Home Automation Library

Question

I am a C # developer who wants to get into home automation as a hobby. I did a little research, but wondered if anyone knew of a good .NET library that supports Insteon hardware. I would rather use Insteon than the X10, due to security concerns.

My ultimate goal at this stage is to have a simple home automation server (possibly lighting and climate control) with a secure ASP.NET web application interface. I'm more interested in actually building and exploring this, rather than finding an existing solution.

Thanks for any suggestions or comments.

Edit: Thanks for the help, everyone.

Does anyone have any experience with Z-wave technology ? It seems promising - it seems that this is better equipment, includes the main library, supports .NET, etc. ControlThink seems to be a very good controller and SDK.

Here's an interesting app to consider: Rack Status: Know Before You Go

Answer 1

We found that for Insteon there really isn’t much developer support if you don’t want to buy their SDKs and agree to their rather tight license agreement. Instead of following this route, we wrote our own .NET library called FluentDwelling , and we open it. You can find the download link and some sample code that you run if you follow this link.

The source code comes with a complete set of unit tests (NUnit is required, also free), so you can add improvements and make changes if you want.

Answer 2

I would avoid the X10 like a plague. Between things like modern TVs and power strips, bridge junction boxes and just weird wiring, X10 signals tend to just “fade” and never get to their destination.

If you really want to give an X10 a shot, I have a box with an X10 in a garage worth $ 250 + new, and all this is completely useless in my house, so you can get it. Some of them worked in my old house, but it is not so much as turning on the light on the 2 exits where I live now.

X10 is considered by the most modern electronics as “noise” on the line (which, technically, it is), and something that needs to be filtered out, and not transmitted or left alone.

Answer 3

I don’t remember if it covers the specific technologies that you mentioned, but you should definitely check out this .NET Rocks episode . They talk about all the different things you can do with home automation, and how to do it. I believe that one of the highlights was that Microsoft Robotics Studio was a good tool to use, as it uses a lot of the same abstractions as you would otherwise use.

Answer 4

I know that this was a long time ago since this message was made, however, I was wondering if you chose the route and what you ended up with home automation.

I did such things with many technologies, but I always did it on top of a product called homeseer. .Net plugins and vb.net and C # scripts can be run on top of this foundation. I was thinking about folding my own, similar to what you described. Any thoughts, tips, decisions you made, etc.

Answer 5

A little off topic, but listen to the latest episode of dot net rock, one of the finalists in my story .net created a home automation solution that really made me dive into home automation again. Totally awsome solution.

http://www.dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?showNum=518

Answer 6

I think this will be the place to start insteon sdk

Answer 7

Some Google research looking for the Insteon SDK only provides something from 2005 . There is only information about the serial port interfaces (without USB), and the only language mentioned is what is called the DockLight script, it also looks like it has not been updated since 2005.

X10 , on the other hand, supports C ++, VisualBasic, VB Script, and JavaScript. No .Net, but VisualBasic / VB Script most likely implies a COM object that you can easily import for use in C #. They are also much more USB friendly, and the kit costs 1/4 of the Insteon kit ($ 50 vs $ 200).

If you were actually building a product, I would understand the problem of reliability. But since this is a home project, I think you will be much better off with X10.

Answer 8

you can try the C-bus from Clipsal (schneider) for free.