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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!
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15+ Smart Home Automation Ideas from Pros
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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!
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Another transition from Vera to OpenLuup And now to HASS - PerH
PerHP
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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.
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My Home Automation Story
rafale77R
Share your blog or adventure here. Here is mine: https://rafale77.blogspot.com
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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My Home Automation Setup...
DesTD
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Another transition from Vera to OpenLuup And now to HASS - PerH

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  • toggledbitsT Offline
    toggledbitsT Offline
    toggledbits
    wrote on last edited by
    #101

    By "daemonizing" I mean starting them as a daemon, which is in Unix parlance a console-less process that runs in the background (a service, if you will).

    Author of Multi-system Reactor and Reactor, DelayLight, Switchboard, and about a dozen other plugins that run on Vera and openLuup.

    1 Reply Last reply
    0
    • rafale77R Offline
      rafale77R Offline
      rafale77
      wrote on last edited by
      #102

      The closest I have come to this has been running them as systemctl services. My single VM actually runs everything that way. I did so for MSR as well but no docker for me. You can put all of these command within the service file? I am actually autostarting all of my services in a sequence with dependencies: example: Do a socat reload before starting z-way. Then when z-way is up start openluup then start habridge then start homekitbridge... etc...

      PerHP 1 Reply Last reply
      0
      • PerHP Offline
        PerHP Offline
        PerH
        wrote on last edited by PerH
        #103

        Well, as long as you state restart policy "restart: always" or "restart: unless stopped" in the docker-compose file, it will start that container on reboot as long as the docker daemon itself starts.. docker installed itself as a service, so i haven't thought about it really.

        Just to have it said; the docker-compose is just a script to rig up the containers with the correct settings. This is done once, after that the restart policy you set for the containers decides how they will live from there. you can set up as many containers as you like in one compose file.

        1 Reply Last reply
        0
        • rafale77R rafale77

          The closest I have come to this has been running them as systemctl services. My single VM actually runs everything that way. I did so for MSR as well but no docker for me. You can put all of these command within the service file? I am actually autostarting all of my services in a sequence with dependencies: example: Do a socat reload before starting z-way. Then when z-way is up start openluup then start habridge then start homekitbridge... etc...

          PerHP Offline
          PerHP Offline
          PerH
          wrote on last edited by
          #104

          @rafale77
          Haven't thought about dependencies, all the stuff i'm linking together handles if one is missing.. you can set up Startup and shutdown order in the compose file, so i guess that is the docker way to handle it?

          1 Reply Last reply
          1
          • PerHP Offline
            PerHP Offline
            PerH
            wrote on last edited by
            #105

            I finally reached the finishline for the move-to-docker project! 🙂
            All applications are now inside dockers, communicating on the internal docker network.

            This makes updates easy - just update to a newer docker image. (or update in the app, in the openLuup case)

            Backup is done by copying the docker volumes to an SSD along with the indluxDB.

            Restore to any machine running docker is in principle just attaching the USB devices - install ser2net, and running one docker-compose file. Everything is set up and ready to go. Tested on an Ubuntu installed machine, and it works!

            This will offcourse take a bit more disk-space, havent summed it up yet.. But i have no plans on running this on machines with tiny storage anyway.

            One thing i'd like to improve is to get the UZB into Ser2net as well, with the advantage of accessing it from my test-system as well. Z-Way unfortunately can't take IP-serial without Socat? mabye in later updates.

            I made this sketch to keep track of the system in progress, it might be usefull to others?

            70d8d104-d6f4-4819-8c16-4d4e7ceaff0d-image.png

            rafale77R 1 Reply Last reply
            2
            • akbooerA Offline
              akbooerA Offline
              akbooer
              wrote on last edited by
              #106

              Really enlightening.

              BTW, Where do I go to find out more about “the internal Docker network”. I’m having no end of problems with openLuup not identifying incoming IPs correctly.

              1 Reply Last reply
              0
              • PerHP Offline
                PerHP Offline
                PerH
                wrote on last edited by
                #107

                I found my info here, and lookung at other docker-compose files. I've only set up a standard "bridge" network, theres more advanced methods available as well. I found that giving the containers static IP worked for me.
                You can do that in a run command, in compose or manually in portainer (but that will be gone in a reset of the setup). I'd recommend docker-compose!

                1 Reply Last reply
                1
                • PerHP PerH

                  I finally reached the finishline for the move-to-docker project! 🙂
                  All applications are now inside dockers, communicating on the internal docker network.

                  This makes updates easy - just update to a newer docker image. (or update in the app, in the openLuup case)

                  Backup is done by copying the docker volumes to an SSD along with the indluxDB.

                  Restore to any machine running docker is in principle just attaching the USB devices - install ser2net, and running one docker-compose file. Everything is set up and ready to go. Tested on an Ubuntu installed machine, and it works!

