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Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Defa home

Norwegian company Defa (mostly famous for the car heaters and car battery chargers in European Nordic part of the world) http://www.hyttami.no/ or in Swedish http://www.defahome.se has launched a HA system based on some wireless protocol that can turn on and off lights, heating and have a module for presence.

The good thing is that the service is based on GSM modem that work with low cost over whole Europe and it seems to be dead simple to set-up.

The bad thing is that every module has basically the same price as z-wave modules but there is like 3 of them to select from, compared to the 700 z-wave devices certified right now but they provide support for you if you need help to connect to a device.

Oh, did I mentioned that they have a yearly fee of about 100€…

Is home automation the new Model Railroad

Is Home Automation the new model railroad? I have a strong feeling that controlling small electronic devices goes deep down in the soul of each man (and maybe also women). The model railroad has until now been an very secure way to burn the household finances and whatever spare time you might have on a hobby. The challenge with the model railroad hobby seems to be that it takes up rather big space if your hobby grows. Different scales has been introduced to try to solve this but for every down sizing of the scale you have also lost some capabilities. To mention a few. You can no longer use a automatic couple, control your crane, unload your coal wagons or drive your model cars and busses from remote. So going from the N-scale to O- or Z-scale gives you less fun for less space. Other issue is that the old investment needs to be painstakingly converted to support the new digital formats and not all formats can work with each other (honestly not all HA system can handle this either).
I'm of course writing this mostly because I don't any longer, used to as a kid, have any model railroad but I had a urge and some plans at some point in getting one, though that was before Vera from mios.com come into my life Smile

A home automation system gives you a way of controlling a wide range of things, manually, over internet, by schedule or by external triggers like place, weather, presence etc. It involves the whole family. Aware of it or not when their coffee is ready in the morning, flowers watered, warm house and a lower than ever energy bill, saving money for better things...

It lowers the energy consumption and saves the planet or at least gives you the luxury of a letting the plumber in by un-locking the front door from your office and see what he is doing while being there.

Space. A home automation system takes up very little space and you don't need to convert a whole room for it. I have seen very complex system built up completely hidden in a dorm room, devices can be hidden in your bed or mail box. The only one that knows they are there are you (so please remember to inform if that’s by law where you are).
A railroad in a house might not raise the selling price while reports from USA show a plus twenty percent higher sales price for homes with a smart house system installed.
To move your railroad to a new place is a difficult operation even though module based system provides a great mobility. Moving with a HA system is unfortunately not that easy either, but if you like you can take at least most of it with you again and if it’s based on e.g z-wave protocol then it’s wireless and mostly very easy to move.

Going all in, nothing says that you can’t control your MR with HA Winking smile

Saturday, November 10, 2012

Greenwave IPv6 LED

http://www.greenwavereality.com/solutions/led-lighting/ is now mentioning that they actually starts to ship there IP v6 LED's to "selected partners".
When and If I will see them in Europe I might actually consider to see if I could use them for my garden lights, if somebody figures out a way to also control them from the Vera gateway.

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Western Digital RMA

See previous posts in same subject http://868mhz.blogspot.fi/2012/07/powerline-saga-final.html
My result in trying to fix my Western Digital Powerline adapters was... resultless... and my happieness was short. The adapters decided to still be a very big problem so I sent them back and after several week I have got a new pair back.
Lets see if they work any better this time....
I have in the mean time purchased a Zyxel powerline adapter that has been working great. It's providing the network connection to my Raspberry pie until I have time to get it on wireless.