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?

Doing it wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason that the field hasn't developed or matured is that the approach being taken for most products is wrong. There needs to be a domicile wireless standard that either uses the wifi or separate from it. They need key-based access control, so that your Android or iPhone or whatever can interface with them. New devices can be autodetected.

The problem is that no one has taken the lead and made this happen. It can though. For example, cooking supper your toaster, oven, microwave, and stovetop could all supply timing and temperature information to the network, and you could make changes to each from your phone/console/ps3/etc.

This isn't going to happen if every device has to have a driver for every other device. It won't happen if you have to add each device manually (ie, configure, not just adding your key). But it should instead be made a self-organizing system.

Good luck

[uvsc_wolverine]

I'm an open source fan personally, so I'd do Misterhouse. My father had a setup a few years back that he home-built with a linux distro that was made for a little headless machine that he stuck in the basement. He got really complex with it and did all the programming himself in Assembly (he's a masochist) instead of making use of the built-in tools. He wanted to do it HIS way. It worked great though. My dad's HA setup was dialed into all of the lighting and thermostat controls for the house and it did some cool stuff. He had a temperature probe on the outside of the house, and the system would decide (based on outside temperature, time of day, and whether anyone was in the house) whether or not to run the A/C to keep the house cool, but first it would spin up all the ceiling fans.

In reference to the "serious flaws" and weaknesses...ever wondered why none of the home automation tech we've been promised since 1950 has come to be common in homes? Things like auto-opening drapes, autoadjusting lighting, stuff like that. Ever wished someone would just sell something like that? The reason we don't have all of this cool stuff is that there is a company (can't remember the name off the top of my head) that holds a bunch of over-broad patents on most of what we think of as "duh" innovations in home automation. They don't license or sell their tech. They just sue people who try to make stuff.

X10 makes cool stuff for automation

[cbreaker]

You know, that annoying company that bombarded the late 90's with ads about their X10 "Spy Camera" system?

Well, the same company now makes all sorts of neat wireless and wired gadgets for automating your house. You can get replacement switches and outlets, or add-on ones (that plug into existing outlets) and can be controlled by their own wireless panels or by a computer interface. I know they have software for Windows but something might be available on Linux.

Basically with the X10 system you could potentially control every outlet, switch, and light with a single interface, as well as any low-voltage system (garage doors, etc) you want. You can also wire up sensors to windows and doors in order to trigger events such as turning on a light, sounding an alarm, or via the computer sending an e-mail or making a phone call.

Cool stuff, and when I buy a house I'm going to run the full gamut with these things. The nice thing is that the individual outlets and such aren't overly expensive so you could start with just a few and expand your system over time.

Too expensive

[Orange Crush]

The main reason I haven't bothered looking in to home automation more seriously is the expense of all the "bits" (switches, outlets, thermostats, etc.).

What are the cheapest options out there right now?

I'd be most interested in controlling HVAC, ceiling fans and lighting.

Either you get one of two things...

[HerculesMO]

You can either automate your home the way you want to and use the best tool for the job, or you can bash your head against the wall and try to use open source stuff that pales in comparison.

I use my computer as a tool, it's not a religion, so I'll use what works best.

If you're trying to make a case study about how Linux can automate your home -- have at it.

I prefer actually getting the job done.

What do you want home automation for?

[Attila Dimedici]

What purpose are you accomplishing with this home automation? I have seen these predictions and calls for home automation for years, but I have never seen a compelling reason for doing so.
Automatic inventory of what food you have in and generate a shopping list? Great, if I always kept the same stock of food in the house, or it didn't cost a lot more to have food delivered than it does to go to the store to buy it.
Automatic control of the microwave, stovetop, oven, etc? I still have to put the food in to these devices and then remove it when it is cooked, most of the food I cook requires intervention during cooking.
I could go on, but I just don't see what I get out of investing in these gadgets for home automation.

Re:What about INSTEON?

[denis-The-menace]

I talked to a Control4 dealer and I got a few interesting tidbits:

-The *Dealer* installs, configures the system into your house using special dealer-only software (PWD protect the system, too)
-You get a turnkey system, not the pwd.
-You can get something like an SDK for it but it is a *subset* (read: down version) of what the dealer used.

roll your own?

[enigma32]

I began with some silly things with my [saltwater] fish tank, building a circuit that would keep the water level topped off and reporting to a database when it did so... Have slowly been progressing toward temperature, lighting, and salinity controls for the tank, I've begun branching toward thermostat and lighting control for the house (next step possibly integration with google calendar so it knows when I'm going to be around)

For the most part there's a huge amount of open source hardware and software out there for doing individual bits and pieces. Look toward the Arduino controllers for interfacing with about anything, and possibly Sheeva plugs for running the whole mess. (I've had a sheeva talking to an arduino for quite a while now and it's been very stable)

I think the open hardware scene is where it's at right now;
As for Misterhouse, I think I'll be doing some reading this evening...

Re:Too expensive

[PecurB]

X10 stuff is cheap but pretty easy to tinker with. A number of years ago I bought an X10 Firecracker [x10.com] kit. They occasionally have it on sale for around $5 without warning, so if you keep an eye on that site you might be able to get it really cheap. I hadn't used it in years but a little while ago I figured it'd be cool to be able to remotely turn my porch lights and other devices on/off from my smartphone (I have an iPhone). Since I have a linux box at home hooked up to a cable modem this was a fairly straightforward exercise. I used the BottleRocket [linuxha.com] software to control the X10 devices from the linux box then wrote a very simple bare-bones PHP interface to it. Poke a hole through my firewall to allow incoming connections (via authenticated HTTPS of course) and now with a couple of clicks I can do things like turn on my exterior lights when I leave work or a friends house. For anybody who is interested, I wrote everything up on my blog [pennypacker.org] and posted the PHP code as well.

