Smarthome Planning and Projects [2021Edition]
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- čas přidán 13. 09. 2024
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If you're interested in adding some new devices to your smarthome, please consider using my Amazon.com shop as a starting point www.amazon.com...
2021 is a New Year and after the dumpster fire that was 2020, I'm looking forward to working on my Smarthome and focusing on projects that help the house take care of the people who live here and visit.
My projects for 2021
1) Healthy Lighting
With the extra time at home during 2020, one of my focus areas was improving my health, starting with my sleep. After spending a lot of time reading ( I highly recommend the book "Why we sleep" by Matthew Walker Phd ( affiliates link geni.us/hkgwhy... ) I've become a little obsessed with making sure that my family and I get the right amount and type of light at the right time of day.
Smart lighting can definitely help with keeping sure your circadian rhythms in line. Basically it means that it will reset your body clock and help to make sure you get sleepy at the right time of day.
Apples Adaptive lighting was supposed to be a step in this direction, but unfortunately, it fell short of expectation.
Apple Adaptive Lighting Explained - • Adaptive Lighting in H...
On the bright side, I've been running the beta of Follow the Sun by developer Matt Corey ( www.homemadeau... ) which has some me seeing some light at the end of this tunnel ( see what I did there!!! )
Follow the Sun macOS App - homemadeautoma...
2) Air Quality
2020 has taught us the importance of air quality and making sure you take care of what goes in your lungs. Fortunately, 2020 has also been a great year for Homekit enabled smart devices which help to take care of your environment. For more on some of these devices check out these reviews
Rio Arc Electric Heater - • Rio Arc Electric Heate...
Vocolinc PureFlow Air Purifier - • Vocolinc PureFlow Air ...
Using my Awair Air sensors as my main feedback loop, I'm going to continue to work towards having the house always working towards keeping the air fresh for everyone in the house.
3) Intentional Design
As my Smarthome has matured, I've realized that much of it was put together with what I politely call "organic growth. 2021 is going to be the year of re-designing my smarthome with intention. A place for everything and everything in it's place. I'm still working on the actual requirements, but I be documenting the whole process and really looking forward to sharing the journey with all of you.
4) Electricity Reduction
I've had the sense.com electrical sensing system now for a couple of years. Although the device is great, what I've realized is that you need to "feed" it with additional devices to be able to really get the most out of it. Smartplugs with electrical sensing always feel like half a solution to me as the graphing and data analysis piece always feels half-baked. By combining TP-Kasa HS300 power sensing power strips with the Sense platform, I've getting close to identifying the great majority of the electrical draw in my house. Now that I know what's there, the plan is to start figuring out what's drawing power when it shouldn't be and shutting it down.
Those are the four big projects for me for 2021. It's ambitious and will take up most of the year but I'm really hoping to be able to make a dent on all four of these by the time that Santa jumps back in his sled.
If you want to let me know what you're working on in 2021, I'd love to hear about it in the comments!
#homekit #smarthome #projects
This video was definitely one that I could relate to. Saving on my electric bill was what got me started on creating my smart home through HomeKit. I’ve recently started paying attention to all the appliances and lights that kept getting left on and switched them out with smart bulbs, outlets, and switches while at the same time keeping them convenient for the family through automations. Your videos have given me a lot of great ideas!
Wow! Thanks Robert! I really appreciate the kind words! I’d love to hear some of your favourite automations and smarthome ideas if you’ve got any favs.
Totally agree with Apple dropping the ball on adaptive lighting. I too will be looking at current draw and what is using the most electricity at my house and ways to mitigate that.
Mt projects include upgrading my router system to a true mesh router (looking hard at the Linksys Velop Tri-band Mesh WIFI 6 routers), replacing 2 ceiling fans (Hunter Builder Series fans to match the other three new fans that I have already installed last year), finish up changing all of my light switches to Lutron Caseta wireless light switches (just a few more to go), putting in a couple more Aqara sensors, finish up my Aqara alarm system (make it into a true alarm system), replace the 3 exterior doors with automated locks (probably LevelLock; I have already done one exterior door; not too happy with the Bluetooth-hoping LevelLock goes to using Thread), installing a video doorbell (leaning towards the Netatmo), installing a NAS system (probably QNAP; for computer backups, media player, and PoE camera system storage), installing 8 PoE 4K cameras around the exterior of my house, adding more HomePod Mini's around the house (have 1 in Master Bedroom and 1 on order for Guest Bedroom-would like 1 for Office, 1 for Kitchen, and 1 for Shop; also considering getting a HomePod but only if they put in Thread and the U1 chip like the Mini has), replacing my broken laptop with a new laptop running the new Apple M1 processor (or whatever they call it whenever I get around to buying one).In my Home Theater Room, replace my TV with a HomeKit TV and replace my existing Denon A/V receiver with a Yamaha Advantage A/V receiver that has AirPlay 2.
As you can see I have lots and lots of projects. Just need to get the funds to purchase said items and the time to install them. I have been working on automating my home since end of 2019 (when I started researching) and the start of 2020 (purchasing and installing).
