Smart Home 2022

My first adventure with controlling lights was in 1980 with RadioShack’s X 10 devices. This was a system that sent control signals over the powerline.

Then I moved to “Insteon” – an advanced powerline-based protocol (with some mesh/radio) with more devices. It has the ability to be controlled using a computer. Home automation actually worked! Fast forward to 2020 and Insteon seems to be going out of business and it’s time for a revisit of what is home automation and what works. Hence this blog.

To start, why do I have a smart home and what do I use it for?

First is to turn on/off lights, both to make the house look occupied and to make it feel like home (whatever that means). The second is to easily control a set of lights and appliances for on-demand actions that would be inconvenient if I needed to get up and manually turn things on and off. Like setting the lights when I want to watch a movie in the living room. I also use motion sensors to turn on lights at night when I enter a room. And last, for peace of mind with cameras to check on status of our house randomly from a far. Throw in control of sprinklers and heaters and the system works! I also use it to control the front door deadbolt lock. REALLY NICE, I go on walks now without bringing anything but my phone!

It also is a great way to see if your home is on-line and the power is on. You get a notice when you are away from home and the home stops responding. 

Do we use it? Hell yes!!

As I shared an early draft of this blog with a friend he pointed out that his main use was as a security system for home. He has lots of cameras that upload to the cloud so if something happens he can go back and see. They make lots of different sensors (like glass breaking sensors, smoke detectors, etc.) to make a complete security system. I don’t use these features, but if you need it, here is a cost effective way to get it! 

Back up a step to pre2022

My old system was based on a MacMini running a program called “Indigo” to control the Insteon devices. Indigo was a very full-featured program that could be “bridged” to control many different standards of devices (including Z-Wave). It took a significant amount of planning to program Indigo – it was a geeks / professional tool. It was painful to set up, but reliable after it was set up.  (I used it to control sprinklers and what a pain to set up an irrigation schedule. Same thing to schedule heating/cooling schedules. But it worked and was good for its time.) 

But Indigo changed to a subscription model for their software – at a rate of $200 per year and no discount for multiple homes and the need to have a MacMini working all the time AND Insteon (SmartHome) not making new products AND Apple was making changes to the operating system that forced a new version of Indigo to keep running so … it was time for a change.