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Node Three

Node Three came about from the need to site some RF equipment within the house to give the best coverage.  It’s nothing fancy, just a two tiered shelf in the loft for the time being, maybe at some...

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Node One

So, about to be evicted from bedroom four which was the old Node Zero, I had to come up with a way to maintain use of all the existing CAT5 cabling and avoid ripping up floors and running more in....

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Node Zero

Re-locating Node Zero was never going to be an easy task, but fortunately I already had a location for it to go. When we’d originally moved into the house, the garage was used to put one of our cars...

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Four Nodes

So, the first “real” post …….. and it’s actually an old one!  Below is an article that I wrote for the Automated Home web site back in July 2010. Things have changed a fair bit since then, but this is...

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Yet another Home Automation blog!

Welcome to my new blog! About 14 years ago I got bitten by the Home Automation (HA) bug and have slowly seen what was initially a hobby grow into something of an addiction During that time I have tried...

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Cloudy with a chance of saving some cash!

I’m sure we’ve all experienced the massive price rises in utility bills in recent years and they’re increasing on an ongoing basis.  If you’ve read my blog before, you’ll be aware that I’ve been...

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The 10 Home Automation Commandments

One question I’m frequently asked is what technology I use in my Home Automation set-up and people always seem surprised when the answer I give takes several hours to explain It seems to be the view of...

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Automatic loft lighting using Vera and Fibaro

I started my journey with Z-Wave many moons ago, a Linksys NSLU2 aka “Slug” and a TrickleStar USB adapter using the OpenZ-Wave stack and some HomePro devices dumping me right in at the deep end!...

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RGB, RGBW, Digital RGB, Arduino, Z-Wave, XBee / ZigBee, Raspberry Pi,...

I dabbled with RGB LED strips three or four years ago and used some simple “warm white” ones for our kitchen under cupboard lighting (I still have a blog post planned for that!) and some “cool white”...

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xAP Speedtest – Internet Speed Monitoring (I Love It When A Plan Comes...

For many years now I’ve been using the excellent JD’s Auto Speed Tester (or JDAST) software for monitoring my Internet connection.  It’s a fantastic tool for performing regular Internet speed tests in...

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Fibaro Universal Door & Window Sensor plus Pressure Mat equals Stairway To...

So a couple of weeks ago I started to look in earnest at a “stairway lighting” project that has been on my to-do list for a number of years.  After running this project through the 10 Home Automation...

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I Like Big Butts – Monitoring Water Butts With Visonic, RFXCom, xPL And xAP...

Many years ago we asked our water supply company to install a Water Meter, so that we would be charged for “actual” usage, rather than what they estimated we used.  This was duly installed and has...

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Project Disco Stairway Lighting Is A Go – xAP, Arduino and WS2801 5050 RGB...

You’ll recall that the stairway lighting project is well under way, with the presence detection phase completed and working well.  The next phase in the project was to look at the available options for...

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Daddy, the garden gate is open again – Visonic, RFXCom, xPLRFX and xAP...

So we’ve got a gate down the side of the house that leads to / from the back garden to the front garden & drive.  When our kids are playing outside we typically leave the gate open to let them...

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Stairway Lighting – Fibaro Z-Wave RGBW Controller to the rescue, another job...

Sadly the Arduino based prototype for the stairway lighting project just didn’t stand up to the 7th Commandment, that of 99.99% reliability! No matter what I tried, I just couldn’t get the networking...

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The future’s bright, the future’s RED, Node-RED

It’s been a while since I posted – unfortunately it’s been a pretty busy time lately with so many projects on the go both at work and at home   With a few hours to spare, I thought I’d share how my...

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