Smart Lighting - Motion Sensor

Philips recently released a motion detector for their Hue smart lighting system. Now that there's a few Hue bulbs in various rooms of the house, I thought I'd try a motion sensor out to see if there's an actual use case that makes sense in reality.

The motion sensor itself is pretty small (5x5cm) and some thought has been put into the mount to make it pretty flexible. You can freestand it, or screw the supplied 'mount' to something like a wall. The mount is magnetic, so you can re-position or remove the sensor at will.

Finding and configuring the sensor is pretty much the same process as for a new bulb. There are 3 main configurable parameters for the sensor; how sensitive it is to motion; how dark it needs to get before the sensor becomes active; and what times separate 'night' from 'day'. This final parameter lets you split the day into two, and assign different lighting schemes to each. For example, a basic Hue White bulb supports schemes for fully on, dimmed, and nightlight, so you could go for fully on during the day, and dimmed during the night.

As a home worker the first use case we tried was in our home office. We stood the sensor on the desktop, and linked it to the desktop lamp and ceiling light. We configured both night and day to turn these lights fully on, and turn both off after 5 minutes of no motion detected. So whenever someone comes into the room the lights come on, and then they go off again when the room is unoccupied.

This use case almost works. I go into the office in the morning while it is still dark outside, and the lights come on. I work there all day, and a few minutes after I leave in the evening the lights go off again. The problem is, when I leave the room to go and have lunch, the lights stay on. This is because the ambient lighting has increased, and that deactivates the motion sensor. You can configure the sensor so that even on the brightest of days it will never deactivate, but that misses out on an opportunity.

What would be fantastic, certainly at this time of year, is to be able to trigger a scheme as the ambient lighting conditions pass the on/off threshold. We could then turn the ceiling light off as the dark morning transitioned into full daylight, and back on again in the afternoon as the night draws in. On a positive note, this is only a software update, so maybe in time it will come.

The second use case we've tried is in the hallway. I mounted the sensor above the front door, and tied the sensor into the hallway lights. We've set a far shorter period for no motion, and the hallway is a more transitory space in the house than the office, so the chances of the lights being on just as the sensor is deactivated by ambient light is very slim. This use case works very well. No need to fumble for the light switch when coming downstairs half asleep in the morning, and when returning from an evening out it is nice to be welcomed home automatically.

Currently the motion sensors are £35 from Amazon, so certainly not cheap enough to blitz the house with them. But we'll probably get a second sensor for use in the kitchen, as the use case there is the same as the hallway. Hopefully there'll be a software update from Philips at some point, and it'll be worth putting one back in the office.

Smart Lighting - Dimmer Switches

The Philips Hue dimmer switches have arrived. We ordered two of the Wireless Dimming Kits, rather than just the switches themselves, as it was the equivalent of knocking off £5 the price of each bulb.

The first thing we noticed was that the bulbs included in the Dimming Kits are different to the bulbs included in the White Starter Kits. In both cases they are dimmable white LED bulbs, and Philips claim both are the A19/A60 shape, but to my mind the Starter Kit bulbs are closer to a K shape.

White Starter Kit bulb

Wireless Dimming Kit bulb

As it happens both bulbs fit fine, but I'm intrigued why Philips are producing two different shaped bulbs.

The bulbs in the Wireless Dimming Kits come pre-paired with the dimmer switches themselves. So you could install them without even needing a Bridge. That would make a nice and relatively cheap way into smart lighting, although you wouldn't have the network connectivity until you introduced them to a Bridge.

Pairing the bulbs and switches with the Bridge was also straightforward. The key is to add the switches first. In the mobile app this is via Settings -> My devices, and you'll need to poke the actual switch itself with a pin to get it into pairing mode (orange flashing light). I found that the Bridge couldn't automatically find the two new bulbs, so noted down their serial numbers and used the manual search facility of the mobile app, which worked fine.

To change the link between the switches and the lights or scenes that we wanted to control is configured through the My Devices settings, rather than the lights or scene settings. Our bedside lamp, which has an automatic timer to come on in the morning, now also has a dimmer switch linked to it, so we can turn the lamp off, go back to sleep and be late for work, all without having to find the tablet.

