Automate your home the easy way
We all like our home to be as modern, efficient and sustainable as possible. For this reason, MarPlus already has the most modern active components on the market, but what if we want to go a step further and enjoy the advantages of having, in addition, a smart home?
Nowadays, many companies promise smart homes and usually do so by offering a very high price premium for it but, what is worse, selling a proprietary and closed system that can only work with the components of that brand, without being able to opt for anything else. Thus, when we need to include a new device in our home automation system, it is not possible. Therefore, this type of systems soon end up becoming obsolete within their own closed scheme, and the only proposal/solution given then by the supposed home automation experts is to pay again a large amount of money to have to change everything and start all over again.
At GANDITEC, we understand the concept of "home automation" in a different way. From our point of view, a smart home should be controlled by a single open application that focuses on user privacy and allows us to combine all kinds of components from different brands and of different types and classes. It should never force us to use a different application for each new component we want to install. Of course, this control can be done from anywhere: indistinctly from your couch or from the other side of the world.
I would like to emphasize again that the important thing is to be able to use ONE SINGLE open source APPLICATION that allows this integration with all the components of our smart home. It is no good if, for each device, we have to use a different application. It is clear that our new LG or Samsung TV will have its own application, but the interesting thing is to be able to do without it and control everything from a single software that acts as a 'hub' or concentrator of the control of the smart home. There are few software on the market that allow this functionality with open source and with more than a thousand active integrations working. One of those few is the one we recommend because we have been using it successfully for more than five years: Home Assistant. You can enjoy HA with a small hardware investment: a Raspberry Pi4 by installing the free HA software on it or directly buying the device for about 100€.
Any centralized open system, including Home Assistant, must allow:
- Control/Automate your most basic elements such as lights or blinds in the house: MarPlus allows direct integration by exchanging the installed Valena Next switches and blinds controls for their equivalent Netatmo domotized models. This system can also be integrated with Home Assistant and other hubs, which is why it was selected. However, if you prefer, you can add wifi, zigbee or zwave relays from other brands such as Shelly to your original non-domotized switches.
- It will easily integrate an alarm or surveillance system, which can include cameras (e.g. Reolink), presence detectors, smoke detectors, CO andCO2 detectors, noise control, etc. It will allow, for example, to activate an automation that warns through the audio system of the house, speaking with a message, when a higher than adequateCO2 level is reached.
- It will also allow you to access and monitor the status of household appliances: to be alerted, for example, if the refrigerator has been left open, what content is playing on the TV upstairs, or if the dishwasher has finished cleaning the dishes. For example, Bosch appliances with HomeConnect (such as our Option+ dishwasher) also support HA.
- It will include the management of our HVAC system. Optional airzone systems with your MarPlus home allow for this and custom HA integration for Panasonic Comfort Cloud as well:
- Integrate and control our multiroom sound equipment (such as Sonos equipment) or TVs from LG, Sony or Samsung that also allow integration with HA:
- Manage energy consumption, both electricity and water, being able to quantify everything in real time or consulting the consumption history by days, months, weeks or even years. To do this, you can use systems such as this Shelly EM, easily integrated in HA.
- Control our car as an extension of the house: its location, its status and if it is also electric: manage and automate its charging, integrating it with the energy management of the rest of the house, as it allows, for example, wallbox.
- Any new element we wish to integrate in the integrate in the futureFor example, garden irrigation, a weather station on our attic terrace or the automation of the garage door, as there are already more than 2,700 integrations available:
- Possibility of using spoken commands, only if we want to give permission to 'listen to us' and only of the specific elements that we want to control by voice; using Google Assistant, Siri or Alexa indistinctly.
- Multiple access possibilities: by voice, from our cell phone, our tablet, the computer or a touch screen control that we have installed in the living room or kitchen of MarPlus.
To be efficient, you have to be aware of what you spend. We must be able to measure the consumption of our main supplies: electricity and water. Therefore, our ideal home automation system for our smart home must also be able to manage and measure the electrical energy and drinking water we consume, allowing us to compare different periods and thus learn how to act to improve it further. This energy management must integrate both our consumption and our production: for example if we have the solar panels and Huawei inverter of the MarPlus Option+with integrated customization in HA for the Huawei inverter.
I hope this small introduction to one of the simplest and most open automation systems available, Home Assistant, will be useful to you in order to make your home more efficient. your home MarPlus even more modern, efficient and intelligent.
Visit the home page of our website https://ganditec.es to have access to all the documentation of our new, modern and efficient construction site in Gandia. New housing in Gandia, in the Safor, the Residencial MarPlus.
