Worked on a project for Kazakhstani real estate company to make a cheap "smart home" solution.
Went for 100% wired installation exactly because of that.
Second problem was every "star" topology hugely increases wiring cost, so a bus it was, and with bus came a problem of software MAC not being performant enough even to send audio, electrical isolation, CSMA...
Even if cost wouldn't be a problem, wireless has many other disadvantages.
First, it's not really wireless, you need to wire power, and cut walls.
Second, most of devices will spend their life deep in the junction box, or even cemented inside the wall. Having an external antenna for every one of them is impractical.
Third, no wireless standard is even 1/10th as reliable as wire. They are simply too complex.
Fourth, you want to have backup power for such vital things like HVAC in highrises without windows, security, and fire alarms, emergency water, and electricity cutoff, door locks, and intercom. This way, you need to have wiring anyways.
2. Star topology as I said hugely increase costs through: additional labour, cabling, cutting walls, switches, bigger junction boxes.
Main idea is that you don't want the builder to have to cut walls when they can not to.
2. For busses you have no alternative to CAN, or RS485 based busses, or multidrop ethernet hacks. Third is off because it's expensive (think of having 3 port T hubs for every device.) First is off because of bad hardware selection.
So we are left with many hacky RS485 based solutions.
Choose your poison:
Unreliable CSMA
Manual addressing
Super low performance
Polled nature
Near no existing ecosystem
In the end, MODBUS with hacks it was. The lesser of all evils.
4. It being a bus, and you having devices connected to other appliances, you have to provide electrical, and I/O isolation, as you don't want a random man plugging 220VAC into it in error, or deliberately frying all electronics in the highrise.
That's hugely expensive, and sometimes you want to power external devices through your box.
This necessitates to invent many case-by case compromise solutions.
He was one of the team that created the first webcam: the Trojan room coffee pot: Quentin pointed a camera at the coffee pot and wrote the XCoffee client program which allowed the image of the pot to be displayed on a workstation screen. When web browsers gained the ability to display images, the system was modified to make the coffee pot images available over HTTP and thus became the first webcam.
It wasn't even a digital camera for that system - it was an analogue CCTV camera hooked up to a framegrabber. Digital cameras weren't really a thing at that time.
Being able to switch lights on/off either with conventional wall switches or programmatically, i.e. from your smartphone. If you don't get carried away with the "automation" aspect of it, it can really enhance the UX in some common cases.
It's a system for controlling lights wirelessly. The lights themselves are of course still wired, but instead of having physical switches you have a wireless control network turning them on or off.
a few days ago I helped my neighbour install some light fixtures in her house. She was sold some smart lightbulbs with it because you can dim them and change the light color a bit from a remote control. There are 6 or 8 lightbulbs next to each others.
I'm impressed how unreliable this tech is. Standing 2 meters away from the lightbulbs, I had to press 3 or 4 times the off button to turn them all off. I just don't understand why you would knowingly install that kind of crap.
Depends on the bulbs. Our Philips Hue bulbs (ZigBee) work perfectly fine. None of the issues you or the OP describes are an issue: they continue to work as regular bulbs if the hub fails, can be paired via Bluetooth app without proximity to the hub, and seem to have a lot of range. Best thing is that no wiring/electrician is necessary.
Same experience here, Philips (and other Zigbee lights like IKEA) did a great job.
Only problem I had with the Philips hub is that it's memory limited and can't handle more than about 50 devices. Above that you need to replace the hub with something like Home Assistant, but can keep the rest of the system.
You can also use multiple hubs (HomeKit and various third party apps support this - the Hue app does, but IIRC you have to manually switch between them).
Is different. Bash guy cannot find it. Other guys didn't know it was missing. If it was missing for four years and then found it would be a better version.
Good grief... who would sign up for such a thing? The biggest lighting system I worked on was Philips Dynalite. It's a gigantic RS-485 bus - you just make sure all the dimmers and light switch panels are on the segment. It can be over a kilometre long and you can control/reprogram everything from everywhere on that bus. The protocol is simple enough that you can bit-bang subsets of it from dumb devices. Do recommend.
I have a wifi access point in the house to supplement the lan, and so I don't have to use the data plan for my phone.
The durned thing needs to be power cycled now and then. No way I'm putting the lights on wifi. The wired lan is 10x more reliable, but even it needs the router rebooted. (I've had lots of routers. All needed rebooting.) Never had to reboot the lights or the power sockets.
Do you think there's something inherent about forwarding packets or beaming WiFi that make devices unreliable or have you considered the possibility that purchasing a more expensive device might resolve these issues for you?
MikroTik routers a good for the price, WiFi is decent. Ubiquity APs are good for their price, WiFi is about as good as it gets.
HP ProCurve switches has been to space.
You could use any device that runs Linux to DYI these things. Though you need one 2ghz and one 5ghz NIC in the device acting AP.
Since i started working IT 5 years ago and got some gear from work I've never had to reboot my device because it stopped functioning though I have scheduled automatic software updates checking (and installing if available) every day at 5am which implies automatic reboots every once in awhile.
IMO x86(_64) machines running a standard Linux distro with ath9k/ath10k cards is the way to go. Embedded access points are crappy, and loading OpenWRT on them just makes them crappy in different ways. I'm sure enterprise gear is better than the consumer stuff on average, but it's still painting myself into a corner.
In a similar vein, it pains me to hear people complain about SD issues with Raspberry Pis. My Kodi terminal will die occasionally due to SD card issues, and the only local disk usage it does is booting and the occasional dist-upgrade. The things are meant to be cheap and accessible, not reliable. If you're setting up a server in which you will be investing your time, an RPi is the wrong tool for the job.
The filesystem (ext4) should handle power failures just fine, so a more expensive SD card might do you well. There's a reason some are 5x the price of the cheap ones.
A better SD card would be more expensive. But that doesn't mean if I buy a more expensive SD card it will be better. I've already been using name brand consumer ones like Samsung EVO+. And I don't have the patience to dig through spec sheets on Digikey to see which ones purport to handle power loss gracefully and then do web research to find out if they actually live up to that claim.
My next use of RPis (security cameras) will just use SD to load the kernel/initrd, and then run from nfsroot.
BTW this hasn't been a once a month problem, maybe once a year. But once a year is still too often for me, as I would assume it would be for anyone who relied on one to control their lights.
I've bought multiple access points, they all required rebooting. My HD TV requires rebooting once every couple weeks or so. Also my Roku box. Also the cable modem. My Grace Digital media server. Every damned thing I own that has a computer in it needs rebooting now and then.
Including my Windows and Linux boxen. Or they just slowly grind down, likely from not doing a good job cleaning up unused resources.
Stop buying consumer networking devices and the reboot problem goes away. Last I checked my Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X uptime was just over 2 years. 0 issues. Same with the Unifi APs I use in my house.
I have to reboot at least one of our Ubiquiti switches each month on our office network. I'm very skeptical of Ubiquiti hardware. We had similar problems with their access points and swapped to them out for Cisco Merakis. I don't recall ever having to reboot our Meraki access points or firewall.
That means you can't have multiple light switches on the same network without quite a bit of complexity, you can't detect what's on the network, you can't update firmware or do device setup over the network, and so on.
In stage applications that's not a problem because all the light switches are in one place - the lighting desk - and the lighting guy there can see all the lights at the same time.
For example, not having to get up and go to the door. I find that extremely convenient when lying in bed, about to sleep. I usually read for a few hours with dark red light, when I’m ready to sleep I can just turn the lights off.
What I mean is I think I prefer them even if I were technically set up to use my phone or a remote - they'd never be in the right place so I'd have to get up anyway.
(And in this case the (dumb) switches on the wall have always been in the right place, by the bed, in my bedrooms. (In addition to one by the door of course.))
I'd just have 'the system' 'aware' of the switches and current state etc. so that I could have certain automations, logging, etc.
The physical switches would either be network inputs themselves (easier implementation but reliability concern) or just report events but be electrically connected to the light still; I suppose also light-side state reporting for ultimate reliability (against missed switch events that did change light state because of electrical connection).
There is a technical solution for this which might need some research and I’m not sure it’s been proved out yet but if you search for ‘bedside lamp’ you might find a starting point.
Because I don’t want to read in full darkness. I sometimes read for several hours before I sleep, the lack of light would make me fall asleep far too early (I already wake up at 4 in the morning when I sleep normally).
You don't really need a "smart" light for it, a traditional radio-controlled "dumb" light switch is good enough for this purpose. Just press a button, and the remote control sends a RF signal at 433 MHz to switch it on or off, there's no IoT complexity like firmware updates, Linux kernel, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, an Internet connection or other nonsense. It can either be a light switch installed on the wall, or an integrated unit that comes with the LED light fixture (which may also allow you to change the color). Also, neutral wire is not a problem, some wall switches don't need it [0].
"Smart" lightbulbs are more flexible with more features, but personally I'm not a fan of them - many features with few additional benefits (with high price tags, possible bugs, and privacy concerns). Nevertheless, if you are not allowed to change any electrical wiring in the room, using "smart" lightbulbs can be a justified choice. Another genuine use may be controlling many wired-together lightbulbs on a large light fixture as separate groups without a laborious rewiring. Meanwhile I'll keep using my dumb wireless light switch.
[0] They solve the neutral problem by using an always-on high resistance in series with the "hot" wire. The lightbulbs on the light fixture completes the circuit, a tiny current starts to flow, which is harvested by the switch to power itself. Clever hack!
First, some context. When I was replying to this thread, there were only three comments, the first said wireless lighting was an useless solution waiting for a problem, another said it was a hobby and not too useful, and only you said it was useful. Hence, it thought it was natural to add some comment under your comment. Furthermore, the original article described how the author designed a Wi-Fi based system, and other readers seemed to have "smart" or "Wi-Fi" lights or lightbulbs in mind when they were expressing their disapproval to wireless lightning, so I thought it was useful to make the point that a remote-controlled light is not necessarily a IoT "smart" light, which constitutes the first paragraph of my reply. And the second paragraph in my reply was my personal opinion to those "Wi-Fi" / "IoT" based lightbulbs - they do have legitimate uses, however they may contain "possible bugs, and privacy concerns" (as in: a Wi-Fi controlled lightbulb with a mobile app), thus "meanwhile I'll keep using my dumb wireless light switch".
I hope my comment makes sense to you now.
> A radio-controlled dumb-switch used this way is still wireless lightning.
Yes, and it was also the point I was trying to make.
I have an interesting setup with home assistant similar to your needs
Power the bed reading light lamp with a zen15 zooz inline switch which is never shut off but can monitor current and power continuously. So now homeassistant knows when my bed reading light is on or off based on if the lamp is drawing more than 3 watts or less. Which means it can control my ceiling fan appropriately AND dimmable room light bulbs AND mess with the thermostat depending on outside temperature / mode. And maybe other options someday in the future.
Some effort to set up the hardware, maybe 30 lines of YAML automation code, but it is nice and convenient.
I have a "reading desk lamp" in my basement lab that does similar tricks. Desk lamp no current drawn means my soldering iron and some other apparatus has its power removed. Improves safety a little.
If my youngest kid were not an older teen, I've been thinking about wifi/bluetooth presence detection such that my table saw has no electrical power if my phone isn't within X feet of the saw. A kind of similar automation but different opportunity.
I’m actually contemplating exchanging all our halogen spotlights (as they’re no longer being sold) to IKEA Trådfri.
My rationale for it is that I want to be able to dim them, but exchanging halogens for LEDs would mean the transformer wouldn’t see enough of a load to dim properly. By exchanging everything for IKEA bulbs I save on changing the transformer since the dimming circuit is in each bulb.
Beware, the Tradfri spots are not as bright as regular bulbs by far. Try out one first before committing on a couple hundred dollars.
And if you're hunting for relays and other actuators... the compatibility between IKEA Tradfri products is excellent, but your mileage will vary when going with other Zigbee products.
I like and have bought into the IKEA system, but I have had a lot of trouble with their gu10 lights.
Some sets of three occasionally go into party mode and start flashing in a sequence. They reset themselves every month or so. I'm tall and my ceilings are not so it's quick for me to pair them again. It would be super annoying if they were too high to reach. Setting the white spectrum fails using the 5 button controller. Often one or two usually fail to set correctly resulting in a weird mix. I simply don't bother anymore. They work nicely with the app, when still paired.
I haven't had any problems with the e27's in the same rooms.
'Dumb' rf motion detector triggered under-counter lighting in the kitchen has been way better bang for buck. It just works. No smart home required.
I have found it useful when you have your hands full (e.g. hands full of shopping, or carrying a baby with a dirty nappy/diaper to a changing table are just two examples where you can just shout to google/alexa to turn it on), or turning stuff on/off when you are away from home (e.g. automatically at sunset, turning heating on when you are on your way home etc), or you left the lights on and you are already in bed etc.
I am sure that this is a cool feature, but I am really having a hard time wrapping my head around all the technological overhead required here to avoid having to flip a switch with your elbow or hip if your hands are full. "First world problems" seems like an understatement here.
The lights are just gravy for me. They're super cheap, and it is handy to be able to turn a bunch on or off with one command. Or have them turn on when you get home, etc.
What really keeps me going with home automation is the door & lock control. Being able to monitor the status of the garage doors and the deadbolts on all doors is worth the price of admission. The kids each have their own code to get in the house, I can lock the doors from afar if they get left open or unlocked, I can check the status at any time, etc. I have the system close & lock everything at bedtime if it isn't already, and it communicates status to me as things are opened/closed/locked/unlocked.
I could give up the lighting if I had to. I could just use the built-in scheduling on the thermostat. No biggy. But the locks and doors functionality is worth the effort.
As for when my hands are full, elbows work just fine.
If/when I become bedridden or crippled, I'll probably get Alexa. Until then, I get up and walk to the switch. It's a privilege to be able to do that, and I'll do it as long as I can.
1970s technology appears to be 3 times the price of a WiFi switch though :) (...not including 16USD delivery...)
Do clappers hear through doors and across different floors? E.g. in bed upstairs and light is on downstairs? Plus would one clap not turnnoff everything that hears a clap, and not just the thing you want off but leave other things on? And can it auto clap itself off/on at certain times when you are asleep/not there? Can it hear you clap when it is at home and you are in your car/at work? And only 300% as expensive as a WiFi switch? Bargain.
But you know, when my hands are full I can just put everything down and rub two sticks together to make a fire just fine. The power of humanity's intellect and dominion over nature is a wonderful thing and making fire is a privilege that not all mammals have that I plan to use for as long as I can - 4000 BC's technology to the rescue </sarcasm to illustrate a point>
So much technology could easily be done "the old way" (fire to oil lamps to candles to gas lamps to electric lamps for example all make the room bright I'm the darkness), but it makes things simpler/more convenient/easier/etc. This is one of them IMO
That does not sound like a good decision in terms of the safety tradeoff vs whatever benefit you get from driving it. Cheap? Am I wrong about that? Does it increase the risk of injury and death for other road users or are you sure it's just you and your passengers alone who are consenting to carry that (unnecessary?) risk?
It avoids having to run wires through the walls (the switch can be battery powered or even piezo-powered so it works just from the force of your press). Having said that most houses already have the wires in the walls, and even if the wires are old/unsuitable you can pull through new ones, so for most people it doesn't really make much sense.
There are some reasons to go for a wireless system, for example when you can’t just go and run new wires to have switches in places you’d want to. Either because it’s an old house or a rented unit or something like that. But when planning a refurbishment or new construction, pulling (ethernet) wires is the safe bet.
Batteries for example, or you may have power from other circuits that you can tap. A light circuit with multiple switches requires comparatively complex wiring - either all switches need to connect to a central point (breaker box) or you need to have some sort of loop that passes by all switches. It’s nontrivial to retrofit. Some sort of (wireless) bus system that transmits the signal digitally can help reducing that complexity.
I have a system called KNX, its not wireless but each switch is independent of each actuated function (light, blinds, etc). The main advantage is the wiring is simple, a bus for all switches and all lights go back to a relay board. Switches, sequencing / grouping can be assigned at any time after install, scheduled on/off, easy to extend later, etc. For example I built a garage 10 years after my house and by running a single cat 5 between the buildings, I can now press a button (any button I wish) in the house and turn all garage lights off. I can also see the state of any light or actuator at any time, etc. So there are some nice advantages, but I'm glad it is wired for sure..
I have just two of these lights, both phillip hue's, and Alexa. They are pretty problematic, but they are the best solution I've found in my two lights, which are dim lamps that I turn on and off frequently when I cannot reach them.
I don't disagree with point #1 but can you honestly say you've never purchased something that you truly believed would work better than it did? I'm pretty sure the OP did not intend to rip out his system and waste £6k when he started this project.
I had almost exactly the same problems, albeit on a much smaller scale of perhaps 10% the size of this person's network.
I spent years and a fair chunk of cash trying and failing to get a reliable zigbee and z-wave network set up using various bits of kit.
To echo the article, the problem with zigbee & zwave for me was that things would stop working, and it was almost impossible to work out why. The only "solution" was to start the annoying repairing process as outlined in the article which was a huge ballache.
In the end I also binned all of the zigwave & zwave bits and moved to a 100% wifi-based solution using MQTT & Tasmota firmware (1) running on very cheap hardware that is usually <10GBP per node. It is very reliable - I don't think I have had a single unexplained outage in the couple of years I've been running this now. Wifi + MQTT is mature and just works. It is also super easy to diagnose problems - you can see the devices on your network, ping them, subscribe to their MQTT topics, manually send messages on MQTT etc. Its a dream compared to the black box of zigbee & z-wave where you essentially had zero control apart from on/off.
Wifi + MQTT + Tasmota appears to be the solution for me.
My main complaint now is that HomeAssistant cant connect to Google Home/Alexa (so that I can use voice control), so I am using OpenHAB (which has a free integration that works). OpenHAB seems absurdly complex though, and they seem to be in a continual process of rewriting the software (some stuff is stored in config files, some in a databases, and the location of the config files is not in the docs/the docs have the wrong location so backups are hard, the docs are only for V1 (but don't say that they are only for V1) but the current version is V2 that is also deprecated because they are working on V3 etc, the recommended UI can't do everything you need to do to get the system working so you have to manually update stuff in a shell but the aforementioned docs telling you what file to edit are just plain wrong etc because the are referring to some different version, running OpenHAB in docker requires some odd permissions/user set up on the host machine etc - it is a mess). I am planning on ripping out OpenHAB and replacing with NodeRED at some point since that seems sane.
I was considering "smart" home active lightining stuff but finally went with 120% wires (some extra wires left for some future needs, double lamps etc) and traditional 2 state mechanical switches.
It is not about money but maintenance burden.
I can't imagine where would be my marriage when I was gone for some week long business trip and all that "smart" stuff had failed that time for my family. So far for 8 years of use I only had to replace one switch which got punched too hard by kid.
This. Every "smart" switch should also act/fallback as a physical analog switch any way. I don't understand why that's not the case...
Edit : plus I don't want to pull out my phone or whatever device to switch the goddam light on
Well, there's two different types of smart switch:
- The first type isn't actually connected to wall power, and is basically just a small remote that tells your lighting to turn on/off.
- The second type is connected to the wall power, and works perfectly fine as a normal wall switch and controls the lights in the same way. Along with being a normal wall switch, it's a receiver and can receive commands from elsewhere (including the first type of smart switch) to trigger the normal wall switch functionality.
The second type is an easy retrofit for existing homes with lots of lights, but doesn't play nice with smart bulbs that need to be always on for advanced functionality (like having automatic step-up/step-down lighting levels at sunrise/sunset).
At the moment I feel like the best use of the first type are switches that fit neatly over normal hardwired wall switches (like the Lutron Aurora), or adding a spacer (see https://www.shapeways.com/product/35B9F36RD/philips-hue-dimm... for one example) so that your smart switch can just be popped off to access the normal hardware.
What is the point of trying to wirelessly link up a system that needs so much wiring in the first place, including electricity? This seems moronic, unless it’s for fun. And even then it’s pretty stupid.
Retrofitting new wires to every light fixture and switch in a house is unenviable. In some cases, impossible. Laminate floors can deprive you of subfloor access of a whole floor, running cables through existing stud walls is difficult at the best of times...
Wirelessly linked smoke alarms are becoming extremely common now in the UK because outside a narrow envelope building regulations want linked alarms (linked either wired or wirelessly) on every floor. Imagine converting a basement and attic of a 1800s victorian house, and having to find a way to run a new cable from the roof of the attic to the ceiling of the basement. So instead it's a relatively dumb chip which shouts 'fire' on an unlicensed frequency block and a great deal of complexity is saved.
There is a chance you could do here what powerline adapters do, and use the ground wire to communicate. But they are notoriously inconsistent and there's any number of reasons it wouldn't work
And as I mentioned in another comment, many EU houses have concrete (internal) walls. Tubes for electricity wires come pre-installed in them so together with the other things mentioned, just running some wires can be hard to say the least.
> There is a chance you could do here what powerline adapters do, and use the ground wire to communicate. But they are notoriously inconsistent and there's any number of reasons it wouldn't work
This is exactly how Insteon works in conjunction with a wireless mesh. I'm extremely happy with my Insteon setup -- it's just a matter of replacing light switches and outlets with a bit of re-wiring on 3-wire switches (no new wires to run, just bypassing one of the switches so only one controls the light). The Insteon-branded hub is fine for a few light switches, but if you're doing a whole house and need something that can handle more complex configuration I would go for an ISY994 controller (don't know if anything newer exists but it's been rock solid for the last 5 years).
All that said, it was expensive and probably not worth it. I spent $4k on a somewhat large house and I was able to justify it as a learning experience for in-home IoT device use cases -- but I'm not sure there's much benefit to doing a whole house with it over just a couple rooms.
> Wirelessly linked smoke alarms are becoming extremely common now in the UK
Also becoming a baseline feature in detectors in the US, in my experience. New houses have been using wired interconnect for a long time now, but in the last couple years I've helped several older relatives upgrade their smoke detectors and even the cheap ones have wireless interconnect now.
Those are all reasonable comments, I have spent the last two years doing up my own house, but that is NOT what robdobson.com did.
Note: "Since Lorenzo (the sparky) was replacing most of the wiring in the house I managed to get him to bring a lot of the control cables together in around five separate locations."
Granted, not ALL the wiring, but enough that there are "at least three (control) units lost in the walls" that don't control anything.
The lack of access in a house to critical infrastructure is why that critical infrastructure has simplicity and reliability as its primary characteristic, and if you are going to experiment, maybe consider redundancy? The writer appears to have a lot of hardware expertise, and almost none about systems. Single point of failure? Check. Closed hardware systems that might be unsupported sometime soon? Check. No diagnostics? Check.
This was a fascinating project and I commend the writer for posting all the hairy details, but I am slightly appalled at the wastage.
Yep. Works as intended, easy to set up though as with most of these wireless technologies the initial pairing can be a bit fussy. The built-in software and smartphone app is good enough for me, but if you want you can flash new firmware and/or use HomeAssistant. I use it for roller blinds and for outdoor lighting on a sunset/sunrise timer.
I'm not a huge fan of home automation and my partner hates the mere thought of it, so what's nice about Shelly is that these units have not just outputs but inputs as well. If you flip a physical switch you will still trigger your lights or appliances or whatever is connected to it. You're not locked into an ecosystem with its own remotes, switches etc. – it'll feel like the sturdy old system you already had, except that now you can program it and control it remotely, too.
I stayed clear of smart appliances for a long time for the reasons I'm sure we're all well aware of. However, recently we had our central heating boiler changed and my partner was very keen on having Hive. It's almost useless. I can't believe how incompetently it seems to have been designed.
Essentially there are three parts, a receiver connected to the boiler, a network bride connected to the router and the thermostat connected to both.
Within the first week of having it installed we had times when we realised the heating hadn't come on as scheduled. Checking the display on the thermostat would show no signal. In effect the receiver on the boiler had disconnected from the thermostat and as such you have no heating. After several occurrences of this I broke down and moved the thermostat to the closest reasonable place I could.
The thermostat is now in the worst place in the house for taking a temperature reading but at least it vaguely heats the house up when I expect it to. However, it is now almost constantly disconnected from the network bridge which enables the "smart" part. The solution to this if I can ever be bothered is to run a network cable from the router to the same room as the thermostat.
Why it was designed like this is beyond me. Why not have the schedule stored on the receiver, at least in memory. That way if it lost contact with the thermostat at least it could put the heating on full during the schedule.
Why make the wireless bridge a separate part? If I could add my WiFi details to the thermostat I guarantee it would have a reasonable connection.
I have to say my experience with Hive has been nothing but exceptional. All the way from having it installed back in 2016 (when we moved in) to this day when it came on for an hour this morning. The controller is right next to the boiler in the eaves of my house and is connected via ethernet through a
TP-Link TL-PA9020P powerline adaptor. In all fairness the thermostat is very close to the receiver, in the landing, so maybe that's why it's never been an issue. I don't think I've ever once had a single issue with using the app, whether that's from downstairs or from the other side of the Atlantic. It will be the first thing on the shopping list when/if we ever move.
Thanks for the hint on ethernet over power. I can plug one in reasonably close to the thermostat and another close to the router and they'd be on the same ring main so should work pretty well.
Spectrum is a shared resource, it's a cost we all pay.
Part 15 doesn't give you a free pass to blast RFI everywhere. If you're over the legal limit and found to be broadcasting you will be asked to stop using it.
I've had a Hive since, I think, late 2013 and my experience is a little closer to the GP's. The Hive hub crashes and needs a hard reboot on a very regular basis, at least once per month, sometimes 4 times a week.
Do you think your partner will opt for the less techie option next time or do they incurable gadget lust (like many of us have to fight within ourselves)
Not all smart systems are terrible, I've the Honeywell evohome system and it has been flawless for the 18 months or so that it's been installed, bit it looks like a different strategy was used - the main thermostat/bridge/controller is linked via wifi, but everything else is run over a different RF standard, so all the TRV's, thermostats and the boiler controller talk to the main controller directly (iirc it's in the 900MHz range)
The main controller runs the scheduler and is the only device which reaches out to the internet (to sync with honeywell's cloud systems so you can control heating etc from an app remotely when away from home).
Other than the interface on the controller being a bit clunky, I've no complaints, even the batteries in the TRVs seem to be lasting well.
I have installed a Tado smart thermostat and it's nothing short of phenomenal.
I've done a setup once and now it just runs automatically. Can't remember the last time I've even touched the thermostat.
It shuts down when I leave home, it heats up when I'm on my way home. When it's a sunny day it let's the sun heat up the house in stead of using the heating.
It's almost recouped it's costs in the first year by just gas savings (as opposed to my time based thermostat).
It blows my mind that PoE LED drivers aren't an established dirt-cheap standard I can choose from multiple vendors supporting @ my local Home Depot/Lowes.
This article honestly made me want to quit engineering and limit the amount of technology I am dependent on. You must have the patience of a god. Also your family definitely hates you
I greatly enjoyed the article, love the Shellys too. +1 also for Homeassistant.
Just wish (minor point) the author had chosen a font-color with more contrast to the background, like a slightly less pale shade of grey.
I have been gradually installing Shelly relays and dimmers in my place for some time, and they are excellent. They have a fully open and documented REST API, a simple but effective local web interface, and any Cloud connectivity is completely optional.
I have never had one fail (N=25). Since installation, I have never had one drop off the WiFi or require a physical visit for any reason at all (one is installed in my boiler and it takes an hour to get it apart, so I really appreciate this!). I honestly don’t think a single one of them has missed a single rest API call in the time they’ve been running.
When initially installing them, this can be done from a mobile next to the unit, at which point you join them to your WiFi.
I’m not in any way connected with Shelly, just a very impressed user of their stuff.
I wouldn't buy a house with such a system in it, and I doubt anybody else will, either. Who wants to become an expert on these systems just to turn the lights on? Not a chance.
I considered these systems when my house was built, and am very glad I didn't get them. I turn the switch on, the lights go on, I turn it off, the lights go off. I replace a bulb now and then.
That's it! I'm very happy with it.
But what I did do was run cat5 and RG6 to every room in a star configuration, which has paid off very very nicely. I did all that work myself because the electrician didn't understand words like "crosstalk" and I didn't want to find out after I moved in that the wires in finished walls didn't work.
the electrician didn't understand words like "crosstalk"
Can you explain what the problem is? I also run cat5 (or maybe even cat6, don't remember) to every room, most even multiple times, just put it in walls/cailings/whatever worked and all 40 or so sockets work just fine.
I turn the switch on, the lights go on, I turn it off, the lights go off.
I run a star configuration for switches and light points, where all switches are on 12V DC and use a 'patchboard' to hook them to impulse relays which drive the lights. Still switch on/light on, but you can select which switch does what, easily hook up miltiple switches to multiple light points etc. Not domotica, but still much more dynamic than traditional build-once-change-never.
I'm curious to understand the advantages/benefits of being able to reassign switches/lights. Surely a light/group-of-lights needs a switch/set-of-switches, but once it's done, what's the imperative for change?
but once it's done, what's the imperative for change
If it's truly done there's no reason for change. However getting there, to what for us is the most optimal configuration, is what was the main incentive for me. The way it is now it requires almost no ahead planning. I.e. for most rooms we had no idea on beforehand how we were going to pupulate them with furniture and which activity we'd do where, so I just went 'cable for lighting in the center, at the side on each wall, and some extra' and then put the switches in sensible places i.e. usually next to room entrance. Then during the next years hook up as needed and adapt if needed. E.g. couple of months ago we needed an extra desk for working form home and one extra for my GF's new hobby, so we just put some desks to a wall and instantly can get a light above it. With a fixed configuration you'd either need to think of that in advance, or use the light centrally in the room which makes you sit in your own shadow. or add lights you just plug in the wall socket but that's extra cable, and especially for desks it's hard to find a suitable one. Also throughout the years I've made small changes here and there to change things like being able to turn on the light in the bathroom from the bedroom, or turn on light in the kitchen from the place where we eat so you don't have to look for th kitchen switch in the dark. Sure those are just nice-to-haves but pretty convenient. I've been and lived in quite a lot of houses where the whole configuration was pretty akward. Though I get some people don't care about that.
Crosstalk is when two wires are close together, one induces a voltage in the other (it's how transformers work). The trouble with house wiring is if you run a phone line parallel and close to an A/C line, it will induce a 60 cycle hum in the phone line, which will drive you utterly mad.
The electrician was installing the cat3 phone wires in the same holes as the A/C wires. It was guaranteed to induce a hum.
The correct approach is to keep the low voltage wires as far from the A/C as you can, and if they cross, keep the crossing at 90 degrees. Don't run them in parallel unless they are separated by feet (plural). If you have to, you can run them in grounded metal conduit as a shield.
I probably went overboard on this, but doing it inadequately meant 60 cycle humming on the phone lines and an utterly ghastly bill to rip the walls up and fix it.
He also was installing cat3 (POTS cable) and R59 cable (1970's cable TV stuff). I pulled that all out and threw it in the trash, putting in cat5 (cat5e and cat6 are better, but weren't available then) and quad-shielded RG6 cable.
Getting the best cable available cost maybe 20 or 30 dollars more, so it's crazy not to do it. The network and cable speeds have all increased dramatically since I installed it, and the cables have all worked like a champ.
Even the cat5 cables are happily carrying gigabit Ethernet.
