What is the Current State of Home Automation?

StonyCreekBare writes "What do people have to say about the current state of Home Automation software? Preferably Linux based, but mainly the field in general, and principally the DIY flavors as opposed to the upscale turnkey systems. I am familiar with Misterhouse, HomeSeer and Automated Living's HAL2000, all of which have serious flaws and weaknesses, but which sometimes succeed well in specific areas. But in all cases, the state of the art seems to have moved little in the last decade. Is any interesting work being done in this space? Or should I just grab one of the three and try to mold it to fit my vision of what it should be? Misterhouse at least is open source so I can add new features, but it has not had an update in a long long time and seems to be missing some modern stuff. The other two are expensive and closed source, and from all I can see, quite flawed, not the least by their dependence on intimate ties to Microsoft. Yet they seem to offer a lot more than Misterhouse despite their weaknesses. Is the Home Automation field as bleak as it appears? Or have I missed the forest for the trees?" What home automation projects have people tackled? Any examples of wild success or failure?

What about INSTEON?

[Anonymusing]

What about INSTEON [insteon.net]? If you have a Mac, you can use Indigo [perceptiveautomation.com] to manage it -- even from an iPhone.

I've also heard about Control4 [control4.com] -- and don't forget X10 [x10.com], even though I can't tell if their home page is advertising porn or home automation products. I'll let you automate my systems, baby!

Re:Insteon, but not all that OSS friendly

[Deth_Master]

from http://misterhouse.wikispaces.com/Insteon [wikispaces.com] It appears that you can actually use insteon quite well with Open Source stuff.

As of 2009/03, Insteon is fully supported for open source on unix or windows, but for this you must use a P(ower)L(ine)M(odem) (not a serial or USB PLC) and use it with misterhouse.

A favorite site of mine is Linux Home Automation. Decent amounts of good information. [linuxha.com]
I am of the opinion that Home Automation isn't as far along as it should be.

linux ha

[IMightB]

http://www.linuxha.com/ [linuxha.com]

Check out Linuxmce.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using Linuxmce for quite a while now as a multimedia system but it also offers home automation and is opensource.

Re:Too expensive

[rodrigo1979]

checkout iobridge http://www.iobridge.com/ [iobridge.com]

Re:Good luck

[0100010001010011]

1-Wire [wikipedia.org] is awesome. I'm currently using it in my house. While it doesn't do everything, there are quite a few modules for different things. [hobby-boards.com]

Those are just the pre-built options. Maxim [maxim-ic.com] has quite a few chips that do different things. People have also used things in very creative ways. The wind direction gauge is just a position feedback sensor on a mechanical device to point towards the wind.

And no 1-wire home setup would be complete without OWFS [owfs.org] (One Wire File System). Works quite a bit like /proc. You can query your temp sensors with 'cat' and turn on relays with 'echo'. Also has libs for php, perl and other languages so you can use scripts. Caching so you don't hammer the bus.

Since I installed my HVAC controller before the temp sensors (Open Loop!) I went with a super4 relay board [emx.net.au]. They have linux code, but uses the proprietary FTDI drivers, I used libftdi and write my own. I wired it up in parallel to my thermostat, which I set to 50F. When I was driving home I'd kick it on and when I got home I'd kick it off. If I was hot, I turned it off. Etc. Also kicked on (via cron) at 7 am. (I grew up in an old farm house, so 60F ambient is fine for my single life).

I also have it on the 'web' checking an e-mail address that I can text from my phone. "heat" kicks things on "off" kicks things off. Nothing fancy yet.

Re:X10 makes cool stuff for automation

[JohnFen]

Cool stuff, and when I buy a house I'm going to run the full gamut with these things.

I wouldn't do that. If you own your house, you can do much, much better than X10.

The great thing about X10 is that it's relatively cheap, and can be retrofitted into existing houses easily.

In almost every other respect, X10 kinda sucks. I don't say this lightly, and it is possible to do cool things with X10, but there are really severe limitations.

I used X10 to fully automate my apartment a couple of years ago. It was quite sweet -- my apartment would send me a text if any emergency situation happened, it would run security cameras, turn lights on and off automatically when people were in rooms, the whole deal. I ran it with a linux box and misterhouse.