I have a 2,000 sq ft house that I have set up 27 rooms in the Home App (which includes all of the closets, my 3 porches, Yard, and Exterior of my house). I have also put in custom backgrounds for the "home" and "rooms" in the Home app on my iPhone. I have 4 exterior doors and 21 windows. All 5 ceiling fans have a Lutron Caseta Fan Switch to control the fan speeds and a Lutron Caseta Dimming switch to control the lights on the ceiling fan. All of the three way light switch circuits use a Caseta Light switch on one side and a Lutron Claro/Diva paddle switch on the other end. I even have a Caseta Wireless Dimming switch (PD10-NXD-WH) on one of the three-way light circuits going to the ceiling fan in the Den. I have two of the Caseta Smart Home Plug-in Lamp Dimmer Switches and am using one as an extender to the Lutron Hub. Currently I am using 4 HomeKit cameras (Aqara Camera G2 Hubs) for monitoring the entrance areas of the 4 exterior doors and nearby windows and 3 non-HomeKit cameras (Canary) for internal surveillance as well as notifications of when family members leave and arrive home. I have an Apple TV 4K in the Living room (that acts as the Home Hub) and an Apple TV 3rd generation in the office (would like to replace that unit in the near future). I have 9 temperature/humidity/atmospheric pressure sensors (Aqara), 8 door sensors (Aqara), 3 motion sensors (Aqara), and 7 water leak sensors (1 Eve and 6 Aqara). I have an Aqara Hub and a Lutron Hub in the office where the main router is located. I have 4 LIFX bulbs and a VOCOlinc light strip. All of the other bulbs are "dumb" bulbs. I have two in-wall ConnectSense electric plugs. I have 33 Lutron devices installed with several controlled by Aqara motion sensors or door contact sensors.
I have created 14 scenes and 22 HomeKit automations. My favorite is when someone opens my Mailbox door I get an alert (it also tells me if the mailbox door was left open), and when my wife opens the shower door in the Master Bathroom, it turns on the wall plug that her curlers are plugged into. So once she gets out of the shower and dries her hair, her curlers are hot and ready for her. Her curlers do NOT have an on/off switch on them.
I also have a sophisticated morning routine shortcut that runs when my alarm is turned off. It gets the current weather from my current location and if I am in my home town, it runs my DayBreak Scene. Then Siri says "Good morning and welcome to a new day full of possibilities." I then get a report of the current weather conditions (Current Date and Time, High, Low, Feels Like, Visibility, Precipitation Chance, Air Quality Category, Air Quality Index, Sunrise Time, and Sunset Time). It then gets my first work appointment from my work calendar. If I don't have any for that day, Siri tells me "No work events scheduled for today. Enjoy your day off". If I do have a work event scheduled, Siri tells me who the client name is for the appointment, when the appointment occurs, and how long it will take me to drive there from my house.
I also have a bunch of other Siri Shortcuts for logging my daily weight, checking tomorrow's outlook, where my next appointment is, sending a notice to my next client if I am running late, directions to next event, travel time to a specific address, and many, many more.
Wow! that’s AWESOME!!!!! Congrats on getting so far down the journey! Definitely understand that there’s a journey here. I just added some additional air sensors today for some things I’m working on! Love the shortcuts piece! This is something that I’ve been digging more into lately and looking forward to learning more about what you’ve got set up. Now that the HomePod minis have made it more financially viable to put Siri and shortcuts around the house I’m looking forward to dipping my toes further in the shortcuts pool.
@@Homekitgeek If you want some help with Shortcuts or you would like to check out some of the stuff I have done, I would be very happy to share that and my experiences with you. What the shortcuts will do and not do is not very well documented and it does take some thought going into making one before you start building a shortcut.Going back and making modifications to an existing one is not very easy and there isn't an undo function, so if you mess up you have to be able to fix it back the way you had it (I highly recommend that you save a copy of an existing shortcut before making any changes). That way if you mess it up, you can always delete the bad one and restore the save copy. If you want to see some of the stuff I was able to do with shortcuts, let me know and I will copy them out to my DropBox account and give you a link to access them. Apple should really do a better interface of editing a shortcut and allow you to undo an action when you make a mistake. Trying to create a shortcut on your iPhone can really be a pain with using finger gestures and trying to get the curser to go to a specific location using your fingertip.
Great video and ideas 👍🏼
thanks Adam! Really looking forward to executing on this stuff and sharing the journey this year! Can’t wait to see what you’re cooking up as well!
Just for a bit insight, here’s what I’ve done for circadian rhythm imgur.com/gallery/8u5xVny basically it starts off at 50% then goes up to 100% by midday ish, then back down every hour. Works really well!
Hey Michael! Really appreciate you sharing! I’ve been down this road as well and at one tile did something very similar. Eventually I standardized on LIFX lights because of how good their circadian rhythm feature was. The big difference for me was the gradual change of warmth and dimming that wasn’t noticeable at all. Follow the Sun isn’t 100% yet but it’s quickly becoming what I feel Adaptive lighting should have been! Definitely encourage you to check it out once it released!
@@Homekitgeek yeah I thought you’d have something like that, with your knowledge! Well I had a bad experience with lifx so I’ve only got hue now
You never know so I really appreciate you sharing! I’ve heard of the bad LIFX experience from others as well so you’re not alone. I’m just lucky that I’ve been able to avoid that particular hole. I’ve got a ton of the LIFX a tiles throughout the house. They have become my standard for “waking people up in the morning” lights and the local API has given me hours (days?) of distraction during the enforced tike at home.
@@Homekitgeek yeah no problem at all, that’s exactly why I shared it! Yeah I mean they might be better nowadays but hue has been rock solid since I changed! Never done anything with the API, what kinda things can you do?
Here’s a bit of what I was working on www.imore.com/amazing-lifx-tile-hack-puts-baby-yoda-and-more-display. A Sonos integration I put together twitter.com/homekitgeek/status/1260986247956385792?s=21 as well as a OpenCV integration for live video twitter.com/homekitgeek/status/1262757257034338304?s=21
I just picked up a new camera with onboard machine learning models that I’m going to dig into see what’s possible. The Tile shape was unique in the industry. Shame they end of life’s the product.