I have a couple plugboards in the basement where all the wires terminate.
I did the whole thing for less than a grand. If an electrician had done it, it likely would have been 10 or 20x more.
Here in The Netherlands and probably other parts of Europe, you are not allowed to run electricity and network or phone cables through the same tubes. Also the number of wires allowed in a single tube is limited.
Many houses have concrete walls, floors and ceilings, so you don't run extra tubes easily...
Reconfiguring switches is next to impossible and via existing switch wires you can dim/switch the lights but not change colour(temperature).
So here the original switches are removed and the connection is bridged (always on) and battery/kinectic powered ZigBee switches control the lights directly, even if the gateway is down.
Conduit isn't very common in US residential construction. Electricians will generally cut a hole in the drywall, drill a hole in the floor plate and tack the cabling to the framing.
Americans love building single-storey detached houses on big lots. And when they build an upper floor, they love complex roof systems where almost every upper floor window has a first floor roof or porch below it.
This means problems like fires spreading to adjacent buildings and fires trapping people where they can't escape are much reduced; you'd never see a repeat of the great fire of London in an American suburb because there's practically a fire break between every single home.
This is made affordable by America's vast tracts of land and high rates of car ownership.
I think that is very location dependent. Here in the Midwest, Romex still isn’t a thing and most residential construction still requires (effectively or otherwise) 1/2” electrical conduits for all high voltage wiring. Older construction might be the horrible BX/AC instead.
You said Midwest, but are you sure you don't just mean Chicago? Chicagoland is the single place I've heard about residential work requiring conduit.
I had a house with mostly Armored Cable and came to appreciate it. Especially after I opened up a floor and found an exposed conductor on some Non-Metallic that had been chewed by a squirrel.
NM wiring is extremely common in every state (except for Illinois) and NM is allowed without restrictions in multi-family stick-built housing up to four stories. You must live in Chicago or some other restrictive AHJ.
There are still existing functional knob and tube wiring systems that are 100 years old
I still have some knob and tube wiring in my home (which is 96 years old). I've ripped out most of it over the years, but it is amazing how reliable it actually is.
Were you able to do that without digging into the walls? My house had a bathroom and the kitchen upgraded by the previous owner and we did the basement but most of the house remains on knob-and-tube.
I've gradually added GFCI outlets to each circuit. They're not grounded, unfortunately, but they do trip if something were to go wrong. And it allows us to plug in 3-prong plugs without using those horrible 2-to-3 adapters.
We had to change home insurance companies because Amica blacklisted us the instant they heard there was knob-and-tube wiring. A few other companies have the same approach. But it's not like homes are spontaneously combusting everywhere because of it.
Even if you aren’t using conduit you cannot use the same pathways for line-voltage and low-voltage wiring. You need to drill separate holes thru the studs to run NM in one and Cat6 in the other. You also need a divider in a multi-gang box if it contains line-voltage and low-voltage wiring.
> Here in The Netherlands and probably other parts of Europe, you are not allowed to run electricity and network or phone cables through the same tubes.
Presumably that is not because of interference concerns but because of the danger of mixing high voltage and low voltage circuits in the same conduit, right?
As others have noted, conduit isn't usually used in houses in the west.
Sorry should have been more clear; I'm an eletronics engineer so I know what crosstalk is, it's just that I didn't understand how this would be an actual problem with CAT5. Phone line, that's something else though.
If an electrician had done it, it likely would have been 10 or 20x more.
Hmm, that is like twice the amount one would typcially pay here. Still, don't froget the working hours you put in there :) plus the fact that usually technicians get their materials for cheaper than you do (also because in my case it's only 6% VAT instead of 21%). I did many such calculations when renovating and for some things it was actually cheaper to get a technician.
They're maybe getting it for cheaper than you do, but if you think that's what they're actually charging you, you're deluded.
The typical electrician gets it indeed for cheaper than market rate, then charges it to you retail rate plus 20% to account for the "trouble" of sourcing and purchasing it.
if you think that's what they're actually charging you,
I never claimed that.
The typical electrician
Maybe you rather mean 'the typical electrician I met' or so because I know for a fact the rest of that sentence does not apply to the ones I met myself.
From my experience in trades, you just double the price of all materials.. which conveniently is roughly the same price homeowners will see if they spot-check at Home Depot.
That's an easy one. Switch on the light, network disconnects. We had this happen at our office. There's obviously much more happening on an electrical network other than 50/60 Hz, like transient response to switching loads on and off, RF noise from spark loads, dimmers etc.
In digital cinema the projector and the playback server does a handshake and key exchange before you can play encrypted content.The rest of this story might not be entirely correct, I've been out of the business for a few years and this happened maybe 5-6 years ago, but it's a bit fun and kind of relevant.
This usually works without any issues, but on one type of projector they had used a non-shielded network cable internally in the projector and if the projector lamp was lit juuuust at the right moment, the handshake would fail and the film would not play. Normally it wouldn't be a huge deal as the handshake happens just before the film and the lamp is usually lit on the beginning of the show long before the film starts. HOWEVER, there was this one cinema chain that had standardized their playlists in such a way that they for some stupid reason turned of the projector lamp in between the trailers and the film (I think to "introduce" the film) and then turned it on again just before the film with the result that the handshake failed 3 out of 10 times or so.
Long term solution was to replace the shoddy cable. Short term solution was to change all their playlist templates to blind the lamp instead of turning it off. Like they should have done to begin with.
Never had this myself for network, but I can imagine if the wires are close enough together and the light switch sparks enough (or draws enough power) it could happen. Actually this is our 'standard' way of intentionally messing up serial or USB communication: place wire next to the serial line, then try to generate as much transients as possible to induce errors in the bit stream. Still doesn't always work.
> technicians get their materials for cheaper than you do
Sure, they buy materials wholesale, but they bill you full retail for it. I installed around a mile of wiring :-)
But I also got it exactly the way I wanted, the wires run where I wanted, and I bought professional quality tools to do the work, and still have/use them. I like working with my hands now and then, it's viscerally satisfying in a way a keyboard never is.
> I didn't understand how this would be an actual problem with CAT5
I know that twisted pair is supposed to be resistant to that, but I wasn't going to risk it and didn't have a good way to test it. I didn't want even a teensy bit of hum, and there isn't any :-)
It has no effect unless it lowers the SNR too much and errors can't be corrected. Try wrapping RG6 a few times around a thick, active AC line. I saw that a few times back when I was a field tech.
> if you run a phone line parallel and close to an A/C line, it will induce a 60 cycle hum in the phone line
Isn't twisting the pairs supposed to prevent that? Isn't that what makes it feasible to run telephone lines on the same poles as electricity, thus allowing the POTS system to be practical?
Yes, it is. Also true for data. The problem is that common mode rejection is limited for unshielded pairs, so it works - but not perfectly.
POTS is legacy now, so I'm not sure how much of a consideration it is for modern builds.
There are safety issues with running network and power cables close to each other, but generally on small domestic systems crosstalk between data and power shouldn't be a serious problem.
The exception is if you have a lot of hash on the power lines from USB chargers, unfiltered noisy motors, or white goods that generate both digital and analog noise.
Ferrites or other kinds of filtering can help. So can using shielded cat cable.
I would seriously question the overall competence of any electrician who ran any low voltage cable in direct contact with AC power cables. This practice is not permitted by the electrical code. An electrician who does not respect that code requirement might be cutting corners with the code in other areas, too.
While the level of knowledge among electricians regarding network wiring is gradually increasing, the conventional wisdom for anyone who wants network wiring installed professionally is to hire a contractor that specializes in low voltage wiring.
This was 20 years ago and the general contractor thought I was nuts to pre-install all this cabling. This all changed a year later, and network cables pre-installed became normal.
40 sockets is pretty impressive. Running cat-something (I got CAT6) everywhere makes absolute sense though! Especially now that everyone and their dog is working from home, and I live in a typical nineteen-thirties Dutch street with terrace housing, not having to rely on wifi too much is pretty awesome.
I think by now I've got rid of all the R59 cable sockets and POTS stuff too except for one POTS socket in the cabinet that holds the fuse box. If anyone ever wants to reintroduce a wired telephone they can just reuse a CAT6 cable, but I doubt this will happen.
I didn't put any POTS cable in the house, but ran two cat5 cables to each room. One for POTS, the other for network. The configuration is done at the star hub. Cat5 is just fine for POTS.
When I started with that idea a lot of people considered it crazy. But for some jobs I've had the trouble of not having a network in some places was so annoying that I thought: not in my place. For me it totally paid off, it's just convenient to have a proper connection everywhere. Also because we were living in the house during renovations so moved desk multiple times. Granted there are sockets which I haven't actually used yet, but there's equal amounts for which at one point I thought 'damn, so convenient that this socket is here' :). E.g. FM reception here sucks for some stations, now I just carry a little RaspberryPi+speakers mounted on a piece of wood around as 'radio' and can just plug it in in any room. Also if I see the mess some people go through in a brand new house, dealing with wifi repeaters on all floors and sometimes long cables to feed them just to get a signal which is still worse than a fixed line, I think this way is more convenient.
Could you explain what the star configuration is please? I'm not familiar with it and am currently assuming that just means cables to each wall from the ceiling.
The easy solution is to have the intelligence in the lightbulbs the way Philips, Osram and IKEA did on their Zigbee based systems.
I have all lights (100+) in the house on Zigbee but without changing any wiring. Only non standard is that I replaced all the wall switches with a variant that's electrically "always on" and sends a Zigbee command when pressed (and can be pulled out to access a traditional physical switch as a backup in case of full system failure). They fit the original Siemens outer wall plates that my house was built with so everything looks standard. Returning evening to non-smart in case I want to sell the place is an afternoon of work replacing the switches behind the plastic face plate with their old versions. Those are all in a box in the attic :-)
The benefits of smart lights for comfort are pretty big, auto-on lights by motion detection is great for bathrooms, storage rooms etc. Having the color temperature match outside and time of day is also much better than traditional dimmers. Voice control is useful in some situations (mostly when cooking or carrying kids or groceries). And being able to walk out the front door saying "Alexa, turn off all lights" is a great way to save energy and make things easy.
not GP, but I use Xiaomi 2-gang switches, IKEA 5 button remotes, the old IKEA dimmers, and their on/off remote. At the moment I'm eyeing LIDLs remotes as well... In Denmark
Everything is controlled via Homeassistant+Deconz and a Phoscon Zigbee Dongle.
It's even possible to hack the IKEA switches into the danish wall switches.
Here friends of hue Gira and Ikea 5 button remotes mounted on a blindplate.
