Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie
Home automation in a church :)
-
20-02-2021 5:01pm#1Ok Ok.
The title is a bit misleading .... it's actually a converted church, that now is a private home.
So, the background story: last year in January 2020, we moved to a new place, just before the initial lock down. It's an old church from 1815, that has been in private hands since the 1980s. The current owner bought and converted this place in 2005 and he did so to a very high standard. The church building itself also was extended with an annex, that maintains the original style. There are 5000 sq. ft. of living accommodation here and the place itself sits on little over half an acre in a little sleepy village in the midlands.
The issue however is, that this place is rated BER excempt and there are certain things, that can't be "fixed" due to the status of the building, being a historic landmark. The other issue is, that the last tenant hasn't maintained a thing in the last 10 years.
So we started out with a monthly electricity bill of 475 EUR and burning through 1200l Kero/month, the reasons being:- there are 300 light bulbs in this place. And while half them were bust, the ones that were here, most of them were 30W candles. 300 light bulbs x 30W = 9kW draw.
- there are 7 flood lamps around the property, that were all rated 150W or 300W. These are on PIR sensors and there was no way of switching them off. So they burn through the night from sunset to dawn every single day.
- there is an immersion heater for hot water here, that isn't wired the way, that you'd usually do. One element is on a switch, the other on a timer. Seperate.
- there are 4 heating zones here, that have been rewired by the previous tenant to 2 zones, because the zone thermostats upstairs both in the church and the annex went bust.
- there are 40 radiators with individually TRVs here and most of the wax motors had gone bust, some radiators had been shut off by the previous tenant and some valves were stuck.
- there was a 20 year old 150k BTU Firebird boiler here, that had not been services in the last 10 years. One baffle looked like Sasquatch had come around and taken a bite out of it. It was essentially operating at 50% efficiency and packed in 2 days after we moved in.
So, to fix all of this, going smart home was the perfect way.
A few considerations, because I'm traditionally sceptical of the smart home approach:- the smart home should be hosted within the home. If the internet dies, the majority should still work.
- as this is a tenancy (for now), everything has to be reversible/removable. If we don't get compensated for our own investment, we'll just take the stuff with us, should we leave
With those requirements in mind and the issue, that there is no neutral at the light switches, fitting the likes of Shelly or Sonoff switches was out of the window.
Philips Hue is expensive. Especially, when you have to buy 300 bulbs. However, their Zigbee hub is one of the best ones out there.
Luck will have it, that Ikea Trådfri works with the Philips Hue hub and in February, they lowered the price of the warm-white candles to 8 EUR. And that sealed the deal for me on that one: Philips Hue Hubs (multiple), with Hue color bulbs and strips in a few select places, while most of the hallways etc. have Ikea warm-white bulbs.
Everyone that uses Hue knows and has tried to manage multiple Hue hubs, that it's a pain in the hole. Well, I fixed that also. For the app, we use the "Hue Essentials" app on Android. It allows you to control multiple Hue hubs and also supports the Ikea Trådfri hub. It does not work with the Silvercrest hub from Lidl.
Next question is, how to get Alexa to work with multiple hubs. Because you can only pair one Hub with Alexa in Hue. You could get 2 Hubs working, by using a Hue hub and then an Ikea hub as your second. Pair each of them up with Alexa. But for 6 hubs, which I need, the trick was to tie all the hubs together with the OpenHAB home automation platform and then let OpenHAB handle the connection to Alexa. That way you can also limit, what you want to expose to Alexa. Why do I need 6 hubs ? Each Hue hub has a hard limit of 63 bulbs. I have at least 300 bulbs to control.
So, internet connectivity and wifi. One can imagine that this being a church, wifi is another pain in the hole, because the walls are very thick. That is correct ! I have currently 12 AVM Fritz!Box routers connected via mesh over Cat5e. Luckily this place had network cabling ran to each and every room, when it was converted. Only one router is connected via 5 GHz and one other via powerline. Those routers also take care of:- our telephony (with telephony over mesh)
- handle the new smart TRVs we installed on the radiators.
