this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2023
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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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Smart Thermostat (alien.top)
submitted 11 months ago by perilomo20@alien.top to c/homeautomation@selfhosted.forum
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I am looking to do a massive home automation project in my new home, but at the moment I am very new to automation/smart homes and what not. Still learning programming and such.

That being said I am looking to have things started and improve/replace/upgrade things as I go and learn more on how to do these things. But the biggest requirement of all is to run EVERYTHING locally. No Cloud integration... No Alexa, or Google Pod, or Siri, or what have you....

At the moment my biggest project is smart heating at home. I've been looking at smart thermostats online, but practically ANYTHING and everything does not specify it's integration with other devices/systems. It just tells you that it's compatible with electronic devices like phones, desktops, and ipads... Which only tells me "You can install our app on your device and control it that way".... My idea is to be able to integrate things (Eventually) to a centrally managed system.

First thing that comes to mind is "Matter" and devices compatible with it as it is meant to be an open standard that can be controlled centrally regardless of who manufactured the "Smart device".... But it doesn't look like many manufacturers are adopting the idea of "Matter" and do not make things that are compatible with it....

So my question is - What are the options out there for a smart thermostat that eventually down the line I'll be able to centrally manage via a program/script I run on a local home server or something along these lines?

And one that doesn't look like this

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[–] kigmatzomat@alien.top 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

go read the wiki ( http://reddit.com/r/HomeAutomation/wiki/index ) to learn about the basic technologies. Do some browsing to see what's for sale in your market. Pick one tech to be your foundational system (I recommend Z-Wave or Zigbee) that can provide for >80% of your needs. Figure out what your likely runner up is that covers 10-15%, and expect maybe 5% weird gizmos.

Decide if "suitable for use" is OK or if you need "best in class". Even in tech, "best in class" winds up with prima donnas that dont play nice. You will find often a company does one thing incredibly well and is a total nightmare to integrate outside their tiny walled garden. Linking multiple walled gardens together becomes a constant pain to keep active. It is often less stressful and more successful to choose "B" products that play nicely over requiring everything be "A+".

Now pick a controller than covers your two technologies and top weirdos. You want a primarily local system so look at Homeseer, Hubitat, Homey, Zooz, Fibaro, HomeAssistant, OpenHab and ISY. Decide if you want a pre-built appliance or DIY. Be aware most appliances aren't great at supporting more than 2 or 3 cameras as video needs a lot of bandwidth and storage. If you plan on multiple cameras you may need something PC based

[–] perilomo20@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Pick one tech to be your foundational system (I recommend Z-Wave or Zigbee) that can provide for >80% of your needs.

The problem with this approach is the fact that I don't want to be pigeon holed into a single vendor for smart devices. If I go with Sony, that means that from now on - I will have to buy ONLY Sony compatible devices in the future.... Not a good plan

Now pick a controller than covers your two technologies and top weirdos. You want a primarily local system so look at Homeseer, Hubitat, Homey, Zooz, Fibaro, HomeAssistant, OpenHab and ISY. Decide if you want a pre-built appliance or DIY. Be aware most appliances aren't great at supporting more than 2 or 3 cameras as video needs a lot of bandwidth and storage. If you plan on multiple cameras you may need something PC based

To be fair I have no idea what you're talking about. I will check the wiki though and hope it can answer things better

[–] kigmatzomat@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

I didn't say pick a brand. I said pick a technology. Some technologies are tied inexplicably to brands but not all. Lightning belongs to Apple. But USB and wifi are multi-vendor technologies. Can you name the brand of USB? no, you buy Logitech and Microsoft and DLink and dozens more brands.

There are multivendor technologies in home automation. Z-Wave, Zigbee and MQTT/Tasmota are established, to various levels. Matter is a theoretically multivendor tech that is still nascent in the market.

[–] vmaziman@lemm.ee 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Probably not helpful for a thermostat on a local only net, but there is a specific use case for a thermostat connected to a third party network. If you have a iot only network that you can allow outside ingress and egress to you can get a connected thermostat to participate in smart grid demand response events. Basically instead of having your thermostat just set to your preferences, you can also allow a utility company to modify the temp offset by +/- 4 degrees temporarily or even do things like “pre cool” your house by having your tstat be set to autocool the house aggressively before the hottest part of the day and then switch off when everyone else’s starts turning them on and your house is cooled already. This makes it easier for utilities to supply houses with renewable electricity instead of relying on peak power coal plants. The controls they send out allow for an opt-out, but the less you opt out the more money you generally receive off your power bill or thru some other incentive

https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2022/07/smart-thermostats-inadvertently-strain-electric-power-grids

(How tstat with user only settings affect electric grids)

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2210670720308556

(How distributed demand response with devices like thermostats, car batteries, water heaters etc can help)

https://blog.srpnet.com/how-smart-thermostats-are-changing-the-electrical-grid/ (An example from a utility directly)

[–] mtbchris@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I run ecobee and Lutron Caseta with HomeKit on an ipad for local control, it’s easy and works really well.

[–] perilomo20@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

I am not buying into the apple eco-system.... Thanks

[–] perilomo20@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

Sorry about my last reply. There's been a lot of people here suggesting HomeKit and I somehow assumed your response did too.

Thanks for the suggestion. In fact this is the first thermostat that does not look like a square brick that looks like a clock from the 90's

I'll look into it and appreciate the suggestion

[–] koolaid351@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

If heating only I use Sinope thermostat. They are simple. They have line voltage, low voltage and electric floor heating. They have WiFi and zigbee. But they do not support AC. I have them because I have radiant heat with floor sensors. They were the only company I could find that were zigbee with floor sensors. TH1400ZB

[–] perilomo20@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

Heating is the first step... I just want to start automation and smart integration with the most functional and useful things and slowly work my way up....

Idea is to have a system that is modular that I can control in a central location with code

[–] zmanfelt@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

Lutron with Josh ai.. done

[–] Difficult_Purchase17@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Without reading every post to see how many times its been suggested already, look into Homeassistant and ESPHome, I built a purely local thermostat using a relay, ESP8266 & DHT11 temp / humidity sensor and then it's easy to add more sensors as you go.

Home assistant can run on a PI and is purely local but supports almost every smart home manufacturer.

Good luck diving down the rabbit hole buddy.

[–] perilomo20@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

So what is the actual thermostat that you are suggesting.

There's a lot of info there about a topic I am not 100% on. Just trying to figure out what I am looking at and for

[–] tarierdna@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Check out Loxone products. I am currently installing it in my home and it's very easy. https://www.loxone.com/

[–] perilomo20@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Didn't really find a thermostat there

[–] tarierdna@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

They don't have thermostats. Their system is for more complex projects, where you can connect everything to a single source of command ( in this case the miniserver https://shop.loxone.com/enen/miniserver.html ). It can be connected to the majority of the heating systems and act like a thermostat command. It will get the temerature from their switch (https://shop.loxone.com/enen/touch-pure-flex-tree-white.html) and pass it to the miniserver. Using the app, you can see the temperature in realtime and adjust it. The miniserver will start the command to the heating system.