Home Automation Domotica Forum Europe, Bwired Forum

Hey guys.
I've been busy, with a new job, and moving into a rental house. I will be building a new house early next year.
Heres the question.... What do I install for home automation? (i'm in Canada)

If you had a new house (anywhere!), what system(s) would you use? Lol.
I just thought I'd throw this one out there, for a bit of fun
Andy

Andy,

You van find alot information about this on the forum. It will always be the question what your budget is and of you like it as a hobby or not.

Andy,

Just some tips from a recent (ex-) beginner without any legacy technology/stuff. I started from scratch when we moved houses. So no need to maintain investment in older or dated technologies.

I.M.H.O., I figure most (80+%?) of typical home owner's needs can be taken care off with 4 basic technologies/products:

1. Lighting/Switching: Z-wave based products. I see that you are in North America. You have way more choices in z-wave products than I in Europe. Even so, I went with Z-wave based on the reviews and trends.

2. Alarm: Visonic. Is wireless and in combo with RFXCom (see below) means that all alarm sensors can also be 'read' into your home automation system/controller which allows for all kinds of event based actions. The tech-experts on this forum have even been able to establish even richer links between Visonic and their home automation controllers.
In addition, I also bought the 'other' sensors for the Visonic. Such as smoke alarm, co2 alarm, water-detecting, etc...

3. Home automation controller: Homeseer. I first went with Vera, but was advised by the much-more experienced users that Homeseer is more advanced. Which is true, it's just that Homeseer interface leaves 'something to be desired' and is intimidating in the beginning for the non-technies like myself

4. RFXCom Great piece of hardware to capture all kinds of wireless datastreams. Like, for example, Visonic alarm sensors

5. The 'other 20%' : The possibilities and creativity are virtually endless. My suggestion; search this forum for infinite number of creative ideas and products. My suggestion would be: z-wave based products always as a start.
Oregon scientific has some nice sensors & products. Plugwise is populair in the Benelux, not sure if you can get it in Canada.

Hope this helps

Cheers,
Olof

Andy,

Oops, I just noticed that you are far from a beginner, based on your forum activity around Domotiga

Oh well

Lol,
I've used X10, and have an RFXcom and some Oregon sensors, and 1-wire too. I like to play
Since Im building a new house, it gives me the chance to start with a new, clean slate.

With this topic, I was trying to have some of fun. Something like eg. "If I had a million dollars....." what would I buy?

Andy

"If I had a million dollars....." what would I buy?

Ha!
Well, no idea about the technology required, but I would want to have an HAL 9000 in my house. Without the independent-streak ofcourse

I would fill the place with CAT6 cabling. This is one of the regrets I have when refubishing the house we currently live in. I just didn't install enough of the stuff and retro fitting is not so easy.

The parents of a friend of mine recently had quite a large new house (500 m2) built and had the Control4 http://www.control4.com system installed. They have 4 touch screens around the house and pretty much everything is integrated into the system including audio, video, security, lighting, heating etc... All the TV's in the house are also integrated so anything can be controlled from a TV as well as the touch screens. The speakers are also embedded into the walls / ceilings.

I don't know the cost but I suspect that whilst not a million dollars it will have been very expensive. Very nice though

Paul..

Some things I would do:
- Create extra ceiling boxes for motion, light, temp and humidity sensors.
- Create places for LED-lightning in the ceiling.
- Touchscreens in the wall, no more ugly touchscreens hanging on the wall but tightly tucked away.
- Speakers in the ceiling in each room.
- A room in which all the cables come together so you can tigh it all up there.
- 12V to each ceiling box or other places with sensors.
- Open/close door sensors integrated into the doors. No more ugly in sight stuff.
- Pressure sensors on places where you need to detect a human being entering (beneath the entrance of the house?)
- As mentioned, RJ45 at every socket and to every ceiling box perhaps.
- Curtains when opened hidden behind a small wall.
- A decent place to crawl beneath the floor
- Integrated refrigerator near the couch

Just some thoughts from me

Just keep 1 single thing in mind.

Tubes.. lots of it. Just get 3 or more tubes from 1 central location to each room in the house (and even better per outlet)
The thing with getting utp to each room is nice, but what if you need more? Just make sure you get at least a bunch of tubes to each room then you can always expand and choose what you want to put in.

This is what happens when you let a forum influence decisions concenring the building of your new house

Met de hartelijke dank aan de e-installateur die afgelopen vrijdag, net voor het volstorten van de 1e verdiepingsvloer, deze foto's nog voor mij heeft genomen.

Your not the only one, this was the part I put in the base of of our houseboat: this is how that continued into becoming a Technical room: and now it not a pretty sight any more, so sorry no pict yet, maybe when I cleaned it a bit....

Wow, i did not knew tube post got revived.... ;o)

One small remark, dont forget that it might get kind of warm in your technical room and you might want some kind of ventilation.

I am redesigning my house.
Everything is open like ceilings and walls. Everywhere where possible, there will be ethernet and spare tubes.

This was the chance to make everything ready.

Not that much like the above pictures
But a new house would look like this too!