First steps into the smarthome hype

Being stuck at home lately kinda results in escalating zest of action. So, because I don't have a lot space at home I decided to make it as comfortable as possible. And what is more likely for a techie like me than jumping right into smarthome automation. 

Overview of the products I used

First, I was reading about hosting my own smarthome automation instance with OpenHub or similar programms. But because I kinda have a lack of hardware for puposes like this, I decided to start with gaining some experience in integrating some smarthome products via google home into my google assistent. Having a lot of things going on automatically, like shutting down the heater when the themperature outside rises above 15 degrees, truely is a very cool thing, but it's less important if you only have one room to manage like in my case. This is why, for me, integrating a voice assistent is much more interesting atm.

Well... and at this point I stopped writing this article because life got fast and stuff happened and I was busy improving.

So now the situation changed a little bit and the new "home automation setting" is two rooms big plus a bathroom and a open kitchencorner.

But the basic conzept stayes the same: my primary focus is on voice controlled automations in context of ambience.

I looove futuristic led lightning, especial if it is indirectly like up or down a wall. The top dog in this clearly is philips with his hue lightning concept. But as fancy as it all is, commig to the price point, with round about 80€ per led stripe, not including the hub or bridge... philips is like the apple of smart-home solutions. I'm absolutely willing to pay a little more to avoide trouble with bad designed electronics... but not in a cathegorie of 50€.

I took some research on alternatives and had to find that the range of products is absolutely confusing. After some hours of comparing prices and functionality, I decided to give a try on "Govee" for the following reasons:

• The portfolio of products is quiet large with different designs for a lot of scenarios
• The quality made a good impression
  
• The price point between 25€-35€ seemed quiet fair to me

As a first try, I got the 5m RGB stripe. The good thing is, you don't have to pay extra money for a hub, because the controller can be accessed directly by bluetooth and from this on be checked in into your home network via wifi. Out of the box you get the 5m RGB stripe role, a controller unit, a power adapter and some mounting materials.

The controller comes with three buttons on it. One for turning the stripe on and off manually, one for changing through the different colors and the last one for activating the "music mode" which lets the leds turn on and of in the beat of recognized noises.

The "govee home"-app, govees solution to administer the device without any third party assistent, is well designed, kind of intuitive and I wasn't able to find a offensive bug in it. 

Inside the app you can manage your devices, set scenes and schedules for activating or deactivating the device. In case of a lamp, you may also activate the dimming function. All of this can be done without integration inside an assistent or homeautomation platform and leaves the possibility for standalone use, what in my opinion provides freedome to the user to decide between multiple ways of use.

Because at the time of this article, I don't have a google home device or amazon alexa, I integrated my led lights with just a few of klicks inside the google home profile on my mobile. On the one hand, this has the pros of giving me mobile access to not only voice commands, but also the gaphical interface of the google home dashboard no matter if I'm sitting at my desk, on my couch or am standing in my kitchen. On the other hand, because my phone also leaves the house with me, commands that trigger major processes are disabled when my phone is locked. So I can't access light activation via voice command while I'm like 10 meters away from my phone cleaning the windows. This is by far not a perfect solution. But it fits for me right know, because the implementation is manly because I'm nosy if and how stuff works.

Mounting the led stripes wasn't a big thing because the M3 glue on the back of the stripe and the controller unit sticks to nearly everything. I even glued one at the back of my couch that is covered in fabric. The manifacturer dosen't recommends this, but it holds on it very well. Only important thing is to not bend the stripes to much. For example to cover two shelfs with one controller, I connectet the two stripes with extensioncables and signal splitters. This solution provides an easy way to build more complex systems than just a straight usb stripe.

First try

In case of the kitchen lightning, I bought myself a diffusor ridge, sawed it to the right lenght and glued the led stripe inside. In this case I also used a different stripe than the default RGB one because I wanted this light to be usefull for productive kitchen work as well as for effect-lightning because I have an open kitchen corner. I used a so called RGBWW stripe, which provides, with two extra leds, the possibility to adjust the color temperature of the white light.

The results were quiet satisfying and I had a lot of fun planing and implementing the lights.

sawing is a lot easier with the right saw - tested for u only ;)

This glue sticks like hell to everything!

RGB WW (two extra LEDs) and controller

Kitchenlight for work and party

Once in the hype, always in the hype... Next wish that came up inside me, was the ability to controll my heaters.

Again, the pricerange is huge, depending on what brand or technologie you go with. This time, I decided for Meross. One of the most important aspects with the thermostat was the pssibility to include it in IFTTT (IF This Than That). IFTTT is a web-based service that clames for itself to help connecting the services from different brands together and automate chanes of actions between them. In case of the thermostat, an example would be to shut down the heater when a sensor at the window recognizes that it's open. Sinze now, I didn't implemented IFTTT into my home automation, but I will for sure.

Some thermostats come with screens and buttons, some not. In the case of a network breakdown, I didn't want that I have to change back to the analogue thermostats. That's why I decided for the Meross Valve. It has a few controllbuttons and a simple LED screen.

The Meross Valve Thermostat

The Meross Valve comes with different adapter rings for different kinds of valves, is battery powered and needs a hub for integration in the network.

Up to 16 devices can be connected via the same hub, a little white box that is powered via usb. In difference to the govee devices, the Valves connect to the hub, and the hub then connects to the home wifi. I had concernes that maybe the connection to the hub would cause problems on the thermostat I installed in the bedroom. Three walls and a distance of about 10 meters are in the way between the hub and the thermostat. And indeed, it causes a little trouble. The pairing took some time and now and then the app marks the thermostat as not reachable. How ever, send commands seem to allways reach their destination.

Looks absolutely more like 2020!

Byside of the thermostat in the bedroom, the pairing isn't quiet intuitive but works fine. I want to mention a few things I recognized that could be done better:

Mostly, when an instruction is send to the thermostat, it dosen't directly updates the LED screen, what gives a quiet unsure feeling if the command got through.

Next thing is, that the thermostats are only useable with non-rechargable batterys what is bad for multiple reasons. On thing is that it's not eco-friendly, another one are the costs linked with it.

No rechargable batteries - sadly

Connecting the hub with the google assisten then is almost the same as connecting a govee device and should go without a lot trouble.

And again, the manufacturer provides his own software solution. The meross app allowes to controll the devices habit not only manually, but by setting routines like: "reduce the temperature at all workdays between 8am and 5pm to 19 degrees". This allows to safe a lot of money on cold days while never come home to a freezing cold couch.

Because I installed the thermostats in the summer, I wasn't able to test all the functions so far, but we'll see when winter comes.

And that's it till now. Next steps would be to learn and implement about services like openHub. I can definitely say, that installing new features to the home you live in can give you a whole different feeling of living and makes a lot of fun if you are into futuristic stuff like I am.

The only thing I didn't and even if I could won't try, are safety gadgets like doorlocks. I'm not a lot afraid of my data going somewhere ( else wise I won't be running a google assistent on my phone that potentially listens 24/7 - nobody really knows), but in my opinion, IoT and Smarthome still is a whole new thing and making something bulletproof is something that ofthen relies on experience gainde my time. And combined with the safety-question, without knowing details, this whole thing isn't bulletproof enough to me. :)

I'll definitely will play around more with smarthome stuff and maybe can provide articles with more technical details in the future.