There is great confusion about the term smart device for the home, because a
device alone is difficult for it to be smart, because when we talk about
smart devices for the home, we refer to domotic devices capable of communicating with
other devices through a domotic controller as a Joomasist. This is what really gives
a set of devices something like intelligence, although in reality intelligence we have to
put it ourselves. And for a system to be catalogued as such, it
is essential to have two types of devices, those that are able to capture
information from the environment through sensors and those that are able to perform actions on
electrical things or appliances through actuators and get to have an intelligent system is that
some communicate with others so that they automate tasks of our house, like if
they hate water under the sink, that they send a notification to the flood
cell, if it is very windy or it is raining, that they pick
up the awnings or the blinds or if it is eleven o' clock on
Saturday night that puts a romantic light and enig en annexa to this type of
intelligence. We mean smart devices for the home. Let the sensors detect something
and inform the automatic server to send orders to the actuators and do something automatically.
It' s the basis of any home automation system. The automations.
Hence the importance of domestic devices is intelligent devices. In another chapter I will
talk about automations more in depth, because today I want to focus precisely on
this, on the types of domestic devices, whether sensors or actuators, because
although there are hundreds of smart devices for the home and these can be classified
into sensors and actuators, all can be grouped into two large groups, those
that depend on the Internet, the manufacturers and the servers and those that,
in other words, not those that subject you and to which you can submit.
Although to get here first we' re going to have to differentiate the
smart devices that function as sensors and those that function as actuators. Welcome to
technology for everyone, the podcast where I talk about ardui and not home automation
programming, and everything related to Mikel' s movement my name, Luis del
Valle, and you can find me on the Internet in easy programming. I
' m going to start by talking about the domotic devices that function as sensors,
and it' s that a sensor is nothing more than an apparatus capable
of measuring different physical or chemical magnitudes and transforming them into another easy- to
- understand magnitude. We can think of technical, acoustic or magnetic sensors,
for example, their function is to capture a physical magnitude to convert it into
an electrical signal and then into a digital or analog signal for easy understanding and
treatment. Then there are the automatic actuating devices. An actuator makes the reverse
path because, starting from a digital or analog signal, it converts it into
a physical magnitude, such as luminous intensity, force or magnetic field. The
actuator we are going to use in domotics are certainly the relays that when it
receives a signal, it energizes a coil to separate or join a contact and
thus allow to flow the alternating current. And this will allow us to turn
on or off electrical appliances, such as the home bulb, but it can
also be treated as actuators, a smart speaker, a motor or a screen.
Having this in mind, we need to understand what the function of a
home automation device is, because if we install a home automation device, whether
it' s a sensor or an actuator, and we don' t connect
it to the tomotic server, like Homa Eastan, it won' t be
able to interact with the rest of the devices. I mean, if you
don' t send the temperature sensor data from the fridge to the server,
it' s hard for me to warn you in case the temperature is too
high. To get all this, we' re going to need to connect
the devices to the same data network as the topotic server. And here comes
the first breakthrough of free home controllers, because, by being installed in your
own home, if the need to connect to the Internet, it is possible
to communicate all devices through your own local network. This does not happen with
all tomatic devices, because, as we will see later. There are devices
that require an Internet connection to work, but either send the data over the
Internet or through your home' s local network. All devices must be sensors
or actuators, communicate with the server and communication technologies must be interconnected. There
are many whitfie ethernet TZIG, bet, WATHREAT, Radio mater, frequency,
Plutoth infrared. The list can be very large and, depending on the type
of device, will use one technology or another, although the important thing is
that many of them can be integrated with Homasistant. So let' s recap
what we have so far. Domotic devices can be sensors or actuators. Sensors
collect information from the environment to send it to the home automation controller and actuators
receive information from the home automation controller for actions on electrical things or appliances.
