New Home Plans - Guidance Appreciated

Community Playground Getting Started & Initial Setup
1

Just starting to plan some HA requirements for a new home I’m building. I’m new to HA but have a background with electronics, especially programming. I’ve been doing some reading but to ensure I’m on the right track in my planning I was hoping to layout some of what I want to do to see what recommendations you all have:

[ul][li]Doors that can be locked/unlocked remotely[/li]
[li]Camera outside the front door that can be remotely checked[/li]
[li]Shutoff “all” lights (by all I mean all the ones I decide to connect)[/li]
[li]Adjust/Automate the changing of my thermostat[/li]
[li]Set/UnSet alarm remotely[/li]
[li]Turn on a specific light when a specific door is unlocked (e.g. the light near the door)[/li]
[li]Nice to have: proximity based door opening (e.g. NFC or RFID entry)[/li][/ul]

Anything on this list look more complicated than normal? Any other tips I should know as I continue my planning? The walls haven’t even been built yet and I’m trying to do as much planning as I can now so once the walls are closed I dont kick my self.

2

All these things are very doable with Z-Wave and Vera.

[ul][li]Make sure to use three conductor cabling so that there is a neutral in every switch box. This is pretty standard these days.[/li]
[li]Wire the doors and windows for alarm sensors. It’s cheaper and more reliable than wireless sensors.[/li]
[li]When the time comes for an alarm system/company, be sure to find one that offers a Z-Wave compatible system, or one that you can add a Z-Wave module to.[/li]
[li]Put some Cat5 to where ever you plan to have cameras. Wireless cameras are OK, but wiring opens you to a lot more options. Even wireless cameras need power.[/li][/ul]

NFC and RFID entry should be possible in a couple of different ways, but I have never tried it. Right now, most of the available locks use a key code/pad are pretty limited, so RFID would likely need to be a homebrew setup.

One word of warning, Z-Wave devices are not inexpensive. Whereas a regular light switch will cost $5 the Z-Wave equivalent is $50.

3

For proximity to home … people have tried various proximity sensors … and software such as Google lattitude. Various levels of satisfaction … but I do not believe any have been 100% satisfied.

For unlocking doors/disarming alarm systems in the house … should not be a problem.

I ran CAT6 from a media closet to every area in the house I might want a TV.
Today on a single CAT6 you can carry LAN, HDMI HiDef, RS-232, and IR signals.

4

The proximity stuff isn’t a high priority for me. I like the idea of using NFC tokens since I have an NFC enabled phone, just not sure if they are secure enough.

The alarm system seems the most confusing as most of the alarm companies install their own sensors for free (at least in my area) as long as you sign up for their monitoring. However, I’m dreading trying to explain to them that I want a panel that is compatible with my HA system - have a feeling that may be a bit of a headache.

5

If I were wiring a new place, from scratch, then there are a few items I’d consider over-and-above the normal security wiring packages that are often setup.

A few things I’d give strong consideration to:

a) Add wiring for Motion and/or Presence sensing in a LOT of rooms.
I may not actually wire up the end, but it would save me money when I’m ready to do it. This would go way-beyond the typical Motion sensors that you’d wire if you were solely considering it for security.

A few examples:

[ul][li]a walk-in wardrobe that turns on a Light when you enter.[/li]
[li]Stairs that have compression sensors at the top/bottom to detect you near them, and turn on lights.[/li]
[li]doorbell and/or pressure wiring that lets me detect people[/li]
[li]wiring the garage so you know if it’s open or closed (and add wiring for “other” automation in this space)
[/li]
[li]wiring for car-presence, and direction, in a driveway[/li][/ul]

A number of these items can be added after the fact, but they’ll be more painful to install (or will trigger you to go wireless, with varying degrees of success)

b) Wired Door locks
Most of the Z-Wave door locks are about ease of retrofit, so they have use batteries. If I were doing it again, I’d use door-jamb based wired locks (with fail-safe mode), and add the low-voltage wiring to power them. This would let me choose standard locks, and would be a lot more reliable.

For the most part, I’d wire these to my security system, via PGM’s, so I could unlock the house and alarm at the same time (a number of panels have the bits to do this). As much as possible, I’d do this in a way that could work-with Vera, but wouldn’t be dependent upon it.

c) Consider the placement of Security keypads.
My house came pre-wired for 3x keypads, so it’s fairly good, but not everyone is setup this way. Having the wiring means you have the option, so you can always install just a single keypad, and add the others at a later date (but having the wiring is key)

6

Thanks for the advice. I’m especially curious about your wired door lock comment. Can you provide a little more info (maybe a link to a product or 2)?

7

Lookup “Electric Door Strike”. There are a number of them available, and you frequently see them done in commercial deployments. They’re not something that everyone would want to do, since they might be a little industrial for some.

Here’s a DIY Security discussion on doing it with the DSC Panel, for example, using a PGM:
DiySecurityForum.com is for sale | HugeDomains

If you read up on the forum here, you will see the types of issues that people run into with the battery operated Z-Wave gear (Locks, Motions). For some folks, it works perfectly, and for others they have problems ranging from initial setup through to over-time failures.

