Hardware is hard… But with the magic of Kickstarter and IndieGogo, hundreds of enterprises are running off with your money building innovative hardware.
Lookup “BRight Switch”… I haven’t checked on it recently.
But I’d love to figure out what’s the minimum viable product here, really. What would be the minimum you’d expect from $150±, that would satisfy your requirements.
Cool. Are you just using regular switches, sans the load line or something else?
Tell me about it (co-founded a venture that shipped hardware to 50k users in past 6 mo). I still back regularly because hardware’s hard, not impossible. While I’d love a fully integrated touchscreen solution, I’d also pay for an it-just-works-and-looks-great bracket that allows me to repurpose and easily power an old phone/tablet.
Unfortunately, they’re discontinued, but they’re intermatic auxiliary switches. I think GE makes them as well.
Haha…yeah I agree…only issue I have with kids and dogs…they don’t routinely do ANYTHING hahaha…
But I get what you are saying…I never really thought about using combinations of motion sensors to understand things better. May have to research more when I have more sensors. Start by just automating a few things then bring in the smarts. Some of your ideas are really interesting like accent lights in kitchen which I’ll have in my new house.
Are you doing those “combination rules” on motion sensors using the stock apps? I ask for the V2 local stuff? Just curious. I think a rules engine would be GRRRRRRREAT but I know it’s low on their priority list and I know other 3rd parties are developing it but would like something that I know won’t break if ST makes a change.
Either way…it’s interesting to see people’s set up like that as it does give me a few more ideas. At the moment, I am “beta testing” my home trying to determine what I need in the new home and testing products so very complicated scenarios I can’t test but that is very insightful…thanks Scott appreciate it.
Tony
That’s where the problem lies, I think.
You want, most touchscreen controller to be at lightswitch level, not down where most outlets are.
As we know, many (most!) old homes don’t even have Neutral wires at the lightswitch, so they can’t even be used as a power source, even if replaced with an outlet.
It is usually permissible to run low voltage wire inside walls, but gotta source the 5v somewhere.
Ideas?
I’ve attached an older iPad to the wall. It uses the phone version of the app but it works.
I’ve seen a few setups using an old tablet with a Qi charger mounted in the wall and magnets to hold the tablet in place. You just need to have an outlet close enough that you can plug in the wall wart and fish the 5V wire in the wall to the Qi pad.
I’m sure there’re some really old homes that don’t have neutral, but all homes built within last 30 years have one. All modern LED-capable wall dimmers and switches require neutral anyway.
Some are, some aren’t. The stuff controlling the AV gear uses an iTach, to which I send the IR commands from HAM Bridge. While you could do this with just a SmartApp, when you start controlling a half dozen or more AV components, it is much easier (and more reliable, timing wise) to write a script and execute it from a computer. It is also much easier to edit a simple text file than to have to go into multiple SmartApps and/or deviceTypes to change things up.
All of my HUE lighting scenes are controlled the same way (and using scripts gets you features not support in the SmartThings integration (transitionTimes, Alerts, ColorCycling).
Well… I wonder what proportion of homes in the USA were built in the last 30 years?
In San Francisco, my home, among thousands and thousands of others, were built prior to 1940!
Hard to find stats with just a quick search, but Forbes article founds that ~25% of homes for sale in certain metro markets where built prior to 1940, though only 1% in Las Vegas, Fort Lauderdale, Phoenix, etc.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/trulia/2013/05/02/american-homes-by-decade/
I think it would be beneficial to have a repository of ideas and how they were implemented so that people could review. More than smartapps but how they make them work…almost like recipes and what they accomplish. It would have to be user driven though. I think your ideas on how you leverage your hue would be interesting (i have them too but not nearly as integrated).
People come up with great ideas and others don’t know they are great until they here it. Should be a place that’s more than just a “use two apps to control living room lights” and more this setting, with this app, and this and that accomplishes this using these modes and routines. Something like that would be beneficial no?
Hmmmm…I KNOW ST doesn’t have the time to create something like this. Maybe someone (or groups) should take it on…mmmmmmm…got me wonderin’
Thoughts?
We have a “Projects” category in the forums, I think that’s where most people put stuff like that. Some very cool ideas there. 
Yeah I have see that…I was just thinking about one that was catered to it as opposed to just a forum post…again like a recipe card…it’s wishful thinking I know. Like I said, maybe I’ll talk about it with someone…give back 
I have a page on my site devoted to some of the things I have done with SmartThings that I think are cool. It is a small sampling, but I think the highlights are there.
Authors are free to put in as much detail as they want in project posts, and you can always ask for more.
Seriously, dude, how much more of a “recipe” do you need than the following?
https://community.smartthings.com/t/smart-secret-bookcase/
Or this?
Or this?
There are a number of topics in the Project category that have plenty of detail.
The key there is 30 years. My house was last renovated somewhere between 40+50 years ago. Until I started rewiring it over the past 5 years, most of the electrical was the original knob and tube with cloth covered wires that was put in almost 100 years ago.
@JDRoberts Those are great…i guess i should look through them all…wasn’t sure they were all that detailed. I wasn’t trying to insult anyone…but put it in a form where it was structured…nevermind…looks like the project section is fine…i was just throwing out ideas…
Ideas are good, and the amount of detail varies wildly, it just depends what the original author wanted to put in.
If you want to contribute to the community, you could always start an index topic in the projects category and index some of the more detailed projects. You know, author, link to the topic, General description of the use case.
It’s not surprising you didn’t know some of that stuff was in there, it can be really hard to find.
