So, we went to the Home Improvement show yesterday as the start of research for our newbuild. It looks like the two biggest areas of business at the moment are folding sliding doors and Home Automation/whole house AV.

I’m tech savvy, and the current house has structured cabling where it’s useful (rather than flooded to each and every room). I know the extent to which the AV is useful and can sort that myself. Surely any of these expensive built in systems would be horribly outdated in a couple of years – better to keep it commodity and flexible.

I’ve looked at DIY home automation solutions over the years, and have a reasonable idea of what the ‘installer’ systems do but I’m still struggling to see the benefits:

Lighting – running a few circuits and sensibly laid out switches seems just as effective as hugely expensive remote controlled ‘scene’ based systems.

Heating – I rarely tough my current heating system which has a £100 7 day digistat controller on it. Move to underfloor and a few stat controlled zones seems to cover nearly every eventuality

What’s left? Might be useful to have a video entryphone linked to an alarm but it doesn’t feel like it needs to be linked to anything else.

Am I missing something or do people just get blinded by the salesmen and drop many thousands of pounds on overly complex systems that don’t do anything useful?

Sonos type systems have removed the need for wired av.

Would go for good ethernet as it’s still better for data transfer.

If I was doing a new build, I’d run cable ducts to each room, so you can pull through / blow through whatever cable is the latest fashion eg CAT-5, CAT-6, Fibre etc.

I don’t see the appeal of underfloor heating (unless combined with a heat pump), it seems to be expensive to run and not as quick to respond as radiators. Eg I tend to switch my CH on manually, as in wait till I get home and decide if I want it on or not, rather than use the timer / 7 Day thermostat, which is just switched down to a minimum setting. With a modern, well insulated house, the gas bill for radiators will be tiny as so little heat will escape.

Thanks – no advice needed on AV or cabling – i’m fine on that.

It’s the rest of the ‘home automation’ industry. Can anyone sell me on the benefits?

A mate of mine is designing a system so he can do stuff like run a bath to a specific temperature and put the coffee on so it’s waiting for him when he gets in from a cold ride. He started with the idea he could control curtains and lights when he was on holiday as he was worried about burglary and went from there.

Seems like a lot of faff to me though.

The ‘rest of’ bit you’re looking for is bringing all of that stuff together.

‘some tech kit installed’

Family room
1x TV
1x Freeview/sky/virgin/whatever
1x media centre
1x amp
1x lighting control
1x BD player

master bedroom
1x tv
1x media centre
1x lighting control

heating controller, 7 day program with indi zones
regular switches on the wall
cctv box and maybe an alarm

So you have all this kit and you’re doing your thing. Using a well setup HA system will allow you to, for example, get to the front door and press your alarm keypad to set the house to leaving for work (you’re the last one out of this house in this example) your alarm is armed, your lighting control is set to simulated occupancy (recursive learning pattern based on the last 2 weeks of whatever has happened (save for holiday mode)) your heating temp is lowered and should the tv have been left on in your master bedroom, that’s switched off/put to standby and your cctv system is set to record any movement – sending you an sms text/email should you wish.

putting that lot together is fairly straight forward.

I’d look at lighting control because:
cool factor
completely programmable/customisable
less ‘wall clutter’ with banks of switches (which looks gash, to be fair)
cost savings – lights are not powered 100% all the time
can be integrated into the whole house

for media centre’s, i would have to find a very good reason to not use RaspBMC and an iPad, more than capable of playing HD content, costs you £40 or thereabouts per room and you only need a NAS (though i would suggest using the HP Microserver as it’s cheaper than a nas and more can be done with it)) you can setup a shared sql db to ensure each room is sync’d with each other.

Lighting, i’d suggest RAKO. For your alarm, I’d suggest Honeywell Galaxy as it can have RS232, SMS, networking and a few other bits. Use BlueProx sensors too. for connecting the lot together, Control4 is pretty good, however if you know someone who is handy with Crestron/AMX their kit can be purchased pre-owned and can make for a very inexpensive and capable system.

Following on from my example, let’s assume you get to the front door, open it (of course) and using either a keyprox to unlock or a code, your lighting in the hallway comes on, your kitchen goes to ‘scene 1’ (ceiling spots and under cabinet LED’s) and then your choice of radio comes on through the ceiling speakers.

Depends what you’re building, how far your imagination can stretch and ultimately your budget.

Please DO NOT ever use a company in Sheffield, Konnectiv. Not sure where you are geographically but drop me a mail if you want to chat (I don’t work in that industry anymore)

JT

Personally, UFH is where it’s at. Heat store in the floor substrate, feeling of heat is evenly spread throughout the room, won’t need to be on for as long as a typical radiator system due to the heat store of the floor. (assuming concrete) + it feels pleasant to walk on a warm floor (assuming wood / tile, as you wouldn’t use carpet with ufh)

id pay for curtains/blinds to be automated on light sensors (with a back up XYZ timer for dull days)

that way during winter i can get max solar benifit and minimum heatloss via curtains when its dark before i get home – ala most of the winter

but then the old adege keep it simple stupid comes to mind

All sounds nice but won’t it be horribly out of date the day after its installed, and being hard wired it would be impossible to update.

