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What's the thread consensus on arlo? I sold my Nest Hello with my old house and I need to get something for the new one. I had gigabit fiber at my last house and here I have 400/25 cable so I don't really want something constantly eating that limited upload bandwidth if possible.
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Aug 19, 2020 13:47
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On the topic of cameras, are there any systems/setups that allow me to access SD card data remotely without needing to suffer thru some phone app/website? (Just local network access would be more then enough actually) I've been using a Wyze camera, which has mostly been fine for my purposes, and I've been able to use the RTSP firmware to access the live feed via a local computer. I would really love an option that lets me access the SD card's saved data too. Wyze has their app and whole service which seems to let you view the saved video thru their servers, which makes sense if I'm not using an SD card. If I'm using an SD card though, it seems like the only option is to physically remove the card and read it externally which is way less convenient when I just want to quickly check a timestamp or something.
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Aug 20, 2020 02:43
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Vagrancy posted:Just poked around the mobile app and seems like that's default behaviour, I never came across it because all my activities involve the TV. On the Mobile Harmony app (assuming the Desktop app settings are laid out in a similar structure) Devices tab -> Devices -> [device] -> Power Settings, and changing the selection from "Turn off when not in use" to "Keep device always on but switch off button when pressed" for all affected devices seems like it would resolve the issue. I didn't know the Harmony Hub devices could even sync with the desktop app. The desktop app has changed many times and each time lost a few features but I know the option you're referring to is in the Silverlight app. Either way I thought the desktop app only worked with the 650/750 and not anything else at this point.
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Aug 20, 2020 05:14
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Any thoughts on the Abode smart alarm compared to Simplisafe ? I'm thinking about moving away from the Ring alarm due to the continued lack of additional sensors/sirens, Alexa Guard or even real monitoring in the UK. In the UK with Ring you just get the motion and contact sensors and thats it. The 'monitoring' is just a round-robin automated call to your number list with no human operator and no police called ever. Both Abode and Simplisafe would allow me to have additional external and internal sirens, real monitoring with a human in the loop, lots more options for sensors etc My initial feeling is Abode seems to be a better platform but I'm a little concerned as to whether they'll still exist in a couple of years. Simplisafe appears to be quite substantial in the market so I'd have more confidence of their continued existance.
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Aug 24, 2020 13:51
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I know absolutely nothing about smart lights and poo poo. Now that we're settled in the new house, I'm trying to figure out what lights the kids always leave on, which is loving all of them. Is there a recommended smart light brand? Is it Phillips Hue? What about for the tube fluorescent bulbs? Would I have to put in a smart switch (if those exist)? I'd like it to turn the lights off at a certain time of night or something. Is that possible?
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Aug 24, 2020 17:29
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Baconroll posted:Any thoughts on the Abode smart alarm compared to Simplisafe ? I'm thinking about moving away from the Ring alarm due to the continued lack of additional sensors/sirens, Alexa Guard or even real monitoring in the UK. In the UK with Ring you just get the motion and contact sensors and thats it. The 'monitoring' is just a round-robin automated call to your number list with no human operator and no police called ever. I've had Abode for two years now. They've recently released new product, etc so I'm not sure what the concern is of their longevity. In any case, they've been great to work with. I had a problem with a third party connected smoke false alerting and they couldn't be sure if it was the smoke or their gateway and just shipped another one out right away. You can also get a fire protection cert from them if you have the connected smokes. Don't know anything in particular about simplisafe other than 2 year ago when I was making this decision Abode seemed to be the better choice.
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Aug 24, 2020 19:03
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Henrik Zetterberg posted:I know absolutely nothing about smart lights and poo poo. Now that we're settled in the new house, I'm trying to figure out what lights the kids always leave on, which is loving all of them. Is there a recommended smart light brand? Is it Phillips Hue? What about for the tube fluorescent bulbs? Would I have to put in a smart switch (if those exist)? I'd like it to turn the lights off at a certain time of night or something. Is that possible? Hue bulbs work well generally. For tube fluoros, you may be able to get smart switches but probably not smart dimmers; I haven’t seen smart tubes. Turning lights on/off at specific times is possible; the Hue app can do routines like that no problem. For other smart lights you might need some kind of home hub system like HomeAssistant to do the automations.