- controls a switched socket for the plint heaters in the kitchen.
- control the switched sockets, that now can switch the flood lamps on and off, which now have been replaced with 50W LED ones.
- control the switched socket to the fountain in the front yard
- will eventually handle the relay, that opens and closes the front gate
- take care of the intercom at the outside doors and the gate
We also replaced the boiler here (obviously the owner paid for that, as it'll stay with the premise) with a Grand Vortex Condenser boiler and that's now running at 97-98% efficiency.
Where we started: when we moved here, we were burning through 1200l/kero month in the winter and using over 102 kWh of electricity every single day.
Where we are now: we are using approx 600l/kero month during Dec/Jan. That's half of what we used last year. And our electricity consumption was as low as 26 kWh for a day during the summer and the highest this winter we've seen was 50 kWh per day on 2 different days.
I'll be documenting some of stuff, we've been doing here. It goes far beyond just light and heating. We've also put Sonos hifi in most rooms, obviously Alexa devices, motion sensors have been added, a robot lawnmover for the lawn and many many more things.
With Lidl's recent smart home offering, I've also added much more color bulbs, as they certainly are a bargain at 15 EUR/bulb opposed to the Hue pricing of like 50-70 EUR/bulb.
This is a picture of our guestroom and one can see, why there are so many bulbs here. Every single room, including the garage, the press and the walk in closet in the master bedroom, is fitted with this type chandeliers.
So the purpose of this post is, that I'll be documenting some of the stuff, we've done. I've also started a new YouTube channel, where I'm documenting, how to configure most of the home automation, that I've done. We're far from finished here. There are more savings to be got.
/M15
Comments
-
First video on the new channel:
How to get the Lidl/Silvercrest Zigbee smart powerstrip to work with OpenHAB.
/M0 -
There are over 300 light bulbs in our home and there was no way, I could have afforded that buying Philips Hue bulbs.
It's been a few years now, that Ikea updated their bulbs to be full on Zigbee 3.0 compatible, but because they originally only sold the bulbs and the remote, the pairing of Ikea bulbs is done with TouchLink. And that can be a bit hairy.
Either way, as of approx February 2020, the cost of Ikea warm white candles etc. is down to 8 EUR each and that is still the cheapest warm white Zigbee bulb on the market, that actually can be bought in volume.
Here's a little guide on how to pair these bulbs with the Philips Hue hub.
/M0 -
-
I’d have put in smart switches and dimmable LEDs. Having 300 independent lamps is ridiculous. Especially as the luminaries have several lamps on them.
As per my initial post:With those requirements in mind and the issue, that there is no neutral at the light switches, fitting the likes of Shelly or Sonoff switches was out of the window.
I did consider that, but it would have either required a switch that doesn't require neutral. So no dimming and no warm-white mood light. Or it would have required to get an electrician to wire neutral to my switches, to have them dimmable. Still no warm-white or color tones.
With an average of 5 lights per luminary, that would have cost: 20 EUR for the smart switch and 5 x 2 EUR for new bulbs, as the old ones are 30W standard bulbs. Total cost per luminary: 30 EUR.
If I wanted dimmable bulbs on dimmable smart switches, that would have cost approx 30 EUR for the smart switch + 5 x 4 EUR for new bulbs, as the old ones are 30W standard bulbs. Total cost per luminary: 50 EUR, plus either the cost of an electrician wiring me a neutral to every switch or me rewiring the luminaries at the top, which isn't precisely an easy job.
With the Ikea warm-white Zigbee smart bulbs, I have dimming, cold to warm white tones, depending on mood. Cost: 5 x 8 EUR. Average cost per luminary: 40 EUR.
You can see .. your calculation doesn't quite go up there
It most certainly would have been a non-runner on Philips Hue prices, but with the price of the Ikea bulbs, it is actually cheaper than installing dimmable smart-switches and buying dimmable LED bulbs. And it was the matter of replacing the bulbs only.