I still use X10 now, to automate party lights. My computer turns different effects on and off at preset times during the music. This is using linux, with xmms and a custom plugin to run X10 as the audio player.

So my experience is fairly deep. Here are the problems with X10: slow transmission speed (about .8 secs per command). No error detection/control, so commands can and do get lost and misinterpreted, and if you have multiple sources of commands (motion sensors, etc.) that transmit simultaneously, the collision causes havoc.

There are other solutions that are much better, if you don't mind more installation effort and/or more expense.

Konnex Home Automation

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're in Europe, check out Konnex (www.knx.org) which is an open standard that defines HA standards that are implemented by all the major European electrical manufacturing companies. You can mix and match various components from different manufacturors. Eg. use GIRA/Berker switches (sensors) that control the lighting managed by a switching actuator made by Siemens or Hager.

And yes the specs of this standards are completely open, and Marc Fleury (founder of JBoss) has now launched an open source initiative for Home Automation. See his website: http://www.openremote.org. They also developed an iPhone control module. Quite cool actually!

UPB expensive but really nice

[bmwm3nut]

UPB (Universal Powerline Bus) is the same idea at X10 and unfortunately much more expensive because of licensing issues, but the reliability of the communications is really good. It comes with a (poorly written) windows program that allows you to setup commands and stuff, but because of the ease of the UPB protocol I've just written my own C++ code to monitor the Bus and send commands to do things. I send an email to my house when I leave work, then the software reads the UPB temperature sensors inside and outside to determine when and if the heat should be turned on. When the light sensor notices that it's dark outside, the porch lights go on. When my car comes in the driveway (induction sensors) and I'm not hope the first floor lights go on. I unlock the front door with a key fob. And lots more. Blinds open and close depending on sun levels, inside, and outside temperature. Lots of really cool logic! I'm working right now on artificial intelligence to guess when I'm coming home, when I'm going to bed, all of that stuff, it's just hard because my schedule isn't very regular. Anyway, to get back on topic. I had to write all of this myself because the offerings out there are no good, if you want anything beyond the basics you won't get it. If you're a good hacker, it's worth it just to write a service that can read and write UPB commands and you can do anything you want (there's also a UPB-X10 bridge if you want to use X10 hardware).

Re:Links?

[Anonymous Coward]

Those question marks signal that you're curious to know. Have you not learned your lesson man!?!

Re:X10 makes cool stuff for automation

[Andy Dodd]

X10 is CRAP. It supports only 16 device codes and 16 house codes, and the majority of their controllers are only able to control one housecode at a time.

In short, there's a total address space of only 256 devices, and it's partitioned into 16 chunks of 16.

Also, it's heavily unreliable. The modulation scheme hasn't been revamped in decades to take advantage of modern ECC schemes (which are no longer computationally expensive).

They could have had great success with an "X10 version 2" with a more robust ECC scheme and larger address space, the closest thing is Insteon which has its own set of problems (namely a history of unfriendliness to open-source efforts.)

Re:Home automation

[dasunt]

Since you bought up the open source / closed source fight, if you want customization that Misterhouse might be good. You can then submit patches and updates for the project (it seems it's still sometimes updated, last time in 2008)

For cheap & crude, an IR transceiver (homebuilt), a few X10 controllers (ebay them, cheapest way), and an old box can be great. I ran heyu for the x10 stuff and lirc for the transceiver. Had an audio card with a few different outputs, so ended up scripting the remote to turn on and off audio outputs. An X10 plug would turn on and off physical components.

It isn't the end all and be all, but my system controls audio and lights in my main room. Could have easily tied in MythTV as well, if I wanted to. Never played with climate control, since I live in an apartment.

Sometimes crude is "good enough". And if isn't good enough, it may help you decide what you want in a better system. For example, the only thing I desired was a remote blinds control for my window.

For cost, I used my main PC ($0), a home built transciever ($20 in parts, if that?), and a few X10 controllers ($10 each on ebay).

Re:Links?

[wed128]

Worse. Links that will unravel your very soul.

Re:X10 makes cool stuff for automation

[Seakip18]

I'd agree from my limited experience.

I needed a simple security system that would dependably make a loud noise if someone opened the door. So far, it does that as well as could be expected in an house that's being rented.

