Smart Home Blog

Recently I found the Verve – the first (at least I had never seen before any) commercial lighting control system based on EnOcean. EnOcean is a modern wireless technology to easily build your home automation system. Comparing with another technologies such Z-Wave or ZigBee, EnOCean has a big advantage. It doesn’t use any battery to power devices. Instead of that it convert electromagnetic, piezogenerators, solar cells, thermocouples etc into usable electrical energy.

There is, unfortunately, not any detailed info, price and availability of the Verve. But it’s nice to see that EnOcean becomes more popular.

P. S. I just would like to remind you that LinuxMCE has basic support of EnOcean too. See that wiki page for more details.

That cool switch plate offers some kind of unique functionality. You may record a message (up to 20 seconds) that will automatically play each time someone flips the switch. It can easily replace an existing switch plate. Just not sure how to 4 AAA batteries will fit the switch box. Also the Parrot Digital Messaging Switch Plate is cheap (just $9.99). So, you can simple try it to see how it fits your life.

Unfortunately, I didn’t find the possibility to ship that messaging plate to Cyprus. So, I have no idea how it useful but personally I prefer notifications on my cell phone

That presentation will be useful for all who’d like to understand what kind of wireless devices can be used in the home automation system and how. I like it but the CoCo devices, which use some proprietary protocol instead of some standard one, should be definitely replaced by something with support Z-Wave or ZigBee. Moreover, it’s supposed that CoCo devices will control via remote control and not via PC or controller (correct me if I wrong). I found the PC interface but it’s used to set timers and not for integration with home automation system. As a simple and basic solution without controller or PC with specific software CoCo might be good (depends of the price, of couse). But for something serious it’d be better to use devices which support some standard protocol such X10, Z-Wave, ZigBee etc and which can be easily integrated with opensource or commertial software.

[via AutomatedHome]

If you care about environment and your electricity bill but always forget to switch off unnecessary light using SmartSwitch is an one way to solve that situation. It’d designed to give user feedback about a value of personal or communal electrical usage. If that value reached predefined maximum than the SmartSwitch is physically harder to use, thanks to a brake pad inside the mechanism and built-in microprocessor. As result the user will always remember to turn off unnecessary light and electronic devices.

The SmartSwitch fits into standard electrical boxes and data communication occurs through the electrical lines using X11 protocol.

C-Bus users now have a possibility to build wireless network as well as a wired. It might be needed when existing system is expanded and you don’t want to put additional cables. Currently only wireless switches, dimmers, scene controls and remote controls are available. Unfortunately there are no any security sensors or thermostats yet.

The switches, dimmers and scene controls are available in two styles – Neo and Saturn. Switches and dimmers can have two or four buttons. Scene controls – only four. To integrate wireless devices into wired system the C-Bus RF Gateway should be used. It provides a C-Bus protocol communication bridge between a single C-Bus RF wireless system and a single C-Bus wired network.

Wireless C-Bus devices look nice but there are two big disadvantages which limit their usage. The first one is small choice of available devices. And the second one is a range of transmitting of the commands. If I’m not wrong a wireless C-Bus device cannot re-transmit command sent from the controller via gateway. So, to improve a signal coverage additional gateway should be added. Comparing with Z-Wave or ZigBee where each device in the network can re-transmit sent commands.

But in any case, for existing C-Bus users the wireless devices can help extend their network without breaking walls.