Home Automation

rathdowney

Hello to all

I have some question about Home Automation
i know that there are a few companies doing this in the U.S
but how does it work?

How does the user connect to the device and the device send
a signal to the user to tell that it is on.

E.g

I want to turn on my bedside lamp at home from my Phone or any device
and i want a reply message that tells me that the lamp is on or that the light bulp is blown etc..

Anybody??

happyeveryday

Looked into this whole area before. I'm no expert but i'll try helping with my limited knowledge.
Their are a number of iPhone Apps for this function now and I'm sure it can be done with any web connection from the remote site end of things.
At home you would require a device to manage the system, wifi would be the easiest to install, but that means wireless light switch, sockets etc and when i did my research they were prohibitively expensive >$120 per item, but could be mounted to existing fittings. The sky is the limit from managing your heating, cctv, door locks, lights, sound system, home entertainment etc. As all of these devices would be wifi enabled they would return a signal with their status (i don't know about checking the status of a light bulb but the light switch yes).

Hope this helps.

NeverSayDie

Far as I know, the most popular standard used for home automation gear is X10. See here;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X10_%28industry_standard%29
It normally uses power-line networking (ie, a LAN that uses your house's wiring to send data around), though there's presumably more wireless options nowadays too. You should be able to find plenty of folks selling X10 modules of all sorts, though I'm not sure how popular that kind of gear is here, it's more of a US thing from what I gather.

rathdowney

Thanks guys for your help

Anybody else out there willing to help?

E39MSport

You can get stuff off the shelf in B&Q. Didn't pay too much attention to it so not sure of its capabilities.

It's not uncommon technology. I have IP cameras in/on the house and some of the SW providors also provide functionality to control stuff in the house.

I'm not sure that you're in the right forum. Possibly security might be better.

Regards,

randombar

I'm interested in this myself, with the price of ipod touches dropping the whole time I reckon it won't be long before we could have one in each room controlling everything??

I actually did my final year project on something like this about *cough* a few years ago it's amazing it hasn't gone further yet.

So if I do get my planning and build I would be interested in:

lighting,
heating,
cctv,
door locks,
lights,
sound system,
home entertainment,

any more??

Since it would be a new build I could cable the whole lot.

I'm wondering about cost, how much are the light switches, door locks, etc? I mean we all want to keep cost down and do things ourselves, has anyone managed to do this??

Thanks
Gary

E39MSport

Check avforums for possible info

E39MSport

EDIT: - add removed

olafshiel

The best thing is to have a rough idea what level you want to get to and install the relevant cabling. After that you can chip away at it bit by bit. First thing is to get familiar with the market.

What do you want to achieve? What equipment is out there to help you do this? Once you are armed with this you can then see how to do it cheaper.

When I built my house 6 years ago, there was next to nothing on the market in ireland of any decent quality so I ended buying everything i needed from the states. The dollar rate was kind at the time and its cheaper anyway. They have been doing this stuff for decades so they have pretty much ironed out and problems. Personally I would steer clear of X10 or at least only use it as a last resort as a retro fit. Its unreliable and you could end up with a house gone crazy at all hours of the night. If at all possible hardwire everything and limit any wireless stuff.

For lighting I installed http://www.centralite.com/ There stuff is bullet proof.I've had it for years and never had a glitch.EVER!
For my home automation and security I installed HAI Omni Pro11 http://www.homeauto.com/Products/HAISystems/OmniOverview.asp Again bullet proof. For home audio/Video I installed Russound. http://www.russound.com/caa.htmAll three of these can communicate seamlessly.

With a small bit of research you can install all this yourself and get your local electrician to install the legally required stuff. Any alarm company will come out and sign off on your alarm if you pay them to monitor it. €200 a year or so.