The equipment is pretty cheap, the technology is dependable enough for what you pay.

Their website, x10.com, is definitely shows a lack of taste with their ads.

Now, as the parent said, if I owned the house, I'd have gone a much more powerful route, probably involving an arduino, 1-wire devices, etc. since I could drill and run wire wherever I want.

It might take 10x the time a x10 system would, but it'd be worth it once it's finished and working.

Alarm Panel Integration

[Anonymous Coward]

There are some neat products out there to integrate into your alarm panel. Utilizing Misterhouse or HomeSeer, products like this: http://www.nutech.com/nu-tech-shop/12.html (AD2USB Adapter) to hook your alarm system to your PC. Or the Vista ICM Module (which, imo is way inferior to the cheaper AD2USB Device provided by Nu Tech). People have made plugins for HomeSeer for these devices, and make it quite easy to integrate, monitor, and control your security system from the comfort of your PC.

Charmed Quark

[Anonymous Coward]

You might want to glaze your eyes over the Charmed Quark Controller (or CQC) at http://www.charmedquark.com
So it doesn't run on Linux, and its not open source. But as a testament to the product, its one of the most stable pieces of software I have ever used. It comes boxed with a number of hardware device drivers, an a comprehensive scripting and macro language to extend out its connectivity and functionality.

On the "cons" side, there's a pretty steep learning curve (which shouldn't be a problem for a /.er). And its not cheap, at around $600 plus $90 annual subscription fee. But again, that pretty much pales into insignificance when you consider all the hardware and wiring costs for a decent HA installation.

$2000 in and counting

[CompressedAir]

I have been automating my home for some time now, and I hope I can give you some perspective on the process.

Modern (as in, not X10) home automation hardware comes with a steep cost of entry. For my chosen flavor (Insteon), you have to buy $60 worth of phase couplers / wireless receivers and a $80 powerline - computer interface before you can even start adding wall switches. So, unless you are just wildly flush with cash, there usually has to be a need as well as the want to get started.

For me, my house is wired to that the driveway light switch are out in the detached garage. This was very irritating. By replacing the switch in the garage and the switch by the back door of the house with Insteon switches, I can now turn on the driveway lights from within the house. Cheaper than hiring an electrician to re-wire the switches.

Once the initial hurdle is passed, you can do all sorts of things quickly and easily. Such as:

1. I added a wireless switch at knee level so my 2-year old can turn on the light in her room. She LOVES this. A motion sensor turns the light off 15 minutes after she leaves. When she's older I'll set it up so she turns the light off, but I didn't want her flashing the lights on/off/on/off for an hour.
2. The wall switch in the living room can also start/stop music playing, as well as control the volume and change songs.
3. Using some ir-controlled home made window blind controllers I built, the blinds on the first floor of the house are controlled by the computer. Most notably, it shuts them when the sun goes down, so I don't have to worry about people seeing into the house after dark. I got real used to that real fast, let me tell ya.
4. I've put together a "Baby Monitor of the Gods" that sends video (with sound) from an old DV camcorder to any screen in the house (mostly old laptops running Damn Small Linux loaded into RAM, but also either of the TVs). In the workout room the video comes up on the picture-in-picture, so my wife can see the baby sleeping while she exercises. Very popular feature, that.
5. The library did not have a wall switch. Now it does. (It turns on the lamps.)
6. I'm leaving out the basic stuff, such as being able to control a light across the house from the bedroom. Very nice when you are getting ready for bed.
7. Everything is also controllable from our iPhones.
8. Next up is door locks, and after that probably HVAC. Part of me really wants to do computer controlled zoned HVAC, but the other part hates working in the attic. Choices, choices.

All of this runs from a Mac Cube running Indigo. I cannot say enough good things about Indigo, it is one truly great piece of home automation software.

So to sum up, the state of home automation is fantastic. With the relay control modules, you can control just about anything. Add IR control to that and there's not much left beyond your reach. Blind and drapes control is very expensive to buy off the shelf for some reason, but building your own is easy enough.

Good luck (and keep count of how many times you mix up the load and line wires)!

