Do you currently have six actuators?

I have 5 actuators, 4 of which are broken, don't hold onto the valves anymore.. One manifold out of 6 is closed halfway with a simple plastic cap, so I could add one more actuator instead. Also, I have only 3 thermostats in the apartment, none of which seems to be doing anything - I guess they are connected to the broken actuators.

The capped one I would assume is your bathroom.

And how is your floorplan? Is every zone indeed a room of it's own? My living room is two zones and even has two thermostats (great for having normal temperature but warmer feet on the dining table than on the couch )

I'm looking at energy costs, especially with electricity in my place. I've got some good logging going. I ought to write a routine to export the data directly to Excel.

The red is the tumble drier, the blue is the washing machine.

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Anyone using any roombas or similar cleaners together with Home System of yours? any recommendations? to or not to buy ?

If I get one, I'll get a new Xiaomi as there's a binding for that with openHAB.

Not that you can do much with it - I'd just set it to mainly do the floors when no-one was at home because of the noise.

I'd also set it to pause if the door bell rang and people were at home.

But the main reason is that the Xiaomi gets good reviews.

Looking for advice. Complete newbie.

I am going to dip my toes in the home automation pond. Want to do very simple things (like change home bulbs to smart ones, control Sonos players, may be the smart TV to begin with). Would like to extend to DIY Arduino projects at later date.

Two questions:
1. Which controller platform: Open Hab or HomeAssistant? I have not programmed for a long time, though not averse to learning.
2. What hardware to start with? I was thinking of getting a Raspberry Pi 3, an Echo Dot, few Philips Hue lamps.

Thanks.

I can confirm that Raspberry Pi3, openHAB, an Echo Dot and Philips Hue all work really well together.

I've got all those plus a few Arduinos, a Homematic CCU and other stuff all working well together via openHAB.

I don't know much about Home Assistant so can't help you there but the creator is Dutch, like you!

I am willing to exchange Hues with LIFXs, any one using LIFX ? or used both ? pros cons ?

Why are you considering the change?

The pros of Hue:

Although 'idle power consumption' (RF etc on but lamp not on) is improving on LIFX models as new ones come out, wifi will always consume more power than the 866MHz that the Hue uses.

866MHz (Hue) can penetrate walls better than wifi 2.4GHz

Hue is a mesh type network and can use in-between lamps to communicate between a hub and a distant lamp.

Osram Sylvania and Innr lamps can also be used with the Hue bridge.

Lamps are less clumpy.

The pros of Lifx:

No bridge needed.


There's probably more.

Lifx are brighter and looks much more useful to me. I did not check the consumption tough, but to be honest I do not think that consumption would change my mind. I have seen couple video comparisons and Lifx look way better, brighter to me

Having no Hub connection is not a pro to me because I do not see a problem installing hubs or not.

So just because they are brighter, looked better to me :/

Looks like you are right according to data.

I've only got two Hue lamps - the white ambience.

We got two normal LED lamp bulbs for bedside occasional/reading lights the other day and the light was horrible in a blue-white morgue kind of look.
So I splashed out on a white ambience kit which comes with the remote control and the light is so much nicer.
The remote control is great - my wife certainly wouldn't want to faff around with a smart phone app every time she wanted to dim a lamp.

It's good to know about the Lifx lamps as I would never have considered Philips lamps as they currently are for general purpose lamps as they are just not bright enough.

I suppose one could have both sorts.

In case of need, there is a campaign at deindeal for the Hue lights

Not such a good deal though.

One ceiling lamp, for example is 15% off CHF 189 which is CHF 159 + 9.90 postage gives a total of 168.90 and you may not get it until the middle of January.

Luminart sells the same lamp, including postage, for CHF 141.75 and you'll get it in a day or two so [you've been] Done Deal is nearly CHF 30 more!

hi, for someone looking to start with some automation would this be a good starter kit say for installing in the living room?

https://www.digitec.ch/en/s1/product...-bulbs-5634024

thanks !

It depends what you want to do. What do you think you'd be doing with coloured lights? In what room are they going to go?

Sure you could have fun with them but what happens when the novelty wears off?

I tend to think of problems I have and then how home automation can give solutions.

For example, we've just fitted Hue white ambience bulbs in bedside lights with the dimmer remote.

They can be bright for reading or a dim, warm colour for background ambience.
I'll add some code later so that they progressively turn on in the morning when the alarm goes off.

That's the solution. The problem was that in an energy/cost-saving exercise, we replaced the filament bulbs with some normal Philips white LEDs with horrible harsh light that made the bedroom look like a morgue. This solves that problem.

for sure the first use case is fun

long term it would be 3-fold
1. energy efficiency
2. automation of lights on/off based on arrival, departure, schedule, etc also like the possibility to dim/control light intensity
3. as we away quite regularly I quite like the ability to turn on/off lights remotely since our living room has a wall to wall window and can be seen externally.

I just ordered from Luminart a few Hue bulbs. Quite a bit cheaper than anywhere else. It would never have crossed my mind to shop online at Luminart. Thanks for the tip.

This popped up recently in my tech stuff - Domogik

Looks interesting. Very similar to OpenHAB with a bit more polish maybe?

The website is certainly more polished. It doesn't have the range of bindings to different devices that openHAB has though.

Not sure whether the rest is as polished though. I quote from their site FAQ: