Building a smart home in the Costa Rican Rainforest

Posted on
Mon Jan 25, 2016 10:23 am
captcurrent offline
Posts: 440
Joined: Nov 28, 2005

Re: Building a smart home in the Costa Rican Rainforest

I am in the dutch caribbean we use 50 cycle power here which for me has rendered Insteon useless

Most of my system uses X-10 , old but works I have had MAJOR issues with z-wave range i think from construction techniques
right now I am bout max of 30 feets



good luck

Posted on
Mon Feb 01, 2016 10:19 am
Coolcaper offline
Posts: 299
Joined: Aug 30, 2013
Location: Australia

Re: Building a smart home in the Costa Rican Rainforest

If going with z wave I would like to suggest to stick to the new zwave plus/gen5 products as their range is much better than first generation stuff. Speaking from experience and kudos on your plan OP!!

Posted on
Mon Feb 01, 2016 11:05 am
johnpolasek offline
Posts: 911
Joined: Aug 05, 2011
Location: Aggieland, Texas

Re: Building a smart home in the Costa Rican Rainforest

If going with Insteons and starting from scratch, I'd suggest putting micromodules and fanlincs in the light fixtures and going with all keypadlincs in the switchboxes. These will let you control either 5 devices (in the 6 button mode) or 8 devices (in the 8 button mode) and if you get the clear button changesets, you can print out your own labels to stick inside them. When I retrofitted the house I recently bought I ended up with a whole lot of spare places where the original wiring had 3 and 4 switches and I needed only one keypadlinc to control more things than they had originally. And setting up 3 or more keypadlincs to control a single light is extremely easy once you understand how scenes work.

And for security/ wildlife cameras, I've been reasonably pleased with the Ubiquiti bullet cameras and their free Unifi software as long as you are willing to pull cat5 cable from the camera to the router. And you will have to supply external IR or visible spotlights at night, their motion detection is a bit tricky to set up, and you will have to have a bit of expertise with setting up a virtual Linux machine on the mac, all of which might make you choose some of the wireless alternatives that are out there and can talk to the DComplex universal server, but I have had some reliability issues with that one.
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Posted on
Wed Apr 26, 2017 6:37 pm
nexx offline
Posts: 56
Joined: Jun 27, 2010

Re: Building a smart home in the Costa Rican Rainforest

Is Teptron Move supported in indigo? How to interface distant Move's? (it only supports bluetooth)

Posted on
Wed Apr 26, 2017 7:44 pm
Different Computers offline
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Posts: 2533
Joined: Jan 02, 2016
Location: East Coast

Re: Building a smart home in the Costa Rican Rainforest

Looks like I'm jumping in late here, but so glad you're considering Indigo!

As a former ST user, it would take me a week to explain how much better is than SmartThings. In particular, if your internet is less than 100%, your ST system will never be solid.

As to your Internet, I recommend Ubiquiti point to point wifi bridges. Hard to be more specific without knowing a lot more about the distance you have to span, but the guys at Ubiquti will be able to help.

SmartThings refugee, so happy to be on Indigo. Monterey on a base M1 Mini w/Harmony Hub, Hue, DomoPad, Dynamic URL, Device Extensions, HomeKitLink, Grafana, Plex, uniFAP, Fantastic Weather, Nanoleaf, LED Simple Effects, Bond Home, Camect.

Posted on
Thu Apr 27, 2017 7:10 am
johnpolasek offline
Posts: 911
Joined: Aug 05, 2011
Location: Aggieland, Texas

Re: Building a smart home in the Costa Rican Rainforest

Ubiquiti actually has a tool to figure the p2p signal strength based on the location and height of the towers...

https://airlink.ubnt.com/#/

Posted on
Thu Apr 27, 2017 10:04 am
Different Computers offline
User avatar
Posts: 2533
Joined: Jan 02, 2016
Location: East Coast

Re: Building a smart home in the Costa Rican Rainforest

I don't see where you mention you want cameras, but I see someone else talking about them, so I thought I'd point out that the Indigo Security Camera plugin available for free will let you manage all your cameras inside of Indigo, possibly saving a good bit of money on any other camera management software you might otherwise need.

SmartThings refugee, so happy to be on Indigo. Monterey on a base M1 Mini w/Harmony Hub, Hue, DomoPad, Dynamic URL, Device Extensions, HomeKitLink, Grafana, Plex, uniFAP, Fantastic Weather, Nanoleaf, LED Simple Effects, Bond Home, Camect.

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