An integrator and the Internet of Things
As the number of consumer-focussed AV and automation devices increases, Ryan di Rozario asks: how far can you go using only DIY IoT products?
Around 18 months ago I began exploring the Internet of Things (IoT), or consumer level automation products and their ability to deliver an integrated, whole home solution. Having acquired a new apartment and being in the industry, I began to consider what I could automate and how, the cost and, of course, whether infrastructure could be put in place.
I wanted a consolidated, automated solution. For some time now, as an industry we have been a bit caught up in giving people app control of various devices rather than integrated solutions.
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Automation of the AV didn’t really pose any issues; it was the building automation that would prove the most challenging. The most accessible and obvious choice for me was Clipsal’s C-Bus; however, everything would need rewiring and there were too many construction limitations so it wasn’t viable.
After many hours of Google research I had formulated a bit of a game plan, which on paper seemed bulletproof. What follows is a breakdown of the products used, how they are used and how they work together. The total retail cost of the automation component including all lighting, was about $3,500.
The first thing I really wanted to tackle was how to automate the lighting. At the time the most interesting product available was Philips Hue – a retrofittable colour-changing bulb that worked on Zigbee via a gateway connected to the home network. (One important limitation of the Hue product is a 55-fitting limit. I used 23 for my apartment.)
While deciding on the lighting control I was checking out control systems that could operate the Hue bulbs in a logical way, along with also taking care of other building and AV automation. Simple Control (formerly Roomie Remote), was the control system I settled on and how it worked would virtually dictate the decisions on all my equipment beyond this point.
Simple Control is primarily targeted at IP control and doesn’t have the need for a conventional processor; rather, my iPads, iPhone and Apple Watch did all the processing and fired all the commands. It is a full-featured control system for under $100 plus an ongoing subscription of about $15 per year to use legacy IR libraries. Best of all it is programmed right from the iPad.
A full list of devices that were compatible for IP control were on the Simple Control website so I went about building the rest of my home around what the control system supported natively, rather than buying the equipment and trying to get the control system to make it all work.
For the most part, Roomie handled everything brilliantly – all the lights, three TVs, a matrix and five zones of Sonos (it really is the best Sonos integration I have seen to date). Plex and XBMC integration was also unparalleled, with full metadata feedback and a synopsis of the show or movie selected within the app.
Simple Control was by no means perfect for lighting control, or perhaps my expectations were too high. When it came to triggering scenes it worked well 90% of the time, but occasionally a bulb would fail to respond.
When triggering scenes using the Hue app I had no problem (though its app is more of a novelty than something that can be used for real lighting control).
My apartment is programmed into five or six discrete whole home modes like ‘Welcome Home’, ‘Wake Up’ and ‘Goodnight’. These modes tell every device what to do every time – lights, blinds, TVs, Sonos and even the fish tank.
Each Hue bulb needed four commands: hue, brightness, saturation and ‘on’. Multiply this by 23 bulbs and we are at 92 commands that Simple Control is issuing just for lighting.
It was no problem to shoot all these commands out. It was the Hue bridge’s ability to receive these commands, process them, then send then send them to the bulbs that was causing the inconsistency.
This was solved by delving into the Hue API. The scenes were built and housed locally on the Hue bridge and triggered via Simple Control. It was at this point I realised that maybe this level of automation is still not quite ‘plug and play’ for the consumer.
The Hue lights cover downlights and lamps, but what about other building automation? There is floor lighting, LED strips and motorised blinds, and it wouldn’t be fully automated unless the bathroom exhaust fans and heat lamps were included. This is where the cheap and effective Belkin WeMo family of products come in offering plug and play on/off control over WiFi. The WeMo app itself is not fantastic just yet; however, Simple Control had seamless integration of these devices.
Motorised blind control was a challenge, again due to infrastructure constraints. The solution here was somewhat crude, but really effective. The PCB from the RF remote was removed and wires were soldered to the ‘up’ and ‘down’ contacts. This was then wired into two Belkin WeMo Makers. This is a WiFi-controlled dry contact with a voltage sensing input for other applications, the latter function not being used in the apartment.
I was now at the point where I could set my morning alarm in Simple Control. In the morning, my lights would come on, my blinds would go up, Sonos would start playing Tunein Radio and my TVs would display the day’s weather via the ‘Weather’ app on my iMac. The only things I still needed to conquer were the two split system air conditioners.
A Kickstarter project called Sensibo would eventually fix this, and it did so surprisingly well. Hailed to be the ‘Nest for split systems’, Sensibo has a gateway that plugs into the home network that speaks to two ‘pods’ attached to each main unit, again communicating using the Zigbee protocol. At the time of writing this article, the API for Sensibo has only just been released and as such this isn’t integrated into Simple Control as yet.