A nice touch with the dimmer switches are the holders. These come with double-sided tape, so can easily be attached to the wall or other surface (you can drill and screw if you to as well). The actual dimmer switches themselves are magnetically attached to the holders. So you can detach the switch and carry it around to wherever you are. In the lounge for example we take the switch from the wall, and when it is movie time we can be extremely lazy and dim the lights without having to get up off of the sofa. There is the risk of the switch disappearing forever down the back of the sofa, but then there's always the mobile app for backup!

Honeywell Evohome - Multi-Room Zones - Step-by-Step

I found the evohome Installation Guide uninformative for setting up a multi-room zone. Here's what the Guide says:

Verbose it is not, so here's a step-by-step guide.

The starting point is that there is already a zone set up with one HR92 bound to that zone. First get into the System Settings by pressing and holding the Settings icon for a few seconds. Then select the Zone Settings icon in the top row:

Select the Edit Zone option:

Then select the zone you want to add a radiator or room to. Use the arrow in the bottom right of the Controller to get to the Application Settings option, and select it:

You can then use the Single/Multi Room Zone option to change the type of zone:

Select the Multi Room Zone option, then press the green tick icon in the bottom right hand corner of the Controller: 

Use the arrow in the bottom left of the Controller to get back to the Zone Configuration screen, and the select the Radiator Valve option:

The next step is non-obvious, use the arrow in the bottom right of the Controller to bind an additional HR92 to the current zone:

You'll then be presented with the standard Binding screen, so press and hold the button on the HR92 to get to the Bind function, then a short press of the button on the HR92 to initiate binding to the Controller in the current zone. On the Controller press the green icon in the middle:

When bound successfully you'll get a message on the Controller of the form:

In this case there are 2 HR92s (2 actuators bound) bound to the zone, with bi-directional comms (2-way). You can continue to add more HR92s to the same zone by using the arrow in the bottom left of the Controller, or complete the zone by using the green tick in the bottom right of the Controller.

Note that on the main screen of the Controller it will display the actual temperature from the first HR92 that was bound to the zone. In our lounge and dining room space we bound the lounge radiator to the zone first then the dining room radiator, and so the Controller shows the temperature from the lounge radiator. We've set up the local display on all of the HR92s to show the actual temperature, rather than the setpoint temperature, so I can always take a look at the dining room radiator if I'm interested.

[Whilst the HR92 can tell you on demand what position the valve is actually in, I'm geeky enough to have liked to see the valve position displayed on the HR92 all the time. But that's probably just me!]

Honeywell Evohome - Multi-Room Zones

When we installed the Honeywell Evohome central heating control system we fitted four radiators with HR92 temperature regulating valves (TRV). In the other rooms we left the manual TRVs fitted, and lived with the fact that whenever the Evohome system decided that any of the controlled rooms were getting a bit too cold, then the manual TRV rooms would be getting some heating. So recently we ordered another pack of four HR92s from JTM Plumbing, and have fitted them to the remaining radiators. We didn't do this originally purely because of cost, as the HR92s are not cheap, but the ability to add new HR92s to the system means you can fit out the whole house as and when we can afford it.

As our radiators already have the M30x1.5 valves, installation of the HR92s was as easy as before. Binding them to the Controller was also really straight forward. A long press on the Settings icon is required to get into the system settings menu. Then simply add a zone and give it a name, at which point the Controller will sit and wait for the HR92 to start the binding process. (The only thing to remember is to tell the Controller not to use the temperature sensor in the Controller itself for this new zone.) On the HR92 a couple of presses of the button are required to get it into binding mode, and within seconds the Controller was reporting that the two were bound.

We have an open plan L-shaped lounge and dining room, with a radiator in each 'room'. Previously only the lounge radiator had a HR92, but now both of them have HR92s fitted. We started by copying the temperature schedule from the lounge to the dining room, so that both radiators would be trying to keep this space at the same temperature. This is easily accomplished, by going into the schedule for the lounge zone, and using the icon in the bottom right of the Controller display to copy the entire week schedule to the dining room zone.

