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So I'm building a new house and looking into both home security and automation and even though I'm an IT guy I'm just overwhelmed with where to start. I have 3 months to research everything, so does anyone know of a good place with solid information about all the different ecosystems and options out there? Google is just flooded with referral websites and bullshit review sites. I'm not sure about things like competing standards, interoperability, which devices to go with. It's all intimidating. My inital thoughts: Ecosystem: How to decide between using Google vs. Amazon Alexa or even Apple - we use both google and Amazon services, moreso Amazon. We have iPhones and iPads as well. Leaning towards Echo Dots around the house at this point. My wife is also enamored with Samsung appliances (much to my dismay) and we'll probably be getting a SmartHub refrigerator and higher end Samsung washer/dryers with connectivity. She's way too excited about the possibility of getting an alert on her phone when a load of laundry is done washing, so does that bring SmartThings into the mix? Security - Local company offers a Honeywell Lyric system that looks nice. Another offers an IQ2 based system. Both have some automation integration possibilities. Wife wants Skybell HD at the front door or a Ring. I think the picture is better on the Skybell. I personally don't want a monitored security solution, so unmonitored is fine with me. Goals - Nothing insane really, I'm looking for some automation, and if things integrated it would be great. Don't want to deal with 4 or 5 apps and disparate systems. A garage door control and sensor would be nice, some control over lighting in the house, integration with the wireless thermostats, stuff like that. I'm hoping someone can point me to a solid resource that isn't a website full of referral links for whoever is paying the most this week or offer general advice on where to start.
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Apr 20, 2018 18:14
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bobfather posted:Firewall it. In fact you shouldn't be running an IoT setup that doesn't involve a firewall and preferably a segregated VLAN for your devices. +1. I'm planning on running a separate 2.4Ghz wireless network on a segregated VLAN for all my smart home stuff when we move into the new place. Locking it all down might be a pain though since everything seems to have to talk to a server somewhere. Just got new Samsung laundry units, last night couldn't set them up on my wife's iPhone because the Samsung servers were not responding.
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May 10, 2018 16:43
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enraged_camel posted:So are there cool things that can be done with wifi-enabled appliances? Nothing really worth paying a big premium for IMHO. The app has notifications and shows the status of the washer or dryer. It'll pop a notification box when a cycle is finished. You can ask Alexa things like "ask Samsung what is the remaining time on my dryer?" The biggest thing we'll use it for, is you can put clothes in the washer in the morning, and then start the cycle at like 4:30PM so they're finishing up when you get home from work and can put them straight into the dryer. Saves a little bit of time, and you don't have wet clothes sitting in the washer all day. It's funny though, I work from home, I can do laundry all day while I work if I need to. Honestly it's just a feature that came with the fancy Samsung Flexwash system we wanted. I could totally live without it. We're purchasing a Samsung FamilyHub fridge in July, my wife and kids are enamored with the drat thing. I'm all like "I can just put a touchscreen computer on the counter that does all that and more for less money and it won't be obsolete in 8 months", but I have a feeling I won't win that one. It does seem pretty neat though. You can get a picture of whats in the fridge remotely, you can sync a shopping list, mirror whats on your Samsung TV onto the display, control Spotify/<music> , sync calendars. I won't replace the non smart appliances that are coming with the house with smart ones though (dishwasher and wall ovens). I've looked into Samsung products mostly. You can have Alexa preheat the smart oven, you can have it start the dishwasher or tell you how long it has left. There's a range that talks to the hood via bluetooth so when you turn a burner on it automatically turns the hood on (questionable utility with that one). So nothing really cool or life changing tbh.
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May 11, 2018 19:50
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What's the best solution for ceiling fans and smart homes? We jumped the gun and bought 7 fans for the new house while they were on sale at Costco, but once I started looking at the install requirements I was surprised. Granted I haven't bought fans in over 8 years, but a lot of the new ones seem to be designed to be remotely controlled. I have the house wired for 2 switches at every fan location, but these fans we bought only use one of them, and expects the power to be on 100% of the time and for it to be controlled 100% of the time with the remote. You can't even wire them to the dual switches if you wanted to. I really don't want to keep track of the fan remotes either. I'm not sure how I feel about that to be honest. I saw a device called BOND can control them via RF and integrate with Alexa. They're Hunter fans though, and installing 7 of them looks like it's going to cause problems. (no dip switches like hamtpon bay), and if one gets messed up you have to do some weird remote learning dance 12 times to clear things out. I'm leaning towards returning them and getting standard non remote ceiling fans and then getting GE zigbee switches. I think that might be easier in the long run. HD has a couple of Wink enabled fans, Hunter has this weird bluetooth simpleconnect system unless you buy one of their 400 dollar fans that has wifi. I'm planning on an Amazon Echo/Alexa environment with a smartthings hub (or Wink, don't have a preference at this point).
