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Good morning all,
I'm working on weaning myself off of being totally Vera dependent. I've installed MSR on my Fedora home server, and I've been migrating luup Reactor rules over little by little. My hope is to use Vera as a bare bones z-wave hub, until I replace it either with Ezlo (not so sure about), or perhaps Hubitat. I'm just tired of zero new development in Vera, empty promises of native device integration, and cloud services that go down and leave my automation hanging.In any case, I digress. I've attempted to use Gcal3 on Vera to integrate Public calendars, such as Federal Holidays, School Calendars, etc. It use to somewhat work, but more often than not, all I get from Gcal3 is "token error code: HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request". The developer no longer is active, and it's effectively not working anymore.
I'd like to use these public calendars as Entity Attributes or Constraints in MSR. For instance, if it's a Federal Holiday, I don't have to work, and I may want to sleep in, which means lights may not come on as early, window coverings in the bedrooms may open later in the day, etc. Similar idea with a school calendar. If "closed" is in the event, my daughter may want to sleep in, and not want the window coverings opened as early.
I'm aware that Ezlo has integration through NuCal to all sorts of web based services, including Google Calendar, but as I stated earlier, I'm undecided on going down that path. Is there anyway to do this on MSR through any of it's abilities, such as HTTP calls or MQTT ( not experienced in MQTT, so I don't know now it works really).
Has anybody already done this?
Thanks for any advice in advance.
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Hello all, I am finally ditching my Vera and moving to HA using a Zooz ZST10 Z wave stick. I have around 50 Z wave devices with a good mix of battery devices, locks, sensors and switches. The plan is to include all the AC powered devices first, starting from the ones closest to my Z wave stick then moving outwards. Once that is complete I will go back and include all battery powered devices in the same fashion.
My question is there any quick way to exclude all my Z wave devices from Vera, or should I just delete all devices without excluding them and factory reset each device before pairing to HA?
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Some of you may know that I took at shot at building an alternate geofencing solution for Vera. The core of it was system agnostic, using the OwnTracks application and AWS lambdas to track devices and keep a central data, then disseminate that to the Vera via a websocket-based plugin. It worked with other apps as well, including Tasker and GPSLogger, but of the dozen people that were testing it, most used OwnTracks.
A lot was learned in the process, not the least of which is that the success of any such solution is highly dependent on the phone and its settings. Phone manufacturers love to set things up for the longest battery life, of course, but that's usually very anti-geofencing behavior. In the case of at least one brand, it was unusable and the settings could not be modified. It was also cost-prohibitive to maintain on Amazon, as AWS grabs a dime here and a dollar there and before you know it, it added $100/month to my AWS bill, which my wife deducted from my Scotch budget. Unacceptable.
But it's quite reasonable to use OwnTracks to a local endpoint, and I could pretty easily replicate the functionality as a local application, or maybe even as an additional endpoint built into MSR's API (still separate port and process, but in the package).
So the question really is... would you do it, or would you be too concerned about the security risks associated (e.g., dynamic DNS and NAT mapping in the firewall necessary for the phone to contact the service when not on LAN)?
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The Debian Linux machine that MSR is running on, has developed an issue and I can no longer login to it via SSH or directly on its terminal.
It was fine earlier this morning I connected to it via WinSCP to copy all the MSR files down for a backup to my laptop.
Then a bit later I could no longer connect to it. Either in WinSCP or Putty SSH, it now says access denied, even though my password is correct.
I then connected a monitor and keyboard up to the Debian box and I cannot login to it directly either, I put in the username and hit enter and I am not given a password prompt to enter it and something I could not read flashes up on the screen very fast and then disappears. I had to record a video and skip through it to capture what is says, see screen capture below.
I tried logging in as user root and my own username same thing happens, it does not even give me a prompt to enter a password.
If I boot the box in to Debian recovery mode instead I am able to login as the root user OK.
Any ideas how to fix this?
Thanks
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Sigma have released a new Z-Wave Product that may be or interest to some here.
ThunderBoard Z-wave development board.More details are here....ThunderBoard
Also Dr Z-Waves blog link text
Makes for interesting reading.