Then to top it all off I added a HAL pro voice recognition system http://www.automatedliving.com/automate_swhcd.shtml which allows me to control everything in the house by voice via microphones in each room. So when I go to bed I say "NIGHT MODE" and al the lights go off except my bedroom lights which go off gradually over 10 minutes, the cars are locked, gate locked, doors locked, alarm set except for upstairs where the PIR's are bypassed to allow movement upstairs in case a baby wakes etc. If I say "MOVIE TIME" the lights in the TV room go down, TV changes to the DVD channel, DVD drawer pops open for 30 seconds and away I go. What you can do is virtually unlimited. Check out the video of james Lipsit to give you an idea of what you can do. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYa777RBT50&feature=player_embedded

All this can also be controlled by an iphone from anywhere in the world. http://digitaldan.com/home/ Rewind IP cameras, fast forward etc The house will call me if instructed if any particular event has happened. i.e. The alarm is on but the gate bell is used. The house connects me to the gate intercom so I answer the buzzer as if I'm at home and I can see who is it via the gate camera.
If you need any pointers, let me know

randombar

olafshiel wrote: »

The best thing is to have a rough idea what level you want to get to and install the relevant cabling. After that you can chip away at it bit by bit. First thing is to get familiar with the market.

What do you want to achieve? What equipment is out there to help you do this? Once you are armed with this you can then see how to do it cheaper.

When I built my house 6 years ago, there was next to nothing on the market in ireland of any decent quality so I ended buying everything i needed from the states. The dollar rate was kind at the time and its cheaper anyway. They have been doing this stuff for decades so they have pretty much ironed out and problems. Personally I would steer clear of X10 or at least only use it as a last resort as a retro fit. Its unreliable and you could end up with a house gone crazy at all hours of the night. If at all possible hardwire everything and limit any wireless stuff.

For lighting I installed http://www.centralite.com/ There stuff is bullet proof.I've had it for years and never had a glitch.EVER!
For my home automation and security I installed HAI Omni Pro11 http://www.homeauto.com/Products/HAISystems/OmniOverview.asp Again bullet proof. For home audio/Video I installed Russound. http://www.russound.com/caa.htmAll three of these can communicate seamlessly.

With a small bit of research you can install all this yourself and get your local electrician to install the legally required stuff. Any alarm company will come out and sign off on your alarm if you pay them to monitor it. €200 a year or so.

Then to top it all off I added a HAL pro voice recognition system http://www.automatedliving.com/automate_swhcd.shtml which allows me to control everything in the house by voice via microphones in each room. So when I go to bed I say "NIGHT MODE" and al the lights go off except my bedroom lights which go off gradually over 10 minutes, the cars are locked, gate locked, doors locked, alarm set except for upstairs where the PIR's are bypassed to allow movement upstairs in case a baby wakes etc. If I say "MOVIE TIME" the lights in the TV room go down, TV changes to the DVD channel, DVD drawer pops open for 30 seconds and away I go. What you can do is virtually unlimited. Check out the video of james Lipsit to give you an idea of what you can do. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYa777RBT50&feature=player_embedded

All this can also be controlled by an iphone from anywhere in the world. http://digitaldan.com/home/ Rewind IP cameras, fast forward etc The house will call me if instructed if any particular event has happened. i.e. The alarm is on but the gate bell is used. The house connects me to the gate intercom so I answer the buzzer as if I'm at home and I can see who is it via the gate camera.
If you need any pointers, let me know

You are my hero! Might be onto you again when I get further in only at planning permission stages still (wish me luck)

What would you recommend cabling wise for a new build, I like the idea of providing for the future tinkering. i.e. do light switches have an additional cable wired to a central server? Speaker wiring routed back (inc microphones) security system the same etc. etc.

Thanks a lot for the detailed description I'll definitely be going back to that post!!

olafshiel

Basically you will need six types. Standard electrical, cat 5, alarm cable, shielded 4 core (for microphones) a good quality speaker and coax. The shielded cable is a must to cut out any interference and I wouldn't advising buying cheap speaker cabling. A good quality coax is the RG6 which is well shielded.

Regarding dragging cables for lights, for each light switch you will need a power cable to the light and a cat 5 to the switch. The lighting switch sends a signal to your lighting panel to tell it what power to send to the light. simple really.