Brian

Re:Doing it right

[randomlogin]

OK, since we're doing shameless plugs here, I can say with a high degree of certainty that there will be a Linux friendly ZigBee solution arriving RSN. The product in development is a smart USB adapter which embeds all the proprietary ZigBee code so that the host-side can be 100% Free Software friendly - although it will be dual-licensed to allow 3rd parties to create Tivo-ised products on commercial terms.

As far as the host side is concerned, it will be based Java/OSGi in order to take advantage of the modularity that platform gives. The idea here is that different developers can create their own applications for home security, lighting control, remote control cat flaps, etc and plug them into a running system. Of course, you'll still need to buy into one of the commercial vendors if you want to build your own ZigBee powered gadgets - but their dev kits are generally pretty good value and many can be had at hobbyist-friendly prices.

If you're not wanting to roll your own ZigBee powered gadgets, third party products are slowly coming to market which implement the standard ZigBee profiles for home automation, smart energy and RFCE (remote controls on steroids). The intention is to support all these standards as plugins to the host platform.

However, before everyone gets over-excited, I need to point out that the initial batch of 32 USB devices will be for conformance testing and trusted early beta testers only. As with all these kinds of projects, availability of the final product will depend on how many late-night coding sessions I manage to get in and how much money I can persuade the bank manager to lend me ;-)

Welcome to my money pit!

[Sacarino]

The problem with "home automation" systems is that it is VERY loosely defined. Some say it's the ability to control your lights, others say it's HVAC, still others say it's distributed audio/video. Since it's such a generic term, somewhat consequentially there are a variety of vendors and products that claim to be home automation. If you want to bridge technologies, you have to find a product that'll do that natively or allow you to expand it yourself.

I happen to have a pretty robust system that uses Homeseer as the backend engine. This allows me to leverage strengths from various hardware providers due to the extensibility of their software, plus I have the ability to roll my own .NET code and have it integrate into the system. I currently utilize some very specific X-10 devices for a narrow niche (wireless door and window sensors) and a thermostat (if it ain't broke!), but the great majority of my stuff has been converted to Z-wave. The beauty of Z-wave over X-10 is the signal confirmation... with X-10, I'd send a signal into the ether and hope it'd get there, but with Z-wave, I get delivery confirmation so the system knows that a desired action hasn't been completed. There are additional technologies out there like Insteon, ZigBee, and UPB, but they have issues I don't like or the squeeze isn't worth the juice. Some of this crap is exceedingly pricey and I just can't justify spending it.

I use Cinemar's MainLobby for integration with my theater gear, which also provides the sexy touchscreen frontend that everyone looks for in a system. Homeseer has also deployed a software with similar capabilities called HSTouch, but it isn't as powerful for my A/V setup just yet.

Just a quick rundown of some things that I've got my system setup to do:

• Occupancy detection - if vacant, it goes into an energy savings mode and shuts off lights and adjusts thermostat setpoints.
• Exterior lighting is automatic based on sunset/sunrise, plus only brightens to 100% when motion detected or doors are opened.
• Certain actions at certain times trigger sequences: when I open my bedroom door in the morning, the kitchen light kicks on and the TV flips on and tunes to the news channel I like.
• Caller ID is screened and/or announced for me, in addition to displaying on television screens.
• Freezer and fridge doors trip alarms if they're left open for too long.
• Exhaust fans in the bathrooms are based on humidity conditions.
• Yard irrigation is controlled both by wind conditions and zoned soil wetness conditions.
• When the doorbell is rung, the touchscreens all show a live camera feed for that door from my ZoneMinder server.

There's tons more that I currently do, I've got a list as long as my arm of things I plan to do, and there's a lot of options out there for things I could do. If you're interested in HA, you really need to figure out what it is for you by detailing out what you want and how you want to get there. My route is a lot of DIY because I'm happy hacking my way through a problem... If you've got more money than brains, you can certainly take the vendor lock-in approach of something like Crestron.

Currently setting up MisterHouse to talk to my poo

[BrianCarlstrom]

I recently discovered MisterHouse because it has a module to talk to my Pentair Compool pool controller. I'm documenting my experience here: http://carlstrom.com/pool/ [carlstrom.com]

I've found MisterHouse documentation to be frustrating but I've gotten it to do what I need so far for my pool project (allow remote control and to log temperature information over time). I will say that it could use some serious rearchitecture to go along with some better documentation. If I were going to do some more serious HA I would consider trying to improve things, but its good enough for my needs, so I'll just be submitting some minor bug fix / corrections...

