Instruction manuals for your house.

[toscal]

Probably been drinking too much tea. But I was wondering if anyone has written an instruction manual for their smart home, for either friends staying or house sitting or when time comes to sell so that the new owners can operate their new smart house.

[Otto-Mate]

I can see documentation being a good idea for a new owner, but if it's required for a guest/visitor then I'd say it's not a great implementation.

I have a few docs, mainly spreadsheets on what DIN rail module in what consumer unit controls what circuit.

M.

[TimH]

I have gradually been compiling instruction manuals so they are accessible from an intranet page rather than being printed copies, but I haven't written anything along the lines of "to make this happen, do that...".

However, the TV is perhaps one place where it might be useful, in that we don't use a "smart" or all-in-one remote but a collection of original device handsets. With many different sources feeding the TV from inbuilt tuners, sat receivers and games consoles, it may be an area our guests would benefit from. That said, they're rarely left in the house "unsupervised" so whether such a guide would get used in our house I don't know.

Interesting thought though

[JonS]

Yes I am gradually working on an admin guide, not for general usage but for recovery / maintenance if I am not around, it includes a cable inventory but DIN module allocation is stored in Cortex, which is backed-up. Heating control is an area I've built plumbing and electrical diagrams as well as describtions as per room zoning is quite different from standard controls. Other areas that need more work are AV control, network, file and print server, back-up and KeePass for details of finding other accounts and their logins. So not exclusively HA but the stuff others would find it hard to work out if they ever had to.

JonS

[jpdw]

All the HA type stuff I've done has been with a view that when we move, it'll be removed beforehand so the house is more "normal" - so no manual needed in the direct sense of the question. Having said that, I will be leaving a load of cabling under floors and in walls etc, mainly data but some mains that would be disconnected. I've kept records of where each end is/goes and cables are numbered/colour coded mid-run too, with the intention that I'll leave this information behind for the next owner (probably as confirmation that their predecessors were mad...). I also documented (by 'reverse engineering') the heating cabling before it was overhauled and also have a wiring diagram for the new heating install .. something that was already "used" when different sparks/plumber had to de-com and relocate parts of the heating when we extended the house a couple of years later - in fact the sparkie, after finding his glasses, actually commented that it made a nice change to have the info available.