For microphones, run the shielded cable back to a point where you will have your sound mixer http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/101059-REG/Shure_SCM810_SCM810_8_Channel_Microphone_Mixer.html for 8 microphones or the SCM410 for 4 microphones, Expensive but quality is crucial for voice recognition, Make sure your cable does not run parallel to power cables but across any as you will be more likely to get interference.
I used these microphones http://www.crownaudio.com/pdf/mics/127006.pdf

If your budget can stretch to it install a few touch screens around the house http://www.homeauto.com/Products/ConsolesTouchscreens/Omnitouch.asp
These are great for setting up macros (several of tasks completed with one button pressed) From these screens you can control everything in the house. If these are a bit pricey, get the http://www.smarthome.com/110722/HAI-Omni-Console-33A00-1/p. aspx they do the same thing except a lot cheaper.

Personally, I built a little comms room where everything goes back to and I have a central pc for all the software and hardware there. It's easier to pull every cables in the house to a central point. make it big enough for you to sit down in front of a pc as you will be doing a bit of programming.

One VERY important point. Make sure each and every cable is clearly marked at both ends. It will save you a head ache in the end.

For voice automation and controlling audio and video equipment with your voice using IR transmitters , just follows james's great instructions here http://www.james.lipsit.com/home.htm
The concept is simple enough. You train your ocelot using your remotes to send a specific signal down a specific cable to a specific piece of equipment. Once you have done that you can then use your voice to give a command to execute that particular signal anytime. So instead of using your remote control for your tv, you tell the computer to send that specific signal down the IR cable to your TV which has a small transparent IR transmitter stuck to IR receiver on the TV

randombar

olafshiel wrote: »

Basically you will need six types. Standard electrical, cat 5, alarm cable, shielded 4 core (for microphones) a good quality speaker and coax. The shielded cable is a must to cut out any interference and I wouldn't advising buying cheap speaker cabling. A good quality coax is the RG6 which is well shielded.

Regarding dragging cables for lights, for each light switch you will need a power cable to the light and a cat 5 to the switch. The lighting switch sends a signal to your lighting panel to tell it what power to send to the light. simple really.

For microphones, run the shielded cable back to a point where you will have your sound mixer http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/101059-REG/Shure_SCM810_SCM810_8_Channel_Microphone_Mixer.html for 8 microphones or the SCM410 for 4 microphones, Expensive but quality is crucial for voice recognition, Make sure your cable does not run parallel to power cables but across any as you will be more likely to get interference.
I used these microphones http://www.crownaudio.com/pdf/mics/127006.pdf

If your budget can stretch to it install a few touch screens around the house http://www.homeauto.com/Products/ConsolesTouchscreens/Omnitouch.asp
These are great for setting up macros (several of tasks completed with one button pressed) From these screens you can control everything in the house. If these are a bit pricey, get the http://www.smarthome.com/110722/HAI-Omni-Console-33A00-1/p. aspx they do the same thing except a lot cheaper.

Personally, I built a little comms room where everything goes back to and I have a central pc for all the software and hardware there. It's easier to pull every cables in the house to a central point. make it big enough for you to sit down in front of a pc as you will be doing a bit of programming.

One VERY important point. Make sure each and every cable is clearly marked at both ends. It will save you a head ache in the end.

For voice automation and controlling audio and video equipment with your voice using IR transmitters , just follows james's great instructions here http://www.james.lipsit.com/home.htm
The concept is simple enough. You train your ocelot using your remotes to send a specific signal down a specific cable to a specific piece of equipment. Once you have done that you can then use your voice to give a command to execute that particular signal anytime. So instead of using your remote control for your tv, you tell the computer to send that specific signal down the IR cable to your TV which has a small transparent IR transmitter stuck to IR receiver on the TV

That's great, thanks for all the advice.

I guess the main thing to sort out in the build so is the cat5 cable, the speaker cable, the satellite cable and alarm cable.

I was already thinking I would route this back to a central unit in the utility room.

Couple more questions if you have the time?

What happens if the light control box blows? The wiring config I was understanding from the post was that you would have the wiring for each light coming direct from the control box and the cat 5 going back to the control box controlling the on off mechanism. If that was the set up, if the box blows you are basically without proper light switches until the repair? Do the switches work as standard switches also?

