Initial Smart Home Setup
My daughters business regarding plants got me into exploring home automation.
I bought a few devices and started testing them at home. I just went to the local shops and bought a few devices.
Initially I was quite impressed with how easy they were to setup (proviso here on wifi network and bands , 2.4GHz and 5GHz that I’ll discuss in a separate article) and so added some different devices from different manufacturers. This caused a bit of a challenge as I had to use different apps to control different devices.
Electric Hot Water Cylinder Control
The main device I was interested in was being able to switch on/off my Electric Hot Water Cylinder (HWC) to save electricity.
This had been a particular bug bear for me as I am on spot pricing for electricity and there are penalties for electrical usage during peak times, but not at other times.
I was in the habit of waking in the night as I have some back pain , and so turned on the HWC and later turned it off again at a later time in the night. This could be very successful or erratic depending on how poor my sleep was.
I had an issue with the temperature probe and had an electrician fix it, and asked for a quote for a timer for HWC and was given a $450 quote.
On looking online I came across the fingerbot ($40 NZ via temu) and tried using that but it paired via bluetooth and needed a zigbee gateway(which, at the time I didn’t know anything about) and it was a complete failure for my use case.
So I purchased a Sonoff wifi power meter and connected that to an isolation switch for the HWC and it was great. The next door neighbours had one and they recommended it to me.
I could look at projected price and demand for the day (Blue= Projected, Green= Suppliers bought (based on their expected demand from their clients, Yellow=actual usage) from here.
The chart below is for my specific substation in Wellington.
The device was controlled from a mobile app, eWLink, that you could use to set times when you wanted the power to be turned on/off and it has a dashboard to show how much power consumed in week & month.
So now I can see when I can purchase cheaper electricity for my Hot Water, which is about 2/3 of my energy usage, and I can hopefully get it at the cheaper times outside of the morning (7-12) and evening (5-9pm) peak times where there are extra charges added.
As suppliers can purchase at any time the forward green curve can change quite quickly, so sometimes you think you have cheap power but in fact the actual power demand at that time can be higher, I think this is because some industrial power demands suddenly come on late in the night period. Its still cheaper than power purchased at peak times.
I’m pleased with the outcome and this has been a really useful Home Automation.
Lights and plug control
I tried adding a couple of Tapo lights (coloured) and a plug for testing. I also had another from a different brand, it was white only so I later stopped using it.
I needed the tapo app to set these items up , so a different app from the one for the HWC. So after pairing the devices with the app I could manually turn them on/off or put them on a schedule and even combine them into groups to activate at specific times or with specific actions, eg When phone came into a specific room or with an NFC Tag. The last a bit fancy for me.
I set the lights up in my bedroom and also in my bathroom, so when I was going to sleep I could turn off the bedroom light from my phone without getting out of bed to do so (I only use a main ceiling light) and also in the night I could turn on the bathroom light when nature called. The nice thing with the coloured lights is you can set the light level and also the hue, so soft cream and dim light for nighttime so you didn’t fully awaken to harsh bright light.
The lights I’ve found useful. I set another up in the kitchen, but have had problems with that one. I think due to its distance from the wifi router. I will discuss that issue below.
I got a Tapo smart plug automated and plan on using it for electric heaters in rooms, its currently autumn and not required at present. In NZ central heating very uncommon, electric heating common from oil filled heaters or air conditioned heat pumps are becoming more common.
Wifi connecting to smart device -2.4GHz NOT 5GHz band- Woe is me
Shortly before I started taking an interest in Home Automation my previous router (duel band, separate band for 2.4 and one for 5 gHz) was giving grief and I got a new mesh router that had a combined band and switched to the strongest band, usually 5gHz. So the new router would decide which band you would have, and for phone this was predominantly the 5gHz. The 5gHz band is higher frequency and better in closer areas, whereas 2.4 for further away.
Most Home Automation devices run on 2.4gHz. So when you want to pair phone with smart device then the phone needs to be on a 2.4GHz and stay on that channel until the device is paired with the phone app.
When first settig up had massive issues with phone switching back to 5ghz band, so put in an old router onto the network, so I had a 2.4GHz band. I put 2nd router in bedroom. See vid below on how to setup:
Once I had 2nd router a lot of my issues regarding connectability went away. Although as it was located at the other end of the house the kitchen bulb doesn’t seem to connect and when it does it drops off shortly after, I think with the bulbs they need to be not too far from the router or have sufficient strength to stay connected. Maybe too many walls between router and bulb. I’ve recently paired it again after moving router closer and after pairing it dropped again.
Tuya Power Meter Reader
One further device I got was to read the incoming power to the house with a non-invasive clamp over the incoming power cable to the house with a wifi device- so with a NEW app I was able to connect to this and see my hourly power usage.
I was really happy with this device as I got power usage in real time. I could look back on its history and see how I used electricity throughout the day.
This allows me to plan when I use power for things like washing machine and Hot Water Heating, and also shows me how much power I’m using at peak times.
State of Home automation at this time
This was my initial setup, at the same time I was trying to build a soil moisture meter using a simple soil sensor and a Raspberry Pi Pico w/wifi micro-processor, that being a bit of a challenge.
So, this basic setup is using 3 different apps, the Sonoff one, the Tapo one & the Tuya one. So I have to check each app depending on what I’m doing.
Then along comes Home Assistant. I’ll discuss this in a later article.
Overall most of these items I’m impressed with, the bulbs were about $25 NZ purchased in NZ, and the plug about $25 too. The Sonoff Hot Water Switch was about $35NZ from China from Sonoff web page, and the clamp meter about $22 from AliExpress.
I was pleased with the lights, HWC power switch and the Clamp Meter. I found they were all useful.
Some cons to the pros above
- A bit of a hassle setting up 2nd router but once up and running they seem to be reliable.
- 3 different apps to read and see/activate devices
- Historic data cannot be downloaded on some apps or devices, or you have to pay an annual subscription to get that historic data that is being stored on cloud servers owned by the companies.
- Cabling can be intrusive around the house
- Wiring up some devices need some electrical understanding
End Comment
At the end of the first cycle of exploration into Home Automation devices I was pleasantly pleased with ease of setup of the devices.
The wifi setup was a frustration and I’m still having difficulties with it due to the location of routers and devices on the setup. I’m looking at you Kitchen Bulb!
Overall the pro’s outweigh the con’s and I wanted to proceed further.
