Hardware

Back from Hibernation

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Even while playing a bit with my OpenHAB2 system a bit here and there, this particular side project was on an indeterminate hibernation…

Admittedly, I was thinking about building some stuff, maybe automating my windows blinds after all, or change my lighting system to something more automatable (MiLight was not really what I was expected at the beginning), but no big changes ever happened.

But no longer, I say! Back on active hacking, that’s what we are 🙂

Goodbye IWY Light, Hello Hue

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philips-hue-color-ambiance-starter-kit
Some time ago, I wanted to have nice colorful lights in my automated home. And, not wanting to spend too much money, I went with the IWY lights.
But you know what they say… Buy cheaply and you will buy twice.
Which is exactly what happened, in the end, I got fed up with the missing backlink of the IWY bulbs and went with the “industry standard” of Hue lights. Also, they are considered to be the “hello world” of home automation systems. Any system worth its salt has to be able to talk to the Hue bulbs. Which, of course, includes openHAB.
Along the way I found a few more stumbling blocks, but this is another topic for another posting 🙂

Hello IWY Light

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iwy-light
So my wonderful new automated home is collecting lots of sensor information. And I can visualize everything on the openHAB web pages. Cool. But wouldn’t it be wonderful if my system actually acted? I mean, in addition to sending me emails that the sun has gone up and light should be available in the garden, which is an interesting piece of information in and of itself, but DO SOMETHING MORE?
Enter controllable light bulbs. I read up quite a bit on remote controllable switches, 433 MHz controllers and stuff, but in the end, the IWY lights won as I am at the core of my heart a software guy. And those puppies seem to be controllable via WLAN 🙂

I want a smart house

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SmartHomeSoooooo…. I got bitten by the automate-your-living-environment bug, too.

Actually, my reasons for home automation started off a little bit differently. My house is heated with a Vaillant EcoCompact unit. Most of the time, this thing works pretty reliably. Unfortunately, some of the times, it just decides to get into a fault state and stops heating. More unfortunately, this is usually sometime in the morning and I discover the problem when I get only cold water in the shover. Without precise information how often and when this issue occurs, the maintenance company just comes to my place, tells me that they cannot find any fault and leave me with yet another bill.

The low-tech and works-for-everyone way of logging this information is simply putting a sheet of paper next to the heating unit and write down the dates, but what self-respecting geek would go with low-tech solutions?

Instead, I plan on setting up something that:

  • is fully automated
  • keeps logs for the maintenance company
  • notifies me before I get into the shower

An appropriate high-tech solution which appeals to my geeky sensibilities would be to add home automation functionality to my already overloaded server in the basement. Therefore……..

Enter “openHAB” 🙂