That’s probably more reliable, but way more expensive than UBNT. I use the mFi stuff at all my sites for door open/close temp and power monitoring. I’ve had mPorts die all the time, and temp sensors need calibration. They all go to a controller on VM and I was using windows which sucked. Once I moved that to linux my controller is running MUCH better. But now that it’s not being updated I need a replacement that is not much more expensive.
From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of Zach Underwood Sent: Monday, January 9, 2017 11:33 AM To: af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Home automation I have looked at http://www.networktechinc.com/enviro-monitor.html for a ubnt mfi replacement when I build my new place. On Mon, Jan 9, 2017 at 1:29 PM, Sterling Jacobson <sterl...@avative.net<mailto:sterl...@avative.net>> wrote: I have the following in my house: Sense monitor on my main inside breaker. https://sense.com/ Great idea, but it’s not smart enough to detect most of my stuff and there appears to be no manual way to tell it anything. So it’s just kind of sitting there until they upgrade it to ‘useful’ state for me. I heard they just implemented IFTTT so it might make more ‘sense’ in the near future, lol UBNT mFi I have a few cameras and mPort senseors along with mPower plugs of the single/3 and 8 port variety in my house. I use these all the time to shut down the TV and Xbox on my kids. They can also report on power usage and have their own rule based set. But it appears to be abandoned by UBNT and it’s near impossible to find mPorts. I’m looking for a good replacement for these, any suggestions?? Alexa by Amazon I have it connected to a few things in my home. My wife and kids use it for music, but the speaker kind of sucks. I feel like we don’t really have the hang of it yet. And it’s not so great that my kids can control it. A few ZWave/Zigby Kwickset door deadbolt locks. I had a Vera to talk to these, but took it out because it sucked. I’ll probably hook these up to a Wink 2 when I get one later this month. These are perfect for outside high traffic doors, and my home office. The kids can get in with the code and lock it with a touch of a button. No more keys. Ecovent https://www.ecoventsystems.com/ I have replaced most of my vents in my 3100 sqr foot home with these and their controllers. It’s the closest thing I have found to a commercial HVAC damper system. The App is ok, and it has for sure evened out the temperatures in my rooms/house. But they don’t make a 6” round one that I need for three bathrooms, and those are still way off temp. And they can only do so much if your HVAC is totally screwed up like mine is. Chamberlain garage door control/monitor I absolutely needed this to be able to tell when my kids keep leaving my garage open for hours. I can remotely shut it and open it too. But there doesn’t seem to be any provision to tell it to automatically shut the door after ten minutes. If someone has figured that out, let me know because the kids keeps leaving it open. Harmony remote with Zigby/ZWave adapter Frankly I don’t use this at all. But I did program it at one time to switch my AV stuff on/off etc. It was slow to respond and often got in a bad ‘state’ because it doesn’t know the actual ON/OFF status of the devices. Nest HVAC control and smoke detector I do love this device, and it integrates with my Ecovent system directly So I occasionally manually adjust the main temperature on it. But most of the time I just control it through the Ecovent App now. The smoke detector is cool too and integrates well with the Nest. But I didn’t bother replacing the rest of the detectors, just one in the main hallway. Rachio sprinkler controller I got a good discount on this and a quick rebate check from UT state water conservation as well. It was a breeze to replace my two existing Rainbird controllers for the extended version of this. The app and control are awesome. It almost immediately killed my lawn though. The basic setup did not work right and I still don’t understand how to program it for my lawn conditions. My wife was super pissed off that our lawn was almost perpetually yellow. So this spring I’ve got my work cut out for me in re-programming the lawn ‘type’ and conditions so it works better. It has a hookup for a rain sensor which I bought this winter and will use with it. It also has the ability to hook up a main water flow device which I am planning to do to cross check my city water meter on our secondary water usage. I have one of those timer light switches in my kids bathroom that turns the fan/lights off after five minutes. But they keep pressing the buttons on it for longer times, like 60 minutes for a bath, so I still have to go check sometimes. I replaced most of the 65/75 W lightbulbs in my house with those cheap non-dimming LED lights. My power for lights being on all the time went way down, so I think it’s a good investment. Also, just the ease of not having to replace light bulbs all over the house every year was well worth it already. On the home wireless front, I just installed the UBNT Amplifi. It did improve coverage, but it cut my total speeds down by 1/5 on the high end 5GHz remote room wifi. So in a sense it works better than my spaceship ASUS router, in filing in the dead spots. But it is slower. The interface/app can shut down any device separately, so that is the feature I used the most. But it really dumbs things down in the app for control and you can’t really change much. -- Zach Underwood (RHCE,RHCSA,RHCT,UACA) My website<http://zachunderwood.me> advance-networking.com<http://advance-networking.com>