents your homes data going up to the cloud (which can be secure) but, clearly adds an extra layer of protection. IFTTT is great, but, not (in my opinion) mainstream and is quite 'techy', it requires engineer type commands to set things up... brilliant for those who master it, but, not for 90% of home automations potential market.
Brilliant... I will post that on my desk at work as it is THE biggest issue I come across with smart homes...!
Ben
A good idea but still quite limited on what it can control. There's no mention of the lightwaverf or nest protect that I have.
The LED lighting product I saw, but cannot now find, mentioned Alexa, but what I really wanted to do, I suspect, cannot be achieved. I wanted something that would cut out the proprietary hubs and control products from different manufacturers directly. Thus I would not be tied to one make or another.
That's very good to see.
Have any of you enlightened folk used ouimeaux to control a Wemo Switch? I'm asking because I can't run the Wemo app on my antiquated android phone.
Last edited by jools; 21st February 2017 at 10:54. Reason: corrections to my pidgin english
We built our own house recently so ended up with a decent amount of technology.
Control 4 system manages the TV and music to all the different rooms, with lighting controlled by Lutron. As each room has its own thermostat we use Neo Heatmiser to control that, and have HD CCTC around the house with a monitored burglar and fire alarm system.
We built the house airtight, with no window vents etc, so have an air handling system that circulates air through the house passing fresh air coming in through a heat exchanger to minimise heat loss. We also had air conditioning put in the heat exchanger loop so we can cool the incoming air during the summer.
It sounds like a lot, but was amazed how far you can go now with automation of blinds and curtains etc, and what we did essentially controlling TV and music only is pretty basic now.
9 months in and it's been relatively trouble free. A couple of baluns for TVs have needed replacing and one of the air handling vents developed a small vibration noise that needed sorting, but that's all so far.
I recognise that we'll have significant ongoing maintenance, but as long as you stay on top of it and find good companies to deal with I'm comfortable with that.
Server cupboards can be a bit daunting for technophobes though. I'm reasonably competent but my wife wouldn't know where to start looking if a small fault occurred.
This is the cupboard for TV/music/heatmiser. Security, lighting, air handling etc are in addition.
yep... noticed that too, but, they are still looking to grow... i had a look at the lightwave RF and there are some very keen prices from their outlet store on eBay... but, unless i have missed something it works on its own proprietary protocol?
i am at MWC in Barcelona next week and have set up a couple of meetings with organisations with similar concepts... for me the key thing is a simplified commissioning as a lot of stuff is overly techy and complex
Ben
It may well do. It's not something I looked in to. At the moment I don't see it as a problem as there isn't a standard protocol.
I bought them as I liked the look and preferred the idea of replacing the switches rather than the bulbs.
I can control the Harmony, Nest and Lightwaverf via Alexa. Yonomi and IFTT help too.
I rather like the Yonomi and IFTT support for different devices as it's free with no additional hardware required.
interesting... Alexa (echo) will be on the new fire stick.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolog...fire-tv-stick/
Alexa will be getting into everything... AVS (Amazon voice services) will be put into anything and everything that you could imagine before long... (lamps, Fire sticks, Music systems etc.)
There strategy is to get everything connected via their platform... they could become the Google of the connected smart home driving a lot of business to their platforms.
As I mentioned earlier... the more AVS products they have, has a direct correlation to increased Amazon prime sales (+60%)...
I pre-ordered one of these earlier this week - I love my fire stick and being able to voice search across multiple providers is a big bonus
[QUOTE]A brief update on this... I met with Phillip Steele, a very clever chap, with some interesting plans... If they get it right, they, could have a hugely strong proposition on their hands
in terms of updates to the current version, Tado is nearly done, Alexa is being worked on at the moment... which is all I can share at the moment...
Lightwafe RF maybe possible too at some point...
In answer to your last point, there are lots of them identified and this is what they are trying to address and as they continue to develop the proposition, it will become increasingly compelling as it is already at a very strong starting point. Their principal message is around security of data, which is quite a compelling message for a number of potential customers, but, aggregation of apps and smart programming UI (far less techy than IFTTT) also, makes it attractive to people who like this stuff to be a little simpler!
Ben
Last edited by Wolfie; 8th March 2017 at 11:06.
Looking at getting the Honeywell EvoHome system with individual radiator stats along with a new boiler etc.
As I always seem to unknowingly buy things immediately before a new iteration comes along, just wondering if anyone has heard of any impending new revision of the EvoHome system is on the horizon? I'm in no real rush to get it done so could wait if something is coming along.
Paul.
I work for Honeywell... you'll be fine with evohome for some time to come... it's a nice system, works well and is quite popular
Ben
Thanks for the insider knowledge :) Hoping it will help save oil by only heating relevant rooms depending on time of day and offset some of the cost of itself and the new boiler.
Does it learn how long a room takes to heat up based on outside temp, current room temp and set room temp/time in order to have the boiler working for the minimum amount of time to achieve the goal?
Paul.
It has an optimise function that works out how long it will take for your system to acheive a certain temp…. So, if you want it to be 19c by 7am, it works out (dependant on how far the internal temp drops in the night) what time to turn on... not related to external temp, but, clearly affected by it (if that makes sense?)
Yes I get what you mean, thanks again for the info.
Paul
I had installed two months ago. Superb system. Really simple to use and tailor controls.
I dipped my toe into this today, with an Echo Dot, Samsung Smarthings Hub and some Osram Lightify bulbs for the kitchen/dining/living room area, and they work flawlessly, I wanted to avoid the Philips Hue eco system as its just too expensive.
Alexa lets me dim/group/on/off etc. and the smarthings hub lets me use geofencing for returning home and switching lights on etc.
next up will be the boiler controls, sadly smathingshub doesnt support Nest yet, but I could still use it via Alexa, to be honest I only wanted the smartthings hub for lighting/sockets/proximity/video and door sensors.
it also has good support for other makes with the list growing all the time, I think Sonos is soon, and is unofficially supported by an add app you make yourself or download.
liking it all so far
Energy monitors
There seems to be quite a few home automation geeks in this thread, nellyh's cabinet is a monster :). So I was wondering if I could ask for some advice?
I'm keen to smart-ify my house (mainly energy monitoring and energy switching for now), but the internet of things doesn't exactly have a great reputation for security. Are there better or worse brands for this type of thing? I was looking at the Smappee energy monitor, but I can't find out much about it and it seems a bit overpriced.
Thanks in advance
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