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> The main thing I can't do without the cloud is voice control. I'm using Google Homes for it which Home Assistant exposes all my devices to. Local voice control systems really suck compared to Google unfortunately.

have you looked at picovoice? been pretty impressed by their wake word (Porcupine) and STT (Cheetah) on phones/pi's etc. seems like this could be integrated as a local STT provider with ada.

I'm curious, what kind of motion sensors are you using? I looked into hooking more of them in my home, but I could not figure out an affordable way of doing that.

> Local voice control systems really suck compared to Google unfortunately.

Have you checked the latest updates on this? Home Assistant is getting its own voice assistant: https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2019/11/20/privacy-focuse...

I don’t have the exact model to hand, but they are a super discrete little thing in the ceiling. I can get the exact model later if you want.

It does motion in 3 directions using infra red, and gives you light levels and temperature as well.

They can sense really damn far, and actually I had to turn most of them down in sensitivity to make them useful.

I use the same sensors for triggering the alarm system. They look way more attractive than those ugly corner sensors most security systems use.

I'd be interested in the model if you have the opportunity to check! Thank you.

same

This is the one.

https://www.gira.com/en/gebaeudetechnik/systeme/knx-eib_syst...

You can see what one looks like in place here in the middle of this picture. I use black ones for my wood ceilings.

https://i.imgur.com/pTCOKJx.png

On the left hand side is one of the air quality sensors.

What is Room Of Requirement, if I may ask?

It's a bedroom that we are temporarily using as a storage room for junk that doesn't belong anywhere. My wife is a Harry Potter fan.

I was hoping so much that it would be that HP room :)

I'm in the process of building a house and am thinking of going the KNX route. I'd prefer critical things to be hardwired rather than rely on wireless, just because it's more reliable.

I'm interested to know if you installed everything yourself or had a contractor do it? My understanding is it is expensive to get someone to do the work (as usually it's hotels or offices having this done), but the actual hardware doesn't cost much more than the z-wave equivalent.

Oh and your Room of Requirement definately needs more explanation :-)

I had a contractor and he did all the electrics as well. This meant that the cost for labour wasn’t really much more than getting all the “dumb” electrics done.

Ultimately wiring for KNX doesn’t take a lot more than just running a single extra wire through large sections of rooms since it’s a bus based system.

We worked on an hourly rate + cost of materials, rather than a fixed contract.

All the other home automation people I talked to didn’t really “get it”. This guy opened up to me about the importance of open standards from the first time I talked him and was happy at the concept of me programming the KNX devices myself, so I knew as soon as I met him that he was the right guy for the job.

I worked really closely with him (a daily catchup every day) in order to make sure everything was perfect.

I was really happy with the process, but it relied on getting a guy I could work really well with.

In Germany, there are lots of people who plan and program the KNX system themselves. The actual wiring is carried out by a professional but the commissioning etc can be done by anybody. KNX requires a specific software (ETS).

As KNX is a global standard this procedure becomes more and more implemented. We have published an ebook about how to get started with KNX, ETS 5 and ETS Inside (cheaper version of it) and share best practices.

Check yourself: https://www.knxtutorial.com/

Hi there, are you based in US? KNX is not fully certified in US, right? I spent fair amount of time trying to find good switch actuator that is US gang compatible. But did n't find anything good. Also this says nkx is not certified in us: https://www.cepro.com/news/will_european_knx_home_automation...

I have over 500 sensors integrated into my home and when all done will have over 1k. I find the biggest problem when you get big is that home assistant has no way to deal with back pressure of updating networked sensors. Once you have issues with say 5-6 sensors it starts cascading.. you hit 10 which could be just ecobee sensors or homekit it can bring down homeassistant.

That just seems excessive. Can you help me make sense of what for?

Please see my reply below.

Can you say a little about what the 500 sensors are?