Can’t this stuff be done with smart devices, a tablet and a wireless network yet? That way its modular, get a new fridge, TV or whatever and its part of your set up imediately.

I’ve got visions of houses in 10 years time that feel like living in the pasts vision of the future.

Hi.

Not really, wiring is just that, it’s hardly changed in the past 20 years (in the grand scheme of it)

Home Automation is designed to be modular. I have visions of some folk on STW who insist on having copper pipes on the outside of the wall, just in case it has a leak. 😉

Typically, you wire it all back to one place (under the stairs, a cellar, boiler room, etc) so say you want to change from component to hdmi as a video source (as was the case a few years ago) and all you do is unplug the bit of kit in your media cabinet, go back to the ‘kit room’ and swap the bit out there. Easy peasy.

Technology changes so fast and you should always consider planning for that in whatever you do, be that installing cat5/cat6 in your walls or where you locate your ‘kit room’ as getting access to it in 10 years to add some additional functionality/wiring should be thought through.

It is possible to control most of these things via a tablet (iPad usually) the RAKO lighting system is ace, pull out a ceiling light, amend the wiring to remove the wall switch and put the RAKO dimmer in it’s place, push the light fitting back and locate the switch wherever you want it, rinse and repeat with the rest of the dimmers in the lighting circuits you want to control.

HA isn’t for everyone and sometimes it’s utterly over the top. Check out Future Automation for some amazing tv lifts/art movers/motorized brackets. Not cheap but very well made and a great bit of engineering.

JT

What’s left? Might be useful to have a video entryphone linked to an alarm but it doesn’t feel like it needs to be linked to anything else.

Probably, along with razor-wired walls and thief-proof doors/windows – it was South London you were moving to, wasn’t it? 😉

+ 1 jontawn.

I went and visited Future Automation via work a couple of years back. Stunning company and was really impressed that they manufacture everything in the UK.

Personally home automation leaves me a bit cold, and once you get past the flashing lights we still seem to be pretty much like this.
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tnW7egWGPc[/video]

A colleague of mine has a fairly large house that he’s been refurbishing for the last 10 years or so. He has a bunch of ‘home automation’ stuff that’s a mix of homebrew solutions and off-the-shelf products. It’s quite funny when we’re working away to hear him on the phone trying to talk his wife through rebooting the house 😉

Oh, and on Friday he was telling me how the touchscreen control panel he’s got embedded in the wall has just failed and how he’s not sure he can get a replacement the same size…

If you need any help on systems and options please feel free to email me via my profile, I work for one of the big companies involved in automation systems (begins with Cres) so happy to help out.

^^ What he said

I run a high end home automation company and will be at Grand Designs Live at NEC in a couple of weeks – if you fancy popping over for a quick chat drop me a line and I’ll get you some tickets.

Cheers but tickets already purchased. I’ll try and drop by and say hello – we’ll be there on the Saturday. Can talk bikes instead of business for a bit.

I work in process automation and the last thing I want is any of it in my house. Apart from maybe a kettle I can switch on from my phone.

The thing is with Home Automation, it has to be customised as everyone lives their lives in a different way, so the importance of various functions of their system are different to each household. You only need to look at some of the Control4 youtube videos to understand that an integrated system can be a powerful tool for controlling your home. But, did I want my house to recognise me coming home so it would alter the lights to my favourite setting and then play my favourite song when I opened the front door? No way, naff!!

My system has very useful functions for how we live our lives, like the front door look e-mails me when my son comes home so I know he is safe. The doors autolock at night, as I am the most forgetful person in the world! The lights in our main rooms switch on at night automatically and track the dusk times as they change, this can be randomised with switch off times for holiday settings. the front doorbell is linked to the system too so that when someone presses it the ding dong comes out of the speakers around the house which is a real help for my wife as her hearing is poor, it also sends me a notification if we are out so we could remotely let someone in….which we could monitor via the CCTV!
Lastly as mentioned earlier it ties all the A/V equipment together so that it all works from one interface. Until I installed my Control4 system my wife and son did struggle with working the cinema system and I would get the odd phone call while I was away, I haven’t had that with Control4 so far.

Whilst each individual technology can be installed in your home for not too much money, getting something that integrates all this technology, and is robust, and easy for all to use will cost a bit.

It must be SO hard to flick that little switch or turn a key…

Am I missing something

The rising cost of energy? If your home is a efficient as possible, you can afford the bills and your automation can survive brown-outs then you’ll be fine. Given the rising energy costs I’d be building something that was resilient to the changes rather than making the house more reliant upon energy just to do it’s thing.

@TooTall… one of the many benefits of a well planned/installed HA system is the reduction in energy costs, I’ve never installed HA kit without a UPS btw.

Most folk who are putting a HA system in already have the house insulated, the solar pv/water system, etc etc.

Nice to see another advocate of C4.

I’ve never installed HA kit without a UPS btw

So that gives you a couple of hours of power? Certainly nothing beyond that without a serious investment in a battery bank as well.

If your reduction in energy costs is against the ‘before’ scenario, I’d bet that such a customer was a pretty heavy energy consumer anyway – given they have all that electronic kit they just need to have networked and automated.