What Did You Automate Today?

[joecheech]

Used TP Link HHS110 to monitor energy consumption on my washing machine to send notification when a load has finished.  

[Amr]

On 12/10/2020 at 8:13 PM, joecheech said:

Used TP Link HHS110 to monitor energy consumption on my washing machine to send notification when a load has finished.  

Nice, our washing machine produce a melody when finished that the entire house can hear it  . I will try this with our dish washer that is silent

[joecheech]

13 hours ago, Amr said:

washing machine produce a melody

I thought about this, but with a Sonos household...I understand it's not great.

[Don Cohen]

I have a Home Theater, using a 'scope' (2.35:1 aspect ratio) screen.  It is ideal for watching most movies, which usually have that same aspect ratio.  But some movies, and a lot of regular TV and streaming content have 'narrower' aspect ratios: 1.78:1, 1.85:1, 2.00:1, 2.20:1 and so forth.  When viewing this type of content on a scope screen, of necessity, there are black 'pillarbox' bars on each side.  Even with a good screen and projector, these areas will appear grayish rather than black, which has a negative impact on the perceived picture quality.  So many of us utilize 'masking' solutions of one type or another, to blacken those areas.

When I initially set up the Theater, I installed 2 curtain rods, one on each side, hanging black velvet curtains from them.  I could then draw them in to cover those pillarbox bars, which enhances the picture quality significantly.  But I tired of having to go up there to draw them in, open them up, etc.  First world problems, for sure!

So I ended up installing a motorized curtain track, hanging the black velvet curtains from them.  This comes with an RF remote to open, close, and stop the curtain movement.  I then obtained a Bond Bridge to replicate the RF commands, integrating this into Control4 with the Chowmain Bond Bridge Driver.  I was then able to create "presets" for each aspect ratio, by issuing a 'Close' command, followed by a Delay of the appropriate number of milliseconds, and then a Stop command.  I use an SR260 in this room, and assigned these presets to numeric buttons on the remote, since they aren't used for anything else in that room.  I can then close to the appropriate position for whatever I'm watching with the push of a button.

I am also using the madVR Envy, an external Video Processor, which among its other functions, will recognize the content's aspect ratio, and automatically scales the video output to maximally fill the screen.  They will eventually have a Control4 Driver, and I'm hoping that I can program it using this Driver such that the appropriate curtain preset will be triggered based on the content's aspect ratio, making the process completely automatic.

Here's a simple YouTube Video showing it in action:

 

[BraydonH]

That is awesome! Great work on that screen.

[Elvis]

On 12/13/2020 at 7:03 PM, Amr said:

Nice, our washing machine produce a melody when finished that the entire house can hear it  . I will try this with our dish washer that is silent

Great idea. Our dishwasher signal is inaudible as well, and we always end up opening it to load and find a clean batch still inside.

I wonder if an Eve energy monitoring plug has alerts that are programmable. Got one on the way that is delayed in the holiday shipping crush.

[joecheech]

Not to one-up @Don Cohen's beautiful work, but today I automated my speakers to play the refrain from "Who Can it Be Now" when someone pushes the doorbell and also programed my washing machine to play the opening riff from "The End of the Line" when the cycle is finished.  Go me.

[Don Cohen]

23 minutes ago, joecheech said:

Not to one-up @Don Cohen's beautiful work, but today I automated my speakers to play the refrain from "Who Can it Be Now" when someone pushes the doorbell and also programed my washing machine to play the opening riff from "The End of the Line" when the cycle is finished.  Go me.

Excellent!!  Ironically, "Who Can it Be Now" is the phone ringtone I use for my wife!  Great choice for your washing machine as well. Mine is a "dumb" dishwasher so can't do anything there.

[joecheech]

30 minutes ago, Don Cohen said:

Mine is a "dumb" dishwasher

If you feel like investing $100 you can get a Kasa HS110 energy monitoring smart outlet and program it to fire off a tune when the energy meter reads below a threshold level.  That's how I did my washer.

[Don Cohen]

49 minutes ago, joecheech said:

If you feel like investing $100 you can get a Kasa HS110 energy monitoring smart outlet and program it to fire off a tune when the energy meter reads below a threshold level.  That's how I did my washer.

Very interesting, and creative!!

[Neo1738]

3 hours ago, Don Cohen said:

Very interesting, and creative!!

Agreed, it's this kind of thinking/capability that really pushes C4 further and sets it apart from a lot of the other systems. These things give people lots of ideas how to make their system even better.

[Neo1738]

Just got some Heattrak heated mats for walkway and patio. Got a kasa kp400 outdoor double outlet. Got chowmains openweather agent. Now if predicted snow or actual snow it will turn on the mats for 24hrs. Every 15 mins when app polls weather if still snow or rain w temp below 34F it will restart the timer. Can't wait to see how it goes!

[zaphod]

5 hours ago, Neo1738 said:

Just got some Heattrak heated mats for walkway and patio. Got a kasa kp400 outdoor double outlet. Got chowmains openweather agent. Now if predicted snow or actual snow it will turn on the mats for 24hrs. Every 15 mins when app polls weather if still snow or rain w temp below 34F it will restart the timer. Can't wait to see how it goes!