Do you have speakers built into the ceilings or what do you recommend??

olafshiel

The centralite system is quite robust and I'm not sure how it could "blow" unless your house was hit by lightening, which would be protected in any case by surge protection equipment which you should install as a matter of course. The system is very unlikely to blow any more than a standard lighting setup. but in answer to your question if the panel were to "blow" you cannot control the lights in the traditional on/off way as the cable from the switch is CAT 5 and carries only phantom power. The CAT 5 basically send an instruction to the MCB "master control board" telling it what to do. To turn lights on and off, you tap the button. To control dimming you hold the button down until you achieve the required lighting level. here is the software link for the Elegance system. have a play around with it. http://www.centralite.com/products/elegance/elegance.asp

It looks complicated but once you understand it, it's quite straightforward.

This is the nearest dealer that supplies all the hardware for HAI, Centralite, Russound etc. They dont do HAL voice recognition though. http://www.multi-room.com/

Regarding speakers, ceiling one are very effective. It depends if you want loud party volume or not. You can do both if you like, it depends of the power of the amp you buy.

zabzab

hi there first let me declare I am in the home automation business and have some opinions and advice. In order to do this properly you need to be realistic about your level of knowledge because you are going to live in this house if you decide to plumb it yourself and you do not have sufficient knowledge problem will arise likewise with home automation there are a large number of people with enough knowledge or programming ability to do this as a diy but having been brought in to rescue houses with problems I do know what happens and remember that what you will put up with or use may be a cause of problems when you go to sell your house or even have someone to stay .
I got a call once from a woman whose computer savvy husband had done control of the house but he was away on business and the dishwasher,washing machine and worst of all the tv did not work,
A site that gives good informastion about all of this is the elan site www.elanhomesystems.com. At the end of the day if you are really interested in doing this I would suggest approaching a professional company and telling them what you have in mind and asking how much of the work you can do yourself and what they would charge for the work you can`t do yourself. It is fair to assume that the systems that you buy off the net are usually pretty simple systems, the manufacturers of the better systems tend to only allow purchase through authorised and trained dealers as remember if it doesn`t work who supports it. The most important thing in any home automation is the cable do not under any circumstances believe the person who says wire is wire . I am not one of these people who believes that stuff like cold cured molecular cable is better than good quality but there is a reason why good cable costs more .
Will you use the cheapest materials in the construction of your house.
OLAFSHEIL seems to know what he is talking abou but may I ask why 4 core for microphones? The centralite system is American i believe and my not be ce rated the problem there is if there is god forbid an accident or an electrical fault fire insurance may be void also any electrician who signed off on a system that has live mains connected to a noneu approved device may be taking a chance.

olafshiel

To an extent, Zabzab is correct in that you need to be confident in what you are doing when installing DIY home automation. Obviously the easiest way is to call a dealer and get them to put everything in.
Personally when I built my house 6 years ago there were few if any home automation dealers and I found that that the hardware they had was fairly basic and certainly they hadn't a clue about installing voice recognition systems. So I did it myself in the end. Zabzab is quite correct about cables. Never skimp on this end because to pull out cheap cables only to replace them with better quality cables would be messy and more expensive in the end. Personally I am very happy with my system and like I said it's been in 5 years without so much a single glitch. Again Zabzab is right about hardware being CE certified. If ever there was a fire or something there could be an issue with insurance. http://www.multi-room.com/ supplied most of my stuff all CE certified and have a great backup service. So what I am saying basically is if you want to do it, go for it. Just be methodical and take your time.
In answer to your question Zabzab the reason I installed 4 core was because beside each microphone I also installed a momentary switch which needs two cables to force address the HAL system should the enviroment near the microphone be noisy. Like I said in a previous post keep away from X10 and limited wireless installations as dishwashers etc can go mental at any time.

FrankGrimes

Very interesting thread, certainly plenty of stuff that I'll take on board for potentially building a new house some day.

olafshiel, roughly how much did you spend on your setup? I'm gonna guess it was north of €30,000...would be interested to see estimate it would have cost to get a company in to do it to understand the difference of going DIY (though I appreciate flexibility and items like the voice recognition were things you were less likely to get via an Irish company).