The last piece of the puzzle, and one of the most critical, was that in order to control all of the Hue bulbs the circuit needed to have power. All of my light switches had to be on for my lights to be controlled. What the apartment lacked was something tactile I could use to control the lights, or anything else for that matter.
Eventually in one of the Simple Control updates they announced integration with the SmartThings platform. This is an open platform, Z-Wave home automation gateway that essentially allows wireless devices to talk to each other. It talked to everything I already had and had recently been acquired by Samsung for $200 million, which seemed to show a lot of promise (and not bad for a Kickstarter project only a couple of years in the making.)
This ticked a lot of boxes for me and again, after more Googling, offered me a solution for light switches using battery operated Z-Wave switches from a company called Cooper.
SmartThings supported everything else I already had in place so I bought eight switches, a few Aeon Labs multi-sensors and a SmartThings hub. It took a couple of hours to understand how devices interacted within the SmartThings platform. The principles are a little different from the conventional system I was used to.
The Cooper switches weren’t a natively supported device so required me to load a script via the SmartThings developer portal to tell SmartThings how to handle the switch. It took a little while to figure out but I had my new switches controlling just about anything in my apartment pretty quickly.
SmartThings is completely open platform. Provided you are willing to invest some time into learning a scripting language called ‘Groovy’ you can get your Z-Wave devices to do just about anything. The app itself is nice and clean, it looks great actually, though for my purposes SmartThings is really just running in the background managing the Z-Wave devices, my app interaction is solely with Simple Control.
The biggest processor of all, my iMac was being used as a computer, but what else could it do? I discovered HAM Bridge – a $30 piece of software that integrates with SmartThings. This allowed me to use AppleScript (and various other languages) to control just about anything on the Mac in great detail. The possibilities here are truly endless and I haven’t really scraped the surface as yet. At this point in time I just have it loading the weather app in the morning so I have a nice rundown of the weather on my TVs. It has also given me the ability to trigger the fireplace app to open on the TVs in conjunction with some Barry White on the Sonos system – obviously one of the first things I did!
This brings me to some of the more fun automation that I have been able to achieve. Cloud-based service IFTTT (aka ‘If This Then That’) allows you to do simple automated tasks between supported IoT devices and services (there are many). I have had my Fitbit scales shutdown my apartment, my ‘Goodnight’ mode post a status to Facebook, and even a friend posting a photo on Instagram turn on an exhaust fan.
My car now has a dongle called Automatic in its OBD port that talks to the iPad in the car. It can also trigger anything in the apartment via IFTTT. These are cool party tricks at the moment, but I am sure there are plenty of practical applications in this realm. All the major IoT players are on board with it and I have no doubt that IFTTT is going to be glue that ties the IoT together going forward.
I currently have 28 services connected via this platform that can all interact with each other. They include: SmartThings, Philips Hue, Belkin WeMo, Sensibo, Fitbit, Spotify, Stocks, eBay, Parrot Flower (I have these monitoring my garden), Soundcloud, Weather, Instagram, Facebook, Dropbox, Email, Calendar to name just a few.
What I find most exciting about the IoT is the progressive thinking of the product developers. They are creating simple, functional, inexpensive products that in many ways eclipse and completely reinvent what we have been used to for so long. It’s not about just trying to control some boxes and lights with a universal remote; it’s about everything being part of an ecosystem and those things being able to interact. Not just the devices in your home, but the outside world, the weather, the news, you, your car and even your pets. It’s just a fresh approach to something that has been the same for so long.
So does the IoT offer our industry a threat or opportunity? One thing is for sure, the IoT is not a flash in the pan. Through my experience the specific product set I have used isn’t perfect, but it’s very close.
Products pop up almost on a daily basis delivering similar Z-Wave platforms and inexpensive AV control solutions. Each one seems to pitch a feature the other doesn’t have. How long will they be around and supported? We are flooded with options and it’s hard to make a choice, yet the choice needs to be made or you will be left behind.
There are so many new opportunities for us where those on a ‘mum and dad budget’ can now afford a level of home automation that was historically reserved for high-end projects. The best part is there is no enormous up-front investment; you can just do small pieces as budgets allow.
Today, the very basics of home automation are there for the off-the-shelf consumer and are not difficult to implement, but delivering more integrated and fully automated solutions still requires a reasonable amount of IT know-how.
The emergence of the IoT has delivered unparalleled functionality, affordability, modularity and most importantly accessibility. There has never been any doubt that having a smart home would become the norm just like owning a smart phone is to all of us today. It was just a matter of time.
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