To take this to the next level maybe you could point a camera on the mat and use some sort of image recognition to determine the brightness of the mat to know whether to turn it on.

[Neo1738]

7 hours ago, zaphod said:

To take this to the next level maybe you could point a camera on the mat and use some sort of image recognition to determine the brightness of the mat to know whether to turn it on.

Def would be next level! Not sure that's in the cards just yet but if I ever do I'll let you know!

[eggzlot]

8 hours ago, zaphod said:

To take this to the next level maybe you could point a camera on the mat and use some sort of image recognition to determine the brightness of the mat to know whether to turn it on.

As someone who has heated stairs - these elements/pads usually need to be on for a while to help continually melt the ice and snow.  So a camera seeing someone and turning them on will not really provide a good melting experience

not to put down your idea, but not sure it is practical with these devices.  They aren’t so hot where they will melt ice/snow ASAP.  

[Amr]

I just completed the migration to Zigbee Buttons from RF, much more reliable than RF hit/miss for all bedside lights, idea is a small coin button can give u instant access to 3 actions, one/two/three presses that works nicely with besides lights.

someone can ask what happened to just turn off the bedside manually I’d say this is the 21 century and press a button is all u need to do ...

[wnpublic]

Built a feature-limited interface to the home automation for our Airbnb - exposed features vary by password, so guests can play with the lights and thermostat, but not mess with the doors.  Also integrated a bunch of Ikea Tradfri remotes for use to turn on/off/dim patio string lights which are plugged in to cheap wifi-controlled outlets.

[Neo1738]

On 2/22/2021 at 7:58 AM, eggzlot said:

As someone who has heated stairs - these elements/pads usually need to be on for a while to help continually melt the ice and snow.  So a camera seeing someone and turning them on will not really provide a good melting experience

not to put down your idea, but not sure it is practical with these devices.  They aren’t so hot where they will melt ice/snow ASAP.  

I think he meant when brightness such as white snow is shown turn it on. 

[sitdownman]

In this downtime I programmed my home system to do a couple things when I leave. A double tap on my essential switch delays 15 min, then turns off my lights and puts the computers to sleep (using chowmain's generic tcp comand driver and eventghost)

When I come back home my motions set off a WoL packet to wake my machines and turn on my lights. Additionally any computer activity will turn off the lights in other rooms. This is done with MCE Controller desktop software and the User Activity driver both from Charlie Kindel.

[tmj4]

10 minutes ago, sitdownman said:

In this downtime I programmed my home system to do a couple things when I leave. A double tap on my essential switch delays 15 min, then turns off my lights and puts the computers to sleep (using chowmain's generic tcp comand driver and eventghost)

This is neat, but why not just use a geofence with your smartphone, then no need to use a button. That's what I currently use for anything that's home/away/everyone gone/someone home/etc.

[Amr]

The beauty of Tasmota ...

[zaphod]

On 2/23/2021 at 6:32 PM, sitdownman said:

In this downtime I programmed my home system to do a couple things when I leave. A double tap on my essential switch delays 15 min, then turns off my lights and puts the computers to sleep (using chowmain's generic tcp comand driver and eventghost)

When I come back home my motions set off a WoL packet to wake my machines and turn on my lights. Additionally any computer activity will turn off the lights in other rooms. This is done with MCE Controller desktop software and the User Activity driver both from Charlie Kindel.

What do you mean "leave"?  That is not a concept that most of us in the 6ix are familiar with! 

Have you used the MCE Controller for C4?  Or do you not need control in that direction?  https://github.com/garrynewman/Control4.MceControllerDriver 

[sitdownman]

3 hours ago, zaphod said:

What do you mean "leave"?  That is not a concept that most of us in the 6ix are familiar with! 

Oh you know, to walmart, dollerama...the essential businesses.

Quote

Have you used the MCE Controller for C4?  Or do you not need control in that direction?  https://github.com/garrynewman/Control4.MceControllerDriver 

Yes! I used it for Steam's Big Picture Mode. The idea is to eventually get a video matrix and add the computer as an input. One thing the driver doesn't have is volume up or down. Garry put in the github that he won't be updating it so I have the c4proj open in driverworks but I'm not sure exactly what string to plug in and not sure if that would even work and play nice with navigator.

[zaphod]

Wouldn't you control volume from your Video's audio endpoint?  Like an AVR, if you plug the PC into an AVR, or a TV if you plug it into a TV.  The other option is to use an audio output from the PC, like analog stereo, digital coax or sp/dif into an amp or whatever. Or would you just be using the computer as the audio endpoint? 

I think there is a code that MCEC accepts for volume.

[sitdownman]

Yeah I like using a pair of wireless usb headphones.

MCEC does have it as VK_vol up and down and another vol+/- but they're not working right now. Could be bugged. On the C4 side hitting vol up/down on the sr260 doesn't send anything in the log of MCEC for me.