Still wondering what @t0mas88 is using...
The upcoming Lidl remote is very interesting indeed, because it has 4 buttons which could be wired to a regular 2 button up/down push switch (e.g. Gira 014700) as cheaper friends of hue alternative.
The Gira here as well, and left physical switches behind them. So in an emergency I can pull them off the wall push the switch that's behind to turn off power.
Also 3d printed a holder for a few places that slots into a Gira frame and holds the Philips Hue Tap button. Allows more control of scenes etc, but the color isn't exactly the same.
I just counted my Hue lights in the apartment I live in and got up to 30, 90sqm.
I have some bulbs, 4 spot lights, lightstrips around the living room. Lamps around the studio, bedrooms, living room. If you add bias lighting and indirect light by bouncing off the ceiling you add up quite fast.
Granted, I built up this setup over some time, finding the best use for each set of lights I got but I can definitely see how you could get up to 100+ in a larger house.
Pretty normal house, just under 200 square meter. But for example the kitchen alone has 2 ceiling lamps with 4 spots each, 6 lamps for countertop lighting and 2 in a wall of cabinets. So that's already 16 lamps in only the kitchen. It's more in the living room.
Even a bathroom easily has 6 or 8 in the ceiling, a few near the mirror etc.
The Philips bulbs are much better. Ikea also doesn't dim as low as the Philips Hue. But the Ikea bulbs are cheaper so I still use those for storage rooms where the quality is less important.
Can you please provide a name /brand of the switches you use?
Friends of Hue (Gira and others) with EnOcean comes close, but you'll typically bridge the switch AC wires, so there is nothing to pull out and manually control things as backup.
Lutron used to make an amazing switch that worked with Hue. It was the Lutron Connected Bulb Remote. You hot-wire the switches behind the wall plate, and screw in a panel that sits right behind the rocker hole. The remote then slots into that. They're great, and when the battery dies you can just pop them out and change it without taking the wallplate off.
If they were held in by magnets then I'd call them the perfect switch for the Hue series.
Unfortunately they discontinued them, and on the used market they're often >$100 per switch.
I use the Friends of Hue but left physical switches (in the on position) under them. So if you pull them open you can turn off the power in an emergency.
And 3d printed a holder for a few rooms that fits the Gira frame and holds a Hue button. Works to control more things (and used it that way in my old house), but the color of Hue isn't exactly the same as the frame.
> I did all that work myself because the electrician didn't understand words like "crosstalk" and I didn't want to find out after I moved in that the wires in finished walls didn't work.
You hired a bad electrician. Any good electrician knows you can’t run power and data in the same conduit or pathway. NEC requires a divider in any junction box that contains low-voltage and line-voltage power, and also requires separate conduits/pathways for low-voltage and line-voltage power (can’t use the same stud hole to feed both through)
Spend more money on the electrician, and they’ll be better at their jobs.
> Any good electrician knows you can’t run power and data in the same conduit or pathway. NEC requires a divider in any junction box that contains low-voltage and line-voltage power, and also requires separate conduits/pathways for low-voltage and line-voltage power (can’t use the same stud hole to feed both through)
Sure, but aren't those rules for safety purposes and have nothing to do with crosstalk/interference?
Yes. My point is that an electrician who ignores (or isn’t aware of) NEC rules isn’t anyone I’d let near my home’s electrical wiring. Almost all NEC rules are for safety.
The low voltage in the house is completely separated. The wall outlets are widely spaced. It even comes into the house in a different location and a different trench.
Yeah the guy in the article went farther than I would. I have a lot of connected switches but they are still functional as dumb switches. If you moved into my house they'd all work like normal, you might notice they didn't feel exactly the same as an old-fashioned switch but when you push up they go on, down they go off. I'd of course let the buyer know they had options to connect them, but they could just forget about that and go on with their life.
Smart lighting only makes sense in niche cases. I use the same Z-wave switches in my 60s-era house for a basement guest bedroom where the light switch is bizarrely in a storage closet outside the bedroom. I have another Z-wave switch to turn on an existing front porch light at dusk. This spared me needing to install a separate photocell.
The main value for smart home is in monitoring. I mostly use it for flood and door sensors without having to pay for a Ring/ADT subscription.
About 70% of my lights are smart lights at this point, and I disagree.
They are super useful for things like adding "sunrise" light in a bedroom with few windows/north facing, great for situations where you have a non ideal arrangement of light switches (one of my living room lights is on the switch circuit that my entry stairwell light is on). I also am very affected by light color temperature, so being able to easily transition lights from cool white to warm at night is very helpful for my sleep quality.
> I considered these systems when my house was built, and am very glad I didn't get them.
You don’t need an elaborate, complex system to get a pretty big benefit from a little automation.
I just built a home, and bought and had the electrician install Lutron Caseta light switches for most of the switches (just the ones we might want to automate, not switches like closets or bathrooms).
Doing this has allowed us to even just turn off lights that were left on without having to get up, or turn on some exterior lighting at sunset/off at sunrise.
Pretty easy to set up, just works, and no overhead/undoing if you want to just use them as normal switches.
Around 2010 I designed the "computer room" for a 3 story apartment building that had computers for the residents to use. It was all very basic. The only complexity was that the ethernet run was across the whole building and 3 stories from the 3rd story computer room to the first story utility room.
The day came when it was time to test it out. All the Ethernet lights came on, but throughput was on the order of less than a few kbps. I let the project manager know that something was wrong with the cabling.
He got back to me a week later. The electrician who ran the line ran out mid way and used wire nuts to splice another length of cable. The fix was to simply terminate each end correctly on a splice connector. IIRC they might have even just re-ran one single length.
But the instinct not to trust electricians to run CAT5/6 was 101% correct!
What happens if you somewhat exceed the 100m limit? The only sources I can find boil down to just don't do that but I can't find a chart showing what happens to performance/frame loss.
It depends a lot on cable quality, what you have on either side and the connectors in between.
At work we had to repurpose a pair 170ish meter cat 6 cables for some cameras and it has worked nicely for three years (with PoE even). We tried again with a 100m cable rated for exterior (plus female + patch cords) and it wouldn't even link at 100mbps
The 100m eithernet distance restriction used to be to ensure that if two machines tried to start talking on the same line, they would hear the noise from the other before they finished sending their packet, and could therefore know there was a transmission error.
That is, at least, what was described to me in Computer Networks I back in 2006. I'm sure things have changed as we've moved to always using full-duplex wiring and fully-switched networks.
It is really about the modulation scheme limits (distance v noise). Most ethernet networks have been full-duplex on an individual link level since the early 2000s.
> What happens if you somewhat exceed the 100m limit? The only sources I can find boil down to just don't do that but I can't find a chart showing what happens to performance/frame loss.
It depends on your system. If you're running old school shared medium Ethernet (with hubs, not switches, for cat5), or even just half-duplex mode, if your run length is too long, the big issue is that you've lost guarantees about collision detection; in that case, receivers may see collisions that senders don't, and you're left with transport layer resends (if any) instead of Ethernet layer resends. This is because of transmission speed, minimum packet lengths, and the length of the cable mean that one sender could finish transmission before seeing the second sender's preamble.
If you're running full-duplex dedicated medium, collision detection is a non-issue, there are no collisions. GigE transmits and receives on all four pairs simultaneously and uses echo cancellation to remove the echo'd send that comes back from the far end, the extra distance will make the echo come back later than expected, and that might be outside the ability of the network cards' signal processing to adjust.
Assuming that's not a problem, you would have more resistance, and probably more? capacitance, which may make signal recovery more challenging. 100BaseTx would probably be more likely to work than GigE, in my opinion, but I'd certainly try both. Ethernet autonegotiation runs on a single pair at 1Mbps, so it's quite possible that the cards will negotiate to 1G, and then not be able to actually communicate at that speed because of the wiring parameters.
One important thing to consider is that Ethernet wiring specifications are such that minimum standard wiring will work at a very low error rate at maximum length when in a bundle with many other ethernet cables/other low voltage signaling cables. If you don't have a lot of bundled cables, you have a bit more wiggle room. Of course, if you run the wires parallel and close to AC wires, you have a lot less wiggle room.
Oh, and one more thing. If there's a midpoint somewhat accessible, there are two-port PoE powered switches you can drop in the middle of the span; some of them even will chain PoE; I think i've seen something that would let you put in three of the chainable switches between the power source and your endpoint (you could probably chain a couple more if the endpoint is also a powered switch).
It would certainly make network engineers cry, but you have to work with the site and wiring you have, and only sometimes is it easy or convenient to run new cabling.
The same goes for telco technicians. Just as I've caught electricians wire-nutting UTP cables I've also caught telco technicians putting "Scotch Lock" splice connectors on cables to "extend" them.
without looking it up, sounds like you are referring the brand name or the manufacture/distributor of wire nuts available at your local hardware store.
My dad’s an electrician. I worked for him once upon a time and later I did low voltage electrical construction. He says that the standards change too often, and it’s different enough to be considered a totally different field.
When I went to do low voltage later I realized what he meant. Stereo and security installations just isn’t something you want your electrician, whose knowledge mostly revolves around huge, 1000+ amp panels, to be doing. There’s way more money in commercial installs, so most electricians only do residential work to tide them over.
My dad doesn’t even want to terminate anything more complicated than 4 conductor phone wire, and would pull me into a job just for that reason.
I did the same thing twenty years ago, when my house was built. I ran 2 CAT5 and 2 RG6 to every corner of every room. Some areas got more. For example the garage has 12 CAT5 feeds distributed between three walls. Everything goes to a standard 19 inch EIA rack in the garage and is terminated and labelled on patch panels.
Rather than bring out the connections in each room, I use a toner to find the feeds and only bring out what I need when I need it.
316 comments
[ 1787 ms ] story [ 6074 ms ] threadAt least they're controlled with a normal switch. With decent quality, high powered LED bulbs like we have in the living room, 2 or 3 would do.
Went for 100% wired installation exactly because of that.
Second problem was every "star" topology hugely increases wiring cost, so a bus it was, and with bus came a problem of software MAC not being performant enough even to send audio, electrical isolation, CSMA...
Long story
I can't wait for 802.3cg
It sounds like a story I'd like to hear more of, if you've the time
1. Wireless is off for so many reasons.
Even if cost wouldn't be a problem, wireless has many other disadvantages.
First, it's not really wireless, you need to wire power, and cut walls.
Second, most of devices will spend their life deep in the junction box, or even cemented inside the wall. Having an external antenna for every one of them is impractical.
Third, no wireless standard is even 1/10th as reliable as wire. They are simply too complex.
