Home Automation : the Grand Design

Over the past month I've been focusing on home automation, building a system which is intended to guarantee varying levels of convenience, pleasure, safety, cost control and security that we never had before.  

I started way back with a kit from IKEA, but now have a multi-vendor system that works together, pretty seamlessly, thanks to the open source and free software, Home Assistant, Tasmota. deCONZ and others.

As I've soaked up video howtos, forum posts, articles and howtos and bought more gear, tinkered more and a vision and goals have started to form, as I didn't really know what was possible.  So what can I expect from the system I'm putting together?  (what do you expect from yours?)

• complete control using our phones and tablets of our home environment 
• controllable automation that reacts faster and better than we can manually 
• our home environment, covers heating, cooling, light, power, water, alarms, sensors 
• a comprehensive security system for peace of mind which will alarm, turn on lights automatically, record video, notify us
• automation to turn off the water mains and notify us, whenever a leak is detected under bathrooms and appliances
• to easily toggle scenes and states for leisure, work, entertaining, vacations
• make the inevitably complex system simple to maintain and operate
• minimize costs: power, gas, water, tech systems, home damage

Today I decided to contribute back to the rapidly growing, worldwide home automation community.  Using the internet I've found such a lot of really useful info and people with experiences and tips, mainly from websites and YouTube.  There is not one site that covers everything I needed, probably 5-10 really useful sites.

For now, here's a screenshot of one panel from our home automation system

#HomeAssistant #Zigbee #Sonoff #Blitzwolf #Tradfri