smart home concept ?

[tautvydas]

okay so for my bachelors degree i would love to do something with networks and stuff like that

 

so i'm guessing what to do , and one of the ideas i was suggested is that i would do smart home type of thing.

 

sounds fun but i'm honestly concerned that it could be too difficult or too easy to do since i have no idea what would qualify as "smart home"

okay so my idea is to setup like 4 IP cameras with some kind of sensors that when triggered would start recording into NAS and would send out an SMS to a specific number or something like that though my project leader said that would be shaky since someone last year did something similar to that and that i should step up and try to do it cheaper and more functions. One of the ideas was the basic one like light control's , dimming and stuff like that. And this is where i'm running into trouble since when i google smart home all i see is alexa controlling most of the stuff basically. and it would be better if it werent based on alexa mainly

 

So my question would be :

what would classify as smart home material (it should be network based since that is what i major in)
how hard would it be to implement in real worlds scenario , since when i will be defending my work i will need to an live example

is there any sources that anyone could recommend with this sort idea in mind ?

[Thunderzzu]

The first part about cameras sensing movement and recording onto a NAS is basically the basic functionality of every NVR and IP camera setup.

You can buy 4MP IP PoE cameras for like 50€/piece, a NVR with a PoE switch for ~100€ and then you'd need a NAS. The NVR's firmware's always include motion sensing software - the ones i have have email notifications/SNMP/etc. built-in so all you need to do is set up a email account.

 

If you'd like Alexa/similar integration, that's where it gets tricky. You'd have to program it all by yourself since most NVR's are not Virtual assistant compatible. 

 

My best bet would be setting up the above mentioned system, then you could have a bunch of tablets around the house that would start displaying the video that is being recorded to the NAS once the cameras sense movement and then you could integrate that to a web interface and add buttons that would, for example, turn on lights or sound an alarm or something.

 

Also, everything i mentioned so far would be relatively easy to make. A lot of NVR's actually have alarm sending capabilities so you can literally get some kind of a notification once the NVR starts doing stuff

[Pixel5]

the whole cameras with trigger idea is ultra easy and can be done with one single Synology NAS and 4 Raspberry pi Zeros with a camera on each of them.

total cost probably below 500 bucks.

 

a real smart home system would be like the ones you can buy when building new houses, for example all light switches will go to a central control unit where you also have each individual power line for the actual lights connected.

 

same for door/window sensors or anything else, the problem with all of this is that it requires everything to be connected and powered which is why its only done for new construction as the effort to retrofit this into an existing building is huge.

 

THis is also the reason why all of these small scale wireless smart home things like alexa related stuff are so successful, you dont need wires but that also means you limit the functionality a ton.

[tautvydas]

5 minutes ago, Thunderzzu said:

The first part about cameras sensing movement and recording onto a NAS is basically the basic functionality of every NVR and IP camera setup.

You can buy 4MP IP PoE cameras for like 50€/piece, a NVR with a PoE switch for ~100€ and then you'd need a NAS. The NVR's firmware's always include motion sensing software - the ones i have have email notifications/SNMP/etc. built-in so all you need to do is set up a email account.

 

If you'd like Alexa/similar integration, that's where it gets tricky. You'd have to program it all by yourself since most NVR's are not Virtual assistant compatible. 

 

My best bet would be setting up the above mentioned system, then you could have a bunch of tablets around the house that would start displaying the video that is being recorded to the NAS once the cameras sense movement and then you could integrate that to a web interface and add buttons that would, for example, turn on lights or sound an alarm or something.