However this does mean that if we change a schedule or manually change the temperature setpoint in one of the zones, the other zone is unaffected and the two radiators will be trying to keep the one space at two different temperatures. So we set up a multi-room zone, using both the lounge and dining room radiators. The Controller now allows only one temperature setpoint and schedule for the space as a whole, but the two radiators work independently to achieve the desired temperature. This works really well at dealing with the different thermal characteristics of the space. Our lounge is on the south side of the house with big windows and a wood burning stove in it, while the dining room is on the north side of the house with very little natural warming getting in. Certainly when we fire up the stove, the lounge radiator pretty much shuts down as the stove warms up the lounge. We'll have to wait and see how the system deals with sunny days (I hope!).

Smart Lighting - Installation

We've started to experiment with smart lighting in the house, in the form of some Philips Hue bulbs and lamps. It is early days, but here's our experiences so far.

The starting point for the wider system was a White Starter Kit, consisting of two white LED bulbs and a bridge. Unfortunately we couldn't get the UK standard B22 bayonet fitting bulbs in a starter kit form, so instead we now have two US/EU standard E27 screw fitting bulbs. This isn't a huge problem as we have a couple of compatible lamp sockets, including the pendant luminaire over the table in the dining room and a bedside table lamp in the bedroom, so the bulbs were installed nice and simply.

The bulbs form a ZigBee wireless mesh network between themselves and the bridge, with the bridge bridging the ZigBee network to our home wired Ethernet LAN. So we plugged the bridge into our broadband router (actually, we've now connected a 4-port Ethernet hub to the router, and have the Honeywell Evohome gateway, the Philips Hue bridge, and an eQ3 HomeMatic gateway connected to the hub) and installed the Hue app on our Android tablet. One of the good things about the starter kit is that the bulbs and bridge are pre-paired, so when everything is powered up and the app is started the lamps are already registered and ready to go.

The standard Philips Hue app is pretty straight forward. We can control the brightness of each lamp manually, or we can set up and activate a 'scene', which is a stored configuration of brightnesses for each lamp. We've created scenes with the dining room light at full brightness for when I'm working from the dining table, and at a lesser brightness for when we're dining. The app also has the possibility to create 'alarms', which are time-based triggers to activate scenes. We've experimented with one that fades up the bedroom lamp in the morning over a 15 minute period, as assistance for the alarm clock.

The major issue that we've identified so far is that it is actually really inconvenient to fire up the tablet to turn a light on or off, and more often than not we've just turned the wall switch off and back on. This activates the Hue bulb's default behaviour, which is to turn on at full brightness. We're obviously not alone in this respect so we have a couple of dimmer switches on order, which should work in parallel with the app, and give us that physical switch on the wall to press.

There's another issue with the Hue app, in that it just seemed to crash randomly while I was trying various options. This turned out to be an issue with Android app permissions, but instead of displaying an alert to the user the app was just crashing. It is easy to resolve though, just go to Settings - Apps - Hue - Permissions and ensure all of the permissions are enabled.

So far we've been looking at white lamps. This is mainly due to cost. The white bulbs are about £15 each, whilst a multi-colour bulb is £50. With 25 ceiling lamps in the house (we've got ten GU10 downlighters in the kitchen alone!), we're not going to be installing multi-colour bulbs this side of a lottery win.

But we have taken a foray into multi-colour with a Hue go lamp. This connects into the ZigBee network, but is battery powered and portable, so we can move it around the house whilst we experiment. At the moment we've got it on the floor in the lounge and are using it to flood a wall with light. Movie nights now have a bit more ambience than before. I've also played with the geo-fencing feature of the Hue app, which can be used to trigger scenes on arrival or departure, so that the go lamp turns off when I leave the house, and back on when I come back. There's an option in the app to only enable this functionality after sunset, so I'm not turning lamps on and off during the day.

The next thing I want to play with is IFTTT integration, and see if I can use the go lamp for weather updates, email notifications, and more!

Smart Central Heating

As I've been playing with the scheduling features of the Evohome Controller, I've been thinking about the various headline features that smart central heating systems are marketed on, and why they're needed.

Traditionally your central heating system had one job to do: ensure that your home is at a comfortable temperature. Now there's a second job for it: minimise overall energy use. Arguably, through the use of a well positioned thermostat and TRVs on each radiator you could achieve job number one. The recent explosion of smart central heating systems are all focussed on job number two: minimising energy use.