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Aug 24, 2020 23:44
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If your needs fit nicely within the category of just automating things you could do with normal switches (on/off/dim on the light groups as wired), smart switches will likely be the cheaper way to go. They also tend to be more idiot-proof in terms of people who don't know you have smart lights trying to operate them, since the switch is still controlled exactly where it would be if it was dumb. -- Smart bulbs make sense when you want to control them individually or in groups not matched to existing wiring. Also of course if you are looking for features that don't map well to a single axis of input, like RGB or color temperature shifts, or if you simply don't want to or can't install your own switches like in an apartment. You do then have to deal with the idiot factor though. I have a Lutron Aurora dimmer installed in my bedroom which is a nice clean solution but it only officially works with Hue (though in theory it's a ZLL device and should work with any ZLL compatible system). Also it depends on having "normal" US style switches, other markets or US Decora style need not apply. Otherwise the standard solution is to cover the normal switch in some way and place a smart controller nearby.
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Aug 25, 2020 15:14
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Henrik Zetterberg posted:I know absolutely nothing about smart lights and poo poo. Now that we're settled in the new house, I'm trying to figure out what lights the kids always leave on, which is loving all of them. Is there a recommended smart light brand? Is it Phillips Hue? What about for the tube fluorescent bulbs? Would I have to put in a smart switch (if those exist)? I'd like it to turn the lights off at a certain time of night or something. Is that possible? Whatever brand you go with, if only suggest you pick something compatible with your chosen smart assistant (Amazon Echo/Alexa, Google Home/Assistant, Apple HomeKit/Siri). Hue works with all three and is mostly idiot proof so it’s the easiest option to go with (tends to be pricier though).
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Aug 25, 2020 16:26
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Henrik Zetterberg posted:I know absolutely nothing about smart lights and poo poo. Now that we're settled in the new house, I'm trying to figure out what lights the kids always leave on, which is loving all of them. Is there a recommended smart light brand? Is it Phillips Hue? What about for the tube fluorescent bulbs? Would I have to put in a smart switch (if those exist)? I'd like it to turn the lights off at a certain time of night or something. Is that possible? Just a note, if you do go with a dimmer and you have LED bulbs, make sure they're dimmable and that they're compatible with the actual dimmer you buy. LED bulbs are super cheap though, so it's pretty easy to test. wyoak fucked around with this message at 17:21 on Aug 25, 2020 |
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Aug 25, 2020 17:11
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The thing I dislike about Hue is that their color bulbs are only 800 lumens, that's about 60w. If you do any color other than bright white you lose about 30% brightness. Amazon has these 1 -> 3 bulb adapters for cheap that you can fold inside most full size lamps. The hue bulbs only put out 10w of heat so you can cram a lot of LED bulbs in there before you hit the wattage rating of a traditional 100w incandescent. At $50/bulb it costs about $150.00 to replace a single 150w "room size" incandescent/CFL bulb that might cost $12.00 Living room: 6 x 800 lumen color hue Office: 4 x 800 lumen color hue Bedroom: 6 x 800 lumen color hue Nursery: 3 x 800 lumen color hue Laundry, Closets: 3 x 800 lumen ambiance Kitchen, bathrooms: eufy smart light switches Color hue are $50 and Ambiance are about $25 Eufy switches are $30 each It was like a thousand dollars for the bulbs and a hundred bucks for the switches, $40 for the base station You can get off brand LED for cheaper but it's a total guess as to wether their Google integration will still work next month. Philips is a 130 year old blue chip company. If you're just going to do the kid's room maybe just buy the cheap $15 off brand, but outfitting the entire house for long term lighting, Philips Hue seems like the correct solution, to me at least. As soon as we got two bulbs, we almost immediately went out and got ten more, it's a really nice convenience/luxury that installs very quickly. We're gonna get the hue light strip thing and upgrade our under cabinet lighting in the kitchen, you can power up to like 60' off one strip light unit (bought in 1m extension kits) so we're going to double up the strips under each cabinet, then just dim it to 60% normally. You can never have enough lighting in the kitchen. Lighting is one of those things (like air conditioning or heating) that you use pretty much every day all day so might as well spend a few extra bucks and get a system that will last a while One thing to note, there's four different generations of hue bulbs, the 4th gen has way way more saturated colors, if you're getting a deal on a hue bulb it's probably a 2nd or 3rd gen from 5 years ago Hadlock fucked around with this message at 21:03 on Aug 25, 2020 |
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Aug 25, 2020 20:58
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Also also, for guests, hue bulbs work like regular white bulbs if you use the wall switches. By default they switch back on as white full bright, but I think you can program them to have a different default using the app If you use sane room names, it's pretty easy to train new users "ok Google, turn living room lights on/off" , "set office lights to 50%". We trained my non technical mother in about a day. My 2 year old nephew can turn off the living room lights about 50% of the time. But the switches are a good backup. Hadlock fucked around with this message at 21:12 on Aug 25, 2020 |
