I’m looking for feedback on this idea. Hopefully it’s not half-baked. This is not meant to be wired hyper-accurate – it is as they say “diagrammatic in nature.”
We just broke ground on a new house. I am planning out the wiring for home automation, security, life safety, lighting and so on. I’m in the low-voltage fire alarm, intrusion, access control, video surveillance and sound/public address system industry, plus I’m a big sci-fi futuristic kind of guy, so I’m going way overboard. I have tons of coding experience but I am just getting into Raspberry Pi, and have not done anything with an Arduino, and nothing with home automation beyond the off-the-shelf smart devices and app. But, I’m trying to plan for the future and anticipate future needs, so for example I am figuring on a whole-house 12VDC power supply and running cables all around the house, to power blinds and sensors, fire alarm and intrusion/panic devices.
In the bathrooms, I started thinking about automating the lights because no one ever turns them off here. So, I figure a motion sensor and a smart switch. Then, I start thinking about automating the exhaust fan, so I added a temp/humidity sensor. And, I’m also thinking about semi-automating a whole-house fan, so I figure on more temp/humidity sensors around the house. I know the wife is not going to tolerate a bunch of sensors poking out of walls and ceilings in her brand-new house, so I start pondering integrating them into a single, discreet, housing.
It so happens I think I’d like to have Alexa built into most of the rooms. And, it might be nice to have a whole-house-audio system. Then, I came up with the idea of cramming everything into a speaker enclosure, as sort of a sound and sensor pod. I’ve started to think of it as an “everthing bagel”. Refer to the concept diagram. In this example, I have a 6” speaker in a 12” enclosure, leaving room for everything else. This would be fine in the kitchen, but I’d scale it down to a 4” speaker in a 8” can for a bathroom, or even smaller, maybe.
Misc. remarks: the LED ring is to provide feedback, similar to Alexa. I'm figuring on sealing the upper section of the enclosure to be water-tight in bathroom locations, but adding some passive ventilation.
Misc. other related future ideas:
I figure in a great room/living room it would be nice to make one a master, handling both a left and a remote right speaker.
In at least the master bedroom, I thought a smart mirror, coming off the RP would be nice. I’m also thinking that in some rooms I’d like to put a small (3.5”) touchscreen display above the light switches (or even maybe replacing the switches) for lighting control, scenes, plus maybe for sound controls. That’s more of a 2021 or 22 project, budget- and time-wise, but that’s how far out I am planning.
Not to get too far off on a tangent but I thought about putting a WAP in these, low-powered enough they can be used for presence/device detection/location as an input to automation procedures. I’d have the power there and the room for it.
Question: are there any other technologies (microwave, doplar?) that can provide for a hidden or at least flush motion sensor? These speakers typically have a sound-transparent cloth cover, so I was wondering about ultrasonic. I should probably know more about this, being in the intrusion detection industry, but I've never had to make one invisible.
What do you think? Clever or crazy?
[this is a re-post from the Raspberry Pi forum, due to apparent lack of interest there: Raspberry Pi Forums - Login]