Fourth, you want to have backup power for such vital things like HVAC in highrises without windows, security, and fire alarms, emergency water, and electricity cutoff, door locks, and intercom. This way, you need to have wiring anyways.
2. Star topology as I said hugely increase costs through: additional labour, cabling, cutting walls, switches, bigger junction boxes.
Main idea is that you don't want the builder to have to cut walls when they can not to.
2. For busses you have no alternative to CAN, or RS485 based busses, or multidrop ethernet hacks. Third is off because it's expensive (think of having 3 port T hubs for every device.) First is off because of bad hardware selection.
So we are left with many hacky RS485 based solutions.
Choose your poison:
Unreliable CSMA
Manual addressing
Super low performance
Polled nature
Near no existing ecosystem
In the end, MODBUS with hacks it was. The lesser of all evils.
4. It being a bus, and you having devices connected to other appliances, you have to provide electrical, and I/O isolation, as you don't want a random man plugging 220VAC into it in error, or deliberately frying all electronics in the highrise.
That's hugely expensive, and sometimes you want to power external devices through your box.
This necessitates to invent many case-by case compromise solutions.
Tip: get a Milwaukee right angle drill. Worth every penny.
>Quentin Stafford-Fraser (co-inventor of the webcam).
How can you be the inventor of the webcam? What is it even, besides from a digital camera? Did he invent that?
He was one of the team that created the first webcam: the Trojan room coffee pot: Quentin pointed a camera at the coffee pot and wrote the XCoffee client program which allowed the image of the pot to be displayed on a workstation screen. When web browsers gained the ability to display images, the system was modified to make the coffee pot images available over HTTP and thus became the first webcam.
I'm impressed how unreliable this tech is. Standing 2 meters away from the lightbulbs, I had to press 3 or 4 times the off button to turn them all off. I just don't understand why you would knowingly install that kind of crap.
Only problem I had with the Philips hub is that it's memory limited and can't handle more than about 50 devices. Above that you need to replace the hub with something like Home Assistant, but can keep the rest of the system.
Reminds me of http://bash.org/?5273 haha
https://www.theregister.com/2001/04/12/missing_novell_server...
Notice over the whole article he talks about the how, but not really the why?
The durned thing needs to be power cycled now and then. No way I'm putting the lights on wifi. The wired lan is 10x more reliable, but even it needs the router rebooted. (I've had lots of routers. All needed rebooting.) Never had to reboot the lights or the power sockets.
MikroTik routers a good for the price, WiFi is decent. Ubiquity APs are good for their price, WiFi is about as good as it gets. HP ProCurve switches has been to space.
You could use any device that runs Linux to DYI these things. Though you need one 2ghz and one 5ghz NIC in the device acting AP.
Since i started working IT 5 years ago and got some gear from work I've never had to reboot my device because it stopped functioning though I have scheduled automatic software updates checking (and installing if available) every day at 5am which implies automatic reboots every once in awhile.
In a similar vein, it pains me to hear people complain about SD issues with Raspberry Pis. My Kodi terminal will die occasionally due to SD card issues, and the only local disk usage it does is booting and the occasional dist-upgrade. The things are meant to be cheap and accessible, not reliable. If you're setting up a server in which you will be investing your time, an RPi is the wrong tool for the job.
My next use of RPis (security cameras) will just use SD to load the kernel/initrd, and then run from nfsroot.
BTW this hasn't been a once a month problem, maybe once a year. But once a year is still too often for me, as I would assume it would be for anyone who relied on one to control their lights.
Including my Windows and Linux boxen. Or they just slowly grind down, likely from not doing a good job cleaning up unused resources.
That means you can't have multiple light switches on the same network without quite a bit of complexity, you can't detect what's on the network, you can't update firmware or do device setup over the network, and so on.
In stage applications that's not a problem because all the light switches are in one place - the lighting desk - and the lighting guy there can see all the lights at the same time.
E: A wireless lighting systems seems to be a light bulb with WiFi capabilities.
Providing a solution before the problem exists is exactly what this is.
Don't get me wrong - I want to use HomeAssistant or similar - but I don't want to ditch physical switches.
(And in this case the (dumb) switches on the wall have always been in the right place, by the bed, in my bedrooms. (In addition to one by the door of course.))
I'd just have 'the system' 'aware' of the switches and current state etc. so that I could have certain automations, logging, etc.
The physical switches would either be network inputs themselves (easier implementation but reliability concern) or just report events but be electrically connected to the light still; I suppose also light-side state reporting for ultimate reliability (against missed switch events that did change light state because of electrical connection).
I wound up with a LED strip attached to a RPi under my bed, driven by a clapper script. Doesn't work completely reliably, but well enough.
"Smart" lightbulbs are more flexible with more features, but personally I'm not a fan of them - many features with few additional benefits (with high price tags, possible bugs, and privacy concerns). Nevertheless, if you are not allowed to change any electrical wiring in the room, using "smart" lightbulbs can be a justified choice. Another genuine use may be controlling many wired-together lightbulbs on a large light fixture as separate groups without a laborious rewiring. Meanwhile I'll keep using my dumb wireless light switch.
[0] They solve the neutral problem by using an always-on high resistance in series with the "hot" wire. The lightbulbs on the light fixture completes the circuit, a tiny current starts to flow, which is harvested by the switch to power itself. Clever hack!
And what privacy concerns are there with lights that have no internet connection whatsoever?
I hope my comment makes sense to you now.
> A radio-controlled dumb-switch used this way is still wireless lightning.
Yes, and it was also the point I was trying to make.
It does, thank you :)
Power the bed reading light lamp with a zen15 zooz inline switch which is never shut off but can monitor current and power continuously. So now homeassistant knows when my bed reading light is on or off based on if the lamp is drawing more than 3 watts or less. Which means it can control my ceiling fan appropriately AND dimmable room light bulbs AND mess with the thermostat depending on outside temperature / mode. And maybe other options someday in the future.
Some effort to set up the hardware, maybe 30 lines of YAML automation code, but it is nice and convenient.
I have a "reading desk lamp" in my basement lab that does similar tricks. Desk lamp no current drawn means my soldering iron and some other apparatus has its power removed. Improves safety a little.
If my youngest kid were not an older teen, I've been thinking about wifi/bluetooth presence detection such that my table saw has no electrical power if my phone isn't within X feet of the saw. A kind of similar automation but different opportunity.
My rationale for it is that I want to be able to dim them, but exchanging halogens for LEDs would mean the transformer wouldn’t see enough of a load to dim properly. By exchanging everything for IKEA bulbs I save on changing the transformer since the dimming circuit is in each bulb.
And if you're hunting for relays and other actuators... the compatibility between IKEA Tradfri products is excellent, but your mileage will vary when going with other Zigbee products.
Some sets of three occasionally go into party mode and start flashing in a sequence. They reset themselves every month or so. I'm tall and my ceilings are not so it's quick for me to pair them again. It would be super annoying if they were too high to reach. Setting the white spectrum fails using the 5 button controller. Often one or two usually fail to set correctly resulting in a weird mix. I simply don't bother anymore. They work nicely with the app, when still paired.
I haven't had any problems with the e27's in the same rooms.
'Dumb' rf motion detector triggered under-counter lighting in the kitchen has been way better bang for buck. It just works. No smart home required.
First world problems, but it is handy.
What really keeps me going with home automation is the door & lock control. Being able to monitor the status of the garage doors and the deadbolts on all doors is worth the price of admission. The kids each have their own code to get in the house, I can lock the doors from afar if they get left open or unlocked, I can check the status at any time, etc. I have the system close & lock everything at bedtime if it isn't already, and it communicates status to me as things are opened/closed/locked/unlocked.
I could give up the lighting if I had to. I could just use the built-in scheduling on the thermostat. No biggy. But the locks and doors functionality is worth the effort.
1970's technology to the rescue: https://www.amazon.com/Clapper-Sound-Activated-Switch-Each/d...
As for when my hands are full, elbows work just fine.
If/when I become bedridden or crippled, I'll probably get Alexa. Until then, I get up and walk to the switch. It's a privilege to be able to do that, and I'll do it as long as I can.
Do clappers hear through doors and across different floors? E.g. in bed upstairs and light is on downstairs? Plus would one clap not turnnoff everything that hears a clap, and not just the thing you want off but leave other things on? And can it auto clap itself off/on at certain times when you are asleep/not there? Can it hear you clap when it is at home and you are in your car/at work? And only 300% as expensive as a WiFi switch? Bargain.
But you know, when my hands are full I can just put everything down and rub two sticks together to make a fire just fine. The power of humanity's intellect and dominion over nature is a wonderful thing and making fire is a privilege that not all mammals have that I plan to use for as long as I can - 4000 BC's technology to the rescue </sarcasm to illustrate a point>
So much technology could easily be done "the old way" (fire to oil lamps to candles to gas lamps to electric lamps for example all make the room bright I'm the darkness), but it makes things simpler/more convenient/easier/etc. This is one of them IMO
https://www.enocean.com/en/products/enocean_modules_24ghz/
1. I hope all this electronic and plastic junk gets properly recycled.
2. Learn to be more prudent with your money.
3. £6k would have funded a lot of solar lights in developing countries through SolarAid or similar.
There was an albino blackbird living in the neighbourhood.
I spent years and a fair chunk of cash trying and failing to get a reliable zigbee and z-wave network set up using various bits of kit.
To echo the article, the problem with zigbee & zwave for me was that things would stop working, and it was almost impossible to work out why. The only "solution" was to start the annoying repairing process as outlined in the article which was a huge ballache.
In the end I also binned all of the zigwave & zwave bits and moved to a 100% wifi-based solution using MQTT & Tasmota firmware (1) running on very cheap hardware that is usually <10GBP per node. It is very reliable - I don't think I have had a single unexplained outage in the couple of years I've been running this now. Wifi + MQTT is mature and just works. It is also super easy to diagnose problems - you can see the devices on your network, ping them, subscribe to their MQTT topics, manually send messages on MQTT etc. Its a dream compared to the black box of zigbee & z-wave where you essentially had zero control apart from on/off.
Wifi + MQTT + Tasmota appears to be the solution for me.
My main complaint now is that HomeAssistant cant connect to Google Home/Alexa (so that I can use voice control), so I am using OpenHAB (which has a free integration that works). OpenHAB seems absurdly complex though, and they seem to be in a continual process of rewriting the software (some stuff is stored in config files, some in a databases, and the location of the config files is not in the docs/the docs have the wrong location so backups are hard, the docs are only for V1 (but don't say that they are only for V1) but the current version is V2 that is also deprecated because they are working on V3 etc, the recommended UI can't do everything you need to do to get the system working so you have to manually update stuff in a shell but the aforementioned docs telling you what file to edit are just plain wrong etc because the are referring to some different version, running OpenHAB in docker requires some odd permissions/user set up on the host machine etc - it is a mess). I am planning on ripping out OpenHAB and replacing with NodeRED at some point since that seems sane.
