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What should we build a smart home?



Until recently, the exotic concepts of “smart devices” and “smart homes” have become widespread in our everyday life, simplifying housekeeping and adding comfort. Although, if you think about it, the engineers just made the story come true. After all, the first smart hut was actually already at Baba Yaga. Remember - “hut, hut, turn to me in front, back to the forest”? Yes, and “sim-sim, open up” from a fairy tale about ali-baba than is it not an analog of the cry of the modern user “Hello, Alice” or “Okay, Google”?  

From the hut of Baba Yaga ...


In recent years, a huge number of “smart” devices and assistants have appeared that allow you to control any household devices, lighting, climate, monitor the safety of your home, or simply entertain households and guests. There is no shortage of advertising for these gadgets, but how can one not drown in this sea of ​​information? Based on 20 years of engineering experience in the IT industry and years of automation of my home and summer cottage, I want to share the acquired skills, which, I hope, will help beginners in solving home automation issues and save them from possible errors.

In several publications, I will give tips on how to implement inexpensive and effective solutions from different manufacturers and combine them all into a single and reliable system based on open source projects. I suggest a gradual immersion in the topic with minimal financial injections. Then, starting from simple to complex, you will be able to develop the system almost infinitely in any scenario.

In the first article in this series, I will provide a small overview of the basic approaches to automation using “smart” things and what you can do with them by my own example. 

What is important to understand first of all, if you decide to buy yourself a “smart device” or a ready-made kit for a “smart home”. The prefix "smart" in modern marketing, as a rule, means that you can control this device remotely or on a schedule. There are devices of the highest level, which, analyzing your preferences, can give you recommendations or make decisions on your own, for example, about choosing a climate regime in different rooms at different times.

Any “smart” device must be connected to a local network / Internet and have some kind of control interface, for example, an application in the phone. From the point of view of information transfer, devices are divided into wired (as a rule, power can also be supplied via these wires) and wireless. Most of the sold active (connected to the electric network or built into the electric network) “smart” devices and assistants (smart speakers) are connected via WiFi and use their own applications tied to the “cloud” services of the equipment manufacturer for control. In this case, it is easier for the manufacturer to solve technical problems that arise during the operation of smart devices and it is easier to monetize their services. But the main minus is obvious: as soon as the Internet turns off, such a “carriage” will instantly turn into a “pumpkin”,and frisky horses - in rats.

Autonomous “smart” devices powered by batteries and accumulators use various economical wireless standards for connecting. For example: BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy), Z-Wave, Zigbee, RF, etc. The advantage of the BLE standard is the ability to connect the device directly to the smartphone via bluetooth for initial configuration and possible subsequent use, but in all other cases, to ensure that the devices communicate with Internet or home network, you will need a special gateway. The gateway, as a rule, comes complete with a set of "smart" home or is purchased additionally from the same manufacturer. As you know, even within the framework of one wireless standard, it is not always possible to connect devices from different manufacturers to the gateway.

Therefore, at the first stage of creating a smart home, when you do not yet have a fully formed concept, you may well encounter the fact that you became the owner of a colorful set of smart gadgets controlled from different applications without the possibility of combining them into a single logical system. And what could be sadder than when you already spent a considerable amount of time, effort, and money, and your entire smart house as a result resembles that famous Krylov’s fable in which “the swan breaks into the clouds, the cancer backs up, and the pike pulls into the water” ?

Where to begin?


So, where to start the process of automation of your home? I really want to write that first you need to decide on the main thing - and what do you actually want from your “smart” home, but my personal experience tells me that for a beginner this will be absolutely useless advice! This question can be clearly and fully answered only by a person who is well versed in automation technologies and has extensive practical experience in implementation. In the first stages, you need to focus on something completely different and be ready to show flexibility as you gradually immerse yourself in the topic.

Consider two basic conditions when thoughts come about introducing a smart home:

  • Are you going to start the repair or have already begun to do it

  • You just think that after some time it will have to be done

In the first case, you will have to forcefully dive into the topic and radically change the wiring diagram and provide for additional points of presence of power cables and data cables. But after the repair, you will be able to implement the most interesting concepts of a smart home and seriously save on equipment.

In the second case, you can carefully and slowly study the topic, if possible realizing some of the concepts depending on the current schemes of your engineering systems. But by the time of the repair you will come up with your own experience and understanding of the necessary modifications, and at the end of the repair you will have even more interesting ideas for the next repair.

