New bathroom ideas

General
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Gavin assuming your in the UK than as @TotallyInformation states work in bathroom is covered under UK building Regs and is notifiable to your local council. Seesection 2.5 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/441872/BR_PDF_AD_P_2013.pdf

You can do the electrical work yourself but you must get it signed off by a competent person.
Be aware that there defined zones for example you must use SELV (e.g 24v) equipment in zone 0 like a extract fan above shower and your down lighters must be IP65

Lawrence

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Agreed! I would never trust myself to do it :slight_smile: It is being done by a professional installation team but I am asking for the various "add ons" for purposes of monitoring & control.

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Well, I've ordered a couple of 5m strips recently and it is hard to work out which are the best ones. You will certainly want waterproof. You will also want to work out how bright you want things.

I ordered a very cheap set of RGB LEDs from Amazon which are great for the price but aren't massively bright as they are just the standard 30 LED's per m and no white LED's. Also the supplied IR remote isn't brilliant as it only has a limited range of colours you can use. But fab for the price.

The latest set were from AliExpress and are warm white only. But they are 120 LED's per m and use 2835 LED's rather than the older 5050's. They are INCREDIBLY bright :grinning:. I'll be using these to create some task lighting in the kitchen, some for my wife's sewing and maybe some for a small workshop in my office. I've ordered some corner profile to mount the LED's in the kitchen as they will be directed onto the cooking area from the overhead cupboards either side of the cooker hood.

I've ordered mine from both Amazon and AliExpress. Note that some of the Chinese stores now have warehouses in the EU. That costs a little more sometimes but delivery is a lot faster - same with the US I suspect.

It is wise to buy a bunch of extra connectors and fixings as you will need plenty of those.

I've stuck with 12v strips as the power supplies are easy and cheap to get.

So things to think about:

  • Try to get the latest LED types as they are more efficient and likely to last longer (cheap LED's can fade fairly rapidly when used continuously).
  • Work out whether you just need RGB or whether you want to add warm and/or cool white LED's for brightness.
  • Work out what density you want. This impacts brightness but also colour consistency along the strip. The standard 30/m has quite a gap between LED's. You can get 30/m, 60/m and 120/m. I think that 120/m is probably the highest you can get because they are really close together.
  • Check how often you can cut the strips. I nearly brought one that would only split every metre. You'll need to factor this into your measurements.

I think that, overall, LED's are now sold in such high volumes and so are so cheap that all of the strips seem to be similar quality. As always though, I always check reviews and vendor responses to issues before buying.

https://www.flexfireleds.com/comparison-between-3528-leds-and-5050-leds/

LED's don't dim easily and you really need a proper dimmer circuit on the low voltage side (not mains). There are loads of options and, at 12v it is fairly easy to create your own. However, watch out for the current requirements. They go up pretty rapidly with LED strips.

I don't think PIR works well in a bathroom/wc environment. People will be sat in a bath, on a wc or behind a shower cubicle/curtain so the IR work work.

That's why I suggested using sound instead. You can get sensors that simply provide a digital trigger over a certain sound level and that would likely be a better presence detector. If set to the right level, you could also detect a tap left running when nobody is in the house.

That's easy. Any ESP8266 or ESP32 device will work over WiFi. You can wire multiple sensors straight onto any of them. You can use any of the "standard" firmware like Tasmota, ESPeasy, etc. and they all support comms over MQTT so are easy to integrate with Node-RED. Indeed, it is pretty trivial to write your own custom firmware too.

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Most PIR sensors only detect motion not presence. So when you are comfortably in your bathtub the lights will probably time out. Same with sound or they have to be very sensitive and trigger when your dog barks.

Anyone knows a real presence detecting sensor?

I planning to test BT LE because we always have one or two BT devices (phone / watch) arround us. Pro: you can identify an individual cons: if you left the watch in the bathroom the light/heating will not switch off. So a combination would be best.

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What would such a detector measure? Other than a camera with enough AI to identify a person even when stationary I cannot think of any other way to do it. Visitors might think it a bit unusual to have a camera in a bathroom.

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A Radar sensor should work well in a bathroom:

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Again that will not detect a stationary person.

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True, but with a delay on the trigger it works very well in our kitchen turning on the LED strips when someone is actually in the kitchen.

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I think that bathrooms/wc present a rather different and challenging task for presence sensing.

If you want to avoid the dog-bark issue, add a PIR to detect entry/exit and combine with sound to cover other "activities". Still not perfect if you like long, silent baths but should cover most situations.

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I have used this article/circuit for finding out how to dim a couple of 2.5m RGBWW strips.

My circuit was made using a 8266 NodeMCU and eight FET's with associated resistors (stops spikes). I am using 24V to keep the current down, with an LM2596 dc-dc Buck Convertor to supply the 3.3V for 8266.

