Home Automation

[Paul]

Since we have a bunch of very clever, like minded people on here, though this would be the ideal place to post

After having issues with the bridge between Alexa and a 3rd party App, it made me look at and think of internal automation device interfaces (Such as Homebridge - https://homebridge.io/ and Homeassistant - https://www.home-assistant.io/).
There's also issues as in me having all sorts set up on my phone, but meaning that the misses doesnt have access when i'm away. Makes more sense to me to have a central "controller" somewhere in the house with a touch screen that anyone can access, however also access via phone in the house

Anyone done this? Anyone had a play and know which is the best "Open Source" one out there?

Ideally would love to run on a PI4 only because it doesnt draw much power... however open to ideas!

Cheers

 

[AlanJ]

Either of those you found will do

my house has old non wireless, non alexa, “x10” remote controlled mains lighting in 7 rooms on 14 separate circuits. “x10” uses signals down the mains power lines and has been around for nearly 50 years!

I used an esp32 which fools alexa into thinking there are 14 philips hue lights. the esp then gets the alexa commands and converts them to the format needed by the x10 devices. hey presto i’ve got alexa control of an ancient lighting system. i’m sure you could connect almost anything to alexa using a similar method. all the code was freely available. and i could give you a starter for 10.

 

[Calimori]

My house has a mixture of stuff.
Hue bulbs, wireless sockets, inline wifi sonoff devices, zigbee central heating TRV's and electrical switches. Ring Floodlights etc.
I tried to make an iPad be the central control for the Mrs but it get unplugged from the power socket to move it and then the battery went dead and it got lost down the sofa.
Now Alexa can turn up the heating in a room, turn off and on lights etc, but I am the only one who remembers what a light or room or a group is called.

I started to realise that all my ideas on making it better were not really required for the Mrs.

Home Assistant didn't seem straightforward with my kit. I was running it in a container on my NAS and got it going really quickly but it found few devices. I didn't click with it so walked away, others have said it is great.

(Multiple edits because some apps now require a functionkey+return for line space but this site now treats that as a commit)