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Message
Favorite home automation thing
Posted on 2/5/16 at 2:05 pm
Posted on 2/5/16 at 2:05 pm
1. Thermostats. I don't think there's even a debate here. Controlling my thermostats is not only saving me money but waking up in the middle of the night too hot/cold and just reaching over to the night stand and adjusting it is just pure bliss.
2. door locks. While I admit I avoid using the automatic lock as much as possible to save on battery life, the fact its able to lock or unlock when i'm not around and tell me WHO is coming in (based on codes set) is really great.
3. doorbell. even though i don't have one yet, i think it would be awesome to see what types of random people walk up to your front door during the day. might catch the wife having sex with the UPS guy!
4. lights/dimmers/switches. triggering lights has traditionally been done via dusk/dawn/motion doohickeys so the abilty to add some additional triggers via your phone is nice...but ranks lower on the scale of things that can be done with your phone. to be fair, i rank this higher than smoke detectors because i play with the lights all the time to make the house 'hug' everyone based on our behaviors instead of constantly messing with the switches.
5. smoke/CO2 detectors - nice to get an alert remotely when your MiL is watching your dogs when you're out of town and trying to burn the house down because she polished off a 5th of tequila and is trying to grill a steak on the stove.
6. energy-monitoring. unless/until a whole-house system is in place that provides you with a real-time spreadsheet of every motherfricking energy sucker in your house, piecemeal monitoring is not going to be higher up on the list. probably too cost prohibitive to make your house energy smart, but someone should be making a killing having an inline energy monitor.
one that attaches to the line coming into the house would be nice, but i guess you could use your eyeballs and a piece of notepaper to analyze your meter as your HVAC cuts on or on a daily basis to get a better estimate what you're burning overall daily.
7. garage door openers. meh. i got 2 of them and they are nice but we all have vehicles with homelink these days and its very rare i accidentally leave the door open. i guess the point is its nice to know i CAN shut the door from another country if it was left open by accident, but in real world usage, i've found i rarely use it because i am already in the habit of using homelink.
8. water/leak monitoring? not sure how i'd use this yet. its too late to cut off the water if the washing machine hose comes loose and its draining the tub all over the floor and getting a notification remotely will just ruin my day.
9. propane tank monitoring - "for us country folks" who don't want to walk down the hill in 20 degree weather/ice and squeeze past poison ivy and lift the rusty lid up to check how much propane is left so we don't run the tank dry & freeze to death waiting on a delivery. yep, propane is only used in the winter and during ice storms is where usage will skyrocket and thats when you dont want to be out on the slick ice.
10. egg minder
what do you have?
eta i'm running foscam cameras and they don't work with wink yet so i have no comment on that.
the thing that sucks is the foscam API is open and i can pass commands to it via URL string from any computer so it would be really easy for wink to pull these in unless they have been threatened by dropcam to not allow it.
foscam >>>>>>>>>>>>>> dropcam from quality of video to features and price.
2. door locks. While I admit I avoid using the automatic lock as much as possible to save on battery life, the fact its able to lock or unlock when i'm not around and tell me WHO is coming in (based on codes set) is really great.
3. doorbell. even though i don't have one yet, i think it would be awesome to see what types of random people walk up to your front door during the day. might catch the wife having sex with the UPS guy!
4. lights/dimmers/switches. triggering lights has traditionally been done via dusk/dawn/motion doohickeys so the abilty to add some additional triggers via your phone is nice...but ranks lower on the scale of things that can be done with your phone. to be fair, i rank this higher than smoke detectors because i play with the lights all the time to make the house 'hug' everyone based on our behaviors instead of constantly messing with the switches.
5. smoke/CO2 detectors - nice to get an alert remotely when your MiL is watching your dogs when you're out of town and trying to burn the house down because she polished off a 5th of tequila and is trying to grill a steak on the stove.
6. energy-monitoring. unless/until a whole-house system is in place that provides you with a real-time spreadsheet of every motherfricking energy sucker in your house, piecemeal monitoring is not going to be higher up on the list. probably too cost prohibitive to make your house energy smart, but someone should be making a killing having an inline energy monitor.
one that attaches to the line coming into the house would be nice, but i guess you could use your eyeballs and a piece of notepaper to analyze your meter as your HVAC cuts on or on a daily basis to get a better estimate what you're burning overall daily.
7. garage door openers. meh. i got 2 of them and they are nice but we all have vehicles with homelink these days and its very rare i accidentally leave the door open. i guess the point is its nice to know i CAN shut the door from another country if it was left open by accident, but in real world usage, i've found i rarely use it because i am already in the habit of using homelink.
8. water/leak monitoring? not sure how i'd use this yet. its too late to cut off the water if the washing machine hose comes loose and its draining the tub all over the floor and getting a notification remotely will just ruin my day.
