Project plan

As described in my post New-build home I want to make a smart home out of a not so smart home. Here’s my project plan.

Prerequisites

I have some prerequisites I like to keep in mind:

1. WAF, the Wife Acceptance Factor. My wife let’s me tinker, but doesn’t want to be bothered. No app for her and no unexpected behaviour from the house.
2. I want everything to work as you’d expect, if you need to explain something you’ve overdone it.
3. Since everything is still under warranty, I don’t want to do anything to void that. So no drilling, cutting, etc.
4. If at all possible, I want local options. So no cloud solutions for the devices in my home.
5. Everything has to deliver value in one or more of the topics ‘Safety’, ‘Comfort’ and ‘Sustainability’.

Devices

This is the list of devices I’d like to control and/or use to make the house a smart-home.

• Nibe F1255 PC heat pump
  I want to use the heat pump to save energy in the form of hot water on days when I have a lot of excess energy from my solar panels. I’d also like to be able to set the controls for the heat pump in Home Assistant, especially the thermostat and heating/cooling mode.
• Watts thermostats in upstairs rooms
  I’d like to be able to see the temperature in the rooms and the setpoint for that room. In the future I’d like to couple this with door/window sensors to disable heating when the windows and/or doors are open.
• Orcon MVS-15 ventilation unit
  I want to automate ventilation when we’re cooking.
• GoodWE GW4200D-NS pv inverter
  I want to make the best use of solar energy, so use the washer when the sun is at it’s peak and save energy in the form of hot water.
• Energy monitoring
  Not a device per se, but I’d like to monitor the energy and water usage in my home and be able to act on that if necessary.

Planning

I promised a plan, so here it is. One step at a time is my motto here, I also have a busy job, two young kids and a wife. I’m gonna use this blog to post my research, post my experiences and my solution (if any). This means I might (and already have) start with a simple half-integration and plan for a full integration later. I’ll probably never be finished.