Home Automation - A Look Ahead

You're listening to Syntax, the podcast with the tastiest web development treats out there. Strap yourself in and get ready. Here is Scott Talinski and Wes Boss.

Welcome to Syntax, the home automation show.

Now this Is it gonna be a show about, the look ahead at home automation? So I just bought a new house. We're moving in. Rid. By the time you listen to this, I'll be moved in already. But, I've been looking into sort of going the next level. We did a show a couple years ago on home automation, And I've been looking or like smart home stuff, and I've been looking to go, like, a little deeper on it and get into some real, real heavy stuff. So I thought, Like, Scott and I, I just I'm sorry.

Just just the intonation in which you said that was, perfect. It was great.

Rid. We've just been talking about, Home Assistant and and HomeBridge and Hoobs and RTSP and all this stuff. And I was like, like, let's. Rid. I've been asking on Twitter and talking a lot, and, like, this is kind of stuff that us techies love talking about. So I thought, let's just record an episode sort of explaining how it all works and sort of my thoughts as to where I'm at right now.

And then, like, we'll come back in 6 months or whatever and say, like, Like what we did, because I think Scott's interest is peaked here as well. Piqued indeed.

Piqued indeed. So we're sponsored by 3 awesome companies today. First 1 is rid. Sentry error exception tracking. 2nd 1 is off 0, which is, log in and permissions management for your application. 3rd 1 is FreshBooks Cloud account, and we'll talk about all of them partway through the episode.

With me, as always, is Mr. Scott Talinski. I'm not even going to ask him how he's doing today because this is our, rid Like, 6th episode we're recording today? I'm doing really great, Wes. I'm just Oh, good. I'm glad you're doing good. Doing super good. I know how you're doing.

Yeah. Just chillin.

Probably hungry is what you are after recording this many episodes.

All right. So ready. I'm gonna break this down into, protocols like, software that you can use to do home automation, rid. Hardware. Different. Like, what kinds of stuff would you like to do in your house? As well as, like like, what's the point of all this? It seems dumb, you know? Like, what would you rid you want to do. That's the answer we're gonna give you there. So let's start with protocols. So there are rid. 3 or 4 major protocols when you're doing home automation, and stuff. And and what we're doing what we're talking about here is, like, rid. Lights and plugs and and bulbs and buttons and switches and garage doors and door locks and basically making everything in your life smart, Or a lot of people think it's a big pain in the butt.

So to there's there's kind of like rid. Three major protocols right now. We have ZigBee, Z Wave and WiFi.

And then there's a huge sort of like rid.

Push right now this thing called matter.

And matter is the attempt that's happened with everything. You have 3 standards rid. And they say we should have another standard. So the matter is attempt to standardize the 3 standards into a 4th standard.

And apparently in the fall, this is going to roll out. So we really don't know a whole lot about matter right now.

So they're

for the purposes of this episode, we'll talk about Zigway Zigbee, Z Wave, and Wi Fi. Zigbee and Z Wave are low power. Apple Apple products seem to have, like, their own thing already. Are are they just using Wi Fi, but it's like an Apple specific Wi Fi Paradigm or like

Generally, the Apple products are either Wi Fi or they are a device that uses either a proprietary like a proprietary bit or they're just using ZigBee or Z Wave under the hood and they're not telling you like the rid. Ecobee is a great example. Ecobee works great right out of the box with Apple stuff. It's amazing. And then you can get You get like the ecobee thermostat is Wi Fi, but then you get these like these little tiny 2 inch or 1 inch by 1 inch little thermostat that you put throughout your house or and they tell you the temperature and those things communicate back to your extra thermostat. And those are using I'm pretty sure those are using the ZigBee protocol rid under the hood, and they're just going back and forth between them. So that's really the major difference is that generally Wi Fi stuff take a lot of power.

They're very easy to implement, but they need to have power all the time.

And then you get into other devices that can be lower power. You can certainly get rid. All of the devices that you can on Wi Fi, and Zigbee and Z Wave as well. And and they actually they act as like a mesh hub as well. Rid. But you can also I think for me, at least, the benefit of ZigBee and Z Wave, things is that they They can run on a couple AA batteries or a coin cell or something like that, and they allow you to put these $10 Temperature sensors or humidity sensors, or you can put them all over your house, and they don't have to be plugged in and you can literally stick them anywhere you want. And ready. Once every 2 years you have to go around with a pack full of coin cells and swap out the batteries on them. So ZigBee is Over 2.4 gigahertz and z wave is over 900 megahertz.

So 2.4 is what your Wi Fi will run over as well and your cordless phones in your house with the older Wi Fi standard, right? Yeah. Yeah. Your router will still broadcast a 2.4 and a 5 just because Most of these smart devices are still 2.4 megahertz just because of cost to put a WiFi chip in them. So those are the big protocols out there. I've been 100% Wi Fi only for everything in my life so far.

And then and as I'm looking into some more of the stuff, I'm like, maybe I would like some of those rid Additional sensors. And, in order to get them, you have to have a a hub. Like, the the Phillips Hue, for example, is

What is Philips Hue? I thought it was Wi Fi, but we do have a hub for it. Philips Hue is ZigBee.

