Smart household appliances

„Everything is ”smart” these days: smart refrigerators, smart coffee makers, smart microwaves. Most of the time, this means an extra app and nothing else. The real question is not whether the machine is smart, but whether it knows about the rest.

Yabune Home doesn't sell devices. What it does is integrate your existing and new home devices into one system — so you don't have to open seven apps, and you can write rules that affect multiple devices at once.

You don't have to replace everything.

In most households, machines are of varying ages. There's no point in throwing out a ten-year-old washing machine just because it doesn't have Wi-Fi. With a power meter socket, that's also included in the system: you'll see when it's running, how much it's using, and when it's finished — as much smarts as you actually need.

• Old machine + measuring socket: consumption, runtime, and notification when the program is over.
• New networkable machine: direct integration if the manufacturer allows it.
• Built-in appliances: without dismantling the kitchen furniture, measured from the distributor.

What good is it if machines know about each other?

• The washing machine starts when electricity is cheapest: at peak production for solar panels, at night for feed-in tariffs.
• You can tell when the dryer is done, but no one has unpacked it.
• The hood starts up with the hob and runs for a while afterwards.
• If you leave home and something is running that you shouldn't, you'll get a notification — so you don't have to turn back halfway.
• During vacation, the refrigerator temperature is monitored; it warns of a power outage before the contents are ruined.

Electricity is cheaper at night — take advantage of it

Most households have or can request a tariff in which night-time electricity is cheaper (controlled, „H” or periodic tariff). The boiler, dishwasher, dryer and car charger are all consumers that don’t care how many hours there are — it just doesn’t matter to you whether you get up to use it. The system takes over: the machine waits there, charged, and starts at the beginning of the cheap period; if there is a solar panel, it adjusts to the production during the day and to the tariff at night.

Consumption—where the truth is revealed

The A+++ rating is a laboratory value. The only way to know how much your refrigerator actually uses is to measure it. It's not uncommon for an old freezer in the garage to use more energy than the lights in the house combined — and this is only apparent when you look at the numbers.

What you should know before you get started

• Not all manufacturers are open. Some allow access via the cloud, some don't. In the survey, we'll see which group your machines fall into.
• Work without a cloud. Where possible, we choose local control — so the machine runs even if the manufacturer stops service.
• Think ahead with built-in machines. When renovating a kitchen, planning a measuring module costs a penny; dismantling afterwards.
• Measurement is the starting point. First you need to see how much it will cost — the rules will come later.

When is it worth replacing and when is it not?

The age of the machine is rarely the deciding factor. The question is how much it consumes and how important it is to be able to control it. For a rarely used but heavily consuming machine (old freezer, electric water heater), replacing it will pay off quickly; for a well-functioning, low-consumption washing machine, however, it makes no sense.

There is a third case that is less talked about: the machine is good, but its control is bad. A simple boiler with a timer is not smart — but with a meter socket and connected to the production of the solar panel, it is. The device remains the same, only the decision has been moved elsewhere.

What does „manufacturer-independent” mean in practice?

That you don't have to stick to one brand. Most manufacturers provide their own applications and their own clouds — they all work separately, but neither knows about the other, and if the manufacturer stops the service, the functionality goes with it. Yabune Home goes beyond these: it runs locally and, where possible, talks to the machine using a local protocol. If you replace a device, the rules remain.

What we work with

• Shelly — the meter socket (Shelly Plug S) for old machines, the Shelly Plus PM modules for the circuits of the built-in machines in the distribution board; local control, without cloud.
• Marketcom — Shelly's domestic distributor, we purchase the devices from there.