Every room has a minimum of 7+ sensors (motion, occupancy, light sensor, nightlight, sound, mic, temp, humidity, smoke & carbon (and all related nest sensors like battery, last check, status..., path lighting (not included)). Then light switches are all smart + have occupancy + dimmer level etc... It adds up quick...

I have some crazy node red sub flows where I use state machines to turn on based on conditions and I can do whole home announcements as well as level audio and use it for custom security solution. I have smart bulbs too in some rooms and everything is 100% local with no external dependencies (if voice assistant stops working it doesn't affect anything and I'm going to probably move everything to almond). I built everything around sub flows and I made it easier to debug by adding friendly toggles that actually let me do some crazy accessibility stuff like announce motion or lights turning on etc.. If you were blind you'd know exactly where you were at.

I'm also doing local facial recognition (lots more todo) and I'm starting to integrate those into custom automations based on whose in the room (wife or me). It also greets us when we get home. It's been my dream since I was a little kid to have a smart home, and by smart I mean work for me and be quality of life improvement while being dumb for everyone (progressive enhancement). Home should alert you to dangerous weather or do the proper thing if a fire happens (open windows/ doors, turn on path lighting, announce what direction to go to the exit, etc).

If you’d be willing to open github issues for home assistant with your problems I guarantee you the dev team would want to know about and fix them. I’ve met Paulus in real life and he deeply cares about the community.

I've been eyeballing this problem space for a while now and came to the exact same conclusions as you did, KNX for everything "important" + Home Assistant for nice to haves.

Just waiting for the build a house/completely renovate an apartment to put it to practice.

Can you give some more information about the sensors you use, especially for CO2/VOC measurements?

For air quality I’m using the arcus neo which can do co2, Voc, humidity and temperature. But they are damn expensive.

Unfortunately all the other KNX ones I looked at were super ugly/huge. The more ugly ones also had better features like particulate matter as well.

These are a super discrete and small brushed aluminium circle on the ceiling.

Other than that I have PIR sensors in every room that I mentioned in a sibling comment with presence, temp, light level.

One sensor I’m super happy with is the infrasonic water level sensor for the water tank, so I always know how much water I have left.

I also have a weather station connected in with a pile of measurements for outdoor stuff like light, humidity, temp, pressure.

Did you do the KNX setup yourself or did you leave that part to a professional?

This is really impressive.

Are you using separate sensors for humidity/temp/air quality? If so, which ones?

Do you assemble these yourself (eg connecting a sensor to a network enabled board) or are they connected out of the box?

Would really appreciate anything you've got in terms of parts list.

The cost of all those sensors has me curious. Like you I am wondering if there is a multi-sensor.

What presence detection are you using?

>The main thing I can't do without the cloud is voice control.

Mozilla has been working on a google voice replacement btw

Kind of off-topic but has any work been done on possibly extracting and re-using the voice ML model Pixel phones download (for things like live caption[0] and audio recorder[1])? I imagine there would be some legal issues but personal use probably would be fine.

0: https://youtu.be/v8cLk2W3vY8

1: https://youtu.be/RVMqB4W_EH4

Not that I'm aware of.

I suspect the format would be quite proprietary

Can you tell us what sensors you are using?

which local voice assistants have you tried? is Snips one of them? I'm thinking of setting that up for my next raspberry pi project but I havnt really done a whole lot of research on it either so maybe it's a waste of time

Snips was just purchased by Sonos by the way.

You took the screenshot while you were in the master bathroom?

The text in that image on Imgur is barely readable due high compression. Please consider hosting the image on your site next time or someplace where they don't compress that much.

Are you browsing on mobile? It's a 1500 pixel wide image for me, perfect quality.

Yes, on mobile. Now it's ok, it seems to be a direct link now. Previously it was terrible, really barely readable, in a thumbnail mode like this https://imgur.com/a/oKm3fP1 which presented this https://i.imgur.com/BOB10kkg.png . Never mind...

The room of requirement!