Category Archives: home automation

Integrating Ambi Climate aircon control with Homey

In a previous post, I shared my experience integrating different Home Automation systems together. I received a feedback that there is now an Ambi Climate plugin for the Homey. I’ve now made the switch from integrating Ambi Climate with Google Home to integrating with Homey. Here is what I have learnt.

I took a cautious approach to make the switch, rather than a mass switch of all my 5 Ambi Climate devices, I start with one, the Ambi Climate device for my Study Room.

The overall process was simple, and here are the steps I took.

  • Install the Ambi Climate plugin to Homey
  • In Homey App, choose to add new device > Ambi Climate > Pick desired device
  • Go to Google Home > add > Set up Device > Have something already setup > select Homey > Check for new Devices
  • The new unit should show up after the refresh

The above are the two icons seen in Google Home for the same Ambi Climate device. The one on the left is picked up via Homey, and the one on the right is via direct integration between Ambi Climate and Google Home.

User Experience with the Ambi Climate Plugin for Homey

A/C Switched Off
A/C Switched On

From within the Homey App, I get a typical tile with a nice Ambi Climate icon. Also, I like the inclusion at the top right corner of the tile, the target temperature Ambi Climate had set for the A/C. The two different shades of the icon represents the device being powered on or off. Tapping the tile, like most devices, will toggle the power action to switch On/Off the A/C.

A long press and release will bring you into the device details page. There are five sections, from left to right, Temperature, Power, Cooling Mode, Humidity, Homey device activity log. Be aware though, this plugin was developed with the assumption that Ambi Climate is to be operated only in the Comfort Mode. I would agree, as that is the real value of the Ambi Climate AI. For fine grain control of Ambi Climate, use the native app. If you have some ideas, feel free to provide feedback to the developer for the plugin.

  • Temperature – this page reports the current measured temperature, and the temperature target set on the A/C. Everything here is read only, the dial is just for illustration. You can move it, but nothing will happen. The potential confusion on this page is that even if the A/C is switched off, the message can still read “Cooling down towards”. I would probably prefer it to just say “A/C is switched off” instead.
  • Power – this page does allow you to power on/off the A/C
  • Cooling Mode – Reports if the A/C is set to Automatic, Heat, Cool or Off. Again, this is read only, and changes made here are not applied.
  • Humidity – reports on the measured humidity.
  • Device activity log – shows running history on when the A/C was switched on/off.

At this point, you may ask, if we can only power on/off the A/C, what is the value of using Ambi Climate plugin with Homey. The power is with automation you can potentially do with it.

Below are screenshots from my attempt to create a simple flow, for illustration purposes. This flow will send push notifications to my phone with the current measured temperature.

Of course this is just an example, I don’t really have interest to be notified each time the temperature changes. One practical use perhaps, is to combine with other devices. For example, a trigger could be that the temperature has reached above a threshold, and the action is to close the curtains and switch on the A/C.

How about voice control with Google Home?

Although I have disconnected Ambi Climate with Google Home, there is now an indirect connection between the two via Homey. The good news is that Google Home still recognises these devices as aircon units, so I can continue to use the same generic voice commands “Hey Google, switch on the aircon”, and they still work just fine. Though I haven’t tested it, I don’t think the Ambi Climate specific voice commands will work anymore. Not really an issue for me, since I hardly use them.

Wrapping Up…

I am happy with integrating Ambi Climate with Homey. It gives me access to different automation controls which I could not do via Google Home. I think the plugin is a great start, and I’ll be sure to provide feedback to the developer as ideas come to mind as I use the app more.

Voice Commands and Importance of Naming Rooms with Home Automation Systems

A year ago, in May 2019, I started a simple journey to implement some automation for my new apartment. For some overview, you can read from this post. In my set up, I have connected up devices from different systems. The three main systems I have are:-

  • Homey – the smart controller that integrates with my lights, blinds, doors, TV and Sound System.
  • Google Home – where Google Assistant is the primary voice control.
  • Mi Home – that I use with over 10 remote controlled AC power plugs, and a couple of bedside lamps.
  • Ambi Climate – I have 5 units of Ambi Climate v2 to control the air con units in each of the rooms.

The challenge was trying to integrate these 4 systems together. While I prefer Homey to be at the core of everything, where every device I want to be automated can be done by Homey, it is not the case. For example, there was no integration between Homey, Mi Home and Ambi Climate. [Update 13 June 2020: Switching Ambi Climate to Homey] On the other hand Google Home can integrate with everything. However it does not recognise all types of devices I have. For example, when I first set up in 2019, Google Home did not recognise the blinds. Hence I could not use voice control to perform any actions with the blinds.

