Show HN: The home automation system with an API

http://new.ninjablocks.com/hn

by schappim • 14 years ago

149 89 14 years ago

new.ninjablocks.com

pdufour2• 14 years ago

Is this related to Lockitron?

schappim13• 14 years ago

Nope (but we hope to integrate with them in the future). I should also give them a shout out for making http://selfstarter.us/ available. We used components from it and shoved them onto Sinatra instead of Rails.

Cheers,

Marcus

pdufour2• 14 years ago

Ah, that explains it. I was definitely noticing some similarities. Thanks for clearing that up.

8ig8• 14 years ago

Still soaking it all in, but one inconsistency jumped out at me:

"Shipping Mid January 2013"

"First batch ships December 2012"

schappim13• 14 years ago

Hi Big8 (Marcus from Ninja Blocks here). Thanks for the heads up, I've put in the fix.

Cheers,

Marcus

muellerwolfram• 14 years ago

ninja fix... but probably to quick, now it says january 2012

notum• 14 years ago

The hardware package alone makes this look like a really good deal.

Why isn't the "remaining" number going down?

schappim13• 14 years ago

Q. >> why isn't the "remaining" number going down

A. Slow web hooks. The page is written in Sinatra. The sinatra app stores an inventory value in MongoDB.

When there is a new order, our commerce engine Shopify (is meant to) send a web hook POST to the sinatra app to get it to pull the current inventory via Shopify's API. This hasn't been happening!

Cheers,

Marcus

mikegioia• 14 years ago

I've never wanted $200 more than I do right now :(

pstuart2• 14 years ago

Very impressive. One thing that would be nice would be a low cost light switch replacement.

schappim13• 14 years ago

Mate this keeps on popping up internally, what exactly did you have in mind?

Cheers,

Marcus (Ninja Blocks)

pstuart2• 14 years ago

A light switch that fits in a normal plate that can be remotely "switched". One can pick up a SPST switch for a buck at the local home improvement center -- $10 for this feature would make it easier to buy without hesitation.

hayksaakian• 14 years ago

I remember seeing you guys at TC Disrupt. Looking good!

schappim13• 14 years ago

Thanks mate! We're slowly getting there :)

cubicle672• 14 years ago

PayPal are bastards. I cancelled my account with them a few years ago and they've since refused to process any payment using my cc. This has caused me much frustration over time and I'm not alone

Not sure if people who use PayPay for credit card processing are aware of this. I'd love to buy this - and I attempted to - but can't.

schappim13• 14 years ago

Unfortunately they're our only option in Australia ( at least until these guys come out of beta https://pin.net.au/ ).

cubicle672• 14 years ago

Yes, we're a bit short on choice here, aren't we? I'm using eWay http://www.eway.com.au/ who have been fantastic to work with but require you have a merchant bank account. Seen pin.net.au before and it looks good

damncabbage2• 14 years ago

I'm looking at using https://www.braintreepayments.com/tour/international for online ticket sales a little later this year.

(I'd love to use Pin, but I'm still waiting for a way to use them without the massive bugbear of anything beyond PCI SAQ A, which comes into play as soon as you're POSTing CC numbers to your server.)

PS: Hi Marcus. ProgSoc Rob here. :D

jzwinck3• 14 years ago

Could you accept Bitcoins?

damncabbage2• 14 years ago

It's also unfortunately one of the few ways to accept USD online in Australia, unless you hop through a ridiculous number of hoops with NAB (a bank)[1][2].

(BrainTree just launched in Australia[3], though. I'll be checking them out shortly for a project of my own. :) )

1. http://blog.angrymonkeys.com.au/why-being-an-aussie-startup-...

2. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3098224

3. https://www.braintreepayments.com/tour/international

windexh8er12• 14 years ago

So... A problem here - there's a lot of startup in the home automation space right now. I've been using MiCasaVerde for over a year now and it's awesome. Fully controllable and configurable via the MiOS GUI, or hack it to your heart's content via Lua scripts. The awesome thing is there's plenty of devices you can buy OTS right now whether Z-Wave (built-in) or Insteon (add-on USB adapter). What confuses me about what NinjaBlocks is trying to do is - they don't cater to anyone who already HAS home automation... Meaning: I'd buy it for $200, but they don't say what I can integrate with. I'm not going to spend another grand on switches, dimmers, motion detectors, locks, etc. if I don't know I can reuse my investment. That's a big part of why Spark is not a good option IMHO (http://www.sparkdevices.com/) - because they're using 802.11 WiFi (I don't want my home automation components on Wifi for a variety of reasons, but the first two are: 1) WiFi doesn't have a low-power advantage like ZigBee, Z-Wave, Insteon, etc. and 2) WiFi doesn't automagically create a mesh network for auto-routing and network extension).

