Dipping a toe into home automation

I like the idea of home automation more than the actual headache that it is to get it all working just right.

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Essentially a blank slate.

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Bad news. A blank slate with limitless possibilities will drive you nuts.



I can:
Open my garage door from my phone or by voice (meross garage door opener. Has 1 and 3 door options)
Dim most the lights, lamps in my home and control fans (lutron). I use a few “scenes” where I turn on my under cabinet lighting at night and can turn off almost every light in the house with one button
I’ve added colored lighting to my front porch and wrote an apple shortcut to set different colors for Labor/memorial/election day, 4th of July, St Patrick’s day, Mardi Gras season, Good Friday, Easter, Pentecost, each separate day of the week for October (hue has 6 dynamic scenes for Halloween so I just incorporated all of them), and then an A/B schedule for Christmas starting on thanksgiving night and ending on January 6th
Landscape lighting goes on/off on a timer (also lutron)
My cameras (Unifi Protect) can be viewed in their own app or in HomeKit (no timeline)
My thermostats (3) can be set or changed from HomeKit

I don’t think HomeKit is the most feature rich. But I was able to get my wife and in laws to learn it. We (they) struggled with smart things.


Easy stuff to do that I don’t do:
dim lights when tv is on
Smart locks
I’ve been meaning to figure out the homebridge plug-in to get a receiver to change inputs (triggering a Logitech harmony “scene”) when it detects a Sonos audio output for my father in law, but I’ve been a little lazy on that one.



There’s a ton more that can be done, but I generally try to avoid adding features that I won’t use basically every day.

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A door knob I don't need the key to open would be nice.

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There are a ton of options here but I can't point you in any direction. You can get one from the well-known lock companies, or you can get a cheap chinese one. I have a cheap one and it works fine, but it's just a deadbolt so I have to leave the knob unlocked. If you want to be able to control it off-site (like make sure it's locked when you're out of town, or issue temp codes to a neighbor), then it either needs to be wifi capable or you will need a hub which serves as a bridge to the internet for the lock.

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A smart thermostat which I can control but the power company can't control on a whim.

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No power company can control any smart thermostat on a whim. If they want control, you have to grant it to them and it must be specifically configured for that.

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Smart lights and fans.

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If you can, choose devices that offer local control and don't rely on a cloud service to function.

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Water sensors under all of the sinks and near the washer.

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I don't know the best sensors (and to me "best" would mean local control), but maybe look into the Flume water monitor. I have one and it works great, though it does not offer local control. It clamps around your meter, there is no plumbing involved, and it monitors your water use in almost real time. It may not detect a leak as quickly and directly as a sensor placed right under a leak, but it monitors your whole home and is plenty sensitive enough to detect a leak of a few ounces per hour. Of course it can't tell you where exactly the leak is, but it will let you know if you have a problem.

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A motion activated camera in the attic that alerts me if a critter gets up there.

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That's going to be a tough one. Unless a company makes a camera specifically for this purpose, you're going to be doing a lot of configuring to eliminate false motion alarms due to spiders in front of the lens. And also a lot of cleaning.

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Interior/exterior temperature and humidity monitor.

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Interior I would just get the sensors that go with your thermostat.

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Media server/drive for all downloaded media which can be accessed from all the smart TVs?

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Most people use Plex for this.



And just as a general rule for myself personally, whenever possible I choose devices that integrate well with Home Assistant. I don't trust Amazon or Google (or any cloud service) to be in charge of my stuff, and I don't want to spend five figures on any of the premium home automation systems. So instead I spend hours upon hours configuring Home Assistant to do what I want, as many here on the tech board do.

Sum ting wong dropping your thermostat is a far cry from dropping your shields.

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Water sensors under all of the sinks and near the washer.

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After a washer leak jacked up my baseboards I bought some Aqara Leak Sensors. I've just installed them to be honest but they do work in my testing. Fridge is currently randomly leaking so I threw one under there today. My hub is Hubitat which I really like.

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How much does a water sensor run? That probably is a good idea. Can you get a pack of a bunch of them?

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Most of them are like $20-30 each. You can probably get some cheap ones out of china if you're willing to wait. Personally though I still like my Flume water monitor. I have like a dozen potential leak locations in my house, so I cover them all with a $200 device and it measures consumption to boot.

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I'm planning on getting a garden going in the spring and was thinking some kind of smart sprinkler system would be a good idea because I always tend to fry my garden. I could probably just use the weather, but ideally, I'd like to have a smart rain gauge and then base whether or not the sprinkler runs and for how long. Plus it would be generally interesting to me to have localized rain and temperature stats. Anyone ever done anything like that?

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I've thought a lot about automated gardening, and I think the best way would be with a soil moisture sensor and activate the sprinkler based on the forecast. I don't think a rain gauge would be much use because it's already raining, ya know? I'd just measure the soil moisture content directly and water when it gets low but only if it's not going to rain for 24 hours or whatever.

There are smart rain gauges though if you still find it interesting. I think it would be a fun project to build a DIY tipping bucket gauge. I've also built some low power sensor devices with very long wireless range, and I think it would be neat to deploy a dozen or so in my area for hyper-local weather reporting.

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I'm planning on getting a garden going in the spring and was thinking some kind of smart sprinkler system would be a good idea

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Look at the B-hyve system. Works well and grabs info from nearest weather station to pause watering due to rain or freezing temperatures.

HomeKit is a lock in festival. Avoid anything solely on HomeKit. Zigbee and ZWave and now "Matter" are the way to go. The rebranded Samsung SmartThings hub (now Aeotec) supports everything (meaning Zigbee, Matter and ZWave) but Homekit. Matter just rolled out in an approved form. You can buy whichever door lock works for you (except HomeKit), whichever lights you want, etc.

Learn and add slowly, and intentionally. Don't replace $400 worth of bulbs with a particular brand at once, for instance.

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There are smart rain gauges though if you still find it interesting.

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It depends on how much your water and wastewater fees are. I was paying $300 a month in water/disposal before I got a Rachio sprinkler controller, and my grass is still perfectly green at 50% of the cost. However, designating a zone as "flowers" doesn't work without some adjustment (roses are different than XYZ, etc.) There are always nuances in the implementation. But since you're starting from scratch, just do drip irrigation, and it'll matter less what is providing the water.

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Learn and add slowly, and intentionally. Don't replace $400 worth of bulbs with a particular brand at once, for instance.

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This is really good advice. You may find that one solution works better than another after using for a bit.