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May 11, 2018 20:01
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I’m going to stop by storage this afternoon and open one of them up to see. The instructions make it seem like you can’t wire them without the receiver, but there is a blue wire it looks like. I’m not sure if I’m going to do all the rooms or not. Definitely the living room, game room and master. The other rooms are up in the air Cost is a factor but it’s secondary to getting a functional system that won’t frustrate the family. If paying for the ge switches is the most solid way to do it, I will.
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May 11, 2018 20:58
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n.. posted:I'm still waiting for one that will let you record to a local DVR or at least access an RTSP stream or something. They have a couple. The one I was looking at was like 350 bucks though. It was called the doorbird
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May 28, 2018 05:57
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While on the subject of Hikvision, is rolling your own NVR based system worth it, or is it easier to grab a kit system from someone. Thinking a kit from Costco or Sams with the nvr and 4 cameras.
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May 28, 2018 22:19
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I went with Amazon Echos but they’re useful.
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Jul 3, 2018 23:53
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My neighbor says the Arlo pro 2 work really well. The 1st gen he says wasn’t great. Those seem to be the best in that space
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Aug 23, 2018 04:43
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Aeka 2.0 posted:Do people seek out HOA's? Because paying a massive monthly fee, cant do anything to your house like you're renting, and they can put a lean on your poo poo really turns me off and it is hard to find a place without that poo poo. I live in a small 12 house lot that may have some riff raff, but it's better than dealing with that poo poo. Some people do. Some people like me just have to deal with them. Any sort of subdivision built in the last 20 to 30 years or so is going to have one, especially if there is any sort of shared amenity space. My HOA deals with the common area upkeep, and the community pool facility. There's the standard architectural committee approval BS as well, but that's just part of dealing with it. Ours isn't as bad as some, but can be inconvenient. I don't consider the fee to be massive, though I dislike how much of the fee goes to "management services" which is a total racket (like many things in real estate). Our pool facility is beautiful though and the HOA fee we pay yearly (450) is worth it just for access to the pool. Honestly I'd be fine if all the HOA rules went away and we all just contributed to a maintenance bucket for the common areas and pool. I was surprised though how many people do want a strong HOA and desire to live in those communities. Imagine the sort of person that would care that your trash can was out at 7:15pm when the rules say it has to be put back in by 7pm. Those people like HOA's.
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Aug 24, 2018 15:40
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redeyes posted:I really prefer a windows box for a DVR for Hikvision stuff. BlueIris or something else?
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Aug 28, 2018 00:04
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King Burgundy posted:There are a ton of possible reasons for this, as an fyi. Not sure which bucket this guy fits into, but could be someone from the county assessor's office updating their data for taxes, HOA, appraiser looking for comps, Yard guy looking for ideas, Insurance company updating records, etc. There are also sometimes people that see good ideas that they want to do with their house so will stop to take a picture. This guy had some kind of logo on his shirt, but couldn't tell what, from what he took pictures of I'd lean county assessor's office or appraiser, but he also had a lawnmower in his truck. So one additional possibility is that he has a future job coming up or has been asked to provide a quote for one, got the address wrong and came to your house instead. Back of the guys shirt says taskeasy.com Guy was harmless. Probably thought the rocks and lights were cool and snapped a few photos of them for another client or something.
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Sep 4, 2018 22:42
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Krakkles posted:I seem to recall that roomba > *, but does anyone have any advice on robovacuums? We had the crappy anker one for awhile, and were really unsatisfied - didn't clean that well, was dumb as hell, etc. I'm basically curious if there's any option under $600 that's worth it, because it sure looks like the roombas that are significantly better than anything else are up there. Roomba's are popular, have good aftermarket parts availability, they work well enough. Smartness depends on the model. My buddy has a 680 he likes. I've never had one. I have a Samsung Powerbot. Does pretty well for what it is, no real complaints. Smart enough to go recharge and pick back up where it left off. I like the cleaning width and the edge cleaning functionality. For me, the holy grail of robot vacuums is interior mapping, being able to tell it to just do a section of the house instead of it aimlessly wandering around. Supposedly the newest Roomba coming out will have it, the top of the line Neato has it, and the top of the line Samsung has it. I'm not willing to drop the 700 to 1000 dollars to find out though. My powerbot has some sort of vision system, it doesn't crash into anything and can go back and forth in a room pretty well. It doesn't bounce around in random patterns like the older roombas did. None of them clean really well in my opinion, they supplement normal cleaning, though the samsung does a pretty good job. I have about 1500 sq ft of tile in my house and I run it twice a week to help with crumbs and cat hair, it doesn't replace the full clean I have to do every weekend with a bissell crosswave on the tile, and sometimes having the kids push a dustmop around is faster. I still think of it as a toy mostly, a useful toy, but a toy. FWIW the Roborock gets really good reviews on Slickdeals for the features/price ratio. Issues with support though as some folks are getting them shipped straight from china.