Then you have a startup like SmartThings (http://smartthings.com/) that's just reinventing the wheel, creating a pretty iOS interface, and then trying to charge an outrageous amount for a monthly service - something MiCasaVerde doesn't do. So, at the end of the day would I use SmartThings? I'd like to - but I won't because I don't want to pay $120 a year for something I can run better in my own infrastructure. I don't want you selling my energy usage data or knowing if I'm home, with something like MiCasaVerde - I can choose not to use their cloud proxy to control my home.

If anyone is listening who's designing home automation and wants to cater to people who are looking at building a service to deploy these types of automation to the masses you need to do it right. Baby Boomers, at least the majority of them, will think all of the above are too complicated, so they're going to want someone to install and maintain this for them. There's a huge middleground that needs to be solved here and unless SmartThings and others are going to provide a service, that $10/month is not going to be justified.

Back to NinjaBlocks, please answer the following: 1) Monthly fee if I use your cloud proxy to hit the controller? If so - how much? 2) If #1 is true - is the API directly accessible on the controller - or are you locking me in? 3) Low power integration (i.e. ZigBee, Z-Wave, Insteon, etc.)? Answered my own Q: No... From (http://help.ninjablocks.com/customer/portal/articles/692139-...): "The original Ninja Block comes with a RF 433.92 Mhz (433) dongle and future Ninja Blocks will have this baked in. 433 is awesome because you will find it in all sorts of low-cost battery powered devices, its range is pretty good too. That said, its not all sunshine and lollipops - there are good reasons its considered "low-tech" - only one device can "talk" at a time, labelling is appalling, all protocols are proprietary. So not everything will work out of the box, but a lot of stuff will. " <<<<<----- Sorry, but this sucks, I'm out. You need to have a real and baked solution besides this 433Mhz junk that's not mesh, and has zero security baked in. There's no way I'll pay $200 for this with zero long term scalability or security in mind.

Again, another pretty solution that's just a toy. For my money I'd go with SmartThings - but for the long term I'm sticking with my MiCasaVerde (http://micasaverde.com) setup - cost feasible and fully in my control and no monthly costs. Until someone can come to the table with that I'm better off building my own interface.

onethumb2• 14 years ago

Lots of good questions here, but I think the critical question is whether it's compatible with any of the other emerging standards like Z-Wave. Can someone from Ninja Blocks weigh in on this? There are a ton of Z-Wave components I'd love to mix in here.

windexh8er12• 14 years ago

It's not (see second to last paragraph - Q #3, and answer follows from the NinjaBlocks site). Z-Wave and Insteon are the defacto standard, if it doesn't support it - it's not going to fly. I'm guessing they didn't want to deal with licensing.

And, Z-Wave isn't emerging - it's been around for quite a while. It's not perfect (most low power mesh wireless networking standards have their flaws), but what NinjaBlocks has chosen to implement is not something you want in a system you depend on. Insteon has the advantage of wireless plus being able to operate over powerline (i.e. your home power distribution).

schappim13• 14 years ago

Hi Windexh8er,

(Ninja Marcus here) Thanks for your feedback and questions!

1) Nope, no monthly fee. 2) We don't support this today. We think most of the value actually occurs in the cloud. Having said that all our APIs, hardware and code are open source, if you want to implement this you can. 3) The question of protocols (433Mhz or otherwise seems to miss the point of Ninja Blocks (& the Ninja Platform). We want to integrate with ALL connected hardware. We've been working on adding other protocols like ZigBee, Z-Wave, Insteon but they're not ready yet. I personally believe the future is IP.

We've included 433Mhz because it gets people started very cheaply!

Cheers,

Marcus

windexh8er12• 14 years ago

Marcus,

Thanks for your response. I'd, kindly, disagree with you on #2. I'm a serious home automation user - and have it deployed in multiple locations for myself and family. I won't buy a controller that banks it's existence on Internet connectivity - there are use cases for having controllers air-gapped, and in my book forcing an API in the cloud is a big miss. Hope you'll reconsider, until then - you won't find me as a customer.

jacquesm• 14 years ago

One of the few areas where I will not use cloud services at all is as soon as they are tied in with real world hardware.