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Aug 25, 2020 21:09
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Hadlock posted:You can get off brand LED for cheaper but it's a total guess as to wether their Google integration will still work next month. Philips is a 130 year old blue chip company. Anything with WiFi or Bluetooth as the control interface I'd stay away from unless it has a publicly documented protocol. Especially if it requires any kind of account with a cloud service to set up. Those devices should be assumed to have an undocumented expiration date unless the community manages to reverse engineer them, and even then things might be a bit hackier than you desire. Also I wouldn't use Philips' age to justify anything. Big, old companies have been dropping support for consumer electronics unexpectedly for years and I wouldn't ever expect them to stop. That said as far as I'm aware all of the Hue devices are ZLL compliant so in theory if Philips ever gets bored of the product line we should only lose the cloud services and not any other functionality. edit: I think I remember reading that Apple was requiring a local API for HomeKit support for this reason among a few others, did that actually happen? If so then HomeKit support could be an easy way to identify WiFi/Bluetooth-based devices that don't inherently suck. wolrah fucked around with this message at 22:43 on Aug 25, 2020 |
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Aug 25, 2020 22:36
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I've tried various Z-Wave and Zigbee lighting solutions, and Z-Wave always comes out on top. They tend to be more expensive, but are worth it in my opinion. You'll also have a few choices for a hub to control them with. If you have the option, get Z-Wave wall switches. It's way nicer to have the smarts in something you can toggle by hand. I use a Qubino relay solely for temperature monitoring, but their "Mini Dimmer" got UL listing. You can retrofit your wall switch for Z-Wave if you cram one of those into the gang box.
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Aug 25, 2020 22:45
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Hadlock posted:Also also, for guests, hue bulbs work like regular white bulbs if you use the wall switches. By default they switch back on as white full bright, but I think you can program them to have a different default using the app By default now the latest gen remembers its last state, including programmatically off. Which was in fact what a lot of people wanted although I find it to be pretty annoying. You can set it back to the old way in settings though.
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Aug 25, 2020 23:31
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Rick posted:By default now the latest gen remembers its last state, including programmatically off. Which was in fact what a lot of people wanted although I find it to be pretty annoying. LOL the old way was great. Did the power go off for a minute at 3 in the morning? Here's twenty lightbulbs at 100% brightness, hope you like turning all of these off one by one! I guess they couldn't find a way to punch you in the dick at the same time.
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Aug 26, 2020 03:56
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LastInLine posted:LOL the old way was great. Did the power go off for a minute at 3 in the morning? Here's twenty lightbulbs at 100% brightness, hope you like turning all of these off one by one! I guess they couldn't find a way to punch you in the dick at the same time. Yeah, I'm glad they finally added a way to change that. We have occasional overnight power blips here, and nothing is worse than waking up after one to full-bright lights everywhere. Oh wait, there IS something worse: the old alarm system would start beeping when it was running on battery power. So if the lights didn't wake you up, the beeping would. But that's neither here nor there... I think the idea is that they default out of the box as a "light bulb." Turn power on, it goes to a default color/brightness. Turn power off, it turns off. Switch on and off as required. Also helps with guests who don't know the smart system, so they aren't locked out because they don't have a phone/tablet. But the instant you start adding automatons/etc., this is way more annoying than anything. Anyhow, here is the solution that I have yet to implement: https://www.amazon.com/Lutron-Aurora-Dimmer-Philips-Z3-1BRL-WH-L0/dp/B07RJ14FBS/ Clips over the switch, so it prevents guests from loving around with things. Right now I just have a couple of the stick-on wall plates, but I'd really like to get these things.
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Aug 26, 2020 12:50
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Hadlock posted:You can get off brand LED for cheaper but it's a total guess as to wether their Google integration will still work next month. Philips is a 130 year old blue chip company. If you're just going to do the kid's room maybe just buy the cheap $15 off brand, but outfitting the entire house for long term lighting, Philips Hue seems like the correct solution, to me at least. As soon as we got two bulbs, we almost immediately went out and got ten more, it's a really nice convenience/luxury that installs very quickly. If you've got a switch that controls one or two traditional bulbs, go Hue, but if you've got a switch that controls a bunch of fixtures at once or if you have three-way setups you'd like to keep, look at an electrical-side solution. wyoak fucked around with this message at 17:05 on Aug 26, 2020 |
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Aug 26, 2020 16:57
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DaveSauce posted:Anyhow, here is the solution that I have yet to implement: I'm using one of these. It's great.