My Node Red drives an Opto22 PAC R1 which then drives each channel of the LED strip (with presets). The presets are useful when using Rhasspy to send a voice command for the lights (soft, ambient full etc.). Originally, I did drive the LEDs straight from Node Red, very easy to do!

May seem weird working through the PAC R1, but then this runs autonomously driving Heating, Security Alarm, various clocks for security lighting and of course the lighting. I do know these units are extremely stable and reliable for long term use having used them in Industry. Node Red is the simple interface to the outside world without using Opto 22's Software.

Hope this helps...

(Edit: PAC R1 drives 8266 over wifi through the network!)

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This will detect a stationary person. I will definitely investigate this myself.

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Thank you for the hint, around 20€ 1pix up to 200€ for 16x16 pixel. Nice price. Think the Chinese ir sensors like the MLX90640 where people build their diy poor mans flir cameras are an option too but you still need a kind of ai or pattern recognition to differentiate a heater from a human or a dog :wink:
Ther must be of the shelf solutions because they are build into office floor lamps to do “smart” office lights. Like this one for 100-200€

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For me the break even is too far in the future for energy saving because of the low energy consumption of modern LEDs (if driven correctly). For heating it is perhaps more interesting but as heaters are so sluggish they have to see in the future ... back to learn something about UI.

So there is only the convenience factor left. So I will try the combination of BT-LE and a 1€ PIR and traditional wall switches.

The ideal combination would be a smoke/heat/movement and presence detector because all sensors can profit from each other.

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I found this earlier:

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There is a 5 channel 12-24v module in my workshop with an build in ESP8266 (i think it is a ESP-12F module waiting for a project for 2 years now (I think it costs under 10€).

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But constant voltage is a little bit out of fashion and only present in led strips anymore. Everywhere constant current with serial leds is the thing even with all the disadvantages like destroying all other leds when a certain amount fails or failure of hole parts in filament led bulbs you can see everywhere- but you can build a capacity voltage dropper for a few cents, great, but a power factor of 0.5 not so great- not a thing for traditional power meters but new smart meters will measure that and your 9w LED bulb will perhaps cost you the double of what is written on the cover in the future.
That’s why I think the last word on LED dimming / driving isn’t spoken.

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Yep ... but building a suitable AI around it would be a nice lesson;)

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Nope, they are useless! They regularly turn off the lights when people are still in the office. :frowning:

I've never yet found convincing evidence of cost saved by IoT/smart-devices. Though you are right, heating is probably the most likely but even then only in certain specific circumstances.

Savings with smart lighting will never, I think, outweigh the cost of the "smarts". Also there is the issue that as you get into this stuff, you simply replace a few old, inefficient lights with LOTS of efficient LEDS - rather negating much of the cost saving :grinning:

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I could not share your experience in “they are useless” but never mind.
In “saving the world through smart things” i can say that it depends on scale. Heating and warm water is definitely a point where I personally experienced precisely 30% reduction (In cash). In private households it is difficult to save significant amount to break even the cost - as I wrote it is a convenience thing. In big office areas it is different. Uncontrolled light installation get switched on in the morning and run 12 hours because nobody notice the difference- especially in open plan offices. Same with a/c. So switching of or dimming lights when the ambient daylight is sufficient could save a lot.
Back to the topic: “ heat recovery” is a technology that wasn’t mentioned. Everyone likes a warm bathroom but the humidity must go somewhere.

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How about a smart toilet seat that only lifts the seat and never puts it down.

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That was more from my personal perspective rather (as this thread is about the home not office). I get that they are needed for offices in order to reduce costs and power usage - they are not useless from that perspective of course. But from the perspective of using such a device in the bathroom to improve presence detection, my experience is that they are no better than cheap devices. I believe the cost of them relates to the packaging so that they are robust enough for office environments.

I suspect that this is another area where the cost of the equipment required would not be recovered though I'd be interested to hear otherwise.

I did mention over-sized fans. I live in a Victorian era house in the North of England. As such humidity and condensation are always issues.

I made sure that we internally insulated the walls of our bathroom to reduce condensation issues and improve warmth (our bathroom is in an "offshot" so has 3 external walls and is North facing). That makes a massive difference.

Even so, getting the humidity out quickly and effectively is a bit of an art. A humidity sensor is a must and has helped us work on better strategies. For example, realising that even in winter, it is better to open the window slightly while running the fan after a shower and with the door closed.

Incidentally, as I understand it, smart fan controls are another area of convenience rather than cost savings. Even leaving a fairly beefy fan running all year only costs a couple of Pounds.

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I'd be happier with one that puts the LID down - never understood how some people demand that the seat is down but not the lid. Triggers my OCD.

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