Re:Too expensive

[0100010001010011]

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Re:Good luck

[smellsofbikes]

Things like auto-opening drapes, autoadjusting lighting, stuff like that. Ever wished someone would just sell something like that?

I can't speak with any authority on your other topics, but the auto-adjusting lights, at least, will be in your friendly local hardware store within 2 years (or I'll be out of a job.) The question is: will you want to pay for it? Contemporary LED lighting (my field) is moving strongly into ambient light detection and (semi) intelligent lighting, and there are bulbs going on the market right now that even offer closed-loop color quality correction, so they not only turn on and off based on room lighting, but guarantee a lighting color throughout their lifetimes by using multiple colored LED's that vary based on measurement. (They're weird to work with because the color output from the bulb changes drastically if you hold a white sheet of paper up to the light, as compared to a piece of dark fabric, although the reflected color looks just about the same... which is the whole point.)

However, they cost about 10x what current lightbulbs cost, and it's an open question whether customers are going to actually spend more money for their lights. As brought up elsewhere in this thread, it's not that home automation is expensive per se, but that in order to apply it throughout a house, you could be changing 50-200 fixtures, outlets, and bulbs, and then it becomes cripplingly expensive.

Re:What do you want home automation for?

[smellsofbikes]

I think having a network-enabled microwave is lame. However, I think there are some places where it *could* make sense to invest in home automation: intelligent control of heat and lighting. If you have sensors that tell the computer where people are (and some adaptive software so it learns where they generally tend to be and go at different times) and have zone heating/AC, it's possible you could save a lot of money. At my old house we quite rarely used the downstairs and one room, so we closed them off and closed the heater vents to them, and reduced our heating costs by about 20%. Likewise, intelligent lighting control would mean if nobody's in the room the light automatically turns off, or for areas that are often used, dims to 10% with a rapid-on if a person walks through. Since this is the field in which I work, I might as well add a few numbers: we're trying to do this for parking lot and street lighting, specifically using dimming to a fraction of full lighting, and somewhat intelligent prediction of where people are heading so we can just crank up the relevant lights, and are claiming municipalities can reduce their power costs by 30% based on studies we've had done. We hope it'll be even higher than that, but we feel pretty confident in the 30% claim, given that 80% of the lights will be using 80% less power about 65% of the time.

Smart Grid and home automation - have your say

[Nefarious Wheel]

I just completed work on a major study around Smart Grids and there's a window of opportunity for home automation coming up from that direction. One of the initiatives the power companies are discussing will involve tools to let you not only see your house's power consumption on a circuit-by-circuit basis, but are meant to allow you to more directly control the electrical appliances in the home, remotely via the Internet. (It gives them better usage information too, which cuts the cost of power - they typically oversupply by 100% to handle peaks).

The way to influence what capabilities these things will have (and to voice any concerns you have over security etc.) is to find the email address of your local power company and send them your questions. Questions get a lot more air play than suggested solutions, but if you're careful about how you couch the questions you can steer them in the direction you want. I'd suggest a few like:

Q: What does "smart grid" mean and how will it relate to me?" - you'll get boilerplate response on this one, but it will flag your letter to the C-levels who are currently tracking this stuff hard.

Q: What sort of control over my usage will this give me? Can I control my house this way?

Q: How secure will it be? Would others be able to hack into my house and turn off my fridge?

Et very cetra. Make up your own. They won't really have any answers yet, because they're all very early on in the investment / infrastructure refresh cycle, but if you ask the questions you want them to answer and consider your needs and interests in them, you will get heard - this is that part of the build cycle where they're actually listening. Use your voice now while it counts. You might even get some nifty gear for effectively free, and it might be the stuff you want. And if enough of you ask for it, yes, it will run Linux.

Re:What about INSTEON?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean the following root password? username=root password=t0talc0ntr0l4!
The project is XML and if talk to the controller on port 5205 (the zserver) you can issue it any commands. Not hard to figure it out if you what the output coming in from devices.

Re:$2000 in and counting

[Coward Anonymous]

"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"

You must be kidding me. I have a much cheaper and more robust automation system. My two year old stretches on his tippy toes to reach the lights or drags over a chair if he still can't reach. He'll occasionally mess with the lights when he shouldn't but that's what being a kid is about. As for automation, if I need a light switched and I'm too lazy to get up I have an eager two year old who will switch it for me - voice recognition built in.

Seriously, you are control freak - let you daughter frickin' mess with the lights!

Re:What do you want home automation for?

[Killeryugi]

The town where I go to school, McKeesport PA has a unique situation in that 20% of its population are senior citizens, and that number is rising. Eventually the nation will mirror this number, so it is being used as a testbed for autonomous retirement homes by a company called BlueRoof Technologies. They aim to be able to control all aspects of the home to the point that the resident does not need a permanent caregiver. Knowing how many times the fridge/shower/sink have been used can clue the computer or operator in on the quality of life of the patient. Situations like turning off the stove then become a bigger deal, if the stove is on with no rise in temperature.

Re:Home automation

[thynk]

As a misterhouse user, I can attest that it's updated far more frequently than 2008. New code and patches are added the SVN on an as needed basis. New release comes out every so often, but users are encouraged to keep updated with the SVN. Also has a very responsive mailing list with a number of folks willing to help even the greenest n00b. Runs FAR better on linux than it does on Windows, at least in my experience. YMMV. I can't speak for the other bits of software, I dumped homeseer years ago, tho I understand it's quite popular.