Of course there is a cost overall for the smart hubs, but you'd also need something for the smart switches like that. And there is a cost for the smart buttons. But in the simplified calculation, the Zigbee route is actually cost effective.
/M0 -
-
Advertisement
-
Adding an Ikea GU10 warm-white to zigbee2mqtt and OpenHAB3 using a zigbee USB sniffer stick.
/M0 -
-
-
In continuation to the video adding the Ikea GU10 spot, I made a second one, that adds the Ikea remote to OpenHAB3, and sets the remote up to control on/off, brightness and color temperature of the bulb.
/M0 -
Network around the place
================
Where we are located, we can get VDSL. Eir would have called that eFibre, but it's not. It's FTTC (Fibre to the cabinet) or VDSL. Well, in our case, we're a few 100m from the exchange.
So approx 60-70 Mbit/s are possible, which is very usable.
I've been working partially from home for over 20 years, but with the current events, we've all been stuck home full time.
Wifi in this place is complicated, because the old church walls are thick. So I had to install wifi routers in most places and then create mesh via network cable. Luckily this place had been wired with network points, so it was easy enough to do.
Here's the mesh overview from the main router:
Looks messy ? It's actually an older screenshot from spring last year. A lot has been added. Some of those things in that network tree are also smart home related.
Every one of those Fritz!Box 7590, 7530, etc. can also have an analog phone connected. Phone calls get routed across the network to the main router, who then dials either the phone line or a VoIP number.
Last spring during the storms this happened:
Yep. That's us cut off from the road. But can you see the phone pole there ? Yes, that's our phone and VDSL line. And that is overhead to the building ... well in this particular scenario not anymore. The most stupid fact is, that there is a duct going from the church all the way down to the gate with power and cat5e in it for the gate, but the phone line wasn't put into the same duct, when that was laid. I mean .... bad plan there, batman. One more thing on my todo list.
All our smart home stuff, apart from Alexa and some functionality of the front door bell, stayed working. So I did get that right.
The router supports, that I can plug a USB Dongle into it and it can use that for internet instead, but again due to the thick walls, speeds were mediocre. Subsequently, I installed a LTE/4G router in the tower, as a backup internet connection.
Later this year, Starlink will be live world-wide. My pre-order is already in. It may seem pricey to some, but in my case work pays for it, so it's stupid not to have a backup.
Current tests in the american northern hemisphere show speeds of 130 Mbit/s down, 25 Mbit/s up at 34ms.
Elon Musk stated himself, that it would double to approx 300 Mbit/s before the end of the year. Also, they will have global coverage by the end of the year. He also stated, that it's intended for low to medium density population areas.
Pricing is 499 EUR + 60 odd EUR shipping for the equipment, 99 EUR/month. (99 EUR deposit to preorder)
This will not compete with the likes of FTTH, DSL and fixed wireless broadband on pricing. But it will give professionals who need a backup or a faster connection a seriously usable option and it will bring FTTH speeds to rural areas, that have nothing else. World wide !! And it certainly blows all other satellite products out of the water. Especially in speed and latency.
The village, I'm in, consists of less than 1000 houses, so OpenEIR will not upgrade us to FTTH. If we were 500m out of the village, we would have been able to get FTTH now. And I had considered making a deal with a neighbour out that way for free broadband and then build a wireless link. Might still do that, too. The reason being, that my VDSL can have sync issues and the speed of the connection can vary from 60-75 Mbit/s on sync, when we've had heavy rainfall for days ... which is what we get quite a lot .. cause this is Ireland. This is not a problem with the provider. It's a technology issue with the copper portion of VDSL. FTTH doesn't have those issues nor does it vary in speed. You either have the speed it's set to or you have nothing.
Either way, it's some of those things, one has to consider, when looking at implementing smart home integration.
Anything cloud related is dead in the water, when your internet dies.
Link to Starlink: https://www.starlink.com/
Link to the tweet discussing speeds and rollout: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1363763858121256963
/M0 -
Advertisement
-
In March last year, I installed a little weather station in the back yard. There is a pole on the top of my boundary wall, that originally held a trellis, that is long gone.
