A while back I wrote about Home Automation, and how I was using it at my then residence to control a few lamps. While that was all good and fun, it still left a lot to be desired. I was really itching to do a more robust automation system, but due to circumstances (not owning the house), I really couldn’t make it all I wanted.

That all changed two weeks ago when I bought my first house. This nice long holiday weekend provided a perfect opportunity for me to start working on my home automation system. My good friend Jason gave me a handful of X10 capable standard toggle switches and toggle dimmer switches to get me started. When mixed with the wall-wart dimmers and relays that I used in my previous setup they provide a rather robust system.

I’ve also ordered a couple keypad switches to allow me to control whole lighting scenes with the push of a button (one for downstairs and one for the master bedroom), a controllable thermostat and a few more dimmer and relay switches.

My first attempt at an automated system was to set my system up so that, accessing the control pages from my iPhone, I press the button to indicate I’m going to take a shower. It turned on my bedroom light and the light over the vanity in my master bathroom. Then, after 5 minutes it also turns on the bathroom vent fan and associated light.

Each of these lights are automatically turned off after either a half hour or 25 minutes ( so they all go off at the same time), giving me plenty of time to get ready in the morning and without having to worry whether or not I turned the lights off. The first trial run of that was this morning, and it worked beautifully.

I initially was a bit hesitant to install the switches. It involved replacing existing light switches with new ones, a daunting task for anybody who has never done it before. It really wasn’t all that difficult, though.
The first step was to find the circuit in the breaker box and shut it off. After that I took the existing switches out of the wall (still attached to their wires) and turned the power back on. Then, using a multimeter I determined which wire was the hot wire (in most cases for me it was the black wire) and which was the load wire (which was the red wire in most cases, only twice was it black). I then turned the power back off and took out the existing switches (marking the wires as I did to indicate their purpose, even though they were color coded), and hooked up the new switch to the wiring in the wall. It hooked up wire for wire, with the following exception – the new switches also needed to be wired into the neutral wire. Once I had the switches wired in I put them back in the wall and tightened them down, turned the power back on and tested them. They all worked perfectly the first time.

So, why am I doing all of this? Well, there are a few different reasons all combining into one. For starters, I’m a geek and this is a geeky thing to play around with. It gets my inner geek all excited. Beyond that, though, it makes for a more efficient house and easier control over things. I don’t have to worry about forgetting to turn off bath and bedroom lights in the morning after my showers – they turn off all by themselves. I won’t have to worry about turning on and off my outside lights – they will do that by themselves in the morning and evening, within a set period of time before or after sunrise and sunset (and the controlling server updates itself to know when sunrise and sunset will be). I won’t have to worry about setting the thermostat – it’ll be set automatically to efficiently keep the house at a comfortable temperature.

Now, if I could only figure out a way to automate feeding the cat, life would be great…

Anybody wanting to do a similar setup in their home – you should head to www.smarthome.com, a great resource for this kind of stuff. I have a mix of X10 and INSTEON gear, controlled by the Indigo Home Control server (running on a mac mini). I think pretty much ALL of it came from Smart Home. Though I’ve not personally had any issues with their equipment, if you DO have any problems they are excellent at making sure the issue is taken care of. I’ve had nothing but good experiences with Smart Home.

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