'value' for you occurs in the cloud, to me it is a privacy/security risk waiting to materialize in some form and it feels grafted on to create a subscription model where a one-time payment would suffice.

neya2• 14 years ago

This. This is the most valuable insight an entrepreneur looking to jump into home automation can derive directly from a customer. Thank you very much! I will keep these in mind when I design my HA systems. Cheers!

windexh8er12• 14 years ago

Let me know if you're serious - I'd be game to chat on an ongoing basis if someone is going to do this right!

level092• 14 years ago

how does the central computer connect to the internet ? can it use a 3G sim card for example ?

schappim13• 14 years ago

Hi level09,

Our hardware engineer did get it working on Telstra 3G using a USB 3G adapter. It does require you to jump into linux land to set this up.

Cheers,

Marcus

level092• 14 years ago

Cool, Thanks Marcus. Can't wait til mid jan !

jdotjdot• 14 years ago

I'm not really clear on how much hardware experience you need to extend this. For example, let's say I wanted to hook this up to my thermostat as you suggested, or to my espresso machine as you did. What would that actually require? Would I need those breakout boards? I can't even find any; how would I get one?

schappim13• 14 years ago

This kit includes a wireless temperature and humidity sensor. If you want to hack your expresso machine you can use the breakout kit to do this (of course you'll need basic electronics skills to do this).

Cheers,

Marcus (Ninja Blocks)

Aqua_Geek2• 14 years ago

This looks really interesting. Some random thoughts:

Your homepage says the Ninja Block contains an Arduino-compatible µC and a BeagleBone. It took me a while to understand that the former is for communicating with sensors and the latter is for communicating with your API. I didn't realize they worked together at first - I thought it was some sort of "we used Arduino initially but then had to upgrade to something else in later versions" thing.

Interesting use of USB connectors to pass power and IO to accessory boards.

schappim13• 14 years ago

Hi Aqua_Geek,

Thanks for the feedback, we should make that more clear. Actually both the Arduino-compatible µC and a BeagleBone will be used to talk to sensors.

Having a tiny linux computer on board buys us a heap of flexibility!

Cheers,

Marcus

jwatte• 14 years ago

1) I don't want wireless at all. Too easily hacked without detection. Wired Ethernet is pretty cheap these days, and power line signaling is also available.

2) Like Twine, another HA startup, and all of the incumbents, it's too expensive.

sprobertson• 14 years ago

And with SiriProxy [https://github.com/plamoni/SiriProxy] you could control it all by voice! The future is near!

schappim13• 14 years ago

We want to do this but fear the wrath of Apple.

(Ninja) Marcus

iamdave• 14 years ago

I am really sad you guys have that stance.

tsumnia2• 14 years ago

Like windexh8r, I'm starting to see the rise of home automation systems as well. This is actually an area I'm currently looking into working on some projects in.

With that, what are some some features users would like to see?

Frozenlock3• 14 years ago

Any plan to use industry standard protocols?

I work in HVAC controls and I'm always surprised by how the 'home automation' folks seem to just ignore what's already out there.

My favorite standard is BACnet (standard for ASHRAE, ANSI and ISO), but there's also Modbus, Lontalk...

There's a bunch of people who have already worked very hard to make sure there's some usable protocols for lighting, air conditioning and even security access.

IMO you could leverage a strong position and use existing codes by using them.

askpete9• 14 years ago

Totally agree in principal @frozenlock. 433 was simply the path of least resistance for us. It gave us very cost effective off the shelf sensors, and critically, remote control power sockets in all regions. Its not super elegant, however, it gives software developers (most of our customers atm) hardware with an API for peanuts compared to the established options.

The Ninja is a meta-platform that offers a normalized API for disparate hardware. See my reply above for the long winded answer. The short version is - we aim to provide OAuth for your all stuff ;)

tsumnia2• 14 years ago

What are you using for automation? At my old company, we were using Zigbee thermostats after giving up on BACnet/Modbus (just didn't have that time/ability)

Frozenlock3• 14 years ago

I wouldn't call it automation per se. HVAC control is simply named... well, control.

The last control company I worked for was heavily invested in the Delta controls' products. (All working on top of the BACnet protocol) Last I heard Delta also started to toy with Zigbee.