1 - https://tasmota.github.io/docs/
It is not about money but maintenance burden.
I can't imagine where would be my marriage when I was gone for some week long business trip and all that "smart" stuff had failed that time for my family. So far for 8 years of use I only had to replace one switch which got punched too hard by kid.
- The first type isn't actually connected to wall power, and is basically just a small remote that tells your lighting to turn on/off.
- The second type is connected to the wall power, and works perfectly fine as a normal wall switch and controls the lights in the same way. Along with being a normal wall switch, it's a receiver and can receive commands from elsewhere (including the first type of smart switch) to trigger the normal wall switch functionality.
The second type is an easy retrofit for existing homes with lots of lights, but doesn't play nice with smart bulbs that need to be always on for advanced functionality (like having automatic step-up/step-down lighting levels at sunrise/sunset).
At the moment I feel like the best use of the first type are switches that fit neatly over normal hardwired wall switches (like the Lutron Aurora), or adding a spacer (see https://www.shapeways.com/product/35B9F36RD/philips-hue-dimm... for one example) so that your smart switch can just be popped off to access the normal hardware.
Wirelessly linked smoke alarms are becoming extremely common now in the UK because outside a narrow envelope building regulations want linked alarms (linked either wired or wirelessly) on every floor. Imagine converting a basement and attic of a 1800s victorian house, and having to find a way to run a new cable from the roof of the attic to the ceiling of the basement. So instead it's a relatively dumb chip which shouts 'fire' on an unlicensed frequency block and a great deal of complexity is saved.
There is a chance you could do here what powerline adapters do, and use the ground wire to communicate. But they are notoriously inconsistent and there's any number of reasons it wouldn't work
This is exactly how Insteon works in conjunction with a wireless mesh. I'm extremely happy with my Insteon setup -- it's just a matter of replacing light switches and outlets with a bit of re-wiring on 3-wire switches (no new wires to run, just bypassing one of the switches so only one controls the light). The Insteon-branded hub is fine for a few light switches, but if you're doing a whole house and need something that can handle more complex configuration I would go for an ISY994 controller (don't know if anything newer exists but it's been rock solid for the last 5 years).
All that said, it was expensive and probably not worth it. I spent $4k on a somewhat large house and I was able to justify it as a learning experience for in-home IoT device use cases -- but I'm not sure there's much benefit to doing a whole house with it over just a couple rooms.
Also becoming a baseline feature in detectors in the US, in my experience. New houses have been using wired interconnect for a long time now, but in the last couple years I've helped several older relatives upgrade their smoke detectors and even the cheap ones have wireless interconnect now.
Note: "Since Lorenzo (the sparky) was replacing most of the wiring in the house I managed to get him to bring a lot of the control cables together in around five separate locations."
Granted, not ALL the wiring, but enough that there are "at least three (control) units lost in the walls" that don't control anything.
The lack of access in a house to critical infrastructure is why that critical infrastructure has simplicity and reliability as its primary characteristic, and if you are going to experiment, maybe consider redundancy? The writer appears to have a lot of hardware expertise, and almost none about systems. Single point of failure? Check. Closed hardware systems that might be unsupported sometime soon? Check. No diagnostics? Check.
This was a fascinating project and I commend the writer for posting all the hairy details, but I am slightly appalled at the wastage.
Looks pretty cheap and interesting in principle.
I'm not a huge fan of home automation and my partner hates the mere thought of it, so what's nice about Shelly is that these units have not just outputs but inputs as well. If you flip a physical switch you will still trigger your lights or appliances or whatever is connected to it. You're not locked into an ecosystem with its own remotes, switches etc. – it'll feel like the sturdy old system you already had, except that now you can program it and control it remotely, too.
Essentially there are three parts, a receiver connected to the boiler, a network bride connected to the router and the thermostat connected to both.
Within the first week of having it installed we had times when we realised the heating hadn't come on as scheduled. Checking the display on the thermostat would show no signal. In effect the receiver on the boiler had disconnected from the thermostat and as such you have no heating. After several occurrences of this I broke down and moved the thermostat to the closest reasonable place I could.
The thermostat is now in the worst place in the house for taking a temperature reading but at least it vaguely heats the house up when I expect it to. However, it is now almost constantly disconnected from the network bridge which enables the "smart" part. The solution to this if I can ever be bothered is to run a network cable from the router to the same room as the thermostat.
Why it was designed like this is beyond me. Why not have the schedule stored on the receiver, at least in memory. That way if it lost contact with the thermostat at least it could put the heating on full during the schedule.
Why make the wireless bridge a separate part? If I could add my WiFi details to the thermostat I guarantee it would have a reasonable connection.
Part 15 doesn't give you a free pass to blast RFI everywhere. If you're over the legal limit and found to be broadcasting you will be asked to stop using it.
The main controller runs the scheduler and is the only device which reaches out to the internet (to sync with honeywell's cloud systems so you can control heating etc from an app remotely when away from home).
Other than the interface on the controller being a bit clunky, I've no complaints, even the batteries in the TRVs seem to be lasting well.
I've done a setup once and now it just runs automatically. Can't remember the last time I've even touched the thermostat.
It shuts down when I leave home, it heats up when I'm on my way home. When it's a sunny day it let's the sun heat up the house in stead of using the heating.
It's almost recouped it's costs in the first year by just gas savings (as opposed to my time based thermostat).
I have never had one fail (N=25). Since installation, I have never had one drop off the WiFi or require a physical visit for any reason at all (one is installed in my boiler and it takes an hour to get it apart, so I really appreciate this!). I honestly don’t think a single one of them has missed a single rest API call in the time they’ve been running.
When initially installing them, this can be done from a mobile next to the unit, at which point you join them to your WiFi.
I’m not in any way connected with Shelly, just a very impressed user of their stuff.
I considered these systems when my house was built, and am very glad I didn't get them. I turn the switch on, the lights go on, I turn it off, the lights go off. I replace a bulb now and then.
That's it! I'm very happy with it.
But what I did do was run cat5 and RG6 to every room in a star configuration, which has paid off very very nicely. I did all that work myself because the electrician didn't understand words like "crosstalk" and I didn't want to find out after I moved in that the wires in finished walls didn't work.
Can you explain what the problem is? I also run cat5 (or maybe even cat6, don't remember) to every room, most even multiple times, just put it in walls/cailings/whatever worked and all 40 or so sockets work just fine.
I turn the switch on, the lights go on, I turn it off, the lights go off.
I run a star configuration for switches and light points, where all switches are on 12V DC and use a 'patchboard' to hook them to impulse relays which drive the lights. Still switch on/light on, but you can select which switch does what, easily hook up miltiple switches to multiple light points etc. Not domotica, but still much more dynamic than traditional build-once-change-never.
If it's truly done there's no reason for change. However getting there, to what for us is the most optimal configuration, is what was the main incentive for me. The way it is now it requires almost no ahead planning. I.e. for most rooms we had no idea on beforehand how we were going to pupulate them with furniture and which activity we'd do where, so I just went 'cable for lighting in the center, at the side on each wall, and some extra' and then put the switches in sensible places i.e. usually next to room entrance. Then during the next years hook up as needed and adapt if needed. E.g. couple of months ago we needed an extra desk for working form home and one extra for my GF's new hobby, so we just put some desks to a wall and instantly can get a light above it. With a fixed configuration you'd either need to think of that in advance, or use the light centrally in the room which makes you sit in your own shadow. or add lights you just plug in the wall socket but that's extra cable, and especially for desks it's hard to find a suitable one. Also throughout the years I've made small changes here and there to change things like being able to turn on the light in the bathroom from the bedroom, or turn on light in the kitchen from the place where we eat so you don't have to look for th kitchen switch in the dark. Sure those are just nice-to-haves but pretty convenient. I've been and lived in quite a lot of houses where the whole configuration was pretty akward. Though I get some people don't care about that.
The electrician was installing the cat3 phone wires in the same holes as the A/C wires. It was guaranteed to induce a hum.
The correct approach is to keep the low voltage wires as far from the A/C as you can, and if they cross, keep the crossing at 90 degrees. Don't run them in parallel unless they are separated by feet (plural). If you have to, you can run them in grounded metal conduit as a shield.
I probably went overboard on this, but doing it inadequately meant 60 cycle humming on the phone lines and an utterly ghastly bill to rip the walls up and fix it.
He also was installing cat3 (POTS cable) and R59 cable (1970's cable TV stuff). I pulled that all out and threw it in the trash, putting in cat5 (cat5e and cat6 are better, but weren't available then) and quad-shielded RG6 cable.
Getting the best cable available cost maybe 20 or 30 dollars more, so it's crazy not to do it. The network and cable speeds have all increased dramatically since I installed it, and the cables have all worked like a champ.
Even the cat5 cables are happily carrying gigabit Ethernet.
I have a couple plugboards in the basement where all the wires terminate.
I did the whole thing for less than a grand. If an electrician had done it, it likely would have been 10 or 20x more.
Many houses have concrete walls, floors and ceilings, so you don't run extra tubes easily...
Reconfiguring switches is next to impossible and via existing switch wires you can dim/switch the lights but not change colour(temperature).
So here the original switches are removed and the connection is bridged (always on) and battery/kinectic powered ZigBee switches control the lights directly, even if the gateway is down.
This means problems like fires spreading to adjacent buildings and fires trapping people where they can't escape are much reduced; you'd never see a repeat of the great fire of London in an American suburb because there's practically a fire break between every single home.
This is made affordable by America's vast tracts of land and high rates of car ownership.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chicago_Fire
The same day, a forest fire ravaged a number of small towns:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peshtigo_fire
I had a house with mostly Armored Cable and came to appreciate it. Especially after I opened up a floor and found an exposed conductor on some Non-Metallic that had been chewed by a squirrel.
There are still existing functional knob and tube wiring systems that are 100 years old
Guess where I am ;-)
(Not in Chicago/Cook, though.)
I've gradually added GFCI outlets to each circuit. They're not grounded, unfortunately, but they do trip if something were to go wrong. And it allows us to plug in 3-prong plugs without using those horrible 2-to-3 adapters.
We had to change home insurance companies because Amica blacklisted us the instant they heard there was knob-and-tube wiring. A few other companies have the same approach. But it's not like homes are spontaneously combusting everywhere because of it.
