This is exactly what every home can use to radically save energy.
I have a question. How to fully detect that every person has left the building?
Use Zwave lock, and record the tags into the device. Then track who enters and leaves.
a. You cant tell when they leave because they dont have to use the lock to get out.
b. 2 people could come in together, using the first person tag.
Based on 1, it is better to use a rfid style virtual gate. This assumes that everyone is holding their keys ion their pocket with the rfid chip on it.
Motion detector in the Hallway.
Not enough really as it requires more motion detectors.
What about if someone is working in the office and is quite still.
Monitor the energy usage and find the patterns that suggest no one is home.
a. Motion detector.
b. Energy usage on TV, computers, etc etc.
Any other ideas people have here.
I wonder how customisable the triggers and work-flow are in the main controller in order to configure the above types of scenarios.
Thanks for the compliment. When we finish the Lua plugin (under development now), you’ll have a full embedded programming language so you can write your own scripts/logic sequences in Vera that respond to events differently. Also, there is an RFID device from WaveTrend that’s supported in LinuxMCE. Therefore it will work with Vera too. It uses a USB port, and Vera has a spare, and the WaveTrend lets you daisy chain lots of readers.
The way it works right now, though, with the current version is just that you check off days of the week and times of day and tell Vera to check the energy usage at those times and send you a notification if there are more than X lights on, the thermostat is on, or wattage exceeds Y. The intended use is, for example, that Monday-Friday at 9am you’ll get a text if the last person out of the house didn’t hit the ‘leave the house’ scene so you can do it remotely. The notice tells you how many lights/thermostats/watts are on/being used. But it’s just a reminder, if you stay home for the day it won’t know you’re home, and it will still send the alert regardless. Any suggestions for how to implement the “nobody’s at home sensor”? It’s an intriguing idea…
One thought is with a couple stratetegicly placed bluetooth dongles. If each family member has a bluetooth phone you’d know when all the phones were out of the house.
So the lua scripts will be able to be loaded onto the router ?
Yeah, we’re building a whole Lua engine. You can write scripts in the web interface that get called in response to events, timers, etc. to do anything, including serve as an interface to other RS232 devices like TV’s and alarm panels.
It would be cool if there was an xmlRPC interface to it also ?
There are ways to talk to Vera with XML. We put most of the effort into using http get’s because it’s easier to add scripts to low-power devices like phones that don’t have xml parsing.
At home detection…
Just an idea, but have you seen what some hotels do where there’s a slot inside the door that you put your key card in when you enter, and when there’s no card in the slot, the power to lights and certain outlets is cut? It’s really cheap and bullet proof. Just a contact sensor. If each family member has a key card, and you had by the door a slot for everybody to put their key cards in, with a simple contact sensor, and when there were no keycards the power shut off, that could be an idea? Of course you could do it with physical keys too: ie a row of keyholes along the wall in the entry area where the occupant to put their key into, with the keychain dangling below, like the simple peg style key hooks. When the last key is removed from the slot the house is in ‘away’ mode. The burglar alarm could start the 30 second countdown automatically when the last key is removed so they don’t have to remember to arm it. For guys like me who always forget where we left our keys it would also be good since I’d be forced to always put them in the same place. Does the idea have merit?
Ok, SO simple http gets. I assume there are no Puts, because the idea si that any changes you would do by logging in directly.
Can you write something up on your web site about this perhaps. I think that others like me woudl be very interested in seeing this on your RoadMap.
what language woudl the “Addins” need to written in. I assuem that LUA is interpreted rather than compiled.
The idea if the card at the entrance sounds like the easiest for sure. This si the same card used for door authentication, and so they will have to take it with them when they leave then. Still for multiple occupants its kinda dumb because whomeves card is in the slot will be taken out by the perspn. I guess if they just have a collection of cards for each occupant inside the entrance then the person just takes the one left. Yes i see this working well.
So i need to find one of these that is ZWave compatible. Any ideas ??
The card ‘detector’ by the front door doesn’t yet exist. But I imagine a proof of concept could be mocked up very easily. Just take a Z-Wave sensor, like a motion sensor, and wire the ttl input from the motion detection device to a contact switch at the bottom of a business card holder. When the last card is removed the sensor trips and the lights go out. If there are multiple entrances (ie garage door and front door), then the trigger occurs when both card holders are empty.