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Sep 17, 2018 20:51
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So I got a rude awakening 2 months ago when I bought a bunch of fans for my new house. I had similar hopes, and I ended up just scrapping the idea of controlling the fans via Alexa for now. Many of the new fans, especially the stylish ones are designed to work with their remote, and just 1 wall switch. I spent a bit of money to make sure every room in the house has 2 switches for the ceiling fans, only to find out that it was pointless and none of them are being used now. It doesn't help that many new fans are also moving to more efficient DC motors that don't play nice with normal speed controllers. I bought a bunch of Hunter RF remote controlled fans for the bedrooms, and the option I would probably need to look into is a Bond controller, or some other programmable RF hub that integrates with Alexa. Zwave wall switches are out. My living room fan is a 6 speed RF controlled DC motor fan, and I'm not sure if anything other than the factory remote would control it properly. There isn't much of a market for pure Wifi Fans right now (Hunter has a few, and Haiku), and the ones that are out there I didn't like or were too expensive. Home Depot has some Wink enabled fans from Hampton Bay I think, don't know much about them, but there are some threads on SmartThings forum about them. I didn't explore Lutron's solution, and Hunter's SimpleConnect platform is bluetooth of all loving things. So you can handle it all with the wall switches, but you need to make sure the fan you buy is an older pull chain style fan (preferably) with an AC motor and separate wires for the fan and light (usually blue and black). While it originally was a goal, honestly we don't change fan speeds often, and I keep the fan remote for the living room in a storage compartment of the couch so it's there if we need it. What makes me cranky is in probably less than 2 years they'll all come with wifi controllers. It hasn't been that big of a deal though. The biggest adjustment is using the remotes in the bedrooms instead of the light switch. In the living room we never use the ceiling fan light, I have some LED flushmount lights on a Zwave dimmer and 2 lamps on WeMo plugs for lighting.
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Sep 18, 2018 19:56
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I’d say Nest for easy to use, user friendly
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Nov 6, 2018 03:41
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Yes. A restraining order or the like is in order
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Nov 6, 2018 05:28
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Replaced a carrier Cor thermostat with an ecobee 4 with 2 room sensors and I’m super happy with it. It’s perfectly accurate and the room sensors help keep the temp I want. The thermostat is on a wall close to the kitchen so it’s a degree or two warmer over there. Pretty neat piece of kit. The built in Alexa works well too. I recommend it if anyone needs a new thermostat Also setup a smart things hub and a few Zwave switches to control my Xmas lights. Technology is grand
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Nov 23, 2018 22:39
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I just went with a Samsung SmartThings hub for now. Hubitat looked neat as an alternative though it seems young. I don't want to mess with a roll your own system, and I have a few Samsung appliances already so I just went with it. That plus Alexa and I'm having a blast automating stuff around the house. Nothing major or fancy, just a few routines and schedules. My wife is on board with it too which is cool. With as many Wifi options are out there, I debated even going down the Zwave path at all, and I'm recommending a cousin who just wants a few light switches automated to skip it and just get WeMo or TPLink wifi switches instead.
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Nov 26, 2018 19:49
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n0tqu1tesane posted:Do you need colors on the porch? If not, just replace the switch with a smart switch. This is what I did.
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Nov 29, 2018 23:25
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Subjunctive posted:Does anyone have a recommendation for outdoor smart outlets (accessories, not built in)? We’re looking at 10F and light snow worst likely case. I’m in the market for a Z-wave one and something WiFi/hubless that is Alexa-able. I have the GE branded (jasco) outdoor zwave one controlling the Christmas lights and works well
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Dec 2, 2018 01:31
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The gen 3 SmartThings Hub will work over WiFi. The gen 2 has to be connected via Ethernet.
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Dec 2, 2018 17:41
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ManSedan posted:Any advice on what smart plug to get? I’m looking for something that’s both Alexa and HomeKit comparable. I'm happy with the Wemo plugs, and they go on sale at Costco pretty often. Picked up 2 for 30 last week. They're wifi and work with Alexa and HomeKit. I have 4 of them total so far, no issues. They upgraded the firmware in the last few months to work with Homekit without the bridge device.
