I started with an Aeotec sensor and 2 Inovelli 1st gen dimmers using Home Assistant on a pi.
I never tried any of the earlier stuff, but was planning a new house and wanted to figure out something that could be used in the new house. I did lots of reading and found lots of conflicting info and info saying what worked the best. But, at the end of the day wanted something that could stay internal (no internet cloud servers) and would support a more DIY setup.
The SD card in the pi corrupted so I moved HA to my unRAID server and it’s been working great since then.
Planning on a bunch of Inovelli switches and dimmers in the new house with sensors in a bunch of locations. Already bought about 25 devices for the house when it’s completed. Also looking at the Inovelli sensor as a cheaper alternative if it fits into the Aeotec ceiling mount.
I started with IR to RF transmitters and receivers and X-10 with the IR hub to use with my Marantz RC5000 remote and X-10 RF remotes but was never satisfied with the lack of reliability of the X-10 signal between 110 legs of the electrical system so when I bought our house I brought most of the X-10 stuff with but never took the time to install any of it here. So I went many years without any automation, in 2012 the Iris v1 system came out with Zigbee and Z-Wave products and I decided to give it a try, and was much more impressed with the reliability of both Zigbee and Z-wave. I made it through the v2 hub transition and added Alexa to the mix and stayed with them until they shutdown, but I had already purchased a ST system the previous November when the Iris cloud services were down for a few days bringing the entire system down. I had ST running in parallel with Alexa there as well for about a year before Lowes announced they where looking for a buyer for the Iris platform, I had also purchased Hubitat but they didn’t have the Dashboard ready yet when I bought the hub so I never really did much with it for the first 9 months or so other than join the occasional device to see how much worked and not much did in the early months. By the time Lowes shutdown I had migrated a few devices to SmartThings but most of the devices went to Hubitat as it had pretty much all of the drivers that SmartThings had by then and most of the apps as well. After a few weeks on the Hubitat system and seeing it continue to do almost everything when I disconnected the internet I started migrating almost everything from SmartThings which had most of their devices local by then but only thier lighting app. Soon I only had the SmartThings hub online to run our Neato robot vacs since that app hasn’t been ported to Hubitat.
My start was almost 65 years ago. I wanted to turn my bedroom light on and off from my bed. I attached 2 strings to the light switch and looped them up to the ceiling and across to my bed. A tug on one turned the light on and the other turned it off. It was a start.
A couple of years ago I put in some TP-Link smart plugs to control my heating and air conditioners. With the increased consolidation between security / access control products and “smart” controls, last year I started taking a deeper look at this for business reasons but also because it seemed like the technologies had matured enough for me to take a second look for implementing some of this in my home. Last fall, I bought some TP-Link RGBW smart bulbs and that pulled me in. I almost always use indirect lighting so to be able to “paint” my home in color had me acting like a big kid- drove the wife crazy for a couple of weeks
After that I jumped in on OpenHAB because while I really like TP-Link’s implementation, I wanted to do things my way and try out other products. I broke things down into projects from a wish list of ideas. Last week I added several gen 2 Red Series Dimmer series and so far really like them (I posted some comments in the Suggestions & Wishlist section earlier this morning).
'Still working through my wish list and coming up with new ideas but doing these small projects has been fun (on the days I wasn’t up until 3am programming!). I’m really looking forward to talking about these technologies and doing more projects.
I started with Wink and had a GE bulb turn on early morning above the sink and off when we went to work. From there I slowly added to it. I’m now on Hubitat and have about 80 devices. Just started switching old GE switches to the Inovelli switches. Love them!
My first venture into any type of home automation was with the early years of Harmony and a remote that will allow me to control my home theater. I then became very interested in overall connected technology through the company I worked for and our venture into connected security and temperature control.
After visiting a number of home tech shows, I dove in head first and began to build out, with the help of a dealer, a fully connected / automated home with Control4. I spent a fortune (if any of you have been down that route, you will know) but eventually had whole home audio, video, security, cameras, and every light switch in the house.
When we moved and built our new home, while my wife liked the tech, she told me very clearly that we were not spending that kind of money on our new house.
This brought me to tinkering on my own with all of the DIY stuff now on the market. I have slowly built out my current SmartThings based system and having a blast as a retirement past time. I currently have 27 switches, all blinds 18), 2 zones of temp control, 5 cameras, 2 doorbells , screens for my screened in porch, 9 motion sensors, 7 alexas, Sonos multi room audio, 5 door locks, 3 garage doors, outdoor landscape lighting and irrigation control.
Neighbors coming to my house and seeing all of this stuff in action has branched my retirement past time into a little side job building out automation for them. . Gives me something to do when not playing golf.
Shameless plug, I have just installed my first 2 Inovelli switches and love them. (Red series dimmers).
My first real “smart” home product was an option we purchased with our new home in 2007: a “smart vent,” which automatically switches airflow from outside instead of heating and cooling, when conditions are appropriate.
Soon after moving in, I installed a bunch of Insteon switches, including a modem connected to my computer running Girder for my custom programming in Lua. I also bought a GlobalCache GC-100 to control my projector and screen. I also had infrared repeaters to control the blu-ray player and amp in another room.
After 10 years, devices were failing, so I switched everything over to Z-Wave, SmartThings hub, with custom programming in Groovy, and Harmony Hub.
It only took a year to get fed up with SmartThings and now LOVE Home Assistant Hass.io on a Raspberry Pi, which controls the GC-100, Z-Stick (with 30+ devices), Harmony Hub and Google Home and Chromecast. I have about 1500 lines of custom Python code (as of this writing) controlling everything.
For background, our home is Star Trek themed, and the equipment (amp, blu-ray player, TV, etc.) is in a separate room from the theater. For a demo of the system, I have the Apollo 13 disc in the blu-ray player, and say “Hey Google, prepare for liftoff.” The system then automatically:
Turns on the 7.1 surround amp and switches its input to the blu-ray player
Turns on the blu-ray player
Turns on the TV, waits for it to come on and mutes it (sound from the other room is distracting)
Turns on 6 switched outlets and 3 dimmers (mostly Inovelli)
Closes the Turbolift door
Google Home instructs to close the blinds and doors (someday those will be automated too)
Turns on the projector (via RS-232 from GC-100)
Lowers the 10-foot wide screen (contact closure from GC-100)
Navigates the blu-ray menu to cue it up to the launch scene
While all of this is happening, Google Home gives launch-themed commentary, like “T-minus 2 minutes to launch,” “initializing launch control systems,” when the blu-ray FBI warning appears, it says “communications are secure and monitored by the FBI,” and when complete, says “holding for your command to start ignition sequence.”
Then I just say “Hey Google, start ignition sequence,” and it then:
Dims the lights
Turns off the Borg Alcove
Starts the movie. The ButtKickers shake the seats with the thundering surround-sound launch.
Waits 276 seconds, until Tom Hanks says “And that gentlemen, is how we do that.”
Pauses the movie
Turns the lights up
Turns on the Borg Alcove
Google Home says “And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how we do that.”
. Gives me something to do when not playing golf.