Hey all, I am completely new to this. I played with X-10 home automation back in the 90’s. I was about ready to build a house right before the market bust and had laid out a new system in UPB. Well, now I’m in a 35 year old house with 3 kids and looking to jump back into home automation. I’ve been looking around and really like the potential with the Vera products. I already have a thorough wired network so I will be going with the Vera Light.
My home is 2400 square feet, 2 floors, 4 bedrooms, 2 A/C units. My future plans are to replace the 2 A/C units with 1 A/C unit and set it up to 4 zones. My plan is to start small and incrementally add to the system. This is the full system I have in mind as of today.
Main Unit: MiCasaVerde Vera Light
Lights: I really like the Cooper Aspire switches, but they seem to be quite pricey. Ultimately, I would want to add about 30 of these (4 of these are three-way, one four-way), but will only start with a few. I will be prioritizing outdoor lighting first as I have 7 outdoor light switches scattered through 4 different rooms. I also have 5 ceiling fans I would like to add to this setup but would be done later. In the end, I want all the switches to work reliably with the Vera unit and coordinate together, regardless of the brand. For lighting, i do not use LED or CFL bulbs at the moment. I am still one of the holdouts on incandescent bulbs. I once changed all my lighting to CFL when I was in a smaller home, spent a fortune on dimmable bulbs, hated them, and never saw the savings in my electric bill. Dimmable LED looks promising but I may use halogens in the meantime until I find some dimmable LED bulbs that I like. Now the color changing LED’s are neat but don’t think I will be heading that direction right now.
Climate: I like the RCS Z-Wave thermostats and may go that route. They will work with my currently 15 year old A/C units and will certainly work with my new unit. One of the things I want to do with the new system is to centralize all the thermostats near my bedroom and use wall sensors to provide temperature throughout the rooms in each zone; the RCS units allow this. Where I really like the potential is to be able to adjust the thermostats based on temperature/humidity readings obtained from sensors I can place with Vera. Another thing I want to be able to do is to be able to manually turn off the second stage cooling when humidity is high or when I am not home and I should be able to do this with a low voltage relay between the zone controller and the A/C unit.
Doors: I have several exterior doors but as of now, would only want to add my front door. My entire house is setup with Kwickset locks so I would add their Z-wave unit. I have read about the security concerns regarding reprogramming these units. So I went to Lowe’s were they sold these and sure enough I re-programmed the display model. This is not something I am really concerned about as I do not plan on proving access to my home to anyone I don’t know anyway. If the cable guy or plumber needs in, I will be here.
Garage Door: I do have one garage door and would like to add this to the install. The garage door and door opener will be getting replaced in a year or two. Are there any openers that are Z-Wave/vera compatible out of the box? If not, I have seen several DIY’s regarding how to set this up.
Security: I already have a basic alarm system with a local company (no contract) and paid extra to have it hard wired as I knew I would be doing something with it later. It seems like that I can interface an existing alarm with the Vera unit, but I would have to change out the main board to a model supported by Vera. Have not looked into this but certainly will later on. One thing I cannot find searching around is will Vera be a able to determine if a door is opened or a motion sensor is tripped if the security sensor is wired to the alarm panel and them the alarm panel is interfaced to the vera? As far I can see, Vera can only arm/disarm the system. I am just not interested in chaining all of my sensors out to Z-wave, I really like the hardwire setup.
Sensors: Again, this is getting low priority, but I do plan to add some multi-sensors to a few locations, both inside and outside of the house. This would primarily be to turn on lights at night time in occupied rooms and read temperature/humidity values in various locations to adjust the A/C unit.
Cameras: I have seen Vera is compatible with several IP cameras but was not certain on how these interface. Eventually, I would like to have some cameras, probably 4 to 6 exterior and 2 interior (front room at the door and in the nursery). I would like to be able to use a DVR on the system but cannot find any information on how the cameras would interface with both the Vera and the DVR, or if the DVR interfaces with Vera. This is another down the road project so is not critical for me to get started.
A/V equipment: I am interested in playing with using Vera to control my entertainment setup but I cannot find much information on how this works. My wife and I have been discussing getting a harmony remote with the RF extenders as the system in a closed cabinet. I have not done any thing with this yet. Is there a universal remote setup that is compatible with Vera? If so, I will go that route instead. Does Vera need to support my individual components or does the remote take care of anything?
Irrigation: I don’t have an irrigation system but will probably add one in the future as I like landscaping. So I will build this new and would interface it with Vera if/when I do.
So I greatly appreciate any guidance or direction you all can give me regarding any questions I had above, or “start here?”, “do this?”, or “don’t to that?”.
Thanks
Chris
New Orleans