In my head there aren't mutually exclusive, as the BACnet architecture enables it to be built on top of other protocols. (BACnet/arcnet, BACnet/MSTP, BACnet/Ethernet, BACnet/IP...)

elbear• 14 years ago

Hi, Frozenlock. I'm interested in the topic of home automation, but I know very little. Can you recommend any extra reading besides the standards that you mentioned?

Frozenlock3• 14 years ago

Unfortunately, not really.

You see, home automation seems to always do "it's own thing" in regards to industry standards, which is why I manifested myself here.

If you want to know more about building control however, you can just type "hvac control" in google and you should be in the right spot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Building_Automation

nepsilon• 14 years ago

At the bottom it still reads "First batch ships January 2012". I guess there too you mean 2013.

On the other hand, your copyright year is already in 2013.

mcartyem• 14 years ago

The best solution to home automation is to have such a small home that there's no need to automate.

That's a special case of a more general solution. The best way to solve a problem is to not have to solve it.

jzwinck3• 14 years ago

This is insightful. I wonder if someone from Ninja or another HA user can comment on what value these systems can offer to someone in a one-bedroom apartment.

Living small also reduces the need for fancy power usage monitoring, WiFi repeaters, etc.

nitrogen• 14 years ago

I'm not affiliated with Ninja Blocks, but here's what I did in my previous zero-bedroom apartment with a Kinect: http://nitrogen.posterous.com/home-automation-and-lighting-c...

huhtenberg3• 14 years ago

You realize that these are dead-locked, right?

https://s3.amazonaws.com/ninja-assets/gears.svg

tommys• 14 years ago

a classic one :-)

ww520• 14 years ago

Not if they are in different planes of depth. :)

Shaun_Springer• 14 years ago

As a former employee if Crestron, and a big advocate of change and disruption in this industry, I am xcoted to see this product coming to life.

I'd love to talk to you guys about what your doing and how maybe I can integrate some high end gear with it.

askpete9• 14 years ago

please ping us help@ninjablocks.com

hingisundhorsa• 14 years ago

I've used Wiser Home Control, http://www.wiserhomeautomation.com/ . There isn't an API per say but I figured out that they're using XML for all their commands/events for lighting, heating, air-conditioning, security, etc.

lunetics• 14 years ago

For some advanced use take a look at http://www.ip-symcon.de/

It uses KNX / EIB Bus industrial standards for Home automation, as well as enocean and other 3rd party automation tools.

And it's fully customizable / programmable with php.

davidw• 14 years ago

Here's a home automation-ish problem I've got right now:

We live in an on older (70ies) apartment building, with a wonky central heater, and people with varying levels of tolerance for heat and cold. Some of us suspect the heater is kind of broken, because it's hot when it's warmer out, and sometimes seems to pump out less heat when it's cold.

So... it'd be interesting to collect data: interior temperature for all 6 apartments, and exterior temperature in the shade. And do so cheaply. Ideas?

askpete9• 14 years ago

A Ninja Block might be a good match.

pros - You can retrieve folded historical data for sensors from the api (min/max/avg/interval etc) - You can set a callback that POSTs every reading (every 45s) - cheap, additional temp/humidity sensors are $15

cons - range could be a real problem. Manufacturer states 100m open air 30 inside, which is inline with our experience (with a fully extended antena). Apartment walls could be a showstopper.

linker3000• 14 years ago

How about a raspberry pi with a bunch of DS18B20 1-wire temp sensors - stupidly cheap if you can handle the wiring.

I'm sketching out the design for a raspberry pi-based central heating controller with a web interface, mix of sensors and an lcd display - should cost around 75-85UK pounds, including the pi

drsim2• 14 years ago

I backed the 'wireless sensor readings to internet' device Twine (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/supermechanical/twine-li...) so I'm going to put down a couple things about my experience.

-- Production delays -- I waited almost a year longer than expected to get my unit. Because I just wanted to tinker I wasn't bothered. Ninja Blocks say their units are manufactured, just waiting for the enclosures. This might not be a problem for them.

-- Battery eaters -- Twine eats batteries like nobodies business. Two AA batteries last about two weeks. On the forums this seems like the typical experience. Ninja Blocks looks as if the central 'Ninja Block' can be mains powered. But will the wireless sensors have a short battery life?

-- Web app -- Twine has a website that the device must communicate with to report data and push rules to it. There's no (out-of-the-box) way to get it to talk to a local server via a clean API.

This was a big disappointment for me mainly because their web app is very limited: - No data logging (just reports the latest figure) - Rules can just be triggered over thresholds (ie when temperature reaches 20c then X) not when temperature changes - For moisture the actual resistance isn't reported, just a wet or dry condition. This renders it useless for plant watering.

