Skip to content
  • Categories
  • Recent
  • Tags
  • Popular
  • Unsolved
Collapse
Discussion Forum to share and further the development of home control and automation, independent of platforms.
  1. Home
  2. Blogs
  3. Another transition from Vera to OpenLuup And now to HASS - PerH
Seeking Advice:
G

The locksmith is trying to persuade me to purchase the BE-TECH K35 touchscreen lock with both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, claiming it's better than the Yale Assure Lock 2. What are your thoughts on this? Which one would you recommend?

Here is the link to the Chinese brand BE-TECH: BE-TECH Smart Deadbolt K3S.

The other smart lock I am considering is the Schlage Encode Plus.

Thank you!

Blogs
15+ Smart Home Automation Ideas from Pros
L

Hey,

I’m curating a list of smart home automation ideas, and here are 15+ ones (and still counting).

What do you think?

smart home automation ideas.png

..................................
The smart home trend is dramatically evolving with at least 69% households in US owing at least one smart device.

So how could they ease your work and life?

I gathered and asked 15+ smart home professionals a same question:

“What’s your most favorite automation (ideas) for smart homes that is improving your life?”

Let’s check their ideas:

(source: https//www.leadsrating.com/security-cameras/smart-home-automation-ideas/)

Routine Checking Smart Curtain and Blinds Smart Interaction Smart LED String Lights Turn Outdoor Water On/Off Automation NFC Tags Automation Remote Control and Scenes Smart Interoperability Reducing Your Home Cleaning Job Light Control Automation Smart Blinds Light Management Adjusting Natural Light Automation Seamless Connectivity Simple Switch Bot Changing My Overall Everyday Process
Blogs
Finally gave up on my Ezlo Plus
CrilleC

The promise of "all available devices will be supported" gave me hope for including more Zigbee devices into to my home as Vera was not a good option for Zigbee devices.

Despite the support for new devices is extremely slow, the implementation of Zigbee has a lot to wish for and it seems a low priority at Ezlo I managed to include 22 of my 23 Zigbee devices as generic. But after 2 years of devices still missing attributes and randomly/every controller reboot loosing connection to the controller and had to be power cycled to connect again, and some even dropping off the network completely without any reason, I decided to give up.

The positive outcome of all this:
I bought a Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus and installed Zigbee2MQTT and never been happier.
Suddenly the pairing were no pain and took a few seconds per device, all my devices were recognized, all capabilities of the devices were exposed and it never misses a signal to/from a device ever.

I'm surprised how stable and configurable my new setup is. I can set device parameters, offsets, send messages handled by the bulbs them self like effects, broadcast for groups, transition time for power on/off. I can handle debounce for MQTT messages, do OTA firmware update on devices and much more! Most of this is probably standard for the common branded hubs like Hue etc but I never had one so this is new to me.
A big plus for me is the MQTT part of Zigbee2MQTT as I'm migrating as much as possible to MQTT.

My Ezlo Plus is now serving as a modified WiFi access point to my network and only have the VistaCam 1203 Doorbell still connected for evaluation. Time will tell if I ever move my Z-wave devices to it.

Conclusion:
I could really recommend both the Sonoff 3.0 USB Dongle Plus and Zigbee2MQTT to anyone going the same path!

Blogs
Another transition from Vera to OpenLuup And now to HASS - PerH
PerHP

So cool to find the forum of all the banned vera gurus!

I've had a Vera Plus for about 6 years now, and have had a fairly problem free time with it compared to many other stories. The last years have however been lacking in progression in many fields i'd like to explore, so now i'm looking closely at Openluup.
Other systems have been tested as well, but i find that the community and plugins made for vera is kind of special, and something i'd like to contribute to as well. (getting older and not wanting to change to new stuff probably plays a part too!)

So, my stab at opeluup starts with an HP Chromebox 1 i got for free. Its a fairly powerfull thing, but as google wants to sell new ones, its now EOL.
I wiped it clean and installed debian, as it seems to be the closest thing to raspberry which many use for openluup.

