Greg In The Desert

Smarthome has upgraded the Insteon Thermostat to version 2.0. The thermostat adapter requires the use of a Totaline / Venstar thermostat, it plugs into the bottom and communicates with the Insteon network with a INSTEON Access Point (& Wireless Phase Coupler) using a RF protocol.

The new features include:

• Reports changes in temp, temp setpoints, mode, and fan mode
• Controller functionality on heat call, cool call, and fan call (auto & manual ON)
• Supports +1, -1 degree on incremental bright/dim commands
• Off Button functionality – If you want a link to respond to an Off command instead of an On command, send an Off command from the INSTEON controller within 30 seconds of linking and before any other INSTEON commands are sent.

This previous version of adapter had to be asked what the current temperature is, the 2.0 adapter will now broadcast those changes. The 2.0 adapter will also indicate when a heat call has been made which makes it easy to calculate how long the current filter has been in use. I’m happy to see Smarthome making improvements in these products and they even provided an upgrade path for those with older versions.

My home automation software, Indigo, does not support these new features yet. The developers have promised to add them to a future version.

The software I use for home automation set up has had a major update to 3.0. I’ve been beta testing it when it was known as 2.5 and there have been quite a few significant features added. There is now support for the Insteon thermostat adapter, which I’ve been using. There is also support for scenes and links, which allows the control of multiple Insteon devices at once with a single powerline command.

The Unoffical Apple Weblog has a quick write up on it as well as a CooconTech thread.

I installed a ceiling fan in the living room today. It’s the simplest, most basic ceiling fan I could find, an 60″ industrial ceiling fan from Home Depot.

This fan is controlled through my home automation computer like the other fan. Unfortunately the only PLC compatible fan controller that exists is the Lightolier Controls Digital Fan Control (CCWHISPLC) which costs over $100, I have one for the kitchen ceiling fan and it works great. Besides the high cost of the CCWHISPLC it is also X10 only. I’ve decided to use a SwitchLinc V2 Dimmer for the living room fan. Dimmers don’t make good fan controllers. They usually cause a humming noise and can damage the fan.

To eliminate the hum from the fan controller I could implement a work around by Ed Cheung. It’s a passthrough device that properly switches the speed without humming or damaging the fan. The cost of this device is about $50. A Switchlinc is about $45. Together I’m getting close to the price of the CCWHISPLC, but at least it would still not be X10. I’m still pondering this option.

The last problem with this fan is it hangs a bit low. My ceilings are 8 foot high and this one hangs about a foot down. I think I can cut down the 6″ rod about 4 inches which should help.

Popular Mechanics tests Compact Florescent bulbs..

The results surprised us. Even though the incandescent bulb measured slightly brighter than the equivalent CFLs, our subjects didn’t see any dramatic difference in brightness. And here was the real shocker: When it came to the overall quality of the light, all the CFLs scored higher than our incandescent control bulb. In other words, the new fluorescent bulbs aren’t just better for both your wallet and the environment, they produce better light.

Nothing specific about dimable CF bulbs. I’m still saying they are bad for Home Automation because of the noise potential and they don’t seem to always last as long as it’s claimed, at least from my testing.

Gordon Meyer has a post entiteld Twittering Your Home, showing how to use a applescript to add events to your Twitter account. I haven’t found a reason to use Twitter, but this may be enough for me to check it out.

Here’s the script, which borrows some code from Tilman for using curl to send a Twitter status message:

set theMessage to description of me
set TwitterID to “yourID”
set TwitterPassword to “yourPassword”
set TwitterLogin to TwitterID & “:” & TwitterPassword
set TwitterStatus to quoted form of (“status=” & theMessage)
set results to do shell script “curl –user ” & TwitterLogin & ” –data-binary ” & TwitterStatus & ” http://twitter.com/statuses/update.json”

You’ll need to enter the login and password for your home’s Twitter account, as noted in the script. Shortly after running this script, the message is delivered via Twitter, as illustrated earlier. It’s a simple as that.

If you use Indigo, another Mac-based home automation application, the above script will work just a few modifications. Instead of passing the message text using the Description field, use an Indigo global variable.

Indigo, my Home Automation application of choice, has hit 2.0 after a (long) beta period.

