Smart Home Blog 2020

It seems a few other people liked my smart corner lamp project, so I've been busy 3D printing bases for a few other people.

I am not usually tempted by things like the Prime Day sales but the Amazon Echo Show 8 seemed remarkably good value at just £70 and I was curious to see how well it would work in my own contextual smart home. So I bought one and I've undertaken a a detailed evaluation and review of the Amazon Echo Show 8. So far, I've been really impressed by what it adds to my smart home, despite me not being tied to the Amazon eco-system.

Samsung have announced The Premiere lifestyle projector which looks very interesting. The Premiere projects a 4K image of 100 to 130 inches and can be just 12cm from the wall. It uses triple laser to provide great contrast and also features in-built 4.2 channel sound with speakers and woofers.

Whilst I've been working on the RGBW smart lamp, I've also been updating my own smart switches. This is my 'test board' and allows me to test the switches with a wide range of lamps (dimmable, RGB, RGBW, RGBWW, etc.) and lighting format factors.

I've never really looked at using iOS shortcuts for smart home use before but, I spent some time researching them today and I impressed at what can be achieved. They are not a user interface you would use all the time but, they allow some quite complex tasks to be made very simple. They will be ideal for my family to use and I particularly like the spoken feedback that is possible.

Designed a new RGBW smart lamp base in Autodesk Fusion 360 this morning.

Printed it out as part of my smart corner lamp project.

Smart home top tip! When using flood/leak sensors like the Smartisant Flood & Leak Sensor FLD1, use an old circular or rectangular tray to increase the detection area. Don't use metal trays though as these may affect the sensor operation.

Typically, the Dallas 1-Wire DS1820 temperature sensors last 10 years or more but, they do occasionally fail or start to generate bad readings more frequently. My contextual smart home software tracks any warnings or errors, so I know when a sensor needs to be replaced.

This week, I replaced the 'Loft Temperature' sensor as it was generating bad readings too often for my liking. It has been in my loft for over 10 years.

Finalised the controller PCB for my current central heating system. This replaces the current Z-Wave SSR302 controller with a wired/relay solution to enable direct contextual smart home control. The HVAC project.

My Smartisant Arduino Shield SHLD1 is now in the Smartisant store. This is one of my smart home smart home building blocks and is used to connect literally hundreds of sensors and devices in my contextual smart home.

Before I install my new shower occupancy sensor, I thought I would do some smart shower sensor data analysis.

Having potentially having a space JSN-SR04T distance sensor, I thought I'd address the challenge of parking my son's Eunos Roadster in its garage. I've designed a battery powered visual garage parking aid and 3D printed this custom sensor mount for the JSN-SR04T.

My evaluation of the Sharp 2Y0A21 infra-red distance sensor has gone really well so I have 3D printed an enclosure for it.

I've not been happy with the performance of the ultrasonic distance sensor in my smart shower project, which is being used for occupancy detection. So I've been evaluating this sensors as an alternative.

Amongst my deliver of PCBs today was a load of these for safety lighting. They make it really easy to deploy low-level 'safety lighting' around the smart home, using really tiny amounts of power.

Interesting morning updating the code of my contextual smart home, to better model rain. It is now logging the number of minutes it has rained each day for the last 31 days and also logs monthly rainfall in minutes.

Really good progress this morning on the PCB design for the Arduino Mega 2560 Pro. This will allow me build my smart home even cheaper and using more compact electronics. This will eventually become another of my smart home building blocks.

My 18650 Li-ion batteries arrived for my NodeMCU ESP8266 evaluation.

For the next part of my NodeMCU ESP8266 evaluation, I've designed a bespoke PCB to allow deep sleep, battery monitoring and connection of up to 7 sensors.

Today, we had a lot of lightning around us and I got to fully test my new lightning sensor. It's really quite impressive, being able to detect individual lightning strike up to 27 miles away.

These last few days, I've been doing a NodeMCU ESP8266 evaluation to assess its smart home potential. I've been impressed so far. This £4 processor with on-board Wi-Fi can be fully integrated into my contextual smart home, to allow battery powered, remote sensing capability.

Completed prototype PCB design and build of my new lightning sensor. This is another of my and connects using a 4-way Molex connector to a Smartisant Arduino Shield SHLD1 or to a Smartisant 8-channel IO Board IO1.

