Why bother with automation...

[amirm]

When I was working at Microsoft, I had a guy working in my group who loved home automation. I spent a few minutes chatting with him but for the life of me, I couldn't figure out why someone would bother spending money on stuff like this. After all, what's wrong with a $2 switch?

Then I started to build our vacation home and one by one, I got myself deeper and deeper into this. For starters, I wanted a way to set back the thermostat and then turn it up before driving there. Then I thought, I don't want to leave anything on before we leave the place for weeks. Next, I worried about security and wanted to install cameras. Found out that they don't work well at night so thought about turning the lights on if someone walks by the cameras.

Next was the classic theater situation. Hit pause and have th lights come up halfway. Then, as our kids do all the time, have everything shut down, including the projector, if no one is in the theater for many hours.

Now, if you have all of this, why not hit one button that says "I am going to sleep" and have it light up the path to bedroom and gradually turn off the lights behind you? How about a sensor under the steps to the loft so that the lights come up as I walk upstairs to it?

Wait, there is more! How about having the equipment fan in the entertainment cabinet turn on gradually as the temp goes up rather than running all the time, using power and making (a bit of) noise.

The list kept piling up. Added were knowing that the generator had kicked in (we have a lot of power failures) and shutting down some of the loads that it doesn't use too much propane (e.g. turning down the heat pump temp). And on and on.

Net, net, I am deep into this thing now . Not all the projects have been done. But lighting is in with automation. Nice to hit one button and have the house shut down gradually. Lights outside coming on low at night (but not overriding if someone has already turned them on). And by morning, having them all go off.

It is a lot of fun and a ton of learning in the process. The latter is the reason for this subforum. I found that there was no good place on the web to discuss all topics like this. There are forums for Pros, forums for low-end units but no discussion place to get educated on higher-end applications like I have described.

So where do you stand on such things? Have you wished there was some automation in your house? If you do have automation, what do you use it for?

 

[audioguy]

I'm still where you were but apparently there are LOTS of folks who are doing what you are doing. One of the local very higih end HT stores has gone from selling/installing $250,000 home theaters to $250,000 home automation systems.

I have some basic home automation stuff (X-10) to turn lights on and off (and dim) around the house and control the lights (and equipment) in my theater. But I am still struggling why I would want to automate my (for example) thermostat which has 40 bazzillion settings (OK, that is a bit of an exageration). Your vacation home does seem to provide more opportunties.

 

[JackD201]

I'm in the process of automating too. I got the Vantage system originally for the lights only but then since it was hooked up to the main server which stores all the music distributed over the same network with 7 Sonos zones I got all excited! My installer will have to write some code but it is possible to have the sonos switch to specific musical genres when say I switch lighting according to certain programmed scenes. We throw a lot of parties so it would be really cool if after dinner I hit the button for cocktails and all the lights and music changes. Yeah baby!

 

[kach22i]

I have a form of automation in my home. Every time I cook something I rush over to the smoke detector, rip it off the wall and place it outside on the front porch before it beeps at me.

It's my automatic response, right?

 

[amirm]

I have a form of automation in my home. Every time I cook something I rush over to the smoke detector, rip it off the wall and place it outside on the front porch before it beeps at me.

Read with Texas accent: "That right there is real funny!"

Reminds me of our last home purchase. I go down to the furnace room with the owner in our walk-though and notice the furnace is off. I ask him why (it was kind of cold) he says "it beeps sometimes." Worried I have my inspector look at it and he says it is all fine. We move in, and wouldn't you know, in the middle of the night I hear this beeping sound. Walk downstairs to the furnace room, open the door and the smoke alarm is going off that is right on top of the unit! Instead of figuring out why the alarm was going off, his solution was to turn off the unit!

Turns out the reason it was going off was that it had no fresh air intake. And when it would cycle on and off, it would belch out smoke (it was an oil burner) and cause the alarm to go off.

 

[kach22i]

Invest a few dollars into a Carbon Monoxide Detector, you will sleep better at night.

And get some fresh air to that furnace if it can be done.

 

[amirm]

Invest a few dollars into a Carbon Monoxide Detector, you will sleep better at night.

Courtesy of cheap electricity and magic of heat pumps, we are all electric so no longer worry about carbon monoxide. We do have gas for cooking though and I have pre-wired for propane detector. Had a friend who built a hose in Tahoe and put on in while everyone asking him why. Fast forward a few months later and he gets a remote signal that it had gone off. Turns out it snowed a lot an top of a pipe outside which was not connected fully. It developed a crack and the gas leaked into the house causing his detector to go off. Had he not had one, heaven knows what would have happened when he arrived there and turned on a light....

And get some fresh air to that furnace if it can be done.

Good advice. By code this is required in our area so both of our heat pumps have it. They by the way ruled out using split mini (heat pump) systems for a theater we are building as those unit are closed loop and don't allow air intake.

 

[Gregadd]

For the basic reasons See my book that I am too lazy to finish, Kiss My big Fat Lazy American Ass. Heaven forbid we should have to get up and do anything for ourselves. That's it. We have to get up off our oversized chair in our relaxed fit jeans and size 2x t shirt. Get into our oversized suv. Go to the fast food place. We are to lazy to make our own sandwich with ingredients we can get from our oversiszed and overstocked refrigerator. The n we have go to the drive thru window because we are to lazy too walk in. When we get back we just have to continue to watch the Spanish channel because we're too lazy to look for the remote.
While I'm on the subject why are race car drivers too lazy to say "race car number 9?" Why do the have "the 9 car?" You are that lazy you have to save one word,

Whew! I'm exhausted. Too lazy to proof this. I'll just run the spell checker. I can' t read again. To see if I have used the perfectly spelled wrong words.

 

[JackD201]

Greg, Get off your Lazy Ass and finish that book! You might have a BEST SELLER on your hands!

 

[Gregadd]

Luckily you can type laying down. There is also voice recognition software.