My immersion in home automation began according to the first scenario, but with the serious “aggravating” circumstance that I am an engineer (it doesn’t matter if it’s not from the field of automation or repair), so I can constantly improve something, change one idea for another, not seeing the limit of improvement. And as a result, only by the end of the repair, I finally formed a picture of how everything had to be done in reality.

Budget and time constraints allowed us to formulate the following rules and the concept of development of a “smart” home:

  • The system should be introduced and developed gradually. Accordingly, it needs to lay serious potential for expansion, scaling and further expand to the country house, garage, etc.
 
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Here are the main automation scenarios that, without big financial investments, can make your life easier and increase your level of control. From the functional that I personally implemented, I would single out several main areas - comfort, safety, and resource efficiency. By comfort, I mean the possibilities of controlling light, multimedia, electric cornices, central heating radiators and air conditioners. My house is my castle, so by security I mean the control of the front door. By resource efficiency, I mean the ability to control the parameters of the electric network and energy consumption, water consumption, detect leaks in wet areas with the ability to shut off the water supply and the heated towel rail.

Now I’ll tell you more about the implemented scenarios. A few years ago in relation to the "smart home" implied the possibility of remote control of light and various lighting scenarios. Today, the only limitation here is your imagination. I have implemented the most basic scenarios at home. In all rooms except bedrooms, installed motion sensors. The light turns on depending on the type of room and time of day. For example, in the corridor, bathroom and toilet - around the clock, but at different times. In the kitchen and in the living room - only after sunset and until dawn. 

The light in the apartment is not only light bulbs, so I automated the curtains. In all bedrooms, they automatically close at sunset and open on weekdays by the alarm clock, on weekends manually - through the application or from the remote control. While my sons were young, I used the scenario for turning off the lights in the nurseries at midnight. Speaking of children. How to call a child for breakfast from the room if you don’t feel like screaming or is he listening to music on headphones? I do this: I initiate a scenario in which one of the two circuits of the upper light blinks three times at intervals of one second. In the same way, you can remotely “hint” to a child that he does not hear a call when you try to reach him.

TV control. I have two TVs at home - analog and digital, previously controlled via an infrared remote control. Their integration into the general system of a “smart” house has given certain advantages: in the application on the phone it is more convenient to select the desired program from the categorized lists, and for the old analog TV also load the current programs. And, of course, there was no need to look for ever-lost remotes.

"Sim-Sim, open up."


Climate control in my apartment is implemented through automation and integration into a common system of central batteries. Thanks to this, it became possible to forget about such an unpleasant task as tightening the batteries in manual mode depending on the weather and the condition of the windows (airing, depressurization or tightly closed). A big advantage is to set your own comfortable temperature regime in each room through the application.

Additionally, it is possible to implement various scenarios of automatic temperature change depending on the time of day and the presence / absence of households.

To control the front door, a Telegram bot was set up in the smart home control system, which publishes important messages, for example, all events of opening and closing the front door with a photo from the door panel camera at the door at the time of opening and closing. Thus, I receive real-time messages with photos about who came or went. It is very convenient to control when and with what composition the children came from school, because they often forget to call. Also in several ways at any time you can check the presence of family members at home.

Monitoring the parameters of the electric network and water flow gives me the opportunity to see graphs and historical consumption parameters at any time. Another question, what will you do with it later? Much more useful were daily reports with information on daily electricity and water costs calculated in rubles. Sometimes it makes you look for some forgotten switched on device that is uselessly consuming electricity. Also, through the application, you can always see the current readings of electricity and water meters, which somewhat simplifies the payment process. 

As a summary


I also provided an autonomous system for monitoring water leaks, which is partially integrated into the general. However, a small comment is needed here regarding the monitoring of critical systems, such as alarms or water leakage control systems. I prefer to use commercial self-powered systems. My operating experience has confirmed the general rule: trouble does not come alone. For example, cases of leaks were accompanied by a power outage and, as a result, a failure of the central control system due to the absence of an uninterrupted power supply.

Summarizing, I note that the construction of a "smart" house is an interesting and fascinating task, which, with the right approach, can become your hobby for a while and make your home more comfortable and safe. In the next article I will describe in more detail what technologies and devices can be used to automate the home and with what software it is possible to combine all this into a convenient single logical system with minimal financial costs.

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