New House......New Toys

[Grimkill]

If I post this in the wrong spot please feel free to move.

Need help building a zwave house with extremely high Wife Acceptability Factor.

Budget = 2,000 including Zwave Controller
Requirements = Each portion needs to be able to stand alone.
It would also be nice to repurpose an old samsung tab with hstouch to run HS3 with Kodi.
And most importantly it has to be super simple for the wife or I am going to be miserable.

Toys already bought:
DSC 1832
2 Yale Touchscreen Deadbolts
Honeywell 6580

Need Suggestions:
Garage Door Opener (out of box compatibility)
Camera System (blue iris w/nvr or Lorax/Qsee)
Gate Opener / Proximity System (cars get close triggers welcome home events)
6 Fan Controllers
8 Dimer Switches
2 Flood Sensors
Weather Reporting Station

[S-F]

First and foremost, Welcome to this here forum!


Now on to your quest. You aren't going to be able to accomplish your goals within your budget. Everything you want is easily doable and many people here have such technology at work in their homes but they have spent a lot more cash than you're thinking of and over many years. I suggest you start with what's most important and then make progress as time and funds allow. You've gotta think, a camera can be $100+. I don't know if you're considering the price of HS3 and the associated hardware in your budget but that's a few bills right there. The weather stations seem to be around $400 also, though I have no personal experience. I think the cheapest dimmers are about $40, though don't quote me, so 8 of them would be $300 - $400 right there.

With home automation installations the tortoise wins the race!

[Mattyjee]

Your DSC can be used to open the garage door. It has 2 outputs. Set them to be a 1 second pulse and connect one to the coil of a 12V relay. Connect the switching terminals of the relay to the two pins on the garage door unit and presto.

[Grimkill]

Ok.....start with the backbone.
I am planning on getting the Sel Pro w/HS3.
As I said I already have the two deadbolts (which should connect via Zwave).
Which thermostat plugin (Honeywell 6589) is a better choice?

I plan on using the Envsalink instead of the IO Board with the DSC 1832. What are the Cons of each?

I guess what I really need is a planner to help me make a shopping list. Then purchase items as I can. Then after buying read in the forums sub categories to gain information.

[LeoS]

One option for 'weather reporting station' is a NetAtmo weather station. For $150-200 you get 2 environment sensing modules (a usb-powered base station and a battery operated outdoor module). The base station uploads data to the cloud every 5 mins or so, so you can get the info from any browser or smartphones, and the homeseer plugin will also pull data from the cloud.

The indoor module comes with carbon and audio level sensor; rain module is optional. (No wind nor uv sensor yet).

A Davis weather station is $800+, and I'm not sure about interfacing it to HS. I think there are scripts for it, but no full-blown plugin.

Cameras go from $50 to $1000+ each... I think a popular sweetspot is around $150. Those dahua/hikvision types provide great pictures, good functionality and quite reliable.

One thing to consider about dimmer.. is those RGBW Fibaro dimmer module. They can control 1 strip of RGBW colored LED... or 4 single-color LEDs. I'm using a bunch of those to control led strips for indirect cove lighting. They're very small so they can be installed easily behind light switches. They're DC-only.

[mrhappy]

If you are looking for a weather station there is also any off the weather stations that can talk to cumulus, cumulus can then in turn be linked with HS. I use a Fine Offset station which cost me very little and has been going strong for a good few years now without problem.