Having seen the prices charged by some Irish companies for relatively basic setups, I'd probably opt for the DIY route. When renovating my house 5 years ago, I put in a Cat 5e network and have got great use out of it, would Cat 6 not be the way to go nowadays though?

olafshiel

How long is a piece of string! The cost of anything like this will be down to the hardware you install.
I installed 3 24 zone lighting panels, a total of 72 zones. overview http://www.centralite.com/support/Elegance/documentation/Flash/EleganceComponentOverview.swf
One Omni Pro security / Automation panel with a 32 zone expansion board, http://www.homeauto.com/Products/HAISystems/OmniPro2/omniPro2_tech.asp
a multi-room audio visual system http://www.russound.com/cav6.6.htm in 11 different rooms. Then the HAL 2000 PRO voice recognition system which was by far the most difficult to commission as they were so many bits to add on if you wanted to control your house via built in mics as opposed to the phone. The beauty of the above hardware is that they all talk to each other seamlessly.
Add touch screens, speakers, cabling, misc stuff. All in all I got away with a shave over 20k. According to the dealer you can pretty much double the cost to have it installed for you.
As cat5e replaced cat5 a while back I would definately install with cat 6 if you want to future proof your house. Having said that in my opinion, unless you will be looking for light speed connections in the near future 5e is fine for domestic home automation.

Mazotasan

I need alittle advice here myself on this if anyone has some thoughts it would be appreciated. Our house has just been 1st fixed by the sparks and the lighting has been wired standard but I am planning to run cat 5 to all the switch points myself and back to central point...

1. will this work down the road when i have the cash to invest in lighting controls?
2. Say I have a 4 gang light switch, is 1 cat 5 enough to control the 4 switches...does each individual switch say utilise 1 pair of the cat 5?
3. Can you control a socket in the same way as a switch with a cat5.

Olafshiel...could ye give me a spec for the 4 core shielded and the speaker wire? Been looking at speaker cable and actually have 100m of speaker cable already and tbh its looks fairly crap but I think I got what I asked for! What makes for a good speaker cable out of curiousity?

For the likes of keypads/touchscreens would one cat5/6 per point be ok? Do IR extenders work over cat 5?

I also got a roll of cat 7 and was planning on running 2 of them side by by side for a hdmi network. Has anyone used the hdmi matrix switchers and over what sort of distances?

Will 3d work over hdmi and can it also be networked?

Apologies for all the questions but been looking for the this thread/info for a while. Some excellent info here and my set up is only currently an aspiration but if I can get the cabling someway right at this point it'll save some pain down the road.

zabzab

need alittle advice here myself on this if anyone has some thoughts it would be appreciated. Our house has just been 1st fixed by the sparks and the lighting has been wired standard but I am planning to run cat 5 to all the switch points myself and back to central point...

1. will this work down the road when i have the cash to invest in lighting controls?
2. Say I have a 4 gang light switch, is 1 cat 5 enough to control the 4 switches...does each individual switch say utilise 1 pair of the cat 5?
3. Can you control a socket in the same way as a switch with a cat5.

Olafshiel...could ye give me a spec for the 4 core shielded and the speaker wire? Been looking at speaker cable and actually have 100m of speaker cable already and tbh its looks fairly crap but I think I got what I asked for! What makes for a good speaker cable out of curiousity?

For the likes of keypads/touchscreens would one cat5/6 per point be ok? Do IR extenders work over cat 5?

I also got a roll of cat 7 and was planning on running 2 of them side by by side for a hdmi network. Has anyone used the hdmi matrix switchers and over what sort of distances?