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Aug 26, 2020 17:29
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I chose to use smart switches in my house instead of smart lightbulbs. The bulb cost was going to get insane for me. I have a mish mash of different switches. GE Z-wave normal and dimmer switches, a WeMo wifi light switch, all of them work just fine. I'm not tied into a single platform or anything as well which is nice.
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Aug 26, 2020 17:44
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The Ikea Tradfri bulbs and switches are fairly cheap compared to Hue and I like em. They work with homekit with their bridge and other than a couple hiccups (having to re-add them after a firmware update) they have been good.
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Aug 26, 2020 17:48
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Thanks for all the light bulb replies! I'm actually shocked at how much the bulbs themselves cost, and we have a ton of bulbs in our house. Looks like it'll be way more economical to go with switches, which is totally cool. I'm tied to the Apple ecosystem, so I'll look for some that are HomeKit compatible.
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Aug 26, 2020 18:29
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I'm a new home owner and I want to start making my house "smart". I already have some Google Assistant hardware. Is there a good primer out there on how to integrate Google when lights, and things? I already have a chrome cast on my main tv but I want to start looking at smart lights and what not. I'm thinking a smart thing hub with zwave dimmer switches (like the ge ones) Skyarb fucked around with this message at 21:47 on Aug 27, 2020 |
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Aug 27, 2020 18:19
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Baconroll posted:Any thoughts on the Abode smart alarm compared to Simplisafe ? I'm thinking about moving away from the Ring alarm due to the continued lack of additional sensors/sirens, Alexa Guard or even real monitoring in the UK. In the UK with Ring you just get the motion and contact sensors and thats it. The 'monitoring' is just a round-robin automated call to your number list with no human operator and no police called ever. I'm a UK goon and looking at DIYing a Texecomm system, you can buy kits on a bunch of websites i found on google. Its a bit more the "traditional" alarm system in that theres all kinds of sensors to choose from, theyre mostly cheap, you don't pay any fees and you can basically have as many sensors, sirens and strobes, keypad/fob disarming pads etc as the system physically has enough cable terminals for (there are some wireless options too). But it has bolt ons modules to "smarten" it up a bit so you can have it email you, call/text, mobile app control, etc. You can also have it centrally monitored but as far as I know, you have to get it done via a registered installer and then pay your monthly fees for the monitoring. One thing to consider though is GDPR law if you have cameras, which AFAIK even apply to stuff like a ring doorbell. https://www.gov.uk/government/publi...n-your-property
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Aug 28, 2020 00:36
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I've pre-ordered the Abode now. I emailed them with a query and got a good friendly response that wasn't a template cut'n'paste. I'm no-longer concerned about the viability of the company as they are now owned by a substantial smart automation company (also owns Fibaro), and their UK partner is a 50+ year established security/technology company (not 2 guys with a unit on an industrial park). When I get it in a week or 2 I'll post some pictures !
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Aug 28, 2020 11:01
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Does anyone have any experience with the POE Reolink NVR systems? I'm just looking for a no frills home cctv/Ip cam system. I've got an ex work colleague that stole my Ring doorbell and just want a bit better video coverage around my house. I'd like a hard-wired system and own our house so not bothered about cutting holes and working up in the roof.
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Sep 1, 2020 06:07
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I am guessing a lot of people lucky enough to still have jobs like me spent part of their stimulus on extremely overpriced Dyson fans like I did because someone actually improved the Home Assistant support for them. I can now reliably forward control of it to homekit.
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Sep 1, 2020 06:22
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So I'm in the process of building a barn, installing fencing, and a variety of other work to be able to bring my wife's horses to live on our property. Because we don't live on a massive space, the design of this thing will be kind of weird. I want to do some things to make it easier on us: 1) We're going to end up with a gate on our front driveway, and I'd love to have a video doorbell thing on it so we could open it remotely and get notified when packages are dropped off. Ideally, I'd want to install a solar panel to power the thing instead of running electric wire some 300' from the house. Has anyone done stuff like this? 2) I'd like to setup cameras around the place. Right now I have Arlos around the house, but I want something cheaper and with the ability to record locally to my server. Are there any small-ish cameras that I could power via ethernet or something? I don't necessarily need movement notifications, but I want her to have the ability to check on the horses from outside the house, and I want to store a week or two of data locally in case something happens to them. Assuming I can get it working with my existing server (a WHS 2011 box with 18tb of space) then storage isn't an issue, but I'd also like the ability (via app or whatever) to save clips. I'd probably want around 10 cameras. 3) The barn itself needs to be automated. I'd like smart switches to turn lights on and off, and smart plugs to power fans on and off. I think I could do this pretty easily, since I already have HomeKit/Hue stuff setup around the house, and my wifi is strong enough to get out to where the barn will be built (and I can add another beacon if it ends up being weaker). We're going to put a window unit in the tackroom, though, and I'm not sure how those would work with a smart plug. Ideally she'd be able to kick it on and off from her phone. Right now the only smart stuff I have are the Harmony bulbs, a couple of motion sensors, the Arlo cameras, and some of those Lutron switches that go over a real light switch. I wouldn't say money is no object but I'm willing to pay for good stuff if it'll save me a zillion headaches down the road.
