Thinking of buying, are my very basic ideas possible? (UK)

General Discussion
1

Hiya

Brand new here and not done an awful lot of research regarding Home Automation.

I have just had my kitchen installed. and typical of me, I have thought about something new (Home Automation) after the event DOH!

Anyway, in my kitchen I have 22 Dimmable GU10 LEDs.
There are 4 dimmable switches
I have a Yamaha AMP
I have a Nest Thermostat
TV with Sky Q

What I would like to do is have a motion sensor so when you walk into the room the LEDS come on, or at least one section of them.
What Dimmer switches would be good for this?
I would like an Echo DOT to automate some of this via voice
Not sure if anything i can do with the TV and SKY Q as they are not connected to anything other than to the AMP via optical.
I would the Echo Dot to connect to the Nest Thermostat, this may do this without anymore automation, but would be nice all in one place

Is this all doable with my current kitchen set up?

What items do i require for this small project?

Many thanks for any help

Paul

2

Are you in the US or the UK? The selection of devices available is different. From the description, I would guess that you’re in the UK?

Since this is a recent remodel, do you know if you have a neutral at the switch? (That would be a “three wire” set up rather then the more common “two wire”.) That also significantly changes the Device options.

As far as the lighting goes, that should definitely be doable. If you are in the UK, see the following thread:

if I guessed wrong on the region, here’s a similar thread for the US. ( it also has a discussion of motion sensors which would apply to both regions. It’s light switches where there is the most variation because so few UK homes have the third wire required by many networked switches.)

As for the television, at present the simplest integration in both the US and the UK is to use a Logitech Harmony Hub as the go-between from the SmartThings system to the home entertainment devices. If you have that, then you have many more options for television control.

https://support.smartthings.com/hc/en-gb/articles/205653834-Logitech-Harmony-Home-Hub

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4

Regarding the nest… At present there is no official integration between nest and smartthings as using SmartThings to control nest violates its terms of service. This is because nest wishes to limit the number of things that a third party HA system can control, but the SmartThings architecture is such that customer developers can control pretty much anything about an associated device. There is a custom integration created by community members that is fairly popular, but it’s just something to be aware of.

All of that said, Nest has its own official integration with echo ( or dot – – anything that can work with echo can also work with Dot) that will work whether you have SmartThings or not. So that part is simple.

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5

Hiya

You are correct, it is the UK :slight_smile:Thanks for updating it

I have just text my electrician to see whether I have a neutral

Regarding the TV, I have a Harmony remote but not the hub, maybe one day :wink:

Will be back with my Neutral answer soon

Thanks

Paul

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6

How do your current switches relate to the lights? That is, do you have four zones and each zone has its own switch? Or do you have a two-way or even five way setup where multiple switches control the same set of lights?

And regardless of that answer, what is the specific load on each switch? How many lamps and their specification?

In this case, it may change the device recommendations, not because of what is available but because of the minimum and maximum load for an individual device model.

7

Right, there are 4 zones as such

I have a double switch which controls 6 x 5w and 8 x 5w leds
The other 2 zones are singles which has 4 x 5w bulbs

Thanks

Paul

8

Right, apparently I have Neutrals in all banks :slight_smile:

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9

In that case, it’s much easier.

If you want to do this with SmartThings, you will need the smartthings UK model hub for any project. At present it is only available from Currys or the Samsung UK site.

http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/samsung-smartthings-1128-commercial.html

As far as light switches, most standard Z wave switches will work with SmartThings, although some “scene controllers” will need custom code.

Vesternet is a reliable online retailer with excellent technical support and a good selection. You can browse their Z wave devices to see what looks good to you, and then ask about specific models in the forum. They do offer a number of other technologies like enocean, but only the zWave will work directly with SmartThings. Since you do have a neutral at the switchbox, you should be able to use most of the Zwave light switches shown.

Again, if you go with SmartThings you would be able to use either Z wave or zigbee home automation (ZHA 1.2) motion sensors. One of the advantages of SmartThings is that you are not limited to the devices of its own brand as long as the device is certified for either Zwave or ZHA 1.2, although in some cases custom code may be required to take advantage of some features of a device.

If you choose to go with the Devolo hub or one of the other smartthings competitors, some of those are Zwave only, so it’s important to decide on the hub before you start buying devices or you might end up with incompatibilities.

Protocols supported by SmartThings:

http://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=Supported_Network_Protocols

And the official “works with SmartThings” list for the UK. You will notice that there are no light switches on it at all. ( there are several in wall modules that are used to control lighting.) But most of the zwave switches that vesternet sells will work. However, you should be aware that SmartThings support may not be able to help you with a device that is not on the official list, so that can also affect device choice.

https://www.smartthings.com/uk/compatible-products

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10

Fantastic answer, many thanks indeed for this

I will have more questions, there is no doubt about that lol

Thanks again

Paul

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11

I have read about a version 2, is this that version http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/smart-tech/smart-tech/smart-home/smart-home-starter-kits/samsung-smartth-smartthings-starter-kit-10135868-pdt.html

12

Yes, there was no UK model for the version one. So the UK model is the same as the US version two, except on the UK frequency.

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13

Thank you :slight_smile:

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