Home: SmartHome | SmartHome.Exposed

At the very beginning there was just a plan to build a simple house. I already had some past experience with renovation of my old apartment from scratch, so I knew pretty much what to expect. There are myriad of areas to spend your money on during the house construction. I wasn't even thinking that some kind of intelligent installation could make it to the priority list. All the electricity wiring has been planned the conventional way. But with every feature I added the complexity of controlling things was growing.

It went from the hallway and stairway light control, through LED night lights and bathroom fans, to blinds, roof roller shutters, hot water recirculation, garden irrigation, alarm and that long list made me think again about the options how to integrate things.

Back in 2014 when I actually started building the new house I was eager to get as much information and tips as possible to help me find the best way how to implement some sort of smart home infrastructure. One of the key resources for me that time was the official Loxone forum.

However on September 4th 2015 Loxone community forum has been closed, which was by far the biggest mistake they made in my opinion. Since then the Loxone community is spread across many locations. In the meantime, many of my friends that started to explore similar possibilities following the smarthome journey ended up asking me questions for things I already sorted out. I'd like to use this site to share some of my stories with tips and tricks to help others with their own implementation. I hope you'll find it useful.

Light control

The essential area of home automation, light scenes that are triggered by movement, day-time or dawn and dusk, ensuring that nothing is unintentionally left ON after you leave.

Door access

Forget about conventional access solutions, use your finger as a key. Avoid locking yourself out, your finger is always on hand! No lost or stolen keys!

Garden irrigation

Gain the benefits from integrated garden irrigation allowing you define exact conditions when to water where.

Energy consumption

Control your utility meters remotely, see when and what is causing major consumption of energy, gas, or water.

Here are the key bigger topics I was trying to implement. You'll notice how these areas overlap and interact. Sensors that you have initially planned for a single purpose can be used in various scenarios. For instance, motion sensors that are typically connected with dedicated alarm system in smart home can be used also for triggering night lights for instance. Or your wind sensor that pays attention to your canvas awnings can tell the sprinklers not to run as you might not want to water your neighbours garden.

Special stuff, things that do not come straight out of the box, customised solutions and tweaks? See the endless possibilities and crazy ideas here. Just to name a few examples of integrated items I did already, it's a letter box that informs you about any new mails that were inserted in, you can even get a notification over email with a picture of the person that put something in it. Or a status dashboard that gives you useful hints about the status of the house before you leave, so you don't have to check if all windows are closed, or garage shut.

Loxone AC Control AIR

October 16, 2023

Hey, something that I was trying to sort out by myself probably gets sorted even better by Loxone. One of the things that do have quite extensive impact on the overall energy consumption but was very difficult to control externally is the Air Conditioning. Loxone recently launched a product that should be the remedy for … Read More

Softub installation

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Wattsonic and Loxone config examples

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Wattsonic Hybrid Inverter Gen3 Modbus RTU Protocol

June 6, 2023

In this post I will try to share the details about how to communicate with Wattsonic inverters using modbus protocol. Understanding the connection details and list of registers is very useful if you want to get live data from the inverter directly, not relying only on the cloud app. This is essential thing if you … Read More

Upgrade to 2nd generation of Loxone Miniserver

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Initially I was planning this post just as an expansion of original Loxone video which I found a bit too brief. In the end the story was not as successful as I would think it could be, so in case you are considering or even planning a Loxone Miniserver swap for the second generation, be … Read More

Set your bin collection reminder in Loxone

November 16, 2021

Remembering the day of your rubbish bin collection is not that difficult. Especially if this is just the very same day every week. But what if this is happening fortnightly like in my case? Would you still keep track? Nah, but there are easy reminders to be set in the Google calendar for example. But … Read More

Somfy Glydea and Loxone

October 28, 2021

Here is how I automated the electric curtains with Loxone. Having a motorized curtains in living room was not the the initial plan at first place. So I had nothing prepared for this in terms of wiring or any setup. Only this year we have decided to have a curtains on the big sliding door … Read More

Shelly Plug S works amazingly with Loxone

September 14, 2020

Shelly Plug S is a neat and tiny WiFi Plug that is very feature rich and has been designed by clever developers. I am really impressed about the overall design and SW capabilities this “smart” device offers. Unlike other “smart products” that forces you into vendor specific ecosystem (App, Cloud, ..), with Shelly the real … Read More

sDock tablet wall mount

May 31, 2020

If you are looking for a nice and practical wall mount for your iPad tablet that is easy to use, has built in charging option and can do a 90° pivot, look no further. I think I found perfect solution. At home we are using one tablet primarily dedicated to the central control of our … Read More

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