Well new to me anyway, I'm going with Home Assistant as recommended for a long time by nephew George. Hoping it is a one stop solution for all the things, maybe I can get rid of some existing hardware, and maybe I can get some of my existing hardware working better and smarter. I have not been able to get the IKEA lights in the study coming on when I go in there and going off when I go out. Also I found this when I was looking for smart lightswitches1. It is a touchscreen display that goes in the place of a lightswitch and is compatible with this same home automation setup. I can't see it working here, I expect it needs a neutral wire, most smart light switches do, but I really like the idea. There is a lightswitch by the front door that we don't use. It is for an outside light, so I wired the switch permanently on as the light has a sensor. Then right now the switch is covered by a lightwaverf five button switch, basically a remote control that fits in that space. It was just about good enough when I had lightwaverf round the house, it could be used to turn the hall lights on and off and then also turn all the lights off as I went out. But since the rest of the lightwaverf is gone it's just a useless decoration.
I want something like this1 for the hall, and then for the lounge and the study if I can make it work.
Thinking again of trying to make the study a bit cosier now that the summer is over. I feel I will be spending more time there working, instead of up at the table, when it's darker outside anyway. Not a lot of sense to this now I think about it.
I did manage to clear some space in there again at the weekend, took some of the huge jumble pile of clothes to the charity clothes bin. The study is the dumping ground for stuff, well one of the dumping grounds. I've still got a pile of cushions there that I'm not sure what to do with. Would a charity shop want them? What about one of those clothing bins? There's nothing wrong with them, they're just not our scheme any more, but I'm not confident anyone else would want them either. It's like a second hand mattress or pillow. It's hard to know how hard up people are, there are people with no money who would want to soften a brighten their place. It gets a bit gloomy thinking about it.
I could put them on freecycle, that would give some indication without me having to go in a charity shop and have one of the ladies there say "are you stupid?? who would want your old cushions??".
How did we get here from home automation?
Paul Clarke's weblog - I live in A small town. Married to Clare and father to two, I am a full-stack web engineer, + I do js / nodejs, some ruby, python, php ect ect. I like pubs, running, eating, home-automation + other diy jiggery-pokery, history, tree stuff, Television, squirrels, pirates, lego, + TIME TRAVEL.