 

Also, everything i mentioned so far would be relatively easy to make. A lot of NVR's actually have alarm sending capabilities so you can literally get some kind of a notification once the NVR starts doing stuff

i mean i think my college has some ip cames and other networking stuff like PoE capable switch for those cameras , and i'm sure setting up NAS should not be that difficult.

i'm trying to avoid using alexa and other sort of things for now, untill i make sure i can do everything else that feels mandatory and then if i will have extra time or will to add integration with (most likely google assistant ) that sort of thing

i will have to look up NVR's since i never heard of this concept before but that sounds swell
also the surveillance/security system is just one of the parts i'm trying to go for (watching videos and such for smart lighting and stuff like that since that seems pretty easy to set up aswell)

[tautvydas]

7 minutes ago, Pixel5 said:

the whole cameras with trigger idea is ultra easy and can be done with one single Synology NAS and 4 Raspberry pi Zeros with a camera on each of them.

total cost probably below 500 bucks.

 

a real smart home system would be like the ones you can buy when building new houses, for example all light switches will go to a central control unit where you also have each individual power line for the actual lights connected.

 

same for door/window sensors or anything else, the problem with all of this is that it requires everything to be connected and powered which is why its only done for new construction as the effort to retrofit this into an existing building is huge.

 

THis is also the reason why all of these small scale wireless smart home things like alexa related stuff are so successful, you dont need wires but that also means you limit the functionality a ton.

yeah that's the main issue i see here , i'm looking for stuff that can be added to the lets say aspartame/house that would not require to redo all the electricity wiring and stuff like that (running new Ethernet cables seems to be an exception since the main idea i'm going for is functional and not perfect looks so calbe mess is not a deal breaker), from what iv seen Philips hue is just basic light bulbs that gets controlled trough an app (basicly wifi )

but yeah mostly looking for stuff i could do with PoE
 

[Pixel5]

the thing is if you would go for POE it would already make more sense to really redo the electrical system.

in both cases the idea is to be able to get a trigger signal from somewhere and get it to some kind of control unit.

 

For ethernet this means every single device needs to be able to receive an IP address and communicate with a central system.

This is where off the shelf smart home systems are better, they usually use a simple 12V line for trigger signals that require nothing but a switch and work without any network connection.

 

[tautvydas]

On 10/19/2018 at 2:44 PM, Thunderzzu said:

The first part about cameras sensing movement and recording onto a NAS is basically the basic functionality of every NVR and IP camera setup.

You can buy 4MP IP PoE cameras for like 50€/piece, a NVR with a PoE switch for ~100€ and then you'd need a NAS. The NVR's firmware's always include motion sensing software - the ones i have have email notifications/SNMP/etc. built-in so all you need to do is set up a email account.

 

If you'd like Alexa/similar integration, that's where it gets tricky. You'd have to program it all by yourself since most NVR's are not Virtual assistant compatible. 

 

My best bet would be setting up the above mentioned system, then you could have a bunch of tablets around the house that would start displaying the video that is being recorded to the NAS once the cameras sense movement and then you could integrate that to a web interface and add buttons that would, for example, turn on lights or sound an alarm or something.

 

Also, everything i mentioned so far would be relatively easy to make. A lot of NVR's actually have alarm sending capabilities so you can literally get some kind of a notification once the NVR starts doing stuff

hi again , sorry for replying to this but it feels like you know what you are talking about

iv spent some time looking at NVR's and its functions, and well it seems this is the way to go if u want to watch more than one camera at the time

what i dont quite understand (since its much better to stuff like with real equipment irl than to watch videos) is , can NVR record directly into NAS , since all of the explanations i see is one or the other , like NAS installing some sort of 3rd party plugin to monitor cameras and record to the NAS itself, or just record into NVR hard drive (and for some reason they call it NAS).

 

also wondering in what format NVR's record in , since from what iv seen you need to manualy export everything they record into proper formats like mp4 etc. and if i want to record to NAS it would make sense if it would record that stuff into format that anyone could read in a second

maybe there is an video or a text post you read in particular that has a setup of both NAS with NVR that would make sense to read.

[Thunderzzu]

9 hours ago, tautvydas said:

hi again , sorry for replying to this but it feels like you know what you are talking about

iv spent some time looking at NVR's and its functions, and well it seems this is the way to go if u want to watch more than one camera at the time

what i dont quite understand (since its much better to stuff like with real equipment irl than to watch videos) is , can NVR record directly into NAS , since all of the explanations i see is one or the other , like NAS installing some sort of 3rd party plugin to monitor cameras and record to the NAS itself, or just record into NVR hard drive (and for some reason they call it NAS).