Twine can make a HTTP request when a rule is tripped. I plan to play with this but it's not that useful if it can't just HTTP request every time a value changes as I wanted to log temperature (plus it's a GET!).

The Ninja Blocks apps look better and appear to fill the gap between reading something then doing something. Twine can really only report something (twitter/sms/email/HTTP supported). But I'd caution that until you get your hands a device like this you don't know of its true limitations.

-- Sensors -- I didn't up my kickstarter amount when they announced new sensors. I wish I had, as only the temperature sensor is nearly useful. The other built in sensor is orientation... ? IMHO they should've thrown in the other sensors and maybe upped the price to increase satisfaction.

I prefer the sensor pack that ships by default with Ninja Blocks.

In spite of the above I'm optimistic about Twine as it really is early days. This space has massive potential if it can break out of communities like ours into the mainstream. I just hope Supermechanical doesn't get distracted and focusses squarely on their flagship product.

Ninja Blocks? I won't be ordering but will keep a close eye on what those who receive the first units think. Their approach so far seems to be a better path to market than Twine's crowdfunding and their presentation superior.

askpete9• 14 years ago

hey @drism - we are still waiting for our twines here in Aus. You make some excellent points.

-- Production delays -- this is our second go around, we had a kickstarter back in March and it was late (and not a great product to be honest). We learnt a lot this time around and ponied up for a small run. We were "sure" we would ship in December when started taking orders on the 11th (of Dec). Alas, Murphy hates us. Final assembly http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQKQw-YXyjA is happening now. Bleeding into the holidays has cost us a couple of weeks, 15th Jan is about as iron clad as anything can ever be thats outsourced to Shenzhen.

-- Battery eaters -- the block (a beagle bone + arduino cape) ships with a 3A switching power supply - no messing around. The 433 sensors are off the shelf items you find in low end security systems. They use most of their power when they transmit (which isn't that often) and (whilst not tested) we estimate the batteries will last a long time.

-- Web app -- We have a web app that lets you see live data and make simple rules. As you have probably figured out with Twine. Whilst that is fun and sometimes useful but pretty limiting. We think making your devices available to third party apps via OAuth is going to make things much more interesting!

We have mountains left to do, but we already have:

- inbound and outbound webhooks, which enable simple integrations with stuff like Zapier or Tasker no code affairs. - a fully featured API that we use for everything, i.e. not an afterthought- see http://docs.ninja.is - separate interfaces for creating user land apps and devices - OAuth2 - Open source client (currently being refactored to support third-party modules a la npm/gems/etc) - see the "release-two" branch https://github.com/ninjablocks/client

-- Sensors - lol re-orientation, we had an accelerometer in our kickstarter block which was removed precisely because no one used it. Pretty much the first time I found an real world use was for our friday afternoon rube goldberg machine http://youtu.be/jPE_M0ciCYI (beware shaky cam, but we weren't doing another take)

We really wanted to support remote controlling power sockets as soon as possible, but at a reasonable price. That eventually led us down the path of 433 as the only globally available option. Insteon, Z-wave, even Zigbee are "better" technically - but they are 50-100 per socket vs 10-20. We've secured a CE certified supplier for Europe and Australia and will be reselling soon for $12 a piece. There are ok options on Amazon for the US and we are lining up something for the UK - we can't justify the MOQ just yet.

We opted for off the shelf sensors the second time around for a whole bunch of reasons (see above). Cost, availability, but mostly because hardware is hard and oh so slow - especially for software guys. Note that we think the value is in wrapping everything, especially all these awesome kickstarter/indiegogo wifi devices that will probably have average APIs (no offense, but hardware guys just don't seem to grok APIs or auth - think wemo ... LAN only undocumented SOAP, really?)

There are important things we need to tick off - the huge one being severing the link to the mother ship. Currently all logic lives in AWS, thats not acceptable long term. Unlike some of the people in this space, we want our users to connect to our service because it adds awesome value through an ecosystem, not because you dropped a bundle on their hardware which requires it.

Important note - you can already make your own devices. We've got an Arduino Ethernet library that runs on a 328p (that's 2k of memory for the uninitiated) https://github.com/ninjablocks/arduino-ninja-blocks. There is even a browser implementation that uses cors https://github.com/ninjablocks/browser-ninja-blocks. Of courese you can run our official client (git link above) on anything that supports Node.js or just use the REST interface to make anything with http a device.