Back to the point about integration between these systems. There are times where controlling groups of devices by room are useful, e.g. switching off everything in the bedroom. You can simply issue a voice command to “switch off the room”. Since it is Google Home that receives the command, it needs to know what devices are in that room. Since my lights do not have direct integration with Google Home, it then depends on the groupings presented by Homey and Mi Home.

Overview of the automation setup and the integrations

Here is the first crucial part, naming the rooms across the systems. In Google Home and Mi Home, you would create a Home with Rooms. In Homey, the construct is a Home with Zones. Rooms and Zones essentially mean the same thing here, and you want to create the Rooms/Zone consistently across all your systems. To avoid any risk of discrepancies, I recommend to name them exactly the same, even the spaces and cases must match. For example, Living Room, must be spelled exactly the same way, with the capital letter for every first letter and the space in between. No extra characters before and after. With this, when you connect the systems together, the devices grouped within each Room will fall nicely in place.

The next confusion comes, Ambi Climate. When setting up the device, there is a field to provide the Room Name. I found out the hard way, that this does not match a Room in Google Home. It actually translates to a Device Name instead. Initially I setup the Ambi Climate for the living room as Living Room. When I linked Ambi Climate to Google Home, it was straight forward. However, as I issued the voice command to “switch on the aircon“, Ambi Climate (at that time) did not know what device it was. I couldn’t issue the command using the Room name as well, because it would end up switching on/off everything else in the room. That’s when I realised, the Room Name in Ambi Climate, actually maps to Device Name.

The work around I did was to rename all the Ambi Climate devices. I just added “AC” to the back of each Room Name. For example Living Room would become Living Room AC. With that done, I could issue voice commands and call out Living Room AC. That worked really well.

Few months later, Google Home, had an update and gained room awareness. What that means is that I no longer have to call out specific device names in the voice command. Furthermore Google Home would recognise common devices like lights, fan, air con, and coupled with the room awareness, I can issue generic commands like “switch on the lights”, and the Google Home will only work on all the lights associated in the room the command was issued.

At this point, you may wonder, how would Google Home know which room I’ve issued the command from. It’s a simple answer, I have a Google Mini in every room, and a Google Home Hub Max in the Living room. Each device is also associated with the room it is located in. So in each room, I can issue the exact same generic voice command, but the action is localised within the room. Neat!

Wrapping up…

This goes back to the original point to name the Rooms and Zones identically. As there are cross system integrations, the devices within the same room are therefore automatically grouped together.

Think hard on how you want to name the rooms right at the start. As you can imagine, if you have different systems, and you want to rename a room, you will have to do it across all systems. Some may allow a simple rename, some may need you to create a new room and move devices across. While this is the easy part, if you rename a zone in Homey, it may not automatically get picked up by Google Home. Sometimes it just take some time to be refreshed, other times you may need to completely disconnect both system and re-link them again.

You would want to avoid renaming. Plan ahead and name them meaningfully right from the start.

Home Automation with Digital Door Locks

For the next post to my Home Automation Series, I’ll share about what I’ve done with automating the Main and Yard doors for my apartment.

The initial requirement was simply to have a keyless way to unlock the door, and just so happen that there are further integrations possible, I took it a step further. Here are the details.

My initial use case was to be able to unlock the door without keys, but yet secure. After some research I arrived at the Samsung Digital Locks. Specifically I bought the two SHP-DP728.

This lock supports the following methods to unlock the door

  • Fingerprint
    • works fine for most grown ups, doesn’t work well with children
  • PIN
    • a rather smart implementation that it will randomly force you to key in prefix numbers first before the actual pin. This is so that there is even “oil prints” distributed around the keypad
  • Proximity Card
    • the unit came with 2 credit card size, 2 mini card size, and 2 key tags; straightforward tap and unlock
  • App via bluetooth
    • needs to register the phone first via the app, then use the app to unlock. It doesn’t go by proximity, meaning it will not unlock just because your phone is near.
    • I was told that once the Z-Wave module is installed, bluetooth does not work; however it didn’t seem so.
    • To use bluetooth function with this lock, I needed to install the sHome app on my iPhone and setup was quite straightforward. The use of the app wasn’t so good though, I’ll have another post to share more details about it.
    • The short of it is I am able to unlock the door from the app, but that’s all.
  • Automation via Z-Wave (needs add-on module, **ask for EU/I chip**)
    • connects to my Homey, and the possibility becomes unlimited
    • as Homey is primary built for EU market, the Z-Wave module needs to be of the EU band as well
    • For my installation by Hanman, I requested for the EU/I module, as I’ve been told it provide fine grain details to the lock operations, e.g. the Z-Wave trigger can be distinguished on how the lock is unlocked, with a fingerprint, card, opened from inside etc.
    • The module is installed after the lock is installed, and a firmware update was necessary for the module. Both of my modules were supposed to be updated before they brought to my place, but one didn’t work and had to be re-flashed once more on site.
  • Manual Key (override)
    • in case everything else fails, or when battery runs out, this is the override to unlock the door

Another important aspect for me with this lock is the way you would open the door. The lock need to push/pull according to the same direction the door opens and closes. Hanman site describes this really well, here. Bottom line is, you’ll want a natural feel to the direction of opening the door.

