Kjøkken/Kitchen

This room contains solutions for the following systems (notice that on phones, the table might only be displayed in landscape mode):

Description of the solutions in this room

Starting with lighting, this required some investigation into different possible solutions. The simplest to make smarter were lights in the kitchen ventilator, where the old bulbs could simply be replaced with E14 chandelier smart bulbs from Philips Hue, se picture below.

Unfortunately, partly are these bulbs somewhat low in light levels and partly the cover in front of them gives them even less effect. After some back and forth to find a good solution for lights in the bathroom upstairs, in the end I ended up with to leftover spots from the manufacturer DoHome (which does not seem to have its own web page, but the products are sold via AliExpress and other online stores). The solution consists of “non-smart” LED spots and a smart controller, which is even compatible with Apple Home. These were installed under the ventilator hood to supplement the original ventilator lighting, see picture below.

It got way more complicated for light sources where we had old-fashioned fluorescent tubes. This was the case for ceiling lights, in the form of a fixture with two such tubes (controlled by a wall switch) and two lighting fixtures underneath cabinets above the worktop, which we really wanted to control by timer. Also these were turned on/off using (separate) wall switches, with the added complexity that both fixtures have a power outlet used to connect various gadgets scattered across the worktop. Solutions investigated were:

• Replacing the wall switches for the fixtures with either smart switches or using a Fibaro Single Switch behind the original switches, but with old T8 fluorescent tubes, the start-up load would be too large for this to work.

• I considered replacing the T8 tubes with T5 LED tubes, which would be suitable for a smart switch/relay, but this would still leave the power outlets in the fixtures without power when the lights were turned off. Since we have devices connected to these outlets that should be on even with the lights off, this was not an ideal solution.

• The solution we ended up with, though more expensive than the ones mentioned above, has worked very well; we installed lightstrips from Philips Hue, se pictures below (while keeping the old fixtures, without tubes, so that the power outlets can be used). I was initially uncertain whether the amount of light would be too weak compared with the old fluorescents, but that was completely unfounded; in fact we only run the lightstrips at 80% brightness. An added benefit was achieved by installing three strips, which added light to a section of the worktop previously not illuminated.

The three lightstrips installed underneath the kitchen cabinets. The strips 2 meters long which meant that in one place it didn’t reach all the way around the underside of the cabinet, in another place it was just perfect, and in the last place it had to be cut a little

The ceiling lights were for a long time left as they were, partly since there would be limited benefits from making this smarter and partly due to a lack of feasible solutions. As mentioned, fluorescent are demanding due to their high start-up load and no smart switches were suited for such. Later, Aqara has launched different versions of smart wall switches that can also handle this type of lights. Now, the fluorescent ceiling light is connected to one of the switches of a tripe Aqara wired wall switch, see picture below. This version is called S1E Magic Switch and has a LED display that can be “programmed” using different templates and up to nine individual “switches”; three that control the devices physically connected to the switch and six that control any device/scene in Apple Home. We have exploited this to assign often used devices/scenes to the maximum six virtual switches.

The other switch controls a ceiling lamp above the dining table, also shown in the picture below. Also this brings fairly limited benefits through automation, but since it was connected to the same existing wall switch, it “tagged along”, first using an old-fashioned light bulb. Later, Philips Hue (and other manufacturers) launched great-looking filament bulbs, and since the bulb in this ceiling lamp was extra large, we were tempted by the Philips Hue bulb G93 filament bulb with E27 socket. In the display of the wall switch, the physical switch for the lamp has not been added, as this would cut power to the smart bulb; instead the Hue bulb is controlled using one of the virtual switches, as shown below. For some of the virtual switches, Shortcuts have been programmed so that the light turns off if it was one when the switch was pressed and vice versa. It should also be mentioned that the display can either go into screensaver mode or go black after a given period.