9. propane tank monitoring - "for us country folks" who don't want to walk down the hill in 20 degree weather/ice and squeeze past poison ivy and lift the rusty lid up to check how much propane is left so we don't run the tank dry & freeze to death waiting on a delivery. yep, propane is only used in the winter and during ice storms is where usage will skyrocket and thats when you dont want to be out on the slick ice.
10. egg minder
what do you have?
eta i'm running foscam cameras and they don't work with wink yet so i have no comment on that.
the thing that sucks is the foscam API is open and i can pass commands to it via URL string from any computer so it would be really easy for wink to pull these in unless they have been threatened by dropcam to not allow it.
foscam >>>>>>>>>>>>>> dropcam from quality of video to features and price.
This post was edited on 2/5/16 at 2:16 pm
Posted on 2/5/16 at 2:16 pm to CAD703X
shades, which could be lumped into lights and energy management.
Posted on 2/5/16 at 2:35 pm to CAD703X
garage door openers. - I've read about people using Automatic. Some type of OBD sensor or whatever plugs into your car and geofencing to open the garage as soon as you pull onto your street.
8. water/leak monitoring?
Check out Leaksmart. It's a newly compatible wink option. Well, it's supposed to be. Still waiting on the release. I snagged one on Ebay for $130. They are $220 in HD.
ETA: and if you ever actually send payment , you could add motion detectors and sirens to your list.
8. water/leak monitoring?
Check out Leaksmart. It's a newly compatible wink option. Well, it's supposed to be. Still waiting on the release. I snagged one on Ebay for $130. They are $220 in HD.
ETA: and if you ever actually send payment , you could add motion detectors and sirens to your list.
This post was edited on 2/5/16 at 2:40 pm
Posted on 2/5/16 at 2:39 pm to mctiger1985
where do you put the 'water off' thingie? i dont have a shutoff valve coming into my house.
Posted on 2/5/16 at 2:42 pm to CAD703X
quote:
where do you put the 'water off' thingie?
That's a good question...and one I should have examined before I purchased, but it was an impulse buy due to the price. My lines go into my attic, so I can add it somewhere there.
Posted on 2/5/16 at 2:44 pm to CAD703X
6. energy-monitoring. Have you seen this? Curb
Posted on 2/5/16 at 2:50 pm to mctiger1985
only a matter of time i guess before someone got a crowd-funded thingie off the ground.
truly surprised a more user-friendly doodad hasn't surfaced already.
i ACTUALLY was looking into what it would take to create the 'apple' of smart energy monitoring and outlined a long list of my needs for it.
looks like someone is trying to do this..sure other things exist already but they have that quaint '1980s autocad' look to them.
This post was edited on 2/5/16 at 2:54 pm
Posted on 2/5/16 at 2:55 pm to CAD703X
My thermostats and light switches are things I'll never go without again.
Posted on 2/5/16 at 3:02 pm to CAD703X
i wake up and my wife automatically makes me bacon and eggs. doesn't always work, but when it does, it's glorious.
Posted on 2/5/16 at 4:06 pm to 3nOut
quote:Have you tried turning Wife off and then on... and on and on and on again? Sometimes it's a hardware issue, and that can help.
i wake up and my wife automatically makes me bacon and eggs. doesn't always work
Also, sometimes the Wife software has trouble with memory corruption. All of its own errors are irretrievably lost, and it fills the vacant memory with errors gathered from other software, typically Husband. After a period of time, Wife cannot contain these errors in its own memory space any longer, and it runs a routine that dumps them all back onto Husband. This poor error handling results in a wide variety of difficult-to-diagnose symptoms, and your occasional lack of breakfast may be one of them.
Hope this helps!
Posted on 2/5/16 at 4:42 pm to mctiger1985
Cad, tried emailing you and it failed. Need your street address again
Posted on 2/5/16 at 6:12 pm to CAD703X
quote:
might catch the wife having sex with the UPS guy!
New genre of pron - hidden doorbell cam sex.
Posted on 2/5/16 at 11:15 pm to mctiger1985
quote:I'm currently using Automatic and it's pretty cool. Don't have too much configured to automate yet besides a few IFTTT triggers but that's only because I've just been too busy lately.
automatic
Posted on 2/6/16 at 7:18 am to CAD703X
With two small children I use smartthings multi sensor to monitor the temperature in their rooms. Simple yet effective
Posted on 2/6/16 at 7:43 am to CAD703X
Thermostat and lights are the best two I have. You're also leaving out vacuum cleaners, irobot. Disappointed in the cameras I've integrated to date. Storage through the hub is low and often packs of video are missing.
Posted on 2/6/16 at 9:27 am to CAD703X
Just got Flux lighting in my office. Can control from your iPhone and have the ability to set on/off times, light warmth, etc. Pretty neat. Would recommend, although expensive.
Posted on 2/6/16 at 11:10 am to Gradual_Stroke
I love having a camera system. And my sonos stuff. If that counts.
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