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Dec 7, 2018 18:27
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I replaced my Carrier Cor thermostats with Ecobee's with 2 sensors on each one, and they may be my favorite thing I've done in the house so far.
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Jan 11, 2019 18:19
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That's where I bought mine. I got the Ecobee 4 with 2 sensors for the downstairs, and the 3 Lite with 2 sensors for upstairs. The 4 replaced my living room Echo Dot which is really nice. Luckily my utility has a rebate program right now for 150 back for each thermostat. So the 3 was free and the 4 wasn't a whole lot.
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Jan 11, 2019 19:35
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Are the camera's already connected to your wifi?
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Jan 24, 2019 00:08
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Hoobastank4ever97 posted:Does anybody know of an off/on outlet that will work with either a Philips Hue or a Lutron Cassetta setup? I have some Wemo outlets but those only work with my Alexa. I need one that will work with Hue or Cassette because I want one that will turn my subwoofer on and off when I turn on my entertainment system with my Harmony Elite remote (I even tried IfTTT but there were no "recipes" that did what I wanted). Oddly enough neither Philips nor Lutron make on/off outlets that I can find. I can't find one either, both of those systems seem focused only on lighting. Most modern subwoofers I've been around go into a low power standby mode until they detect a signal. Mine barely pulls 1/2 a watt in standby mode. Not worth putting on a switched outlet. A wemo probably uses double the amount of power that the standby mode of the subwoofer uses. Of course if your sub doesn't have this feature I could see wanting to turn it off. On but with no signal mine uses around 7 or 8 watts.
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Apr 12, 2019 19:35
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Oh never mind then. The buzzing is a grounding issue I believe
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Apr 12, 2019 21:23
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I bought both my ecobees from Costco. The best deal I found. Even sweeter I got 300 bucks in rebates from my electric company for installing them.
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Jun 13, 2019 22:35
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I have no issue with the GE/Jasco dimmer connected to SmartThings. I have a mix of all sorts of stuff around the house, Wifi and Zwave and it all works pretty well tbh.
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Nov 15, 2019 18:21
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Rhyno posted:I was going to grab the 5 pack of Blink cameras for outdoor monitoring but it seems they are terrible? A cousin has them, and I'll admit most of the problem is where she mounted them, but I find in her case they're good for motion alerts and seeing if someone/thing is happening in view of them, but the picture quality is not great and they'd be useless for identification purposes the way she has them installed. But like I said, that's 95% on her and where she mounted them. You can't put them 12+ feet off the ground looking down at a 45 to 60 degree angle and expect to get any useful information. Battery life for her has been decent, and she's happy with them for what she wants them to do. I think they serve a purpose and can work OK in certain situations, but I decided against them. A neighbor has an Arlo Pro 2 setup and that works well for him if you can deal with the battery swaps. He has the original Arlo's at a vacation home and he really likes the Pro 2's better. Both are not ideal if you plan on watching or streaming from them often or they're going to catch a ton of motion. They shine in situations where they end up recording only a few minutes a day.
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Jan 3, 2020 18:24
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Laranzu posted:Is there any Linux IP camera solution on par with the Windows options? I've got Shinobi up and running but it's settings are essentially an undocumented mess with crazy names that don't mean anything. It's performance is wonderful compared to some other software I've tried. I’m guessing you’re aware of zoneminder which is the only one I’m aware of, but I don’t keep up with the different solutions out there. I’m planning on running blue iris when I finally get around to the outdoor security cameras.
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Jan 10, 2020 05:31
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Fixing drywall is easy, I'd just cut into it.
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May 28, 2020 16:40
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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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Bioshuffle posted:Those of you who have Alexa or Google equivalent, are you worried about your privacy at all? Once you understand that if you have any sort of online presence your privacy is already gone, you don't worry about 1 service anymore really. There's so much stuff going on in the background these days it's truly scary and short of just not using the internet there isn't much you can do about it.