                  This will offcourse take a bit more disk-space, havent summed it up yet.. But i have no plans on running this on machines with tiny storage anyway.

                  One thing i'd like to improve is to get the UZB into Ser2net as well, with the advantage of accessing it from my test-system as well. Z-Way unfortunately can't take IP-serial without Socat? mabye in later updates.

                  I made this sketch to keep track of the system in progress, it might be usefull to others?

                  70d8d104-d6f4-4819-8c16-4d4e7ceaff0d-image.png

                  rafale77R Offline
                  rafale77R Offline
                  rafale77
                  wrote on last edited by
                  #108

                  @perh

                  I am using using my UZB over IP. You do need ser2net on the UZB host but you can then get anything, including socat, to pick up the socket.

                  1 Reply Last reply
                  0
                  • PerHP Offline
                    PerHP Offline
                    PerH
                    wrote on last edited by
                    #109

                    But Z-Way needs an address to a device right? haven't looked into it.. tried to put in ip:port, didnt work..

                    1 Reply Last reply
                    0
                    • rafale77R Offline
                      rafale77R Offline
                      rafale77
                      wrote on last edited by
                      #110

                      Ohh I see what you mean... if using z-way then yeah I don't think it has direct socket access so you will need socat to move back from IP to a serial port.

                      1 Reply Last reply
                      0
                      • PerHP Offline
                        PerHP Offline
                        PerH
                        wrote on last edited by PerH
                        #111

                        I left the system completely alone for a few weeks now, and as mentioned here, my disk filled up. A lot of strange things happens when there is no disk space, so i was suprised that it actually ran for the most part at all.
                        MSR started doing some - but not all tasks, seemed like it was when the que of actions was longer than a certain number, things got ignored. It may offcourse have been domoticz, openluup or z-way that didn't do its job, can't say for sure..

                        One lesson is - don't try to set up a container if there's not space for it! I tried installing the latest MSR while the disk was full, and ended up with corrupt files in persistent storage. I fortunately had a backup, so i'm up and running again. 🙂

                        One thing I'd like to have is a message if available disk space is under a certain level, any tips on how i can get MSR/openLuup to detect and alert me ? If there's a way to use the response from "df -h", mabye i could send a telegram msg from reactor?

                        therealdbT 1 Reply Last reply
                        0
                        • akbooerA Offline
                          akbooerA Offline
                          akbooer
                          wrote on last edited by
                          #112

                          You can get a piped response from any process you launch. I used to use df to check for mounted volumes.

                          See: https://www.lua.org/manual/5.1/manual.html#pdf-io.popen

                          1 Reply Last reply
                          1
                          • PerHP PerH

                            I left the system completely alone for a few weeks now, and as mentioned here, my disk filled up. A lot of strange things happens when there is no disk space, so i was suprised that it actually ran for the most part at all.
                            MSR started doing some - but not all tasks, seemed like it was when the que of actions was longer than a certain number, things got ignored. It may offcourse have been domoticz, openluup or z-way that didn't do its job, can't say for sure..

                            One lesson is - don't try to set up a container if there's not space for it! I tried installing the latest MSR while the disk was full, and ended up with corrupt files in persistent storage. I fortunately had a backup, so i'm up and running again. 🙂

                            One thing I'd like to have is a message if available disk space is under a certain level, any tips on how i can get MSR/openLuup to detect and alert me ? If there's a way to use the response from "df -h", mabye i could send a telegram msg from reactor?

                            therealdbT Offline
                            therealdbT Offline
                            therealdb
                            wrote on last edited by
                            #113

                            @perh this is the code I'm using to check for space on my Vera. Feel free to change it

                            local function getDiskSpace(path)
                                local function df()
                                    local format = "(%S+)%s+(%d+)%s+(%d+)%s+(%d+)[^/]+(/%S+)"
                                    local d = {}
                                    local p = io.popen "df"
                                    if p then
                                        local df = p:read "*a"
                                        p:close()
                                        local n = tonumber
                                        for f, b, u, a, m in df:gmatch(format) do
                                            d[#d + 1] = {file = f, blocks = n(b), used = n(u), available = n(a), mounted = m}
                                        end
                                    end
                                    return d
                                end
                            
                                local dfinfo = {}
                                for _, d in ipairs(df()) do dfinfo[d.mounted] = d end
                                local x = dfinfo[path]
                                return {
                            		total = x.available + x.used,
                            		available = x.available,
                            		percentage = (x.available /(x.available + x.used) * 100)
                            	}
                            end
                            
                            local disk = getDiskSpace('/overlay') -- customize with what you want to monitor
                            luup.log("Total: " .. tostring(disk.total))
                            luup.log("Available: " .. tostring(disk.available))
                            luup.log("Percentage: " .. tostring(disk.percentage))
                            
                            if (disk.percentage < 30) then -- alert under 30%
                                sendAlert("Overlay Partition at " .. tostring(round(d, 2)) .. "%")
                            end
                            

                            --
                            On a mission to automate everything.

