Friday, October 31, 2014

Home Automation - Philips Hue lights

So, its been two months since I wrote about this.  Plenty of time to report back my "findings."

I initially started out with the 3 light bulb with bridge starter kit, and have gradually added bulbs and lamps as I've went along, linking them to the bridge, and using apps to control them.

There are a myriad of apps out there that you can use to control the lights.  Some are simply to set "scenes" - where you can group a particular set of lights (like the TV room, kitchen, bedroom, etc) and then set a scene using a particular group.  I like to use a TV scene in the TV room when I'm watching TV, and then when I go to bed, I'll tap an off button on the main Hue app to turn all the lights off and then go to bed.

The biggest drawback with this is this... You have to take the phone out, turn it on, find the app, tap around till you get to where you want, just to turn on/off the light.  Whereas you can just flip a light switch.

Here's my "set-up"

I have 5 regular lightbulbs. I also have:

1 Bloom lamp
1 Iris lamp
1 light-strip
1 Disney Storytime light

That totals nine lights linked to the bridge.

They're grouped this way:

I put one regular lightbulb in the Kitchen.

One bulb in a lamp on my side of my bed in my bedroom.
The Disney Storytime light is on the other side of the bed.
I put a bulb in a lamp in one of the kids rooms.

Two bulbs are in regular lamps on end tables in the living room.

The light strip is set up underneath the cabinet that the cable box, Apple TV, etc are set up in.
I put the Iris Lamp and Bloom lamp on the floor in corners of the living room.


There is an app called StoryLights - where if you have a philips hue light, you can link one bulb to the story, (there are three within the app) and then you can read the story to your children, and the light bulb will change color on each page.  One of the stories has a peacock with 8 different colors in his tail, and you can tap each color (orange, blue, purple, etc) and the bulb will change color. It is awesome to see.

The Disney Storytime lamp takes this to a different level, where you link to their Disney Storytime app - (20 stories I believe) and it will do the same thing as the Storylights.  It can also change all other bulbs linked to it so it makes storytime more immersive.

To make these bulbs all work, they need to be left on at all times.  What this means is this - you can turn off the light via the app, but its still "on."  For example, in my kitchen, I have a pendant light that my bulb is in. There's a light switch dedicated to that pendant light.  I have to leave that light switch on all the time for the light to work.  I'll control it via the app, and turn it off, but the switch is still "on."  If you wanted to turn it back on, without the app, you'd have to flick the switch off then back on again to "activate" the light again.  It would go back to a regular white light, not the last "color" that it was on before, if any.

I had some difficulty adding lights to it for the first time.  They say you can add via the app, but I found that virtually impossible.  I had to download a software program onto my Mac and then I open that up and add lights as I go along.  The program isn't in the Mac app store, and its not a very well made program, but it gets the job done.

I have set these lights up using IFTTT, and for the most part, they work fairly well. Here's one way I use this.

I have an Automatic in my car. This is a device that links to my phone via bluetooth and will track my miles, keep track of how the car is operating, etc.  Using IFTTT, I linked Automatic to my Hue.  There's a recipe where if my car is turned off in a specific geographic area (like my house), then it turns on my lights via the Hue.  For the most part, it works very well. My issue is that my house has a lot of natural light, so they'll turn on at 12 pm even if I don't need it.  I wish I could tailor the recipe to turn on after dark.

I also linked my lights to the Nest Protect system via the IFTTT. I found this cumbersome as they want you to link each individual Nest Protect (smoke/co2 detector) to it and then do a recipe.  So they have a CO2 emergency, CO2 notification, smoke emergency, and smoke notification. This is 4 different ones, and I have to set up a notification for EACH of those, for EACH of the devices (5 in the house) so that's 20 different recipes.  I wish you could just do one for all of them.  But IFTTT doesn't allow further customization. Anyway, I set this up to change my lights to red in case of any alert notifications. It works, but there is a lag time, and its not obvious.  I didn't time it, but it felt like about 10-15 minutes before they changed color, and it wasn't very obvious. I would have liked a blinking light to get my attention.