Openluup installed fine, and i got the vera bridge working fairly well by bothering ppl at the vera forum with questions. Its now running OK, but there seems to be an issue with Icons?

f0e29622-0397-4b84-819c-f1b632daab41-image.png

Also at the devices tab:
2892faff-a3ee-4f21-9db8-2a03f604fc74-image.png

I did the "GetFiles", and I see the /icons/ is populated, but no icons. In the luup log says that its trying to GET the icon, but returns no packages.

2020-09-15 17:04:30.818 openLuup.server:: GET /cmh/skins/default/img/devices/device_states/dimmable_light_off.png HTTP/1.1 tcp{client}: 0x55eca8d90cb8 2020-09-15 17:04:30.819 openLuup.server:: request completed (0 bytes, 0 chunks, 0 ms) tcp{client}: 0x55eca8d90cb8

I do have a UZB stick on the way, but before i go down that road i'd like to be sure that the installation is stable and sound.. Do I have all the nessecary packages/background processes? I did install cjson which helped on some things..

Also fairly new at linux in general, so bear with me. 😉

Roadmap:

Get the openluup/AltUI running smoothly
Transfer Z-wave devices
Transfer 433 devices (RFXtrx plugin)
Transfer Zigbee devices (Vera or mabye ezlo plus? zigbee stick?)

more questions will follow!

Blogs
Half-way migration from Vera
therealdbT

In a quest to further stabilize my Vera before I'll move to Z-Way+openLuup or something else later this year (I'm tempted to go the Home Assistant route, since all my friends are here, apparently), I've spent a couple of days removing HTTP calls from the system and I'm now fully using the UDP sender @akbooer has written in the past, to push all variables (and custom events/request as well) to my MQTT broker, then to some code doing the actual work.

Responsiveness seems to be at its maximum now, and stability has improved. There's still a lot of code locally on my Vera, but it's mainly doing variables comparison/scenes, while all notifications and heavy logic are now running in my linux box.

So, maybe, not insisting on the sockets and just use the same UDP server is the way to go for me.

Blogs
My Home Automation Story
rafale77R

Share your blog or adventure here.

Here is mine:

My Home Automation Journey
Blogs
My migration from Vera, or what I did on my holidays
CatmanV2C

Well here we go. A slow, considered migration from Vera to something (I hope) more reliable.
Hopefully we'll end up with a decent documented process for people as right now I'm still not quite clear 🙂
Starting point:
I have a 'mature' Mios set up running on an extrooted Vera Plus with roughly 100 devices, both physical and virtual
Integration with Alexa both voice control and TTS
iPhones for Geolocation
Volumio devices for music playing around the house.
I have no user defined scenes, all automation is run from Reactor.

My impetus is final dissatisfaction with the quality of UI7 software delivery and operational rigour (for full disclosure I am a senior IT Operations leader with circa 20 years experience delivering properly stable systems, so I probably have un-realistic expectations 😄 )

So initial steps:

Raspberry Pi 3 B+ (I think this is my 5, and 6th Pi in total. I may have a problem) Raspbian OpenLuup Verabridge

That I think is stage 1

C

Blogs
Not so much a blog
CatmanV2C

...but I now only have house mode scenes left on Vera. All other automation is by Reactor and Switchboard / Alexa routines.

WAF may be low tomorrow if it doesn't work 😄

C

Blogs
My Wandering
ElcidE

I am a Electrician. I installed hundreds of smart devices for others prior to having my own home automation. In 2013 I bought a new house and decided to make it smart. I did some homework and settled on Z-wave and VeraPlus.
My installation comprises of
25 Z-wave dimmer/switch inserts
3 Z-wave door sensors
10 sonoff devices(basics,TH16 and Mini) ,
4 Tuya(lamps and RGB strips) ,
6 shellys(connected to motion sensors and 2 controlling dead DIY bolts )
3 Amazon Dots(gen2)
2 Broadlink (RMPro's)
4 DIY RF Venetian Blinds
2 Multi button DIY remotes
1 NVR
1 Network drive/Media server/ftp server.
1 smart thermostat heating and hot water
4 wired 240v/battery Aico smoke and heat detectors (connect to zwave via Relays)
1 robot hover.
1 Siren
Node-red server running on android.
Testing openluup on android.
Automate App running on andorid Boxes/phones.
All tv's are connected to android boxes.
No windows PC.
Debian running on android box.
Plugins Reactor, AlexaTTS, Switchboard and Virtual HTTP Switch.

