Anyone else here a control freak?

I spend hours upon hours getting my home computer network, devices, media hub PC, security cameras and environment control system set up juuust right ... and I’m just scratching the surface of Home Automation!

I’ve become obsessed with making all these great (low cost) gadgets work dependably, 24 by 7 but I’ve had mixed results.

Any affordable 100% success stories would be appreciated! ...

One component I’d really like to replace is Emby (http://emby.media/). It’s ok as a music hub but not as a video hub and it handles Chromecast even worse.

You are not alone with that obsession

Been into HA since the 80's and it's been a slow market for sure but with the new buzzword "IoT" flying around expect that things will change rapidly coming year!

Since I'm a electronics engineer by trade I've built most of my stuff myself as well as making own protocols etc. but I intend to start replacing stuff with WiFi and BLE nodes since TCP/IP (and also 6LowPan) is the future.

There are tons of HA protocols available and new ones being "hyped" every month now - it's really a mess! In the long run only a few will survive and since TCP/IP is all over the globe already it's IMO a safer bet than anything else.

/KC

Every time I take two steps into it I wind up taking two steps back out when the setup fails.

Just the simple idea of a universal remote often falls on its face as I find functions I couldn't map to the universal one or some function in a sequence gets missed and I have some things turned on and some turned off.

In the end, I've largely sided with simplicity of design over theoretical simplicity of use (since the latter rarely stays simple).



The Jedi Master

Yea, simplicity is one of the harder parts when making/getting a HA system. It must work 99.9% of the time and be really easy to setup and use (in other words wife/kids friendly) else it won't be used at all after the novelty wears off.

I try hard to follow the KISS "rule" when I decide to do anything and some tasks is better to not automate since they are quicker/easier to do like you always done.

/KC

With respect to those universal remotes like the Logitech Harmony line, I found that when I had mine, I’d more often than not be telling the remote where it’s going wrong to get a set of devices running in the proper mode with the push of one button.

It finally and inexplicably broke and I never bought another one. My remotes are just on/off buttons for me now anyway since I use my tablets or phone for controlling media playback throughout the house.

Keep it simple is definitely a good rule.



Wow, I didn’t know there were so many protocols. I’ve been concentrating on using IP and what hasn’t been so simple (for me anyway) is getting a really dependable WiFi system set up in terms of keeping a solid connection to my Chromecast, cameras, etc. It’s actually been quite fun learning how these WiFi range extenders actually work and how to configure them properly. You’ll often find me walking around the house looking at my WiFi Analyzer app (check it out at the Google Play Store) checking signal strength, channels, mac addresses etc etc.

Anyway, getting back to my media hub ... I think I already looked at Plex and didn’t like it as much as Emby which is why I ended up with Emby but found out that even with a good Wifi network, it’s not cutting it in terms of video playback and Chromecasting. I think I’m going to try Kodi next.

I’m also interested in getting a solid data backup plan in place (network? cloud?).

Any recommendations would be appreciated.

I do a lot of wireless sensor development that leads into home automation. Can't answer any of your questions but just wanted to say, whatever you install, make sure it's secure. And for God's sake change the default address settings. Simplest thing you can do.

I'm running Kodi and it works great for me. Combined with a Android tablet and the free remote control app named "Yatse" it's easy to search for films/music from the couch.



I prefer to keep my data within my own walls. My solution is a cheap NAS running Linux (also acts like WWW server, VPN, MySQL database etc.) where I backup data from all my machines then once/twice a year I mirror the NAS to a external HDD and store on another location.

/KC