The experiences with the light strips, both here in the kitchen and in the living room, were so positive that we have been considering other places they could be suitable. In the kitchen, one area stood out; on top of the kitchen cabinets, and this also gave us an opportunity to test a different type of light strip. For a while, we used Yeelight’s Aurora Lightstrip Plus with colors, but these would not play very nice with our WiFi network. They were therefore replaced with Nanoleaf Essential Lightstrips, which use Bluetooth/Thread for connections. They sit on top of the cabinets, see pictures below, and give a soft and discrete light to the otherwise rather gloomy area underneath the ceiling.

As mentioned above, the Yeelight light strips proved troublesome, it normally took only 2-3 days between one or both losing network connection. It was an easy to fix by disconnecting them from power so that they rebooted, but this was cumbersome as it required climbing up on the worktop to reach them. We therefore first installed an IKEA Trådfri control outlet between the power outlet and the light strips, but it amounted to a little “tower” since it also required a splitter to fit both light strips. So partly to avoid this and partly to test a new type of component, a Fibaro Walli Outlet smart power outlet was installed, see picture below. This gave a more elegant solution, even if it still sticks a bit out from the wall, and it allows rebooting them by turning off/on again the smart outlet.

The smart outlet is a somewhat intriguing product; instead of a smart plug that is plugged into an existing wall outlet, it provides a built-in outlet that can be remotely controlled. Like the other Walli components, it looks good, with a LED ring indicating whether it is on or off (as well as other status indications). It is natively not compatible with Apple Home, but since it is based on Z-Wave, it can be connected to Homey, and from there on to Apple Home via HomeKitty. The only disadvantage is that if there previously was a double outlet in the wall recess, you will now end up with one single outlet. To control the light strips, this was no issue, but especially older houses rarely have too many outlets, so this could be a problem.

The lightstrips under and above the cabinets respectively are grouped together in the Home app so that they turn on/off at the same time and, together with ventilator lights and lamp above the dining table, they are programmed to turn on with the "Good Morning" scene and off at night with "Good Night", see screenshot at the bottom. We could of course have used a motion sensor to allow the lights to turn off when we are not in the kitchen, but with an open floor plan with the kitchen and living room being integrated, we decided it would look dark and gloomy in the kitchen that way. Equally, the two strips on top of the cabinets have been grouped together, but these turn on later with the “Evening Lights” scene, and all go off with “Good Night”.

IKEA offers a lot of lighting producs, most of which are not part of the Trådfri smart lights line, but which still have some “smarts”. In the two largest and most often used kitchen cabinet drawers, we have installed two IKEA Omlopp LED lights with built-in motion sensor in drawers, two of a newer model, MittLED, in two cabinets, and one Skydrag in another cabinet, see pictures below. These are easy to install if the body of the drawer section is of standard width and they work very well by turning on when the drawer or door is opened and off again when it is closed. These can be connected to power using either a “non-smart” transformer, which is the case for three of these, or a Trådfri Driver, which also integrates them into Apple Home, which one of these uses.

Omlopp drawer lights og MittLED cabinet lights

In addition, we have installed two lightstrips and one light panel powered by batteries in kitchen cabinets where the inner area gets a little dark. These are motion controlled so they turn on when opening the door and work well, though it can be a bit cumbersome to replace the batteries inside the cabinet.

The window sensor from Aqara, see picture below, has as its primary function to be part of the programming of the living room heat pump. Together with door/window sensors in the living room, conservatory and the library, this has been set up so that the heat pump turns off when the window or one of the doors are opened.

Smart pet feeders are arguably more for those with a special interest in such things, but the kitchen sports four such from SureFeed. We have several cats who require different types of food and it is not easy to control who gets what by other means. These feeders respons to the microchip that each cat has been injected with and will open only for the right cat. They are not online in any way and as such not very smart, but they work perfectly for our needs!

For a long time, we had a “non-smart” dishwasher, but when this packed it in after fifteen years of service, we naturally chose a smart version. We landed on a Bosch machine with its Home Connect solution for app control, with alternatives in the form of a plugin for Homebridge and an app for Homey. These alternatives do work in that they show the status of programs/door and one can start/stop programs, but we have found that in practice we either use the physical buttons on the machine or the Home Connect app. The most useful feature of having an online dishwasher is the ability to see remotely how much time remains before the current program is done.