Completed V2.0 of my Arduino Mega 2560 shield. This adds I2C functionality to a shield that is already packed with smart home potential.

This is now a Smartisant product and will be available in the Smartisant Store very soon.

It's been an interesting week, watching my mango seed germinate and turn into something that looks like a plant!

My smart home controlled conservatory irrigation system started to leak this week. Somehow the manifold had started to drip water. Fortunately, I had the foresight to add a Smartisant flood/leak sensor and got a notification before any damage was done :-)

The manifold has now been rebuilt and mounted on a new piece of wood.

This week, I've been putting my central heating and hot water under full control of my contextual smart home. This basically renders the smart thermostat obsolete but I've been working on my own 'thermostat'.

The HC-SR04 ultrasonic distance sensors are now potted in their 3D printed enclosures.

Pleased how the JSN-SR04T ultrasonic sensor looks when painted white but, initial testing shows that painting it has reduced its sensitivity to reflections from softer targets (i.e. people). I'm going to do a side by side comparison with an unpainted one.

Potting the ultrasonic distance sensors into a 3D printed case.

This JSN-SR04T ultrasonic sensor is more subtle than the previous HC-SR04 version and better suited to being mounted into the ceiling above my shower. It's going to be used as an occupancy sensor as part of my smart shower controller but it is going to be spray painted white first.

Going to be evaluating the Arduino Mega 2560 Pro in the coming weeks. Really compact and with all the smart home capability of the original Mega 2560.

Spent 3 hours running cables for the new RGBWW LED strip lighting in my conservatory. I really didn't think it would take that long but, there was something in the aluminium channel that made it really hard to pull cables through. Even with all the tools I've collected over the years to make running cables easier!

My smart water shut off valve is progressing nicely. This is the stepper motor mount.

I've been printing Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for our local hospital to help in fighting the Corona Virus. The first print took over 11 hours but, I've got it down to about 3 hours and 26 minutes now.

My first 3D printed smart home project is a switch plate adapter.

My Ender 3 Pro 3D printer arrived today, so I'll be progressing a lot of smart home projects in the coming weeks. You can read my review of it.

I'm currently working on a project to develop my own LED downlights. These are 12V dimmable warm-white lights but can also be colour changing RGBW lights. I'm even doing a variant using individually addressable LEDs. This is a 3D printed prototype. More on this very soon.

Busy building and testing sensors this week. These are soil moisture level sensors, which can be used as part of an intelligent irrigation system.

Fibaro launch their new Home Center 3 and it's going to cost a whopping £525 here in the UK! I am generally a fan of Fibaro kit but, I'm going to have to dig deeper to see how they can justify this price.

The next batch of soil moisture sensors are being potted up this week and will be on sale very soon.

Now this is something we want in our next smart home! CNET: Samsung The Wall 292-inch MicroLED TV from CES 2020.

Unlike most TV screens, the wall features a matric of micro LEDs, providing direct light output for incredible brilliance and contrast. The configurable panels allow screens to be built to fit each space and it can provide above 8K resolution (if the screen is large enough). The one featured in this video is 292" diagonally. It's very expensive!

When you cram lots of smart home technology into one product, like the recently announced Arlo Pro 3 Floodlight Camera it's going to be compromised, especially when it is battery powered. It is also likely to have a much shorter lifetime, than you would expect from the individual constituent parts and is usually more expensive (the launch price in Spring 2020 will be $250) and some of the features will require a cloud subscription. As soon as one feature fails, you typically have to bin the whole unit and many of the functions will also be compromised by being installed in one physical unit. You wouldn't usually install an IP camera in the same location as a flood light.

Nanoleaf announces its learning series of lighting. Nanoleaf says its new Learning Series "intuitively learns, senses and reacts to users needs"" without relying upon voice or manual controls thanks to the company's U-IQ sensors and algorithms.

This is a great example of trying to make something smart that shouldn't really be smart. We want our lighting to be intelligently controlled by our contextual smart home because it has all the sensors and context to make the best decisions and deliver the best possible user experience.
Photo: Nanoleaf

Kohler puts an Alexa-enabled smart speaker in a showerhead. Personally, we have never felt the need for voice control in the bathroom but this kind of gadgety stuff appeals to many.

We have our own thoughts on smart showers.