A Primer on Home Automation (and How Easy It Can Be)

by Ilyke Maasterd

This article is based solely on my personal experience.

I was recently very pleased to realize that "hardware tinkering" could be something even I could have fun with at home.  I am usually more of a software guy.  This is a story where one interesting thing simply led to another, and through which I learned many new things.

You may wish to read on more particularly if you have, yourself, a system similar to what I had before I started:

• One Onkyo AV receiver (audio and video amplifier with five HDMI inputs and an FM tuner).  My particular receiver model could not handle DVI signals from the PC, however my TV model could.  For best video playback, I acquired an HDMI signal splitter and connected to the receiver for sound, and to the TV for picture.
• One large television display.
• One disc player.
• One cable TV source, also serving as a PVR.
• One PC capable of two distinct video outputs.
• One LCD monitor for office computing at a nearby desk.
• A few six-foot HDMI cables.

Things can really kick off if you can afford or already have the following:

• One Harmony Ultimate Home from Logitech.
• One Bluetooth-capable PC.
• Literally any IR-commanded appliance that is around (dehumidifier, portable heater, fan).
• Fancy: one set of speakers with a large bundle of speaker wires (or a Bluetooth alternative) to hear radio or a playlist of songs anywhere around the house.
• Fancy: Wi-Fi thermostats to control room temperature and utility costs.
• Fancy: Wi-Fi 120 VAC power adapters and extension cords to control lighting (or other).

The Genesis

The idea of pursuing home automation came to me when I realized that, as proud as I was to be able to "do anything" with my home theater system, it was always a little hassle to set up everything to get it working in different configurations.  Well, if you are in this situation and follow through this article, you just may be able to consider yourself completely rid of that problem afterwards.

So I went out and decided to buy a Harmony Ultimate Home from Logitech.

Not a product with a low price tag, but all I can say is that from my personal experience, I consider it well worth it.  Truth be told, my real idea was to "Buy it, figure out how to program it with Linux, and enjoy home automation," but I actually did not know much about Linux in the first place.  I decided to buy the Logitech product at that point (nice decision).  It is safe to say that this remote has clearly slowed my learning of Linux!

So the product comes mostly in three parts: an AC-powered repeater hub, an AC-powered charging cradle, and a battery-powered remote control.  The remote control is quite enjoyable to use as it is ergonomic, the buttons work nicely, and the touchscreen display is pretty to look at and works very nicely.

The remote and hub communicate through Radio Frequency (RF) and the hub then sprays the room with infrared (IR) codes to the appliances.  For those unfamiliar, RF are radio waves that can go through walls and, quite obviously, do not require you to point the remote control at the device to be commanded; IR signals are different in that they are line-of-sight signals, which sometimes can reflect, and are the standard used in almost every wireless home product (disc player, cable TV, ceiling fans, etc.).

The remote setup could not be easier.

First, you record your appliances with their make and model numbers, as declared by the original manufacturer.  Then, you program activities, which defines combination of devices, their setup, and the necessary sequences.  That's it, you can enjoy life much better now with only that.  With the app from Logitech and a Wi-Fi network, you can control your devices from a tablet and, literally, from the International Space Station if you can get there.

But it gets better.

In this article, I will totally skip over the Logitech product details and input methods as they are quite easy to learn.  I will only describe the appliances and activities I have come up with on my own as well as attempt to show how interesting things can become.  I expect these descriptions will contain enough details for anyone to experiment easily on their own.  I also assume that your different appliances are all already connected properly.

Please do try this at home.

The Basics

The first rule is: if you can produce the desired changes through the remote, you can execute it with Harmony.  Begin by programming a few appliances and then come back to reading this.  Start with: TV, cable, disc player, and finally, amplifier.

As I said, that step should have been easy enough.  You now have a few different devices programmed in and with a single RF remote, you can control them from way farther in the house.  You do not have to bother anymore to get your arm out from under a blanket to pause, rewind, or whatever.

Programming activities is the next step.