Indigo 2.0 has been officially released and is no longer beta! Version 2.0 can now be purchased at a special introductory price ($20 off retail). Although v2.0 has a higher retail price than v1.8, all existing 1.8 customers can receive a $90 discount towards their purchase of v2.0. 2.0 Download and Trial http://www.perceptiveautomation.com/indigo/download.html After you download Indigo 2.0 and register for the 30 day free trial, join us on our new 2.0 discussion forum. Important The location of Indigo settings and database files has changed. Read the ReadMe included in the download DMG for detailed information about migrating from Indigo 1.x to 2.0. Indigo Client/Server Design 2.0 has been redesigned as a client/server application to allow remote control and configuration from anywhere. The server can run headless (no UI) in the background on your Mac while consuming minimal CPU resources. The GUI client can be run on the same machine or on a remote machine while still providing the same level of control and configuration. Web Based Control Pages In addition to now having a built-in HTTP web server, Indigo now supports graphical Control Pages allowing quick and powerful creation of Web controllable home interfaces. These Control Pages update in real time as device and variable states change. Here is an example floor plan Control Page that is included with the 2.0 Sample House file: http://goprism.com:8000/controlpage?name=1st_floor (this is a live example — try clicking on various devices and buttons) And here is an example of an iTunes controller that allows remote control of iTunes, as well as continuous updating to reflect changes to tracks, albums, artists, and volume: http://goprism.com:8000/controlpage?name=itunes_controller (this is a live example — you are controlling what songs are being played on a Mac in a data center in Las Vegas) Both of these examples were quickly created in Indigo by using the graphical Control Page editor. Live WYSIWYG browser previewing of Control Page editing is also possible (try the Browser Preview button in the Control Page editor). And here are some example pages of text-only based web pages which can be viewed on lower end hardware (like mobile phones and some PDAs): http://goprism.com:8000/basicpage http://goprism.com:8000/basicpage?miniUI=1 Native Sprinkler Support Powerful new UI and actions for controlling irrigation via the EZRain, Rain8, and IrrMaster controllers. Universal Binary Indigo (client and server) run native on both PPC and Intel Macs. Indigo UI Makeover

• The entire UI (all windows, dialogs, panels) has been redone for 2.0. In addition to providing a better appearance (note the brushed metal appearance is a preference in case you are antagonistic towards brushed metal), several other improvements have been added:
• Live searching of Devices, Trigger Actions, Time/Date Actions, Action Groups, Control Pages, and Variables.
• Embedded AppleScript compiling, error reporting, and syntax coloring.
• Table column width adjustment via dragging.
• Live window resizing.
• Dialog window resizing.
• Main dialogs are no longer modal.
• Scroll wheel/ball support.
• Improved text rendering.
• Improved Upload Settings dialog.

Improved POP3 and SMTP Clients The POP3 and SMTP clients have been replaced. Authentication and SSL/TLS are now supported. You can even use a Google GMail account now for scanning Triggers and sending notification emails. New Time/Date Action Options

• Day-of-month.
• Start and end date limits.
• Sunset/sunrise limits.
• Repeating intervals (year, month, week).
• And more!

New INSTEON and X10 Trigger Types

• Trigger on “any” command.
• Trigger on command from “any device.”
• Multiple Actions (without having to create Action Groups)
• Trigger Actions, Time/Date Actions, and Control Page element click actions can now have multiple actions without having to create a named Action Group.

AppleScript

• Added AppleScript device property type to correspond to the device type class: x10 or insteon. Previous type property has been renamed to model.
• Added AppleScript device properties: supports all lights on and off, supports all off, supports status request.
• Added AppleScript application properties: current time date action name, current trigger action name, current action group name.
• Added AppleScript verbs: status request.

Miscellaneous

• Added Trigger Action and Time/Date Action suppress logging option.
• Added Reset Interface Connections action. Use this to force Indigo to attempt a reconnect to the interfaces.
• Added log error message if system date/time becomes invalid.
• Changed log files to use UNIX friendly line endings.
• Increased Event Log window buffer size.
• Main Window progress area can now show if multiple interfaces (X10 and RF) are connected.
• Improved idle and busy CPU utilization.
• Improved infinite loop detection.
• Improved device sorting by type.
• Improved reliability of communication with CM11 interface when power is interrupted and restored to the CM11.
• Improved robustness when communication with interface fails (USB to serial adapter unplugged, PowerLinc USB unplugged, etc.).
• Improved robustness of preference changes (preference file is now periodically auto-saved).

And more!