                            My MS Reactor contrib
                            My Luup Plug-ins

                            1 Reply Last reply
                            1
                            • PerHP Offline
                              PerHP Offline
                              PerH
                              wrote on last edited by PerH
                              #114

                              Nice, thanks.
                              What would be the fastest way to get that percentage value into a reactor that sends me a text?
                              I think i can wrap it into a plugin, mabye even hack it into the existing system monitor plugin?
                              If there's an even faster way to do it, chime in! 🙂

                              therealdbT 1 Reply Last reply
                              0
                              • PerHP PerH

                                Nice, thanks.
                                What would be the fastest way to get that percentage value into a reactor that sends me a text?
                                I think i can wrap it into a plugin, mabye even hack it into the existing system monitor plugin?
                                If there's an even faster way to do it, chime in! 🙂

                                therealdbT Offline
                                therealdbT Offline
                                therealdb
                                wrote on last edited by
                                #115

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

                                I think i can wrap it into a plugin, mabye even hack it into the existing system monitor plugin?

                                I've already done it in my own fork. The license around this plug-in is obscure, so I didn't wanted to mess with it publicly.

                                --
                                On a mission to automate everything.

                                My MS Reactor contrib
                                My Luup Plug-ins

                                1 Reply Last reply
                                0
                                • PerHP Offline
                                  PerHP Offline
                                  PerH
                                  wrote on last edited by PerH
                                  #116

                                  Just updated Z-Way to 3.2.1 today.
                                  I had to build a new docker image for this, and pull down the container and replace it with the new image. All was done in about 10 minutes, and works well. 🙂 System-Down time was about 10 seconds..
                                  Setting up the docker system was a little work, but it is really easy to maintain once its up. 🙂

                                  Here's the docker image, there is a docker compose example in the description.

                                  There is some interesting updates in this version, MQTT client is one that may be interesting for openLuup users?
                                  Several fixes to z-wave communications as well, so it may be even more responsive now. we'll see!

                                  therealdbT 1 Reply Last reply
                                  1
                                  • PerHP PerH

                                    Just updated Z-Way to 3.2.1 today.
                                    I had to build a new docker image for this, and pull down the container and replace it with the new image. All was done in about 10 minutes, and works well. 🙂 System-Down time was about 10 seconds..
                                    Setting up the docker system was a little work, but it is really easy to maintain once its up. 🙂

                                    Here's the docker image, there is a docker compose example in the description.

                                    There is some interesting updates in this version, MQTT client is one that may be interesting for openLuup users?
                                    Several fixes to z-wave communications as well, so it may be even more responsive now. we'll see!

                                    therealdbT Offline
                                    therealdbT Offline
                                    therealdb
                                    wrote on last edited by therealdb
                                    #117

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

                                    in this version, MQTT client is one that may be interesting for openLuup users?

                                    Definitely. I couldn't find a documentation about that feature, but it's doable and this could be easily directly supported under MSR as well (paging @toggledbits & @akbooer)

                                    EDIT: here's the source code of the module https://github.com/Z-Wave-Me/home-automation/blob/develop/modules/MQTTClient/index.js

                                    --
                                    On a mission to automate everything.

                                    My MS Reactor contrib
                                    My Luup Plug-ins

                                    1 Reply Last reply
                                    0
                                    • PerHP Offline
                                      PerHP Offline
                                      PerH
                                      wrote on last edited by
                                      #118

                                      After about 7 years in the Vera/openLuup world i've now moved on to a home assistant installation. This was rather reluctantly, as openLuup has served me well with very few issues (other than ones I created myself off course!). A big thanks to @akbooer and all contributors for all the good work with this software!

                                      The main reason for jumping the fence to HASS was in short all the integrations and UI possibilities. The device handling for Zigbee and RFXtrx is also developing to be really good, and is still maintained.
                                      There is still plenty of annoying bugs/imperfections with HASS, but the maturity is at a level where most of what I need works well enough.
                                      My system is now:

                                      • HASS Container
                                        • Z-wave JS UI for z-wave (Still prefer Z-Way here, but the integration isn't good there yet)
                                        • ZHA for zigbee
                                        • RFXTRX plugin for 433
                                        • HASS Configurator for UI file editor for both HASS and MSR configuration files
                                      • MSR for all automations
                                      • Grafana and InfluxDB 1.8 (upgrading to 2.0 in a while)

                                      So far so good! 🙂

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