Installation by Hanman was professional and nicely done, the installer came with the right tools to  accurately drill the necessary holes in the door and door frame to fit the unit. He then showed me how to do the necessary setup, and that’s about it. The rest was for me to figure out.

I’m generally quite pleased with this lock and would recommended it. I do want to remind you to check out that it is a unit that is compatible with your door, in terms of fitting, as well as the direction of opening.

Taking it further – Here comes the real automation bit

The automation I’ve done is basically two main use case
A. When a door is unlocked, Homey will announce it. This is particularly useful when we are not constantly watching the door.
B. When me or my wife gets home, the door will unlock automatically. This is rather complex to setup, and I’ll need another blog post for that. It incorporates a motion sensor, Google Wifi, IFTTT and of course, Homey.

After the digital lock is installed with the Z-Wave module, the next thing to do is to install the Samsung Z-wave Locks plugin for Homey. The plugin is written by the good guys at Automate Asia, where I bought my Home Automation Solution from.

Pairing of the Digital lock with Homey was straightforward, just like pairing any other Z-Wave devices. Bring the Homey near the lock and start pairing. To know if it’s successful, and if the module in the lock is truly EU/I, there’s a bit to do.

Basically, the acid test to determine if the chip is EU/I, is that if you set a flow as below
When… “Unlocked from back”
And…
Then… “Speech > Say Hello

The key part is “Unlocked from back” as a non EU/I chip will not be able to distinguish that action. So, a successful test is when you open the door from the inside, Homey will say “Hello”

That’s it for the first use case, you are free to create more flows to have Homey say different things based on how the door was unlocked. 🙂

Do you have other ideas? Do share! Have Fun!

2019 Home Automation with Homey & Google Home

I recently move into a new apartment, and I took the opportunity to dive into some Home Automation. This post shares some of the things I’ve done, and will write more around the details.

The overall solution, I adopted the approach my friend, Vicardo, shared with me, that devices can be controlled by Voice, Smartphone App, and Manual. Voice and app will be the primary methods, and as a fallback, there must be a way to manually trigger the action, e.g. switch off the lights, roll up the blinds.

(Full post on my complete bill of materials to come soon…)

Overview of my Home Automation Set Up

Let’s start with some of the uses cases I have, and then I’ll mention the components involved in each use case. It’s important to note that the core controller I’ve chosen is the Homey.

  • Lights Automation
    • I have all my living room, dining room and master bedroom lights automated. This allows me to control the lights as groups, e.g. when leaving the apartment, I can power off the lights with a single control. Or I can define a scene for movie time and it will power off all lights except and keep a selected few on.
    • Device – MCO Home touch panel switches
    • Connectivity – Z-Wave
    • Controller – Homey
    • (more details coming…)
  • Balcony Zip Blinds Automation
    • I have my entire balcony installed with ZipBlinds. I use the blinds to block out rain, or when fully lowered, I can let the living room aircon run and cool down a bigger area.
    • Device – MC2 Altex SecureZip (with Somfy motors)
    • Connectivity – RTS
    • Controller – Homey (Connexoon is optional; which I’m not using)
    • (more details coming…)
  • Apartment Front and Yard Doors Automation
    • I have installed electronic locks by Samsung. It has an added z-wave module which allows integration with Homey for some controls.
      • When door opens – Homey announces the door is unlocked
      • When door closes – Homey announces the door is locked
      • When I get home – the door is unlocked
    • Device – (Lock) Samsung SHP-DP728 with Z-Wave (EU/I) addon module
    • Device – (Motion Sensor) Aeotec MultiSensor 6
    • Device – (Wifi) Google Wifi
    • Advanced Integration – IFTTT
    • Connectivity
      • Lock to Homey > Z-Wave
      • Motion Sensor to Homey > Z-Wave
    • Controller – Homey
    • more on the basic setup of this lock
  • Aircon automated control
    • I discovered the Ambi Climate in late 2018, and found it to be really effective to nicely control the room temperature. The most important part for me is that I no longer wake up in the morning to an overly cold room which I dread to crawl out from under the blanket. Now I always wake up to a nice comfortable temperature.
    • Device – Ambi Climate
    • Connectivity – Wifi
    • Controller – not required, but integrated with Google Home for voice commands
    • (more details coming…)

There’s much more to share, watch out for more posts on the Home Automation topic.

Further topics to read on