I’m curious if any are planning to use weather from the Smart Weather Station into Home Control or Home Automation.
In other words, will you incorporate the Station into a controller that controls many aspects of your house.
If so, how will you use it and what controller are you using?
Hope to use my WF Smart Weather Station as the PWS feed for a Rachio Smart Irrigation system. https://www.rachio.com/
I live in an area of microclimates where a few miles can make a 30 degree difference. Localized weather information will hopefully help irrigation efficiency.
Other uses under study but water/sewer savings in my area is the biggest bang for the buck right now.
What automation controlled are you using?
None needed. Rachio has an iOS/PC/android app where you simply add your PWS. It uses the forecast and real time data to adjust irrigation values. That said, I use “other” methods to do a bunch of additional home things. Still trying to figure out how the PWS can help with the “other” things. Hope to get additional ideas from this thread.
Okay. I’m asking who will be using the Station for Home Control and Automation.
IFTTT already has some actions for Home Control and Automation that works with WF.
I don’t know anyone that seriously uses Home Control and Home Automation that depends on Cloud Based services because there are too many points of failure.
Would you have an alarm system based on IFTTT? Or let IFTTT control the lights in your house?
Millions of people already do. Almost all (if not all) consumer grade security cameras, thermostats, controllable lights, doorbells, ect. use cloud services that people pay a monthly fee to use.
I have all that and none use cloud based applications. The only cloud service I use is Alexa and that I don’t have to depend on.
But we digress. I’m looking for anyone here that is actually using.
Both Nest and Ring use cloud services. Not only to access the video but you
also use an app to access them. If the service goes down or they shut their
doors will the app continue to work?
I use IFTTT to do several automated tasks around the house, including arming and disarming my DIY alarm system daily. In answer to your specific question, I currently use IFTTT with one of my WF AIR’s in an animal enclosure to notify me when temperatures get dangerously hot. Non WF uses include Alexa/Nest/IFTTT to control lights, thermostat, and garage doors. However, if I can figure out how WF can help in those areas, I’ll add them in. I hope to see some great ideas come from this thread.
No, it won’t. That’s the issue with cloud services. If anything between you and the service goes down and it does often, it’s useless.
I’m going to ask that this topic be spilt so you can continue the debate in a new topic
You haven’t mentioned the controller you use to control your lighting. What do you do when your internet connection goes down?
No need to split. My main answer to your cloud comment was that millions of
people use cloud services, pay for them and are happy with them. I would
guess those that don’t are a small minority. Carry on.
For lighting, I’m using Alexa and IFTTT with a mix of TP-Link type devices (no hub needed). As for internet reliability, guess I’m lucky as I can’t remember the last time it was down (over a year at least now). Service provider is Charter (now Spectrum) with newer neighborhood underground services… and it doesn’t hurt to be next to the main west coast undersea hub landing too. If internet does go down, I’ll just do things manually for a day. As far as paying for monthly cloud based services, i don’t, that includes my security system. Love that IFTTT/Alexa/Nest are free!
For the future, might consider using WF AIR and Nest thermostat to IFTTT control a whole house fan and an external vent. And WF PWS as the primary weather input to a smart irrigation controller as mentioned earlier.
I’m surprised no one on here is doing Home Control or Home Automation other than myself and @michael.
With all the bad things happening with hacking of IoT devices I’ve refused to purchase any other then a Spot, mainly just to play with. I’ve even taken my live streaming weather cam off-line and have closed all forwarded ports. There is more that I could do but I figure if someone really wants to get in bad enough, they will. “locking the door” keeps out the casual intruder.
That’s why we do not use cloud-connect controllers. There is an entire industry of secure devices available for control and automation that are for us big boys.
I am, but did not respond because I have no intention of linking my WF station to it.
Started out with Wink, because it was easy for my DW to use and we were sort of forced into that ecosystem by a smart Wink air conditioner purchase. I subsequently upgraded to a Wink2 hub, which executes a lot of the control stuff locally and not in the cloud. I also have a Samsung SmartThings2 hub sitting on the shelf, because I really wasn’t impressed by it.
I went off-script, and picked up an Apple HomeKit BLE front door lock. Both me and my DW have Apple Watches, so the convenience of telling Siri to unlock the front door without having to fish out a phone is a huge sales feature. I have since installed the open-source HomeBridge package in a Raspberry Pi, which presents the Wink2 devices to HomeKit so that Siri can control them.
My favorite automation task so far is the one that is triggered when I pull into the driveway and unlocks the front door, turns on the outside and garage lights, and turns everything off in 5 minutes. Don’t even need the watch any more…