Again, with the default interface, all of the different scenarios you use regularly will be easy enough to configure.  Select the devices involved, specify the output and input channels of each for the activity, and voilà you are done.  You can now, after a long day at work, pick up the remote and press a single button on it to enjoy the ongoing live hockey game of your favorite team.  If the game turns sour and you change your mind, another single key press will reorganize everything to play the movie you left in the middle of the previous night.

More Fun

The second rule is: if you can script commands on a PC that is Bluetooth-capable, you can execute them with Harmony (in conjunction with other tools).

Here I will avoid the subjects of how scripting through batch files (.BAT) is performed, as well as how Bluetooth pairing is performed.  I suggest anyone not familiar with these topics do a quick web search, and read forum answers.  What I will describe, however, is how to take advantage of the fact that the Harmony is Bluetooth-capable.

I had never taken advantage of Bluetooth on any device, ever, until I bought the Harmony product.  Reading up on it on the WWW, I came across a great little software called PS3BluMote.

It is there that I learned that the PlayStation 3 is one of the rare gaming consoles to support Bluetooth, and somebody had already figured out a way to take advantage of the Harmony's compatibility.  While I do not actually own a PS3 console myself, PS3BluMote lets me take advantage of Harmony to basically send commands from my Bluetooth-capable PC.  I will describe PS3BluMote in a little more detail later.

First, a real-life example may prove useful to illustrate the convenience one can enjoy.

I had the issue that my amplifier would not display properly the video portion of the DVI-over-HDMI signal coming from my PC while the sound transmitted fine.  Through my amplifier, the video came out full of artifacts and colors were miscoded.  Watching a movie this way was not acceptable.

The DVI input of my TV being perfectly compatible, I elected to display video through the TV input, and playback audio (in 5.1 surround sound) by selecting the GAME input of the amplifier.  I was thus able to watch a movie with good picture and good sound.  This setup requires using an externally-powered HDMI signal splitter to duplicate the PC source signals.

The problem was that in Windows, sound is not directed to all outputs simultaneously; only one audio output device can be active at a time.  So when I am in normal office configuration, the PC uses a set of small PC speakers to play sounds and music.  One must direct the audio output to the PC's HDMI jack through a small labyrinth of Windows settings.  This operation is only meant to be a manual one for security purposes and over time it becomes a bit tedious, but mostly boring, to change the PC's audio output device.

Then comes a lifesaver, another great little program called NirCmd.

Based on the NirCmd instruction set, I produced short batch files that can switch the audio output device of my PC without mouse interaction (do not ask me how that is done by NirCmd - it just works).  So I created on my desktop a first shortcut that points at a script called Audio-to-Speakers.BAT and another shortcut that points at a script called Audio-to-Amplifier.BAT.

All these scripts contain are two NirCmd commands: the first line changes the audio device and the second line speaks the description of the device out loud (through voice synthesis).

Now it's time to take advantage of the fact that Harmony supports controlling PS3 consoles over Bluetooth.

By setting it up to connect to a fake console receiver through PS3BluMote, you can easily execute any script of your liking on the PC.  The magic is simply done by creating shortcuts to your scripts on your Windows desktop, and by assigning keyboard shortcuts to them (e.g. Ctrl-Alt-0).  Then you simply need to configure PS3BluMote to react to a specific button (e.g. Channel Down) by producing the desired key presses through to Windows by means similar to the SendKeys method.  In my case, Blue commands the PC's audio output to the cinema system.  Yellow reverts the PC's audio output to the small speakers.

Once these scripts execute reliably, it becomes trivial to introduce them within existing Harmony activities such as "Watch movie from disc" and "Watch movie from PC."

The Fancy List

These are things I have just not yet gotten around to doing and have not yet coughed up the money for, but they are all things that I am looking forward to implementing some day.  My very next step will be to kill the lights when setting up to watch a movie by using home automation power adapter(s).

I hope you enjoyed this guide as much as I enjoyed constantly improving my activities and associated sequencing.  I would really love to hear of more unusual ideas to take better advantage of this hardware; please share your experiences in these pages!