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Sep 3, 2020 15:24
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Hey, have some old analog cams that are connected via BNC, and 2 of them are going bad? I looked at yesterday and the IR was flashing on and off for both of them, and today the whole image is just flashing. I was guessing based on the IR, bad power supply? I don't know how they're wired, if they're sharing one supply. It's remote so I just have to call the guy to fix it, was just curious.
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Sep 4, 2020 02:32
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EC posted:So I'm in the process of building a barn, installing fencing, and a variety of other work to be able to bring my wife's horses to live on our property. Because we don't live on a massive space, the design of this thing will be kind of weird. I want to do some things to make it easier on us: Welcome to the poor life, friend! Before I eventually trenched across a giant rear end wash the separates my house part of the 4.3 acres from the horse side to lay electrical wire and pipe water, I had installed 200W of solar on the tack room. That charges a giant rear end used UPS battery I bought on Craigslist. I had two cameras attached to that since they run off of 12V anyway so I just cut the plug off the end and wired them to a junction block that connects to the battery. I also installed a 12V water pump and piped to a 350 gallon water tank behind the tack room. This is mainly for a sink in the tack room but could be used for emergencies for the horses if something happened to my water line across the wash. This system is still in place on the same battery because it just works. I do have 120V down there now and fresh water but I kept the other system as backup. The cameras still run on the battery. For smart lights, I use LIFX outdoor flood lights on the WiFi down there. This was after I installed 120V power of course. LIFX integrates with my Smartthings so that works well. I do have a 12V ewelink relay system that runs some 12V offroad flood lights on the solar/battery system in case of 120V power outage. The bastards at ewelink started charging for IFTTT integration and it doesn't support native Smartthings integration so I just use the app to control that relay box now instead of a command through Smartthings. To get WiFi down there, I installed a Ubiquiti point to point wireless bridge using Nanostations and down at the horse side I have a wireless access point. The cameras and LIFX lights all talk to that access point. The cameras feed to a Blue Iris server in my house. I don't have any pics handy of the cameras, solar, or wifi bridge but here is a current (reduced size) Blue Iris picture of those cameras' view. Hopefully some of that info helps with ideas. I would be glad to answer any questions.
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Sep 4, 2020 18:37
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Is there a thread for horse farm talk? I'm probably going to have one in the near future, myself.
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Sep 4, 2020 21:51
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azurite posted:Is there a thread for horse farm talk? I'm probably going to have one in the near future, myself. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3878671
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Sep 4, 2020 22:25
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Thought this was going to be a link to the bad with money thread because horses.
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Sep 4, 2020 22:27
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Henrik Zetterberg posted:Thought this was going to be a link to the bad with money thread because horses. It is, the thread title just keeps on changing.
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Sep 4, 2020 22:28
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Oh 
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Sep 4, 2020 23:14
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But we already have two boating threads
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Sep 4, 2020 23:21
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Wow, that thread is horrifying.
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Sep 5, 2020 05:25
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I just bought a couple Zooz Zen16 multirelays to automate my garage and sprinkler system. The Zen16 is a choice piece of hardware!
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Sep 5, 2020 12:42
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Anyone who has google assistant and several smart speakers know how to keep their volumes synced? If they are not all set to the same volume and you try to control a groups volume it like scales their volumes instead of just setting them all to an absolute volume. This is annoying for routines...
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Sep 9, 2020 05:21
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I'm going to start here but please feel free to direct me to somewhere better suited to this discussion. I need some form of baby monitor system. After having done a fair bit of research, I'm leaning towards going with Google Nest cams, in no small part because they'll transition to a general house monitoring system afterwards. My hangup is that I'm staunchly opposed to the Echo and that entire suite of devices. I don't want one of these sitting around recording everything in my house. (Let's avoid the topic of cell phones for now.) Is the Nest cam just another of the same thing, or is it considerably less invasive than the "home assistant" suite of devices?
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Sep 10, 2020 15:47
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