I figured, it was the perfect spot for it. I think I bought it in Maplin years ago. It was a spare, that I had on the shelf, should the original one ever go bust. The original one did go bust, but the last 2 places I lived in where short term rentals, so I didn't bother putting it up.
The weather station communicates via RF with a touchscreen panel.
We have 2 of those in the house, as they all communicate on the same frequency and I still had the panel from the old bust one. Via the USB cable, the data can be read from the station and there is a project called pywws, that plots the data, but also has various protocols, so that it can pass the data on.
One of them is MQTT. So I've added the data to my OpenHAB via MQTT. Here it is widely available to all aspects of smart home (tablets, smart phone, alexa, etc.), but I can also record the data in an InfluxDB database and retain it for historic comparison.
My plan was to eventually put it on the top of the tower, but the issue I have with that weather station, is that the battery only lasts about half a year. Climbing up there to replace 2 AA cells every 6 months sounds like a whole lot of hassle. It's not easy access.
So I had a look around for a better solution and in April last year a new project was launched on Indiegogo (a kickstarter website) called the "WeatherFlow Tempest". This little weather station has solar panels build in, is very compact and looked like the right job. It took until December, before these units finally arrived.
Here's a link to the project: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/tempest-a-revolutionary-personal-weather-system/x/8857985#/
Initially, I just stuck the weather station on a tripod in the garden. And yes, the wind has that blown over a few times. But it's a cheap, half broken, Lidl tripod, that I had lying around and that I've long replaced with something much much better.
This little gem communicates on 2.4 GHz with it's receiver and then hands the data off to a cloud service. There's even an Alexa skill for it.
Now .. here was I saying, I didn't want to cloud connect my stuff. Or at least I wanted a backup. Especially, because that thing could be a useless brick, if the company providing the service goes bust. That is correct.
Well, one of the things as part of my research was, that there was already somebody working on a binding for OpenHAB, that supports the protocol this weather station speaks. It's called the "Smart Weather UDP Broadcast protocol". And that grabs the data directly on my network and imports it into my OpenHAB and like with the other weather station, the data then gets stored in my database for historic purposes.
And this thing obviously can go on the tower and I can forget about it, as it charges itself using even the little sunlight that we get in Ireland. It's been out there for nearly 3 months now and hasn't missed a beat.
I only got around to install the OpenHAB binding tonight and added it to the database.
Here's a readout from the data, that you can get from the weather station directly:
Again, all this data from there, I can expose to all elements of the smart home.
Here's a graph of the InfluxDB data in Grafana of this week so far:
You can ignore the rain data. I think my rain sensor on the old station is stuck and the new one there has no data, as I only started recording the Tempest this evening. The app for the Tempest (which pulls the data from the cloud) tells me, that we had 22.5mm rain and it was indeed ... a sh**y day.
On the outdoor temperature graph, you have the orange line and the dark orange area creeping in from the right. That's the Tempest data starting to be recorded.
The green and light blue are the old weather station.
The yellow area is temperature data from an AVM Fritz!DECT outdoor switched socket, which I installed under the fountain in the front yard. Those AVM things can monitor power usage of the socket, voltage and temperature. It has some breaks in the graph sometimes because it is a bit of a distance from the nearest router, so the signal breaks in sometimes. But you can see, how it's always a little warmer near the ground at the front (yellow) than the weather station on top of the wall at the back (green).
Same thing for wind speed. The old weather station is on the wall. The Tempest is currently a bit sheltered on the back lawn.
Athmospheric Pressure, I have to find out, why there is a difference between the old weather station and the Tempest. But I reckon it is a calibration issue with the old weatherstation. The old one, you had to set the offset manually, while the Tempest does it all for you.
Here is another graph.
This data comes from the AVM Fritz!DECT switched sockets. The green graph is the power usage in Watt, the yellow graph is voltage. For some reason, the voltage under the fountain is much more stable, than the feed in the garage.
