So, We’re still waiting to hear from the court. I’ve gotten word verbally that the Judge approved the amendment. That’s pretty darn quick. But we really won’t know until I get keys in my hand.
I went ahead and placed an order on Amazon. A lot of money, but I got some cool stuff that will make it easier to implement a smart home.
The first thing I thought was needed, was this Leviton Split Phase repeater. If you’re in the position where you want to wire up the whole house, but you can’t wire up the whole house, you look for ways to exploit what is already there. In my case, I want to use my electrical wiring as part of my network. Usually that works fine, but sometimes it doesn’t work, because the source location is on one leg of the power, and the destination location is on the other leg. The split phase repeater connects both legs to the same communication ‘buss’ as well as repeats/strengthens the signal. So any network over AC, X10 communications, or whatever, there will be no issues.
I’ve already spoken about the Intermatic Whole house Surge Protector in a previous post, but to recap, it allows the whole home to be protected against high voltage spikes. The advantage to this particular model is that it has replaceable modules that the homeowner can swap out, without having to get an electrician for the entire unit.
I also ordered a Lutron ‘Caseta’ Wireless Smart Dimmer switch (actually I got the starter kit, which comes with the “Smart Bridge” required for the devices to work. Theoretically the system only requires one bridge). It works with Alexa. It can control LED and florescent light, so I may get more of these, maybe one for each room. They’re not the cheapest available, but they’re the most bang for the buck by a manufacturer you can trust.
I couldn’t decide on smart outlets, because I need so many, and they cost so much. So I’ve decided to get regular cheap outlets, and modify only those that need modification. In addition, I bought two 8-packs of Sonoff Wifi AC in line switches. These guys are kind of neat. The AC input powers them. They connect to your local wifi, and can be controlled by Alexa or App. It’s just on/off, but still useful. I will use these in limited areas, such as exterior power outlets and such.
I’m strongly considering solar power in some fashion, either as a total replacement, or a serious augmentation. At the moment however, it’s secondary to the other issues of the home. Once those are sorted out, we’ll revisit solar. It does look like a good deal though. The way GPA is costing, it makes long term sense. Using EmonCMS seems like the best way to output all the dots in a nice graphical display that’s easy to read and understand.
Some of the devices are rather pricey, to be honest. But the monitoring software is free, and the hardware required to run the monitoring software is amazingly cheap. So stay tuned and lets see what all this can do once we get the green light.