My deployment is in the latter category, with frequent failures (in a highly saturated Z-Wave Network). When I get cycles I’ll redo it with an electric door strike, attached to my Alarm system… in my case though, I only use these on the Garage Door, and would never do the front-door, so there’s already a level of isolation in place, so another Keypad won’t won’t hurt.

8

If my understanding is correct to “future-proof” in case I wanted to use this type of lock I would basically run low voltage wiring to the door?

Also, I’m curious about your statement about never doing using this for a front door - is that for aesthetics or security?

9

Low voltage, yes, but capable of running 12v@1A for short durations, with consideration to what happens when the power goes out on the house also. Overall, the power needed will depend upon the strike solenoid characteristics, but they’re fairly similar to each other.

Personally, I wouldn’t do the front door, but that’s mostly aesthetics. I also rarely come through the front door, so I wouldn’t make the investment there, given that ever “extra access” is also an extra security weak spot (ie. an external Keypad that can be shorted, etc, without appropriate isolation being installed at the same time)

For me, I’m looking for the highest WAF, and that means something that ALWAYS works, and is positioned where we need it (in our case, the Garage door)

10

for the lock you can use a z-wave switch with a Merlin Gerin multi 9 TL 16A 220v 15510 relais connected to it and that connected to the pushbutton for the electric door-opener.
i have 2 front-doors so i plan on automating the common front-door this way. i agree on the fact that i would not automate the front-door for security reasons and failure of the devices. the support for the z-wave locks is not yet finished , there implemented in the new firmware of vera. think of when the lock does not respond while u dont have keys with u or it opens coz of some failure or wrong code when ur not at home.
the RFID and NFC tags are better solution then keypad because nobody can see u type in anything and you cant push any buttons or trigger alerts with wrong code. i have NFC prog on my android phone but the sony smarttag i have is not having enough capacity to hold the data from the telephone program, so i cannot test it. but i guess it works. phone receive tag> send activate scene to vera on network/through mobile internet.
RFID tag connects to tag-reader with z-wave which also work without internet. so this is best option i guess.

edit:
i was thinking… you could attach a battery-charger with ripple charge to a chargable battery in the z-wave doorlock. that would prevent batteries running out and makes it power-outage save. like the battery operate shade-motor from rollertroll

11

If I could start from scratch, one thing I would add would be a micro-LAN using a 1-wire server. I still plan to do this in a limited way for temperature sensing.

With a 1-wire setup, you could use iButtons (Dallas keys) for entry and customize setups for different people.

There is a Vera plugin that works with this:
[URL=http://www.embeddeddatasystems.com/OW-SERVER-1-Wire-to-Ethernet-Server-Revision-2_p_152.html]http://www.embeddeddatasystems.com/OW-SERVER-1-Wire-to-Ethernet-Server-Revision-2_p_152.html[/URL]

12

Thanks for all the insight. To be honest it’s a bit overwhelming since I haven’t gotten my hands dirty with any of this yet. I like the idea of using the NFC tags to trigger an app on my phone to communicate with the vera.

13

The key take away is to consider where you might want some extra wiring.

Don’t worry too much about what the wiring is going to be attached to (card reader, NFC, keypad) but more about ensuring:

[ul][li]there are enough wires to handle it, [/li]
[li]the wires are of sufficient rating to “do stuff”[/li]
[li]the wires are pulled back to a useable location.[/li][/ul]

My house is about 4yrs old, and was pre-wired with Alarm stuff. I regret not talking a room-by-room “walk around” and asking myself “what would I like to automate here” in each room… and then working out how I’d do it (hindsight is a great thing 8) )

If I had done this, I would have added:

[ul][li]Speaker wiring to many more rooms (good for shared music, as well as “announcements”)[/li]
[li]Wiring for Garage Dectection/control, and External (front/back) Motion sensing[/li]
[li]Wiring for Driveway sensors[/li]
[li]Wiring to the Letterbox (just for fun)[/li]
[li]External wires for Cameras with PoE[/li]
[li]Wiring for door locks[/li]
[li]Many, many more motion sensor setups[/li]
[li]Additional Camera and/or control wiring near the front door[/li]
[li]Sensors and/near the staircase landings[/li][/ul]

Some of this can be done afterwards, but it’s a lot easier if it’s just there already. It’s just better if it’s there, since you don’t need to use kludges to automate it.

14

so it is. you can allways run wires through the ground or under the floor , but it is going to be hard to get them into the walls. main concern like guessed pointed out, is that you have enough usable wires in the walls before it get build. most new houses come with telephone and antenna-cable connectors in each room, this can be used. but there is also a toilet which does not have this for sure, also maybe a little room under the stairs or the shed. these in particular are the places where you would look for a need to put the wires. also you have to take into account that many z-wave devices in a small area are going to slow down the vera and the network and will cause radio-interference.