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Oct 15, 2020 18:21
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Vivint/ADT are acceptable, but they're expensive. I ended up returning a Vivint system about 3 years ago I had installed from Sams Club. They lock you into buying only their approved hardware, and I was looking for something more expandable. I ended up using a local telco company, and getting a Honeywell Lyric based system. It's tied into a couple cameras, front door deadbolt, skybell doorbell camera, and the MyQ enabled garage door opener. The Lyric platform does Z-Wave so there is plenty of expandability, but it only works with Honeywell's not so great cameras and Skybell doorbell cameras. That's ok for me though. It's not perfect, but it's only 34.95 a month. Vivint was almost 70 and that was without cameras. Vivint also locked you into a crazy contract that I wasn't a fan of. 3 years initial term, and then I think it auto renewed for an entire year unless you contacted them during the 3rd full moon of the second lunar quarter while mercury is in retrograde and a bunch of other bullshit. If you don't want to DIY, try a local company with good reviews, or even Alarm.com. I'm the sort of person that rather buy my own equipment up front and then pay less for monitoring. You can also try seeing if there's some smart home people in your area. I'm starting to see a few local people setting up small businesses to help people setup things like DIY alarms, Smart Home equipment, A/V equipment and stuff like that. If you just want an installer, that might be a way to go.
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May 26, 2021 17:39
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I can also confirm. I'm at the point where I get irritated if something isn't smart home controlled.
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Aug 12, 2021 20:28
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How much did you pay for that switch? It's a neat box, but I can't really handle the price point for home use.
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Aug 18, 2021 20:31
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No. That’s a safety feature and it shouldn’t be disabled even if you could. Its a legal requirement for manufacturers https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/16/1211.14 I mean nothing is going to stop you from disabling the speaker physically I guess. I don’t find mine to be that loud tbh, my neighbors definitely can’t hear it. I can barely hear it through the door to my house.
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Feb 20, 2022 07:23
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VelociBacon posted:I guess I'm not really sure what I'm asking besides to try to figure out if there are certain ecosystems of products in this space that are huge goon favorites that I would benefit by installing and getting used to from the beginning and not trying to shoehorn into my daily life in a few years. I have a total mismash of various smart home stuff from a bunch of different vendors, and use Amazon Alexa to control it all. I have a few things on Z-Wave via Samsung SmartThings (GE light switches, and an outdoor switch), Wifi switches and outlets (Tp-link, WeMO), a Bond for IR/RF only things (led strip, ceiling fans), and all the other Wifi/smart home stuff (TV, soundbar, garage opener, alarm panel, etc) and Alexa fronts it all. I'm sure other peoples setups are much cleaner and better put together, but ultimately what I have works for what I want. I have 2 Ecobee's as well, but we never change the temperature unless we're on vacation, so I use them for the remote sensors mostly. I have a bunch of routines setup in Alexa and they make life easier (read: I don't have to get off the couch or handle a dozen remote controls or go to a dozen apps in my phone). I've had no issues with any of the smart home stuff I've bought. Even the cheap 5 dollar wifi walmart light bulbs work fine. I just front all of it with Amazon Alexa and don't really think about it after that. WhiteHowler posted:How hard was the Ecobee to install and set up? Do you have it integrated with any other HA stuff? The Ecobee installs like any other thermostat, the only thing that might be different is if you don't have a c-wire you have to use the power extender kit that comes with it. The ecobee also comes with a trim plate that can help cover larger holes if needed. skipdogg fucked around with this message at 17:19 on Mar 20, 2022 |
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Mar 20, 2022 17:15
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xgalaxy posted:I've always felt that kind of stuff is super gimmicky unless you have the ability to automate the opening/closing of the air ducts going into each room. It works pretty well for me. I have 2 ecobees, 1 upstairs, 1 downstairs. Each one has 2 sensors attached to it, for a total of 3 data points on each floor. The occupied rooms are weighted more heavily so the room you're in is ideally the temperature you want. Zoning an AC system would be a much better solution of course, but that's a lot more expensive. For example, my owners suite bedroom is on the west side of the house and gets blasted by the afternoon sun. It can get 2 degrees warmer in there than the living room or kitchen areas during the late afternoon. That's fine with me though, because we're not in that room. I want the areas we're in to be 71 degrees, I don't care if my bedroom is 73 or not. I don't want the ecobee at that time to cool my bedroom to 71 which might make the rest of the house 69 degrees. Now when we go to bed at night, I don't care what temp the kitchen or living room is. I want our bedroom to be the right temp. Here's a current example. I'm sitting in my office upstairs, and I've got a couple computers going, and I face east so my office has been blasted by the sun all day. It's 73 in my office, but 69 and 71 where the other 2 sensors are. The AC is running because the occupied room is warmer than desired. The unoccupied room can be 69 and I don't care, I want the comfort where I'm at. https://imgur.com/a/5ZEZNz3 My biggest complaint is the ecobee really is focused on trying to save you money, and I honestly don't give a crap about that. I bought them to make the house more comfortable by using the remote sensors.
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Apr 8, 2022 21:27
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