I can control all of my devices from anyone of these platforms Vera/OpenLuup, Node-red, Automate(phone/tv box) or Alexa.
All devices have a standard/manual switch for anyone to control, and can be controlled even if my VeraPlus stopped working or internet out. My system is stable and may get a luup reload every couple of weeks.

None of my sonoff's or tuya have been flashed. I found Shelly very late into game and will be using these more now i found them, as they offer local control.

I have some coding knowledge from the 90's, but have never worked in the industry.

Blogs
This is me
CatmanV2C

Well, if I see further, it's because I stand of the shoulders of giants. I've got where I got because of the experts here. I started about 15 years ago with some really basic X10 stuff. When we moved in 2011 for some reason it simply would not work in the new house, so z-wave was the thing. Vera lite then Vera Plus.

I'm a child of the 70s. I want the car on the drive to be KITT and my lounge a cross between the bridge of the enterprise and the Lars farm on Tattoine.

Not there yet, but with about 250 devices (virtual and real) things are fun (when they work!)

The absolute killer app for me is Alexa bi directional speech. To the extent that I've walked into hotel rooms and said 'Alexa turn the lights on....'
I'm within a spit of never buying another control and doing everything via Alexa and Reactor (had to drop that in)

So that's pretty much me.

C

Blogs
My Home Automation Setup...
DesTD

Let start maybe something useful for others. Maybe it will give you some idea!

Here's a summary of my setup!

I'm having :

VM#1 that runs openLuup VM#2 that runs Zway 1x raspberry that I use to connect the RaZberry board using socat/ser2net to send "raw data" to the VM#2, this setup allow me to have all my stuff in the data center in the basement while having my zwave antenna on the first floor and send back the data! A couple of pine64 and raspberry around the house, most of the pine64 are use for "smart display" around the house that show data from various source (will post picture later). I have also a raspberry that I used for openSprinkler in the "Shed" Each room in the house + Garage + on the patio is having a SONOS speaker that I use for music of course but that I use with the TTS to send some notification around the house based on the presence!

For example, I can welcome people on the front door based on motion detection + IP camera motion!

I decided a long time ago that all "sensors" will be handle by the DSC alarm. Currently I'm having over 40 sensors in/out divided in 5 partition (main/2nd floor, basement, office and shed and a partition for non-alarm sensor)

I connected my DSC using the DSC plugin from Vera to handle all that traffic that of course is send to openLuup!

On the zwave network, I would say that I'm having every room in/out done!

I'm using also this setup to welcome kids in the morning based on motion detection in each room and I have some time-based reminder using TTS mostly for the kids.

We also "named/called" our Home, SARAH, based on the TV Show Eureka that means "Self Actuated Residential Automated Habitat".

** openLuup handle ALL the logic, I have no scene and logic in Vera and Smarthome/Zway

More to come...

That's our main screen in the center of the house!
IMG_20200428_110740.jpg

Inside the main screen, I'm having a bunch of stuff, like 2 Veraplus, and a RaZberry and of course a pine64 for the screen!
IMG_20200428_110755.jpg

That's an uncomplete setup in the kitchen for screen #2, need to finish the "wood" part!
IMG_20200428_110846.jpg

That's the touch screen monitor in the basement, so kids can use the Sonos app to play some music in the basement! The wood part is done, need to finish some "paint"!
IMG_20200428_110824.jpg

Blogs

Another transition from Vera to OpenLuup And now to HASS - PerH

Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Blogs
118 Posts 9 Posters 30.9k Views
  • Oldest to Newest
  • Newest to Oldest
  • Most Votes
Log in to reply
This topic has been deleted. Only users with topic management privileges can see it.
  • rafale77R Offline
    rafale77R Offline
    rafale77
    wrote on last edited by rafale77
    #10
    Dec 20, 2019  /  post

    How to Recursively Change the File's Permissions in Linux

    How to Recursively Change the File's Permissions in Linux

    Linux is a multi-user system and access to the files is controlled through the file permissions, attributes, and ownership. In this article, we'll explain how to recursively change the permissions of files and directories.

    sudo chmod -R 777 /etc/cmh-ludl
    
    1 Reply Last reply
    0
    • PerHP Offline
      PerHP Offline
      PerH
      wrote on last edited by
      #11

      Isn't that one in the install guide? Anyway, i did that, and GetFiles still didnt get the icons.. So i transferred them manually, and now i have icons after a browser cache clear. 🙂

      Next hurdle is RFX plugin. I tried once, and failed. Mabye the permissions stopped med back then..