Sorry about the verbal diarrhoea - midnight Saturday in Sydney :/. I certainly don't want to suggest that the Ninja platform is all sunshine and lollipops today. However, if you a software hacker and want a real API for things. That's where we are going and we'd love for you to come along for the ride ;)

windexh8er12• 14 years ago

" Zigbee are "better" technically - but they are 50-100 per socket vs 10-20. "

Again - way off base here - please do your homework. A plug-in on-off socket can be had for under $30 (http://www.ebay.com/itm/Wayne-Dalton-HA-02WD-Wireless-Small-...). The cheap 433MHz argument goes out the window very quickly if you know what you're doing.

drsim2• 14 years ago

Great reply. If the Supermechanical guys were as engaged as you I certainly have no gripes.

DanBlake• 14 years ago

Just bought one- Will be replacing my Lowes Iris system if it works decent enough. Will this work with the existing lowes iris sensors?

edit- It does not support the sensors :(

Also, will it work with standard security/video cameras (RTSP/RTMP)?

edit- no, it does not look like that works now either :/

askpete9• 14 years ago

AFAICT Iris is a zigbee/zwave hub? We have experimented with a zigbee via a usb dongle - not production ready but its doable. We'd love to support Z-wave, but its a longer term feature with licensing issues and bandwidth pushing it down the backlog somewhat. Does Iris have an API that could be wrapped?

IP cams (especially the ultra cheap ones with pan and tilt) are way up on our list. It will be one of the first client modules off the shelf in the new year.

windexh8er12• 14 years ago

If you want something that works with what you have today your best bet is MiCasaVerde (I've mentioned them a lot in posts - have no tie to them, but am a mostly-satisifed customer at this point):

http://micasaverde.com/vera-lite.php

The Vera Lite is probably what you want... It can handle your existing sensors and do video (although the video isn't anything spectacular - I use a different system for that, but it does work).

The Vera has "app" concept - so from the controller you can install MiCasaVerde or community provided applications to do certain things (i.e something like a countdown timer for a scene, or an app to control an OTS yard watering system for example). But the best part is you can write your own apps (LUA). The system is entirely hackable (SSH access). So it's basically an open slate to most extent. But, the key thing is there's no monthly fee if you want to use their cloud service - you just need an account and controller (I'm guessing they collect stats on you events - but that's just a guess on my part).

The UI leaves something to be desired - and again, that's where startups like SmartThings will capitalize (pretty).

huhtenberg3• 14 years ago

You are over-thinking it.

I am as convinced as ever that almost all home automation needs, realistically, are covered by a WiFi-enabled drop-in replacements for conventional wall switches, junction boxes and sockets. Everything else is nice, but you must get the basics right before moving on to the fluff. And nobody still has got it. I want to be able to switch off a floor lamp 5 feet away and turn up the heat in the bedroom without lifting my precious behind from the couch. Whether there's a motion in a garage is really secondary.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3957590

askpete9• 14 years ago

Well said @huhtenberg we certainly hope to serve your lazy ass ;)

We do remote control sockets today. Not elegant but at $10-15 a piece best priced laziness available.

We are cooking up something for IR controlled heating/cooling.

huhtenberg3• 14 years ago

Do show them sockets. A photo/render and a spec if you have them.

The IR controlled heating/cooling ... IR? How is that supposed to work?

windexh8er12• 14 years ago

WiFi enabled HA is a bad idea. Please one of my earlier posts as to why. To recap, though (since you're self-proclaimed lazy and all):

Wifi is subject to a single transceiver - that does not automatically extend. This is a big problem in tight spaces, because generally the smaller you go, the worse reception / transmission power you'll have in these systems. What you want is a mesh network (i.e. ZigBee, Z-Wave, Insteon, etc) that will automatically handle the mesh aspect of being able to continually extend itself as you build out. It is also much less maintenance long term as well (for a variety of reasons).

But if you think that there aren't drop in replacement wall switches already - there are. Aeon Labs (http://aeotec.com/z-wave-in-wall-switches) makes some killer stuff that is in-wall, and there are a multitude of others. Check it out - everything you want is out there. And you can build an entire HA system in a decent size living space for far less than $750 USD.

sauteedbiscuits• 14 years ago

The "Only x remaining" part is sleazeball bullshit.

It was 5 a few hours ago, then 12, now 19.

Pretty sure it is supposed to go the other way.

Show HN: The home automation system with an API

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