Channel 7 in Southern California has a news report (from October 4th) with Ken Fairbanks of SmartLabs, who makes all the Insteon gear I write about. Along with the article is a video showing some of the stuff Home Automation can do. Its a short clip but shows some interesting things, like the control of blinds (which I haven’t figure out how to do yet).

You don’t need Insteon to do the stuff in the video.

I first got into Home Automation for one simple reason, because I always forgot to turn off the lights. Lighting makes up a large part of my system, and I want to optimize the efficiency of the lights as much as possible. I want to not only produce the right amount of light in the right color, but reduce their energy use at the same time.

At first, I used Compact Florescence all over the place. They are a obvious choice for reducing energy because they use a quarter of the wattage of incandescent bulbs for the same amount of light output. But as I have found out, they don’t mix well with the PLC (power line communication) switches that I use. You have to find specific dimmer compatible switches (or don’t buy dimmers). The CF bulbs produce noise, sometimes for no apparent reason, that interfere with the signals being sent by the switches. The dimable CF bulbs seems to make even more noise than non-dimmable bulbs!

So far my experience with dimmable CFs has been mixed. About 6 months ago I bought some LightWiz 75 watt equivalent dimmable CFs from ebay pretty cheap, around half as much as anywhere else (right now you can get them for about $7 a piece). I had put one in the garage upside down, one in the front porch vapor proof fixture upside down, one in the back porch simple fixture upside down and one in the halway on it’s side. [Update] The lights I had outside were not the Lightwiz brand. 4 of the 6 I bought are still installed and working (Haven’t installed the other two yet). Including the one mounted upside down in the garage.

One reason I wanted the outdoor fixtures to have CFs is because because I have all the outdoor lights on from sunset to sunrise. Birds tend to rest on the fixtures because they are warm in the winter. Initially they did not produce enough powerline noise to interfere with my Insteon switches. Last week I was unable to get any the status of any switch on one leg of my circuit. Turned out to be one CF bubls producing too much noise, because it was about to die. I would have expected the back porch light, which has the least amount of protection, to be the one to die. It was the one at the fount porch, which is in a vapor proof fixture.

The bulb in the front porch was replaced with a 60 watt halogen, because of the fixture, not much heat is making it out of the fixture. I also have a 100 watt equivalent GE CF dimmable bulb in vapor proof fixture above the garage and so far so good for that one. The CF bulb I have in the halway has since been replaced with a track lighting fixture that has 3 50 watt halogen spot lights.

Don Klipstein has a excellent website on everything you would want to know about bulbs and good advice on when to use bulbs. Based on my experiences and what I read there, I will probably not use CF bulbs as I did before.

[Update 01/08/07 2:21 PM] I forgot to mention some other bulbs. I bought three, pretty pricey, approx. 9 watt, dimmable florescence for a kitchen ceiling fan. These bulbs were incased in a glass bulb so they looked closer real bulbs instead of the spirall-y things. At the time they were hooked up to a X10 switch. 2 of the 3 burnt out within 2 months. I’ve since replaced these three bulbs with 60 incandescence bulbs. I’ve heard that X10 can actually kill CF bulbs so this might be more evidence to this fact.

[Update 02/23/07 8:24 PM] Two Westinghouse 20W “mini-twist dimmable” bulbs that I bought last year have died. A MaxLite 15W bulb that I bought several years ago died. This was 1 of 2 that I have, the other one still works fine.

You really can’t beat this deal if you were planning on buying some Insteon gear. I just purchased the remaining switches I needed for my house, 3 Switchlincs and 1 Keypadlinc for about $150, which saved me about $40. They are not only offering a 12% discount, but free shipping over $150. Use coupon code EHSAVE12 between now and Dec 18th, use the link below to go to Smarthome’s site and give me some affiliate love.

12 Days Of Holidays Deals at Smarthome.

Here’s a picture of my equipment closet. Since I don’t have a utility room and don’t want to put this stuff, mostly Home Automation gear, in garage due to dirt and dust issues. There was enough room in the heater closet to fit all this stuff.

I’ve already been asked, is there a heat problem? Doesn’t seem to be. The heater doesn’t emit that much heat around itself, and since it doesn’t constantly run there’s not any build up from what little bit of heat that is generated. Also, the all the metal here is not interfering with the wireless stuff.

Keep in mind, all this stuff was strung around the house. Mostly in the living room. Since I access the Home Automation computer via VNC I don’t really need direct access to it. It’s nice not having wires all over the place anymore.