One switched socket is for turning the pump under fountain on and off. The other 3 are used for all the flood lights on the property. The garage one doesn't have a PIR sensor, so I used a profile in the Fritz!Box, that turns it on at sunset based on GPS coordinates. That works quite well.
The floodlights at the front and rear of the church get turned on at 15:00. You can see that little blip in the graph. They go on, then the PIR sensor realises it's still light and turns the lights off within a few seconds. Once it gets dark, the lights come on. 3 x 50W at the front and 2 x 50W at the back. There's one more in the driveway, that I still need to fix. We took the original floodlamp down there for now, as there is a short in the power cable somewhere.
And instead of burning through the entire night as previously, you can see, how the power then gets turned off by the Fritz!Box at 01:00. The lights can be activated by either a switch in the kitchen, via Alexa, when the front gate gets activated/opened or from any of the DECT phones in the house, as the AVM DECT phones have smart home integration for their own stuff.
/M0 -
-
Metric Tensor wrote: »Interesting thread. I haven't read it all yet so you may already be past this point but fibaro zwave dimmers work on light switches with no neutral. Obviously Z Wave would be a little more challenging with those walls but no more so than ZigBee or anything else wireless.
Zwave would be adding another protocol. Not that that is a problem, since I have a common combiner by using OpenHAB. But the common opinion is that zwave is dead ... at least if you ask the smart home youtubers around.
Either way, that would only remove the cost of the electrician. The Ikea bulbs still turned out the cheaper solution. And I get the option of cold to warm-white tones everywhere.
I do appreciate you mentioning it though. It may be helpful to somebody else. Some of the Zigbee USB sniffer USB dongles do support both Zigbee and Zwave, so it certainly is an option. I know Shelly is also working on an option of a dimmable smart switch, that doesn't need neutral, which would be another good option using wifi.
/M0 -
-
-
To expose OpenHABs home controls to tablets and smart phones (and this also works with Home Assistant), I've used the android app "HomeHabit". The app can be found here on the play store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.homehabit.view
It looks much nicer than let's say Habpanel and is very flexible to configure.
Here's a screenshot of the controls for the office. The webcam tile in the middle at the top is for the front door intercom.
I used a Doorbird D101S for that. That one is cloud dependant for some functionality like the motion sensor and the camera capture, but ringing the doorbell and the recording of the video feed to the NVR also works offline.
It integrates with the Fritz!Box as an IP based intercom and the picture from the camera is also shown on the DECT handsets, that have a color display, when somebody rings the doorbell at the front door.
There's been occasions, where a courier has dropped a parcel off and not rang the doorbell. The parcel then could have been sitting at the door getting wet for half the day. That's also sorted with this one, as it has a motion sensor.
It can connect via cat5e/cat6 cable to the network or use Wifi, if that's not possible. Pricey little bugger, but it was worth it though.
/M0 -
The AVM TRVs look like this:
They screw straight onto a Honeywell type radiator valve. Adaptors for other radiators can be got. A Danfoss adaptor is included.
This is the AVM Fritz!DECT 301. There is an older model, called the 300, but it's a bit buggy and has a LCD interface and it's interface can't be turned. This one has an ePaper interface, so consumes a lot less power and you can turn the interface in 90 degrees steps, so that you don't have to turn your head upside down to read the TRV. The TRV is powered by 2 AA cells and they last a little over a year. I've just had to replace most of the batteries in mine.
The temperature shown is the set temperature. Obviously measuring the temperature at the radiator is sub-optimal. You can either set an offset in the router or define another device as the reference for the room temperature.
In the router you define a comfort and a cool-down temperature and then define each and every TRV or room during the day and for each individual day of the week.
You can also define non-heating summer periods and periods, when you are on holidays, in which the TRVs all just turn off. In those periods, they can not manually be turned on at the TRV.
If you change the temperature on the TRV (using the buttons), on the Frtiz!DECT 440 panel or via the OpenHAB integration, it will reset to those pre-defined values, when it changes from cool-down to comfort setting or vice versa. So it doesn't really matter too much, if somebody messes with the temperature. It will reset within a few hours.