Source: US National Electrical Code
Presumably that is not because of interference concerns but because of the danger of mixing high voltage and low voltage circuits in the same conduit, right?
As others have noted, conduit isn't usually used in houses in the west.
If an electrician had done it, it likely would have been 10 or 20x more.
Hmm, that is like twice the amount one would typcially pay here. Still, don't froget the working hours you put in there :) plus the fact that usually technicians get their materials for cheaper than you do (also because in my case it's only 6% VAT instead of 21%). I did many such calculations when renovating and for some things it was actually cheaper to get a technician.
The typical electrician gets it indeed for cheaper than market rate, then charges it to you retail rate plus 20% to account for the "trouble" of sourcing and purchasing it.
I never claimed that.
The typical electrician
Maybe you rather mean 'the typical electrician I met' or so because I know for a fact the rest of that sentence does not apply to the ones I met myself.
This usually works without any issues, but on one type of projector they had used a non-shielded network cable internally in the projector and if the projector lamp was lit juuuust at the right moment, the handshake would fail and the film would not play. Normally it wouldn't be a huge deal as the handshake happens just before the film and the lamp is usually lit on the beginning of the show long before the film starts. HOWEVER, there was this one cinema chain that had standardized their playlists in such a way that they for some stupid reason turned of the projector lamp in between the trailers and the film (I think to "introduce" the film) and then turned it on again just before the film with the result that the handshake failed 3 out of 10 times or so.
Long term solution was to replace the shoddy cable. Short term solution was to change all their playlist templates to blind the lamp instead of turning it off. Like they should have done to begin with.
Sure, they buy materials wholesale, but they bill you full retail for it. I installed around a mile of wiring :-)
But I also got it exactly the way I wanted, the wires run where I wanted, and I bought professional quality tools to do the work, and still have/use them. I like working with my hands now and then, it's viscerally satisfying in a way a keyboard never is.
I know that twisted pair is supposed to be resistant to that, but I wasn't going to risk it and didn't have a good way to test it. I didn't want even a teensy bit of hum, and there isn't any :-)
Still I agree it isn’t worth the headache of issues to save $20 and it’s more futureproof to use better cables.
They also said that stp is a lot harder and expensive to install.
Isn't twisting the pairs supposed to prevent that? Isn't that what makes it feasible to run telephone lines on the same poles as electricity, thus allowing the POTS system to be practical?
POTS is legacy now, so I'm not sure how much of a consideration it is for modern builds.
There are safety issues with running network and power cables close to each other, but generally on small domestic systems crosstalk between data and power shouldn't be a serious problem.
The exception is if you have a lot of hash on the power lines from USB chargers, unfiltered noisy motors, or white goods that generate both digital and analog noise.
Ferrites or other kinds of filtering can help. So can using shielded cat cable.
While the level of knowledge among electricians regarding network wiring is gradually increasing, the conventional wisdom for anyone who wants network wiring installed professionally is to hire a contractor that specializes in low voltage wiring.
I think by now I've got rid of all the R59 cable sockets and POTS stuff too except for one POTS socket in the cabinet that holds the fuse box. If anyone ever wants to reintroduce a wired telephone they can just reuse a CAT6 cable, but I doubt this will happen.
These days, of course, I don't use the POTS much.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_topology#Star
Each endpoint connects directly to the hub, rather than as a ring, daisy-chain, tree, or mesh.
I have all lights (100+) in the house on Zigbee but without changing any wiring. Only non standard is that I replaced all the wall switches with a variant that's electrically "always on" and sends a Zigbee command when pressed (and can be pulled out to access a traditional physical switch as a backup in case of full system failure). They fit the original Siemens outer wall plates that my house was built with so everything looks standard. Returning evening to non-smart in case I want to sell the place is an afternoon of work replacing the switches behind the plastic face plate with their old versions. Those are all in a box in the attic :-)
The benefits of smart lights for comfort are pretty big, auto-on lights by motion detection is great for bathrooms, storage rooms etc. Having the color temperature match outside and time of day is also much better than traditional dimmers. Voice control is useful in some situations (mostly when cooking or carrying kids or groceries). And being able to walk out the front door saying "Alexa, turn off all lights" is a great way to save energy and make things easy.
Everything is controlled via Homeassistant+Deconz and a Phoscon Zigbee Dongle.
It's even possible to hack the IKEA switches into the danish wall switches.
Still wondering what @t0mas88 is using...
The upcoming Lidl remote is very interesting indeed, because it has 4 buttons which could be wired to a regular 2 button up/down push switch (e.g. Gira 014700) as cheaper friends of hue alternative.
Also 3d printed a holder for a few places that slots into a Gira frame and holds the Philips Hue Tap button. Allows more control of scenes etc, but the color isn't exactly the same.
https://www.lutron.com/en-US/products/pages/standalonecontro...
Made for UK wall switches.
Your house is massive or your castle is very tiny. Either way, that’s an usual amount of lightbulbs.
I have some bulbs, 4 spot lights, lightstrips around the living room. Lamps around the studio, bedrooms, living room. If you add bias lighting and indirect light by bouncing off the ceiling you add up quite fast.
Granted, I built up this setup over some time, finding the best use for each set of lights I got but I can definitely see how you could get up to 100+ in a larger house.
Even a bathroom easily has 6 or 8 in the ceiling, a few near the mirror etc.
At the moment I have standalone lamps with Sonoff D1 dimmer and halogen (yes, really) bulbs that can actually be dimmed 0-100%.
It is insane how unreliable the ikea products have been and how terrible the interface is vs philips.
I am moving to Deconz (Phoscon) for full flexibility though..
Friends of Hue (Gira and others) with EnOcean comes close, but you'll typically bridge the switch AC wires, so there is nothing to pull out and manually control things as backup.
If they were held in by magnets then I'd call them the perfect switch for the Hue series.
Unfortunately they discontinued them, and on the used market they're often >$100 per switch.
And 3d printed a holder for a few rooms that fits the Gira frame and holds a Hue button. Works to control more things (and used it that way in my old house), but the color of Hue isn't exactly the same as the frame.
You hired a bad electrician. Any good electrician knows you can’t run power and data in the same conduit or pathway. NEC requires a divider in any junction box that contains low-voltage and line-voltage power, and also requires separate conduits/pathways for low-voltage and line-voltage power (can’t use the same stud hole to feed both through)
Spend more money on the electrician, and they’ll be better at their jobs.
Edit: I run electrical work
Sure, but aren't those rules for safety purposes and have nothing to do with crosstalk/interference?
Similar to how close an electrical outlet can be to a sink, there are rules about how close a data cable can be to a current-carrying cable.
The main value for smart home is in monitoring. I mostly use it for flood and door sensors without having to pay for a Ring/ADT subscription.
They are super useful for things like adding "sunrise" light in a bedroom with few windows/north facing, great for situations where you have a non ideal arrangement of light switches (one of my living room lights is on the switch circuit that my entry stairwell light is on). I also am very affected by light color temperature, so being able to easily transition lights from cool white to warm at night is very helpful for my sleep quality.
You don’t need an elaborate, complex system to get a pretty big benefit from a little automation.
I just built a home, and bought and had the electrician install Lutron Caseta light switches for most of the switches (just the ones we might want to automate, not switches like closets or bathrooms).
Doing this has allowed us to even just turn off lights that were left on without having to get up, or turn on some exterior lighting at sunset/off at sunrise.
Pretty easy to set up, just works, and no overhead/undoing if you want to just use them as normal switches.
The day came when it was time to test it out. All the Ethernet lights came on, but throughput was on the order of less than a few kbps. I let the project manager know that something was wrong with the cabling.
He got back to me a week later. The electrician who ran the line ran out mid way and used wire nuts to splice another length of cable. The fix was to simply terminate each end correctly on a splice connector. IIRC they might have even just re-ran one single length.
But the instinct not to trust electricians to run CAT5/6 was 101% correct!
What happens if you somewhat exceed the 100m limit? The only sources I can find boil down to just don't do that but I can't find a chart showing what happens to performance/frame loss.
Would it help to have a heavily shielded cable?
At work we had to repurpose a pair 170ish meter cat 6 cables for some cameras and it has worked nicely for three years (with PoE even). We tried again with a 100m cable rated for exterior (plus female + patch cords) and it wouldn't even link at 100mbps
That is, at least, what was described to me in Computer Networks I back in 2006. I'm sure things have changed as we've moved to always using full-duplex wiring and fully-switched networks.
It depends on your system. If you're running old school shared medium Ethernet (with hubs, not switches, for cat5), or even just half-duplex mode, if your run length is too long, the big issue is that you've lost guarantees about collision detection; in that case, receivers may see collisions that senders don't, and you're left with transport layer resends (if any) instead of Ethernet layer resends. This is because of transmission speed, minimum packet lengths, and the length of the cable mean that one sender could finish transmission before seeing the second sender's preamble.
If you're running full-duplex dedicated medium, collision detection is a non-issue, there are no collisions. GigE transmits and receives on all four pairs simultaneously and uses echo cancellation to remove the echo'd send that comes back from the far end, the extra distance will make the echo come back later than expected, and that might be outside the ability of the network cards' signal processing to adjust.
Assuming that's not a problem, you would have more resistance, and probably more? capacitance, which may make signal recovery more challenging. 100BaseTx would probably be more likely to work than GigE, in my opinion, but I'd certainly try both. Ethernet autonegotiation runs on a single pair at 1Mbps, so it's quite possible that the cards will negotiate to 1G, and then not be able to actually communicate at that speed because of the wiring parameters.
One important thing to consider is that Ethernet wiring specifications are such that minimum standard wiring will work at a very low error rate at maximum length when in a bundle with many other ethernet cables/other low voltage signaling cables. If you don't have a lot of bundled cables, you have a bit more wiggle room. Of course, if you run the wires parallel and close to AC wires, you have a lot less wiggle room.
It would certainly make network engineers cry, but you have to work with the site and wiring you have, and only sometimes is it easy or convenient to run new cabling.
Electricians also almost always use the wrong colors when wiring speakers with something like a 16/4. I have ran into this a lot.
When I went to do low voltage later I realized what he meant. Stereo and security installations just isn’t something you want your electrician, whose knowledge mostly revolves around huge, 1000+ amp panels, to be doing. There’s way more money in commercial installs, so most electricians only do residential work to tide them over.
My dad doesn’t even want to terminate anything more complicated than 4 conductor phone wire, and would pull me into a job just for that reason.
Rather than bring out the connections in each room, I use a toner to find the feeds and only bring out what I need when I need it.