My ultimate dream is to improve the notification system, to different light recipes. My dream is to do Star Treks red alert, where they're pulsing and you hear it.  I'd love to have my lights and a sound system pulsing when there's a fire or a notification. I think there's a way to do this, and I just have to figure it out.  I don't think it can be done with IFTTT as there are limits to it.

An aside, after doing all this, I've come up with an idea for a possible business, so stay tuned.


Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Home Automation

Its been almost a year since I posted a blog here.  Life gets in the way sometimes, and I'm sure its happened to my readers.

As a deaf person, I'm very conscious about knowing whats happening around me.  This applies especially to a household.  Many deaf people get a dog mainly so that the dog will be their "doorbell" - it'll bark when someones at the door or if something happens, so they act as an early warning system for most people.  However, I'm allergic to dogs/cats so this isn't really much of an option for me.

We recently moved to a two family house in Rockaway, New York (a part of Queens) and are now one block away from the beach.

I've used this as an excuse to really do a lot of home automation upgrades to our new home, to see what I can and can't do, especially in the way of smoke alarms, lights flashing for notifications, etc.  I have a lot of great ideas and will be posting a series of blogs here about specific products that I've used, and what I liked/didn't like about them.  Hopefully this will give other people (especially deaf) ideas on how to utilize today's technology to enhance your home experience.

Right off the bat, we've purchased four things.

1.  Lockitron which is lock you put on your deadbolt and you can program it so that it'll open as you walk up the door, or you can open it remotely via an app on your iphone/android.

2.  Doorbot - This is a webcam doorbell.  You'd install a device where you'd normally put a doorbell.  It has a webcam on it, so whoever pushes the doorbell will be on video.  You'd get a notification on your phone (regardless of whether you're home or not) that someones at the door, and you open the app and see who it is.  You can see them, but they can't see you.  You can also "talk" like an intercom through the app. This wouldn't work for a deaf person, but I like the video aspect, so I don't have to go downstairs and peek through the peephole.  This also has a tie in with the Lockitron so you can unlock the door via that while in this app.

3. Nest - This is a well known company.  I've wanted this product for a long time and finally got an opportunity to get this.  We also bought 5 of their Nest Protect (smoke/carbon detectors).  I'm looking forward to having some fun with these. The Nest is a "learning" thermostat that learns your normal daily behavior and will program the thermostat to save energy based on your normal behavior.  Naturally, there's an app, and you can adjust the thermostat remotely.

4. Philips Hue -  This, and number 5 will be the key to the whole system of home automation.  The Hue system, albeit on the pricey side, has a lot of applications.  Its a wifi-enabled network of lights.  You can buy several different types of light bulbs and they connect (up to 50 at once) to a device called the Bridge.  Depending on the bulbs you buy, they can change color, to as many as 64,000 different colors.  Some bulbs are designed to be like a regular bulb - in a lamp. Others are more of a floodlight type (that you'd put in recessed lighting) and they have stand-alone lamps called the Iris and Bloom. They also just released the Lux which is white only.

And this next part isn't a system we "bought" but a service thats available to everybody.

5. If this, then that. If this, then that is a service where you can enable "channels" of various things - from ESPN to the Nest to the hue.  You set up a trigger, "if this" and then if its triggered, an action "then that."  To give you an example, I can set it up so that If the Baltimore Orioles start a game, then my philips Hue lights blink on and off.  I can do the same for any team.

I can even make it blink for every score. I can also make it so that my lights turn on when I arrive home based on the Lockitron. I can even make my lights change color based on WHO comes home. "If Simon comes home, then turn lights blue."  "If Sarina comes home, turn lights orange" and so on.  All of this works with the If this then that system.

I'll be posting pictures of my various gadgets and will devote specific blogs to each of the systems above.  If anybody has any questions about any of these, feel free to let me know.  I'm looking forward to playing with these toys!