      1 Reply Last reply
      0
      • PerHP Offline
        PerHP Offline
        PerH
        wrote on last edited by
        #12

        Ok, so RFX Plugin is installed and working. Anyone here have it? Mine shows
        Firmware Type: false Firmware Version: false

        other than that its working.

        Also tried to hijack the sensors by changing ID and parent ID. It worked, but the statistics (shown in "Temperature and Humidity Sensor Data") are from the remote unit..
        Any tips to making a script that hijacks all sensors?
        Then I could exclude the RFX from verabridge, and be one step more along.. 🙂

        akbooerA A 2 Replies Last reply
        0
        • akbooerA Online
          akbooerA Online
          akbooer
          replied to PerH on last edited by
          #13

          @PerH said in Another transition from Vera to OpenLuup - PerH:

          Also tried to hijack the sensors by changing ID and parent ID. It worked

          Did it, really?

          I'm not familiar with this particular plugin, but this is very unlikely to be something that you would want to do for any device. What problem do you see this as fixing?

          PerHP 1 Reply Last reply
          0
          • A Offline
            A Offline
            a-lurker
            replied to PerH on last edited by a-lurker
            #14

            @PerH said in Another transition from Vera to OpenLuup - PerH:

            Firmware Type: false Firmware Version: false

            Sounds similar this issue. Have a read through the next few posts at that link; may be same.

            It would be good, if we could encourage TinMan to place the USB RFXtrx code on GitHub; so any changes could be kept track of.

            1 Reply Last reply
            0
            • CatmanV2C Offline
              CatmanV2C Offline
              CatmanV2
              wrote on last edited by
              #15

              Ref the icons, you might want to have a read of my thread 'What I did on my holidays'. I ended up transferring mine manually using command line tools.

              C

              The Ex-Vera abuser know as CatmanV2.....

              1 Reply Last reply
              0
              • PerHP Offline
                PerHP Offline
                PerH
                replied to akbooer on last edited by
                #16

                @akbooer said in Another transition from Vera to OpenLuup - PerH:

                @PerH said in Another transition from Vera to OpenLuup - PerH:

                Also tried to hijack the sensors by changing ID and parent ID. It worked

                Did it, really?

                I'm not familiar with this particular plugin, but this is very unlikely to be something that you would want to do for any device. What problem do you see this as fixing?

                If this could be done with a script, i won't have to find, and name about 50 433 devices (including child and group devices)..

                The 3 sensors i tried works fine, but i don't know how the device parameters are stored in the system.. I did this earlier between RFX'es connected to the same unit as well, back then i didnt have to change the device ID, just the Parent ID..

                @a-lurker said in Another transition from Vera to OpenLuup - PerH:

                @PerH said in Another transition from Vera to OpenLuup - PerH:

                Firmware Type: false Firmware Version: false

                Sounds similar this issue. Have a read through the next few posts at that link; may be same.

                It would be good, if we could encourage TinMan to place the USB RFXtrx code on GitHub; so any changes could be kept track of.

                Same issue, same person. 😉

                No conclusion other than inserting ToString(), which removes the symptom, not the problem..

                I read your post, and ended up doing the same thing.. i have icons now. 🙂

                1 Reply Last reply
                0
                • PerHP Offline
                  PerHP Offline
                  PerH
                  wrote on last edited by PerH
                  #17

                  so - if i were to try something like this:

                  for (all devices) do
                     if device.IDparent = 11 then 
                        device.IDparent = 72
                        device.ID = (next free dev.ID number)
                     end if
                  end for
                  

                  How would that be done in lua with the openluup device list?

                  akbooerA 1 Reply Last reply
                  0
                  • akbooerA Online
                    akbooerA Online
                    akbooer
                    wrote on last edited by
                    #18

                    You’re trying to clone the device, as well as giving it a new parent? Do you know if that’s necessary?