So, they ready. Each, there is a hub that connects to Wi Fi, but the bulbs don't have Wi Fi chips in them. The bulbs have ZigBee chips in them, and they can transmit over to the hub. So So the downside is that you have to have a hub.

But once you buy into having a hub, then you can start to get a lot more of these devices, rid. That communicate with each other. We're not going to go super heavy into, like, all the different brand names of products. We'll probably mention them a lot, but, We're just kind of doing it from a top level here. So those are the 3 protocols. Of course, matter will come as well. But who knows how long that'll take to rid to get out there and how expensive those things will be. Yeah. That's recently

announced. I mean, that's, like, new new. Yeah.

Yeah, and it's nice to see that because there is a frustration right now in that a lot of these things don't work together.

Rid. So you buy a couple WyzeCams, you buy Phillips Hue lights.

What happens is if somebody walks in front of your WyzeCam, you wanna turn on your Hue lights. Can't do it. Rid. And last, you go and build your own system, which we're going to talk about, to get them all working together.

So this stuff works well If you go all in on a system and you are okay with the limitations of whatever system you've bought into.

But as all developers know, rid. We like to tweak.

We like to to mess with it. Yeah. So now let's get into software then. That's what you can do is you can either go all in on 1 vendor. Rid And that's usually like the gateway drug.

You you get a smart plug for Christmas.

Oh, okay. That's nice. I can turn off, Turn off the lights with by my phone. Okay. Let's get a couple light switches.

Okay. Okay. Oh, you can hook it up to the Google Home. Okay. Rid. Tell the Google Home to turn off the lights. And then before you know it, you're you're I'm what, like 5? I'm 5 years into deep into this And, like, I've got big buy in from my whole family. They all know how to turn the lights on and off and everything like that. And that's big for me is, like, making this stuff Not frustrate your family, but making your family actually enjoy the automation. And, like we can just say like, okay Google, good night. And it'll shut down all the lights, and you can lock the doors, and and do whatever it is that you want. Yeah. In in fact, sometimes,

you know, the The bulb situation was kind of a pain when you have these smart bulbs and you turn the switch off. Right? But we actually found some some, like, really nice things going on where we have a switch that turns on and off an outlet. And it's like, we never want this outlet to be shut off. What year is this? We don't we don't want that. We don't want it to turn off a desk lamp or something. So So we just took a smart switch cover. I forget who makes this. I think it's Lutron. It's like a switch cover that then you can then connect to Philips Hue, and we just screwed that onto the switch. Next thing you know, we have a switch that we'd never wanted to be shut off. And now that switch can't be shut off, and it's actually useful for something else. And it's controlling the desk, of the actual lamp volumes or or any of that stuff. So, yeah, some of this stuff can really tweak to the point where rid It's enhancing your life in the buy in, and you can, augment some things that analogly were kind of a pain.

Exactly. Exactly.

Like we're talking at our cottage. We have a light switch. They ran out the the kitchen before we bought it. And one of the things that there's a light switch like a foot behind the kitchen, behind the fridge.

And what do we do? You stick your hand back there and you slide it up and flip the switch on.

And like that kind of stuff is much easier now because you could put a smart switch in it and just say tell Google to turn it on. Or you can also get, like, Leviton makes these switch companions where you hook up the main one is a regular Wi Fi switch, But then you can buy like a coin cell operated one that looks like a real wall switch.

And then that one just connects to the the main one. Hey, You can put that switch wherever you want. You just hang it on the wall or cut a little box in, and then a bam all sudden without any wiring, You have another switch literally wherever you want to put it. Like how many times in your house have you been like, it's kind of annoying that the switch is there. Or Or wouldn't it be nice to have a 2nd switch over here so I don't have to walk down? And that kind of stuff just makes your life really easy. Really quick Before we move on, I I thought I would tell this is a funny little anecdote here. You know, my,

my my mini split, I was I was like, I I wish there was, like, a smart control for my mini split in my office so that I could control it from my desk because the controls were way on the other side of my office. And then I realized, I'm an idiot. This thing is just screwed into the wall, so I just unscrewed screwed it. Now it's just sitting on my desk. It's the control for it. It's just like, the normal control port. It was already wire I it was just screwed into the walls. Like It already was wireless. Rid Ernie West wireless. It doesn't have to be smarter or whatever. Sometimes the solution is just done scurred from the wall too. Oh, that's hilarious. I, Well, I've got a sick pick for you coming up on the mini split thing. I'm making your mini split smart.

But you're helping. You'll have to wait or read it right ahead in the notes. Yeah.

So software.

What different software are there? So I went down the first one to me was that, okay, none of this stuff works with Ios.

Or if you wanted to work with Ios, you're paying through the nose, for a special Ios certified switches or whatever. And that what a pain in the butt that is. Right? So, every for a long time, I was like, just get Homebridge. Get Homebridge. Get Homebridge. So finally I said, alright, I'm install Homebridge. So what Homebridge is is It's a open source library that connects all of your devices, And then we'll open them up