Also, if somebody rips open a window and then temperature drops all of a sudden, it'll go to window open mode and turn the TRV off. You can also achieve that for a predefined period by using the window open button on the TRV.
And most importantly, you can lock the buttons. Our 2 year old son had great fun messing with the buttons on the TRVs in the kitchen and diningroom. So I locked those.
The DECT devices, that have temp sensors are the Fritz!DECT 100 DECT repeaters, the Fritz!DECT 200 indoor and 210 outdoor switched sockets and the Fritz!Dect 440 wall switch.
Here is the wall switch in the room:
It shows the actual room temperature. You can then use the bottom middle button to switch through the options, that you've set up. Up to 3 screens are possible.
First screen to set office and bathroom temperature. The second screen I've set up for the guestroom across the hallway, which also has it's own panel.
Third screen lets me switch on and off the floodlights outside and the fountain.
There's still a bit of it's german heritage on both the thermostat and the wall switch. I've actually raised tickets about that. They have forgotten to translate bits and pieces here and there, like "Soll-Temperatur", "AN" and "AUS".
The button besides the panel is for the lights in the bathroom. We've put smart buttons and switches everywhere, so there is no need to whip out the phone to turn on and off the lights.
Underneath that button is the original physical switch, so that can still be accessed in an emergency.
That would look like this underneath:
Other Hue smart switches we've used here are these:
The Hue wireless dimmer
Here in a double version:
and underneath:
The Hue Tap switch. These ones are interesting, because they don't use a battery. The switch is powered from kinetic power. Basically, you operating the switch powers the switch.
Again, underneath:
And then there are the "Friends of Hue" switches:
These use the same kinetic powered interals as the Hue Tap switch. This particular switch can be configured in a double or a single, just by changing the face plate.
There is no physical switch underneath, as there was none in the first place. It's just glued onto the wall with double sided tape. Works brilliantly though.
/M0 -
-
-
The first few days of me logging data on the new weather station in OpenHAB.
The solar radiation and illumination graphs are interesting, because they can give me an indication of how much power I can generate, when I get around to install solar panels.
/M0 -
Advertisement
-
New video uploaded tonight. This one is on how to pair up an Osram Smart+ Zigbee motion sensor with OpenHAB3 using zigbee2mqtt and get it to turn on a light.
/M0 -
A little tutorial, that shows how a Hue light connected to a Hue hub gets added and configured in the all new OpenHAB3 MainUI interface.
There is also a little demo of the Android app HomeHabit at the end, that is a fantastic tool to build smart home tablet screens.
/M0 -
Video on the newly introduced semantic model in OpenHAB 3.
While OpenHAB already is more scalable than Home Assistent (and don't even get me started about trying to add multiple Philips Hue hubs to Home Assistent), this now also brings OpenHAB to a stage, where it exceeds other home automation platforms on how easy it is to group devices and where it creates automatic overviews and categories of all devices added.
/M0 -
I was working on getting my historic data collection and graphic working on the new OpenHAB3 installation last night.
For this, I use influxdb and grafana.
When I logged back into the system this morning, I found this on the front page to my amazement:
Do you see the blue lines in the weather data there ? That's the actual data from the database. That wasn't there before last night.
So they are now reflecting the data right back in the OpenHAB panel. How neat. And it all appears magically as you get other things working.
/M0 -
-
... he nicks them and runs through the dining room and kitchen while turning the lights on and off...
/M
At least he's getting some exercise.
I have energenie monitoring plugs on two heaters here that I have to use a lot at the moment as we're "between heating systems".
I have a set of battery operated TRV's which aren't yet installed on radiators, but I have one in each room because they report back temperature.
I'm using those readings in conjunction with IFTTT to incorporate the electric heaters into the system. I can see how much it's costing me which is shocking, but it's dropped the amount of time per day that I need to keep the stove burning.0 -
I'm using those readings in conjunction with IFTTT to incorporate the electric heaters into the system. I can see how much it's costing me which is shocking, but it's dropped the amount of time per day that I need to keep the stove burning.