                    All the usual luup calls for creating child devices are available to you.

                    1 Reply Last reply
                    0
                    • PerHP Offline
                      PerHP Offline
                      PerH
                      wrote on last edited by
                      #19

                      Not knowing the system - i'm trying to reassign the device to a new parent. 🙂
                      I tried just changing the parent, but then VeraBridge corrected the variable change on reload.
                      When i changed the deviceID as well, a new VeraBridge device popped up on reload. I can live with that, when i've reassigned all the 433 devices to the local RFXTRX, i'll just mask out the Vera RFX in vera bridge.

                      As i don't know the usual luup calls, i was hoping to cut the corner by asking you guys? 😉

                      1 Reply Last reply
                      0
                      • akbooerA Online
                        akbooerA Online
                        akbooer
                        wrote on last edited by
                        #20

                        If this is a bridged device, then you’ll have to make the changes on Vera. The openLuup bridge simply reflects the configuration that it sees on the Vera. Anything (except action commands, device name, etc.) sent to the device locally will get overwritten on the next update.

                        1 Reply Last reply
                        0
                        • PerHP Offline
                          PerHP Offline
                          PerH
                          wrote on last edited by PerH
                          #21

                          Ok, i'll try to specify more:

                          The Vera is connected to AltUI using the bridge. The vera has a RFXTRX433 connected with more than 60 child devices.
                          These are bridged to AltUI, with the 10000 numbers. RFX plugin on vera is device 10011 in AltUI.

                          The Openluup ALTUI Chromebox that i want to migrate them to Also has a RFXTRX433 connected. This plugin device is AltUI device 72.

                          If I go to the variables on one of the children of the Vera RFX - say device ID 10237 - and change ParentID from 10011 to 72, and at the same time changes the DeviceID from 10237 to - say 80 - this child device becomes a local device - Child of '72.
                          When I remove the RFX 10011, all the children also disappears, but I still have the ones i changed, and they now work with the local RFX plugin.

                          If I could run a script that changes DevID and ParentID, I would get all sensors over without having to set up the names and transfer codes for all devices. 🙂
                          I however don't know the correct lua syntax to do it.

                          1 Reply Last reply
                          0
                          • akbooerA Online
                            akbooerA Online
                            akbooer
                            wrote on last edited by
                            #22

                            OK, much clearer as to what you're trying to do. Let me think a while on this.

                            1 Reply Last reply
                            1
                            • akbooerA Online
                              akbooerA Online
                              akbooer
                              replied to PerH on last edited by
                              #23

                              @PerH said in Another transition from Vera to OpenLuup - PerH:

                              so - if i were to try something like this:

                              for (all devices) do
                                 if device.IDparent = 11 then 
                                    device.IDparent = 72
                                    device.ID = (next free dev.ID number)
                                 end if
                              end for
                              

                              How would that be done in lua with the openluup device list?

                              Backup first, of course, but let's try this:

                              local oldparent = 23    -- *** CHANGE THESE ***
                              local newparent = 315
                              
                              for i, d in pairs (luup.devices) do
                                if d.device_num_parent == oldparent then
                                  local id = luup.create_device()       -- get a new device (number)
                                  print (i, d.device_num_parent, id)
                                  luup.devices[id] = d                  -- apply new device number
                                  luup.devices[i]  = nil                -- remove it from old one
                                  d.attributes.id_parent = newparent    -- give it a new parent
                                  d.device_num_parent = newparent
                                  d.attributes.room = 0                 -- and a new (no) room
                                  d.room_num = 0
                                end
                              end
                              
                              

                              Follws by a restart.

                              This may, or may not, work. It is trickier that you might suppose, and without a test plugin, I can't really tell...

                              1 Reply Last reply
                              1
                              • PerHP Offline
                                PerHP Offline
                                PerH
                                wrote on last edited by
                                #24

                                Thanks! I'll try later.. My system isn't doing anything important yet anyway. 🙂

                                1 Reply Last reply
                                0
                                • PerHP Offline
                                  PerHP Offline
                                  PerH
                                  wrote on last edited by
                                  #25

                                  No success on first attempt.. i'll have a new stab at this later.
                                  Where does plugins store their tables? i see in the code that the plugin stores several tables somewhere?

