For the past year or so I have been gradually moving my central heating control over to a zwave hub consisting of a zwave enabled raspberry pi and a number of zwave devices.
Phase 1: controlling the heating in the living room
Phase 2: expanding the network
Phase 3: solving the hot water issue
Phase 4: complete switch over to the new system
And in summary:
The raspberry pi is fitted with a zwave daughter card from zwave.me. All the low level zwave communication is handled by software from zwave.me. This runs as a service (z-way-server) on the raspberry pi.
To this service I have added a custom module which allows for zoning of the central heating, flexible scheduling and boost features. These features are all configurable via an Android app (locally and remotely) and via voice control from an Amazon Echo.
In addition I have added non-zwave sensors and devices to my project in the form of 'HTTP devices'. These are also controlled from the z-way-server. Examples are temperature sensors and rf controllable sockets (both using wifi enabled arduinos).
The android app is work in progress. Here are some screenshots from it running on my phone:
And on a tablet which is permanently running in the kitchen providing an easy controller for all the family.
For physical changes to and for an indepth analysis of the zwave network I use the zwave.me web based user interface. Here is an example:
I also added my own support for Amazon Echo (Alexa). Since completing this, zwave.me have provided official support which I may switch over to. I am now looking at adding Google Home support although I see official support is in the pipeline.
Apart from ongoing improvements to my Android app, this project is pretty much complete. It was not my intention to delve further into home automation, but writing the code has been so much fun that it has been difficult to let go!
I am currently experimenting with lighting, wifi enabled devices and google home support.
