Home Automation

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Home automation is the residential extension of building automation.

It is automation of the home, housework or household activity.

Home automation may include centralized control of lighting, HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning), appliances, security locks of gates and doors and other systems, to provide improved convenience, comfort, energy efficiency and security.

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Communication in a big house (alien.top)

submitted 10 months ago by zvzzswss@alien.top to c/homeautomation@selfhosted.forum

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We have a rather big house for two of us, and it's not easy to communicate across rooms and floors. We use WhatsApp to call for dinner or to ask if there was some mail. It's not as bad but i thought of something that can be a "window to another room", not even necessarily in the same building. Scalable.

So i could walk to it and click the button "talk to room X" and see what's there and they could see me talking, like in the old school movies. Or it would use presence sensor to tell me where the other person is so i can talk to them. Or i could broadcast to all rooms (i think Google Home can do that, but very glitchy).

I could probably do that setup myself with raspberries, cameras, presence sensors, small screens and home assistant. But it's there an existing solution or a commercial platform? Preferably self hosted of course. Thanks!

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[–] ShowMeTheMonee@alien.top 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Not self-hosted, but with Alexa you can call to specific rooms that you name.

[–] p0rkjello@alien.top 1 points 10 months ago

You can send an announcement to all of them. I have an old house and sound does not travel well. This gets used a lot in my home.

You can say "Alexa, announce dinner time." or you can use the app to Write out a message. Additionally as mentioned above you can use the drop-in feature to speak with a specific device/room.

We have 7 echo dots (good grief). They are insanely inexpensive ($22 US) right now.

Lastly, they have motion/temp sensors which are helpful to shutoff lights/etc in empty rooms.

[–] Z-Waver@alien.top 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Video intercom? Yes, there are many.

[–] AndreKR-@alien.top 1 points 10 months ago

Are there though?

[–] Mrcattington@alien.top 1 points 10 months ago

Why don’t you just get an IP phone system? Grandstream has pretty reasonable video phones and you can get them much cheaper like new. I have their new “carrier grade” phones (these models display video from my doorbell but don’t have cameras themselves) and they look nice and function well.

[–] Exitcomestothis@alien.top 1 points 10 months ago

You could buy some Apple home pod minis and use their intercom function. Works pretty well 👍

[–] budimario@alien.top 1 points 10 months ago

hey, have you looked into using smart displays like the Lenovo Smart Display or the Facebook Portal? They have video calling features and could work well for your setup. Just a thought!