                                  1 Reply Last reply
                                  0
                                  • akbooerA Online
                                    akbooerA Online
                                    akbooer
                                    wrote on last edited by
                                    #26

                                    Yes, it’s the plugins which are the real issue here.

                                    The multiple assignment in the above code, though, are entirely due to Vera’s very poor internal implementation of some features, which openLuup had to emulate.

                                    It would be possible to edit the user_data.json file where all the information is stored between reloads.

                                    1 Reply Last reply
                                    0
                                    • PerHP Offline
                                      PerHP Offline
                                      PerH
                                      wrote on last edited by
                                      #27

                                      Coming back to this, I found that the code actually did work! I didn't think so, as all the created devices was invisible, and said "no such device" in the device list in openluup.. 6 days later, all sensors are populated and functioning. 🙂

                                      The UZB has now arrived, so i guess the next step is getting the z-wave stuff over. 🙂

                                      1 Reply Last reply
                                      1
                                      • PerHP Offline
                                        PerHP Offline
                                        PerH
                                        wrote on last edited by
                                        #28

                                        Ok, so Z-way is now installed and GUI is working, but before I buy the (hopefully one-time?) license:
                                        Is there other Open-source alternatives to get z-wave to openluup?
                                        Is the device compatibility list better than vera? (can't seem to find it anywhere!)
                                        will the altUI mesh-map work with z-way integration?

                                        I found the demo license button now, but can't update the vendor list.. and i can't find the two devices i tested..

                                        1 Reply Last reply
                                        0
                                        • rafale77R Offline
                                          rafale77R Offline
                                          rafale77
                                          wrote on last edited by
                                          #29

                                          Seems like I can help on this:

                                          1. The only open source z-wave library that I know of is... openzwave. It is what home-assistant, openhab and domoticz uses. It honestly is much better now than vera but not as good as z-way but is also undergoing significant development.
                                          2. There is no device compatibility list because it is just compatible with zwave. All zwave devices should work. There is no custom gizmoing around configurations the way vera has done it. So yes device compatibility is limitless.
                                          3. The mesh map could be made to work but does not at the moment. It is built off of the neighbor's list property which the bridge is not publishing from z-way at the moment. z-way UI has it's own neighbor mesh visualization.

                                          The license is attached to the uzb itself and it is something I don't like. Is the uzb fails, you lose the license. It has not happen to me yet but I am really not a fan of this method that's why I got a couple of razberries as backup but their antenna is not nearly as good as the uzb and require a rPi.

                                          1 Reply Last reply
                                          0

                                          Recent Topics

                                          • Disaster recovery and virtualisation
                                            CatmanV2C
                                            CatmanV2
                                            0
                                            5
                                            539

                                          • Remote access of Zwave stick from Z-wave server
                                            CatmanV2C
                                            CatmanV2
                                            0
                                            3
                                            244

                                          • Organizing/ structuring rule sets and rules
                                            G
                                            gwp1
                                            0
                                            5
                                            315

                                          • Moving MSR from a QNAP container to RP 5 - some issues
                                            G
                                            gwp1
                                            0
                                            5
                                            277

                                          • Widget deletion does not work and landing page (status) is empy
                                            G
                                            gwp1
                                            0
                                            4
                                            250

                                          • Need help reducing false positive notifications
                                            T
                                            tamorgen
                                            0
                                            7
                                            434

                                          • Reactor (Multi-System/Multi-Hub) Announcements
                                            toggledbitsT
                                            toggledbits
                                            5
                                            120
                                            35.1k

                                          • Deleting widgets
                                            toggledbitsT
                                            toggledbits
                                            0
                                            4
                                            426

                                          • MQTT configuration question
                                            tunnusT
                                            tunnus
                                            0
                                            11
                                            573

                                          • System Configuration Check - time is offset
                                            G
                                            gwp1
                                            0
                                            8
                                            549
                                          Powered by NodeBB | Contributors
                                          Hosted freely by 10RUPTiV - Solutions Technologiques | Contact us
                                          • Login

                                          • Don't have an account? Register

                                          • Login or register to search.
                                          • First post
                                            Last post
                                          0
                                          • Categories
                                          • Recent
                                          • Tags
                                          • Popular
                                          • Unsolved