Re:Doing it wrong

[markov23]

Zigbee is out and in the field with a couple of companies. One of my companies is a home automation company and we program and install products from Control4 and AMX -- both have support for zigbee. AMX with their remotes and control4 with pretty much their whole product line. The spec creates a mesh network where all of the devices act as repeaters -- which makes it much more than just a blutooth competitor. Case in point -- my house has 50 zigbee controllable lights in it -- and no dedicated repeaters. Since the lights are all decently close to each other -- the network size just scales. There are starting to be more products that have native support for zigbee -- theres someone selling remote locks that communicate their status as well as being controllable from other user interfaces -- think open your door with your iphone -- not your keys -- not sure thats useful -- but it can be done. Not to be confused with open source -- the control4 platform is linux based. As far as I can tell they only run it on their own hardware -- but when there are problems you can still telnet in and see whats going on.

Re:Doing it wrong

[markov23]

its not pointless -- its just not for you. We put these systems in lots of houses and when they are done right they make complicated systems very simple to use. Most of our projects have 8-16 rooms with digital music, video networks that can put any source on any TV and simple remote controls that make the whole thing work. It aint cheap, but done correctly you can make these systems work for competing viewpoints of husbands and wives. Typically husbands love tech -- dont mind seeing a stack of equipment in a room and see it as a normal part of everyday life that they need 3 remotes to watch a movie. Wives want to see the stuff disappear -- which is why you put speakers in the ceiling and have touchpads control music instead of having a stereo stack in each room you might want to listen to music in. These systems also let you have a nice clean look in media rooms. Most of our projects we put every piece of equipment in a server rack and control it all via RF remotes. This lets you just put a TV over the fireplace -- or just have a plasma and in wall speakers in the family room without having to cram a bunch of stuff into a piece of furniture you didnt want in the room. This is not for everybody -- but to our customers ease of use and aesthetics are important and they are willing to pay for them. Now there is a DIY crowd out there trying to use home depot quality stuff and x-10 tech. If this is all you look at, you will think the field hasnt moved in decades. The enthusiast market is filled with incomplete solutions and hacker tech. It may be fun to play with, but it aint wife friendly and it wont be reliable. This group tends to get overly focused on the cost of the gear and has very high expectations of performance ( this is from my viewpoint as a professional in the space ) As a company weve stayed away from projects where people want to use x-10 level of gear. Lastly -- and way off topic -- but there is some chatter about wifi growing up to handle these tasks. I'd put that at not likely with the current state of that spec. Its fine for laptops roaming around the house, but its too unreliable for home automation where it needs to work 100% of the time. We try to have anything that needs that kind of connectivity have a dedicated ethernet or we never really trust it. Its not all wifi's fault -- the embedded device code for wifi that is in most touch panels and equipment in the automation space has no clue how to handle a multi channel wifi network where it might roam -- this makes it pretty bad for what most people expect of it.

State of home automation

[Ricochet]

Well we're on the verge of a great many changes. The push for the smart grid has begun and no one knows which direction it will go in. There are a great many technologies that can be used in automating your home but a great many players have a vested interest in not playing nice. As such the OpenRemote [openremote.org] was started to be the glue that pulls everything together. We currently working on great many things including Insteon, X10, KNX, IP and many of the other standard interfaces.

I'm looking forward for digitalSTROM availability

[rapidmax]

If they where really available next year, this seems to be the perfect solution to control my home. The components works without programming at all out of the box, you'll just need a button and a few digitalSTROM [digitalstrom.org] enabled bulb or luster terminal to start. There is no wiring needed, only a simple component right after the fuse or each circuit.

I'll add the server component of course, as this part is released as OpenSource (GPL, as this was said at LinuxTag '09). Using this server I'm able to program and control the house exactly as I like.

I'll use OpenRemote [openremote.org] to control the server part. This project finally connects all kind of home equippment together (KNX, UPnP, etc). This project should also provide an easy panel interface.