There appear to be two basic approaches to minimising energy use. The first is to turn off the heating when you're not at home. And the second is to only heat the spaces that you're using when you are at home. Different companies are tackling one or both of these approaches. For example Nest, Hive and Tado are using motion detection and geo-fencing to tackle the first approach, while Honeywell and Heat Genius are also zoning your house and controlling each radiator independently in order to tackle the second approach.

The pre-smart approach to turning off the central heating when you're not at home was to use a programmable timer. When you delve into the detail it feels like all of the smart central heating systems are really continuing that approach. Some of the systems still require you to program them with the times and temperatures that you want the central heating to work to. Even the ones that promote a 'learning' capability are just using motion detection and geo-fencing to work out your schedule without you manually entering it yourself. Some of the learning systems benefit greatly from you manually entering your schedule first, so they've got a baseline to start learning from.

So if your routine is entirely predictable then all of the smart central heating systems can ensure that your home is nice and toasty when you're in it. It's the unpredictable that some of them struggle to deal with automatically. Those occasions when the train is delayed, the meeting overruns, the motorway is congested, and the heating system kicks in when you're not actually there. In this case no amount of smart learning algorithm is going to be able to compensate and delay heating the house until you're actually going to arrive. As far as I can see, only the systems offering geo-fencing can automatically cope with the unexpected. The others will have to make do with manually controlling the heating system remotely via an app or the web.

When it comes to zoning the house there's very little differentiation between the smart central heating systems. All produce wireless TRVs that allow a central controller to independently adjust the heat output of the radiators. Some of these TRVs allow the temperature to be adjusted locally as well, and some have displays to report on room temperature or temperature setpoint.

Honeywell Evohome - Configuration

The first step in configuring the Evohome system is to bind/pair each of the system components to the Controller. Each component has a slightly different procedure for binding, giving the impression that different teams developed different components for the system. For example, the HR92 TRVs require a 5 second push on their button to get them into configuration mode, then select Bind from the 3 options, and off you go. The BDR91 wireless relays however need a 15 second push on their button to clear the previous binding data, then another 5 second push to get the binding process going. The supplied installation manual explains the binding procedure pretty well. On the plus side, the Controller is battery powered so you can carry it around the house, binding it to each component in turn.

As mentioned before, the Evotouch evolved into the Evohome Controller. Be aware that in the Controller software the Controller is still referred to as an Evotouch. One mistake we made whilst initially configuring the system is to set the Controller as a temperature sensor for the living room, rather than use the temperature sensor built into the HR92 TRV. Not referring to it as the Evohome Controller might have contributed to our confusion.

We also had a little trouble setting up the hot water part of the system. The first stumble was the use of the word Actuator, which seems to be used synonymously for both the BDR91 wireless relay and the mid-position valve. We were also prompted to rebind the BDR91 wireless relay for the central heating at one point during setting up the hot water, but in the end we appear to have everything bound and operational.

We wanted to set the temperature for the hot water tank to 55C, to be below 60C at which limescale deposits start increasing, and also above 50C to combat bacterial collonies such as Legionella. Setting the temperature for hot water is straight forward using the Controller. However two other options are also presented, Overrun and Differential, but the explanations of these options are omitted from the supplied manuals. However, the Evotouch manual (doc ref 50056315-001 B) has the following:

Hot Water Overrun
Specifies how long the valve for the hot water is open or the hot water pump is running to extract all the heat to avoid blocking the heat source.

Hot Water Differential
Setting the switching differential of the domestic hot water control.

So, by setting the Differential parameter to 5C, the hot water should stay in the 50C to 60C range. We also put in a 1 minute Overrun, which I think will keep the Grundfos pump running for a minute after the boiler has been shut down.

Other parameters that we tweaked were to do with Optimisation (Optimum Start, where the system learns when to fire the boiler up in advance to hit the temperature requested) and Fail Safe (where the system will run at a 25% duty cycle if the Controller comms fail completely).

I'm pretty sure we'll get into more of the configuration parameters that the system offers as we get used to the way it works. And then, of course, there's the whole scheduling aspect we'll start playing with.