A few examples that when the fridge sensor reports that the temperature is very high,
I send a message to the phone saying abnormally you have left the door
open again. That when the test presence sensor someone comes in loaded with shopping
bags home, the hallway light turns on automatically. Or what is the flood
sensor of testac water cut water by activating an electrovalvula. And all this is
possible thanks to automations, which basically what they do is listen to the sensors
and according to rules determined by us, of course, sends signals to the
actuators. And although we can have domotic devices like sensors and actuators and they
can use different communication technologies, all absolutely all can be divided into two large
groups, devices that depend on the Internet and servers, manufacturers and devices that
do not depend. Go start talking about the dependent domotic devices to see that
' s how we all started. I mean, it' s normal instead
of tsar with home automation buying a device that depends on the manufacturers, for
example, you have a lamp in the living room and you' re the
very thing about having to bend down the back and understand it every night and
then have to turn it off. When you go to sleep in this situation,
it is normal to enter Amazon and buy a plug of those that call
intelligent and, once the device arrives home, you install it, download it
and configure the app on your mobile and turn on and off the light from
the app. And that' s fine, because you avoid having to bend
your back. Besides, you' ll be able to turn off the light
from the comfort of the bed. But this is neither automatic nor intelligent,
because home automation, as its name rightly says, is designed to make things
work alone that is all automatic. And maybe, with a little luck,
the app you' ve installed will allow you to do some automation or you
can even integrate it into some smart speaker like Alexa or Google hom and create
some kind of automation that allows you to turn it on at six o'
clock and turn it off at the. But what if one day you stay
on the Internet or fail the servers or retire the ceo of the company that
it is your turn to bend the back aside from having to connect to a
server that is ten zero kilometers away to light a light that is less than
a meter away, what do you want me to tell you. I see
it as absurd not to mention the mess of applications that you can get to
have, because each manufacturer uses its own application that is incompatible with the rest
of applications. And for you to understand the concept of manufacturer dependence, let
' s see an example of the process that follows the information. When we
want to turn on the light with these types of devices, the first thing
we would do is take out the mobile and give the light button, and
this what it does is send the command to the server over the Internet.
Then, thousands of miles away, the server receives that command from the ignition
after locating the device. Hey it' s here on this ipeo or I
have to communicate with this particular device send back the command to your home towards
the same device or by branding the Internet. Finally, the device receives the
order and turns on. Let' s go that to turn on a light,
the command has to cross half a planet and this is the typical operation
of any device that could be helly Phillips or softhies, to give a few
examples, because if you use them just by buying them without modifying them,
they depend on the Internet and the server is operational. So, if there
' s a zombie apocalypse and the Internet goes to hell or if the servers
burn or the company closes because the ceo retires, your devices stop working and
your home automation system if you only use these types of devices stops working.
So what do we do with these devices. I mean, you may already
have some device of this kind installed at home and you want to urge homassist,
but you don' t know very well what to do with them.
You throw them to the clean spot in which container they go, because quiet,
most likely you don' t have to throw them anywhere. You'
re interested in learning more about this. Well, I' ll explain this
in another chapter of the podcast, because now we' re going to talk
about the other types of devices, the independent ones. If a dependent home
automation device requires the Internet and the manufacturers' servers, the independents only need
two things that depend exclusively on IT, a local data network, such as
the WiFi network, but it can also be decid B and ZETA, WABE
or any other type of network and a TOP controller like homa sesta have installed
on your own server. Therefore, independent devices do not need the Internet,
they do not depend on the servers of the manufacturers, because they communicate with
your own server and your data. They' re always safe in your home
automation system,' cause what do you want me to tell you that a
company knows when I' m shitting, when I open the fridge when I
get home, it' s not fucking funny to me. And this is
achieved in a very simple way, if you manage to modify the dependent devices
in any way so that, instead of sending the data to the server,
you send them directly to your home automation server. This makes the process of
communicating with the server very different, because, instead of sending the data to
external server over the Internet, which may be in a Vietnam jungle, the
whole process takes place inside your home, without relying on the Internet, without
depending on the servers, the manufacturers or if the ceo retires, getting a
totally private system, because the data never leaves your home. But how we
can turn a dependent device into an independent one. I' ll talk in
another chapter. For the moment we leave it here, but first let'
s take a look at everything we' ve seen in this chapter. We
started the chapter by seeing that there are two types of devices, sensors and
actuators. Sensors are responsible for collecting information from the environment to be sent to
the home automation server. Actuators are responsible for acting on things or devices when
they receive information from the home server. For both sensors and actuators to communicate
with the home automation server, technologies such as WiFi, ETHERNETHIC or tzig B,
among others, are used. Each device can use one or more of
these technologies. The objective is that through the home automation server, sensors and
actuators are in constant communication. This will allow us to perform automations as if
the test water flood sensor closes the valve if it raises the temperature of the
refrigerator that sends an open door message, or if the test door sensor that
has been opened makes a siren sound. And all this is achieved through automations.
The essence of any dopmotic system, whether a device, sensor or actuator
that uses one communication technology or another, can all be divided into two large
groups, those that depend on manufacturers and those that do not. Manufacturer-
dependent devices need to have an Internet connection and the manufacturer' s server is
operational. If any of this fails, it stops working and independent devices do
not need internet connection or manufacturers' servers because they communicate through your local network,
your home, your own automatic server. Everything remains at home and so
far today' s chapter. In the next one I' ll go into
the devices that depend on the manufacturers and why you shouldn' t throw them
away. We leave this for next week. As I always say, we
listen very soon. Don' t miss the date and remember to be happy