Those AVM DECT switched sockets actually monitor voltage, energy consumption and heat.
I've used them on an oil filled electrical radiator last year, that we had in the master bedroom before we got the boiler replaced and was able to time the use of it based on time of day and heat in the room.
It's a brilliant application for something like that, but they need to be capable of dealing with the power output, that such a rad draws. A lot of the cheaper ones just don't.
And yes: being able to calculate the consumption of big consumers like that gives you an idea, if it really is a good idea Or how you can improve upon that.
/M0 -
For voice control, we're using Alexa all over the place. Some of the Sonos speakers have that build in (I know, you can opt for Google Assistant .. but let's be honest .... it's not as good).
The thing, that annoys me sometimes is, that some of the Alexa stuff is only available in the US. I mean ... wtf is that about ?
Either way ... having an Echo or Echo Dot in the kitchen is not a good idea. At least when it comes to the 3rd and 4th gen. That cloth cover for the speaker will never get clean again, once you've got it sprayed with grease or pasta sauce.
So we've got an Echo Flex there.
That clock underneath there is one of those modules, that are US only. We can get the nightlight or the motion sensor plug-in here, but they're not very useful in the kitchen. The nightlights are great in the hallway, especially when an Echo Flex is plugged into a socket at floor level.
I don't use any of the Amazon smart home plugs or similar devices, because a) if I wanted to control them from OpenHAB, I'd need to disable my 2FA authentication ... not happening ... and b) if my Internet dies, nothing would work.
Either way, I did get that clock module from the .com shop, because it's real handy for a timer, when cooking or baking.
Additionally, I've also replaced the clock on the wall between the kitchen and diningroom with an Echo Wall Clock
These were being sold in the co.uk shop at some point last year and the year before, but can not be got anymore. They are still on sale in the US. These pair up to one Echo device and have LEDs around the clock face, that are lit, when you set a timer. And you never have to set the clock and change it, when daylight savings time kicks in. It'll take care of that itself.
Another thing only available in the US are the Echo Dot Kids Edition.
There's a tiger and a panda, so I got both for the kids room to make up a stereo pair. I believe, there is a third one, but haven't seen that for sale for a while.
The Amazon Parental Controls service, that comes with these don't work unless you have a US Amazon account and a primary address in the US. So for us, they're just normal Echo Dot 4gen smart speakers.
Word of advice there: these can be bought together with Amazons Glow light for kids. That one doesn't work at all, unless you've got an active parental account. So the one, I got can't be controlled from the app at all. It's still interesting to the little one, as it changes color on touch.
And in the kids room, I installed another Echo Wall Clock: the Disney Edition. Again .. US only.
This one refused to pair for some or the other reason, until I figured out, it's just a bluetooth device. So I just forced the pairing using the discover bluetooth device in the Echo Dot.
Also this has the timer function.
I think these are great little additions to the Echo Eco system and it's a shame, they're only selling them in the US market. I had to ship them to something similar like ParcelMotel or AddressPal, to get them. Amazon won't ship them overseas, even if you order them on amazon.com.
Another thing, I got working today, is that our Doorbird door bell now can announce somebody pressing the doorbell on all Echo devices, on top of ringing all phones in the house and notifying us on our mobiles. It can't show who is at the front door or act as intercom, but it's one step futher to not missing, that somebody is at the front door.
/M0 -
Video, on how to pair the clock manually and showing the timer function.
/M0 -
Advertisement
-
And this is the video on the little clock plugin for the Echo Flex .. and the Echo Flex in general.
Don't worry, if you have Alexa devices ... I'm using "Echo" and "Amazon" as wake words in this scenario. If you use those .. you better silence your Echo device
/M0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaeohvayR3k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyeI7om7Nos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mW2yUA8DhdA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBCZXkk6_PM
![[Deleted User]](/applications/dashboard/design/images/defaulticon.png)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXvB0p7SpVw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaK4m9GN334
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2NlJrN5rxg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sES13zD-YMA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZE9RayF0ogAdvertisement