 

also wondering in what format NVR's record in , since from what iv seen you need to manualy export everything they record into proper formats like mp4 etc. and if i want to record to NAS it would make sense if it would record that stuff into format that anyone could read in a second

maybe there is an video or a text post you read in particular that has a setup of both NAS with NVR that would make sense to read.

For example, I work with Dahua NVR's and cameras and i can set on both, the NVR and Camera for them to record directly to a NAS via FTP or NFS or other protocols. They technically record in mp4 but a lot of them require you to export a certain period of time in order for you to be able to access them. It kinda depends from device to device.

[tautvydas]

On 11/4/2018 at 10:43 PM, Thunderzzu said:

For example, I work with Dahua NVR's and cameras and i can set on both, the NVR and Camera for them to record directly to a NAS via FTP or NFS or other protocols. They technically record in mp4 but a lot of them require you to export a certain period of time in order for you to be able to access them. It kinda depends from device to device.

so if i would use different brand nvr and cameras, would i run into  a lot of trouble or just some premium features of the combo would be missing

and if all footage needs to be exported what would happen if lets say nvr breaks and all of "raw" footage on nas becomes unreadable ? or most nvr's would be able to export it to mp4 to be able watch the footage ?

[Scheer]

SmartThings motion/door sensors can link over IFTTT to Blue Iris (via webhooks) and trigger anything you want to happen.

 

I wouldn't consider it a college project tho, a person familiar with both systems could have it up and running in an hour... Maybe a day's worth of work if you've never seen either. Point is, we are at the point now where the average Joe can go out and accomplish what you are trying to showcase with off the shelf components over a weekend.

 

Google voice control works basically identically to Alexa control as far as SmartThings is concerned. I have both at home and the only difference is Alexa has way better routine support so you have to use Alexa for the "complex" scenes, or if you want voice responses to things. Alexa is simply the cheapest voice input for whatever smart home system you run, which is why you see everyone using it. Behind the Echos tho, you have dozens of different options. The easy one that is extremely agnostic is SmartThings, a little more complex systems are OpenHAB and HomeAssistant.io. The easiest option are the closed systems where you are locked down to specific devices like Apple, Phillips, Nest, Echo Plus, etc, however they rarely have deep integration with other systems so you are limited in what you can do.

[tautvydas]

10 hours ago, Scheer said:

SmartThings motion/door sensors can link over IFTTT to Blue Iris (via webhooks) and trigger anything you want to happen.

 

I wouldn't consider it a college project tho, a person familiar with both systems could have it up and running in an hour... Maybe a day's worth of work if you've never seen either. Point is, we are at the point now where the average Joe can go out and accomplish what you are trying to showcase with off the shelf components over a weekend.

 

Google voice control works basically identically to Alexa control as far as SmartThings is concerned. I have both at home and the only difference is Alexa has way better routine support so you have to use Alexa for the "complex" scenes, or if you want voice responses to things. Alexa is simply the cheapest voice input for whatever smart home system you run, which is why you see everyone using it. Behind the Echos tho, you have dozens of different options. The easy one that is extremely agnostic is SmartThings, a little more complex systems are OpenHAB and HomeAssistant.io. The easiest option are the closed systems where you are locked down to specific devices like Apple, Phillips, Nest, Echo Plus, etc, however they rarely have deep integration with other systems so you are limited in what you can do.

i have allready left this "smart home" idea behind, since there is not much networking involved anyway but i still need to do cameras and their setups since that might count as my half year kind of assigment thing(setup is easy yeah , but docummentation they require is a paint in the ass), also might do "practice" in the winter where i need to install like 16+ security cameras on NVR , while they still use one DVR with fiew cameras, also this looks fun so i'm looking to learn as much as possible.