Will 3d work over hdmi and can it also be networked?
answers firstly most electricians would not be too happy if you decided to run a cable in with their cable secondly what you propose would not work as your load, lights etc needs to be run back to the board. Most common way for a sparks is board to switch to light ( very simplified i know ) and running a wire would not work, with all due respects to the very capable diy people out there electricity is too dangerous for someone who asks that question to mess with. In my opinion trying to prewire for adding light control at a later stage requires someone with expert knowledge . My advice as regards light control as a retrofit is to do it wirelessly. Also a cat5/6/7 is not mains rated and running it in the same conduit OOPs.
Q 2 The essence of lighting control is that the cable is only carrying information and the number of switches is irelevant. ( there were older systems which used a pair of wire for each switch but long gone )
and yes a socket can be controlled from a switch. I did a house for a client who only wanted mains in the walls when something was actually running so every socket as well as every light was controled and isolated when not being used.
Q3 in my opinion for domestic use a speaker cable roughly same as .75 flex
is more than adequate but I would advise that it is an OFC ( oxygen free copper ) cable more for the fact that it will have been manufactured to a better standard. I am not one of these people who go down the expensive route the € 10 euro a Mt or even dearer.
Q4 If all you are putting in is a control panel a single cat5 is fine but if you are putting in a touchscreen power usually dc is needed and unless you know what touchscreen ( crestron use a crestrex cable ) it is a bit of a lottery, in this situation I would run a second cat 5. There is no benefit to using cat6 as the amount if data traveling down the cable from a control panel is minimal . Any decent multiroomsystem panel will transmit ir
you are probably thinking of the ir extender systems that transmit over the coax.
Q4 the famous cat7 the sample i have has different thickness of pairs and
is to the best of my knowledge not really a step up from cat 6. I tried it and was very unhappy. CAt 5e or cat 6 can both be used for HDMI the main problem is that both runs need to be identical lengths for complete success. The answer is a twin cable, belden make a banana cable not
generally available Also some US manufacturers make the same and this is what I use. The biggest problem with hdmi switchers is that if you for example have one source say a sky box into a switcher feeding two screens and only turn on one screen to watch a match someone switches on the second screen and the picture goes on the first screen until the handshake is completed and both pictures are on and the same happens if one screen is turned off. 3 D should work because it will be a hdmi signal and the hdmi is being sent over the cat5e network. I don`t understand what you mean about network for 3 D . Hope this helps but again unless you are a real techno person I would seek expert advice as you will have to live with this for ever.

Pocky

zabzab wrote: »

the famous cat7 the sample i have has different thickness of pairs and is to the best of my knowledge not really a step up from cat 6.

Autsch ... :eek:
Do you mean all 4 pairs thicker than on Cat6 or one pair (brown) thicker than the other three one? Is that an omnimedia from Schneider/Lexcom? If so, it is NOT even Cat7 as for an Cat standard the lowest performance on all four pairs specifies the standard it complies with. And in this case it would be a Cat5 or 6 with an enhanced pair and not a Cat7 cable.

Love this misleading marketing

zabzab

sorry pocky it is indeed the cable with the brown pair thicker, supposed to be suitable for sending rf I have even heard it referred to as cat 8. As regards the advertising it seems to be a version of my whatever is bigger ,longer etc than yours. I get really bored with the people who tell me " I have wired my house with cat6 or cat 7 " without any idea of the advantages or reasons for so doing and with out any idea of what it is going to be used for. I priced a house some time ago and was kindly informed that I was not getting job as husband had a friend doing this kind of thing and he was much cheaper. 2 years later I was asked to go to house where the multiroom system was not woking like the system they had seen in action in a house I had done. Same house, the friend had wired all the speakers with cat5 back to one end of living room and attached a 100 volt line amp and all the coax to the other end of room with no control cable . Nothing I could do except lament loss of job

soldsold

Hi Olafshiel,

Can the centralite system be connected to low energy LED's?

I have planned to use a number of 2 watt LED's around the house.

Just to confirm - you used the Centralite elegance system? (there seem to be a few different ones)

Cheers!

Steve

zabzab

There are presently no dimmable leds available for use on dimming systems. Any dimmable leds ,there are some available use a proprierty system which in some cases can be controlled by DMX ( the industry standard for theaters,nightclubs EC). so it doesn`t matter which control system you use the leds must be treated as a switched i.e. relay load

soldsold

Looks like Olafshiel is gone from the forum, its a pity as he seems to have a good knowledge of the automation stuff he fitted to his house.

Back to listening to sales people so...

zabzab

I am I suppose a sales person but am more than willing to give any help needed i am however, see previous post, reluctant to give specific advice where live mains is involved. Olaf was indeed very knowledgable but in my opinion assumed that because he had done it anyone can do it and he had from his description an amazing but technically complex system and when your house is finished is no time to realise that a diy may not be the way to go