Hi Guys, I am thinking about buying a 100 room budget hotel in northern Australia. It’s hot all year. With smart locks and presence sensors I can switch off air units when people are out or checkout as well as lights. Smart locks would also mean giving guests codes rather than keys. Outdoor lights and store room security could also be added. This would mean at least 300-400 devices.
What network type and Smart Hub would be able to handle this or am I asking too much.
Thanks
HQ
Ubiquiti network. Run HA on a NUC or server PC with a UPS backup for the HA server and Ubiquiti gear. Should be fine
Thanks Dave, would that be compatible with a budget hotel? What lock types would you be suggesting?
The Ubiquiti gear would be perfect for a hotel, you can even create a guest wifi login page where they have to enter a name and password (like you get in most hotels) and have it time out after a certain period, limit their access / speed etc. Its really powerful and not expensive at all. I actually bought some of my Ubiquiti gear for my house from Kogan.
I don’t currently have any smart locks so can’t really recommend anything. There are many ways to accomplish that job. I would probably go with z-wave but they aren’t cheap. Some people complain about z-wave issues but I think that a lot of the time it’s a case of their network setup. My z-wave network has been rock solid for a couple of years now. It comes down to your design
Thanks Dave, I will investigate Ubiquiti.
Retro-fitting door locks won’t always be easy. You need to find something that fits the existing door hardware, and also connects 100% reliably to it’s infrastructure. It also has to open easily in an emergency or power failure, and there are probably local safety laws which affect that. Then again you don’t want some bad actor just being able to turn power off to a wing and be able to access every room.
I’d much rather be doing this in a new building and run wires everywhere.
One way you could do the door locks (if you have the ability to run cables to each door frame from a power supply) is to install electric door strikes. These can operate with the existing door handles so will retain key override and ease of exit. I’ve installed many of these over the years when doing cabled access control systems in commercial buildings. They can be set up as fail secure so won’t unlock in a power failure (but you can obviously still use the key) and then you could connect them to an ESP running ESPhome with a relay to fire the strike and a keypad for code entry.
Thanks Nick unfortunately I can’t afford a newly built 100 room hotel
There are a bunch of Z-Wave and Zigbee deadlocks that are manually operated from inside the room and are internally powered so the safety and security issue should be fine.
The beauty of the system (if it works) would be the creation of a simple scene:
Step 1: If door is closed (smart lock)
Step 2: Scan for a human presence in room. (smart infrared sensor in room)
Step 3: If no human present then no guests in room
Step 4: If no guest, turn off air con (smart switch)
But would it work 100 times over?
No reason why not… Don’t run it on a Raspberry Pi!
No reason why not, but everything will be wireless (so wifi/z-wave/zigbee).
Depending on the layout, you’'ll probably need some repeaters for whatever technology you use. Zigbee and z-wave form mesh networks which may be useful.
As Nick mentioned regarding mesh networks, if you were to use z-wave motion sensors which are powered, they would act as repeaters which would then give you a nice strong network for the wireless locks. Aeotec do USB powered multisensors (which I use) and you can just power them locally with a USB power supply. They are great because they have motion, temp, humidity and light level sensing which give you a lot of automation possibilities plus act as network repeaters. All my smart lighting is based on motion and light level, I don’t muck around with sunsets or time based stuff because that doesn’t factor in if someone has closed the blinds or if a particular room is dark by design, using light level does.
By the same token using zwave or zigbee smart switches for the AC will work as repeaters too (as long as some backpacker put them in his backpack!)
Brings me to a good point though I suppose, nail everything down!
Yeah, I’d use hard wired z-wave switches which can then be hidden away in the wall / ceiling space out of the way of ‘sticky’ fingers, plus can’t be over-ridden by the occupant playing around. Person is playing up? remotely switch off the A/C
LOL.
100 rooms x 1 lock/room x 4 batteries/lock = 400 batteries
I don’t know what’s the annual replacement cost for 400 batteries but it’s not just pocket change.
Based on Amazon.com.au, ballpark price of a Yale lock is AUS$275.
100 locks x 275 = $27,500
I imagine an order of that size probably qualifies you for some sort of quantity discount (albeit not from Amazon but, perhaps, a distributor) so let’s say an even $20K.
There’s also the cost of the Wi-Fi and z-wave infrastructure plus the equipment to control the AC units. Let’s pull a number out of our back pocket and say $10K.
A rough guess is that this project will cost north of $30K. Is that approximately what you expected?
Hi 123,
Hard wiring would cost a bomb. Everything needs to be wireless.
The savings on the power efficiency from the air cons being switched off will be approx $1 per day when the room is used. If we operate at an average of 66% occupancy that would mean a saving of 100*66%*365=$24,000.
We would also have saving by turning off all other power (fridge etc) in the room once the person checks out
We would have a slight saving on the buildings power by being able to turn lights and fans on and off all over the property.
But the best thing of all would be the pleasure of locking people out who didn’t clean up their mess in the kitchen!!!
There are cheaper locks available… should I be scared?
Thanks Dave
This sort of lock is very cheap, but may not have all the advantages of what @sparkydave suggested. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/33039548536.html
The hard wiring of z-wave switches and dimmers is super easy and quick, wouldn’t cost too much. Hard wiring the door strikes is only ELV (12Vdc) so you could do it yourself
Yeah, the problem with mag-locks is that they are fail safe by design. If they lose power, they unlock and there is nothing you can do about it. The good thing with the strikes is that if they are set up as fail secure, even when they die, the door stays locked. (can still open with handle on inside / key)