Automating an old house

[kolaf]

Hi guys,

Please bear with me for writing in English, you are very welcome to reply in Norwegian :-)

 

I have an old house I am planning to refurbish, which (amongst other things) means that I will be replacing the entire electrical system. Since it is an old house I do not have the possibility of hiding the wires, everything will have to be mounted directly on the wall.

 

I have the following plan, and need some input on choice of technology. I want the light fixtures and some of the wall sockets to be remotely controllable, both from stand-alone/mounted remote controls and android devices. I also want some temperature sensors around the house (maybe even in the freezer and fridge), sensors on the doors, and maybe a video camera or two. I assume these video cameras have two operates over TCP/IP, typically WLAN, so I am planning to ensure that the entire area I'm interested in is covered by wireless access points.

 

I also want to control some outdoor lighting, possibly mounted other places than the main house itself (e.g. on an outhouse, barn, et cetera). I'm also planning to set up an outdoor weather Station whose output should be integrated into the central monitoring system. I fly icy plains, so knowing the wind speed and direction is crucial . It could also be relevant to incorporate some motion sensors to activate outdoor/indoor lights, trigger lights when my cellphone (Bluetooth) comes into range of the specific point. The typical scenario is to automatically open thegarage door and unlock the front door when I arrive in my car :-)

 

We are also building stables in an outhouse, and I need to be able to check the temperature, see the activity (videocamera), and get notified of people entering or leaving the stables (door sensors). I'm sure I can think of more I want as I get started on this, so it has to be extensible.

 

My initial plan is to have wireless switches (the actual wireless relays) inside the lights fixtures and wall sockets. This allows me to put the light switches anywhere (remote controls), and I do not have to run any cables for the light switches (assuming that they are battery powered). This can even save something off the bill to the electrician :-).

 

From the software side I want everything to be integrated/accessible from android. I'm planning to buy a few cheap eBay android tablets to mount in key rooms such as kitchen, living room, and bedroom. These should be able to control the entire system, as well as receive weather information and video streams from the various devices. This is in addition to the wireless switches that should be mounted on the walls here and there (I realise that you do not want to turn on the android tablet to switch on the light :-) ).

 

So, technology. As far as I have been able to understand I think my choice is between zWave and xComfort. Factors that affect my choice are price, availability, reliability, and software integration. I have had a look at the offerings from Sensio, and they have a nice software suite for controlling the system, setting up automatic scenarios, and so on. I also believe they have a nice android application which supports video in some way or another (I am not sure how).

 

The android application should preferably be a unified solution which provides all the information I am looking for in a cohesive interface. In addition to controlling and monitoring the home system, it should also do stuff like weather reports, and so on.

 

Now, I will probably not be able to realise all this at once, so I'm prepared to doing this incrementally. I also have some programming skills which I am assuming will be useful since my dream android application is probably not available.

 

To summarise, I would very much appreciate some input on choice of technology which best fulfils my requirements as mentioned above; price, performance, availability, and software integration. I'm feeling a bit lost at the moment, so I really appreciate your input.

 

kolaf

[SirAmp]

I would definatly choose xComfort with sensio, it's a bit pricy, but has good reliability, great availability and customer support.

[ATWindsor]

I would definatly choose xComfort with sensio, it's a bit pricy, but has good reliability, great availability and customer support.

 

Why? I see little reason to choose xcomfort, it is proprietary, its not very cheap, and it doesn't do anything competitors cannot?

 

AtW

[kolaf]

So which of the competitors would you recommend? At the moment I am considering using homeseer as the central control application with a combination of Z wave and whatever I can interface through a rfxtrx. Does this sound reasonable? Are there any other technologies I should look into before I start creating my concept design?