It's attractively priced at $64.95 and might be a Z-UNO alternative? -
Two stores apparently have inventory of RPI 4Bs with 2GB RAM. Get them while they last!
Raspberry Pi 4 model B - 2GB - RaspberryStore interadmin12 / 62.95 EUR Raspberry Pi 4 Model B 2GB RAM Raspberry Pi 4 Model B 2GB RAMBestel de nieuwe Raspberry Pi 4 B 2GB nu snel en voordelig bij Elektronicavoorjou.nl! - Raspberry Pi Boards, Behuizingen, Heatsinks, Accessoires & meer!
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Is the Smarthome company still existent? If so, are SwitchLinc switched still available?
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Hi! I want to install a smart lock on my front door, but I don't know which one to choose. There are many different models available on the market. Do you have a reliable model to recommend?
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Hi
I’m looking to rework some code I found online so I can use it on Vera, and while I’ve managed to translate / convert a number of things, I’ve got stuck on a few things it does, around encryption/decryption etc.
All the original Lua code is here - > (https://forum.logicmachine.net/showthread.php?tid=232&pid=16580#pid16580 )
Plus there looks to be a python version too here - > (https://github.com/florianholzapfel/panasonic-viera/issues/9#issuecomment-476919658)
Here’s an extract of the code where AES 128 CBC is required?
function encrypt_soap_payload(data, key, hmac_key, iv) payload = '000000000000' n = #data payload = payload .. string.char(bit.band(bit.rshift(n, 24), 0xFF)) payload = payload .. string.char(bit.band(bit.rshift(n, 16), 0xFF)) payload = payload .. string.char(bit.band(bit.rshift(n, 8), 0xFF)) payload = payload .. string.char(bit.band(n, 0xFF)) payload = payload .. data aes_cbc, err = aes:new(key, nil, aes.cipher(128, 'cbc'), { iv = iv }, nil, 1) ciphertext = aes_cbc:encrypt(payload) sig = encdec.hmacsha256(ciphertext, hmac_key, true) encrypted_payload = encdec.base64enc(ciphertext .. sig) return encrypted_payload end function decrypt_soap_payload(data, key, hmac_key, iv) aes_cbc, err = aes:new(key, nil, aes.cipher(128, 'cbc'), { iv = iv }, nil, 0) decrypted = aes_cbc:decrypt(encdec.base64dec(data)) decrypted = string.gsub(string.sub(lmcore.strtohex(decrypted), 33), '%x%x', function(value) return string.char(tonumber(value, 16)) end) return decrypted endI can get to the point where I can create the parameters for the payload encrypt request (example below), it’s just the encryption/decryption I cant do..
data="1234" key="\\S„ßÍ}/Ìa5!" hmac_key="¹jz¹2¸F\r}òcžÎ„ 臧.ª˜¹=¤µæŸ" iv=" {¬£áæ‚2žâ3ÐÞË€ú "I’ve found this aes.lua (https://github.com/openresty/lua-resty-string/blob/master/lib/resty/aes.lua ) module online, but that requires loads of others modules too, most notably ffi.lua. Which I’d ideally like to avoid.
I also came across this aes128.lua (https://github.com/somesocks/lua-lockbox/blob/master/lockbox/cipher/aes128.lua ) but i’m not sure how that handles all the other parameters e.g specify the cbc aspect etc.
Finally there’s this aes256ecb.lua script (https://github.com/idiomic/Lua_AES/blob/master/AES.lua) , could that be converted to aes 128 cbc and then used in the above?
Any help/advice on this would be appreciated..
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I just upgraded the firmware for the inverter for my solar panels and that made it possible to enable Modbus TCP.
At a glance that would be perfect for live production data fed into my home automation environment but my lack of knowledge about the protocol and how to put the data where I want it failed me.What I have:
MSR
openLuup
Vera Secure
Ezlo Plus
Mosquitto
Homebridge
Windows Server
Ubuntu Server
Quite decent PowerShell skills
Enough Lua knowledge to write my own functions and handlers
The inverters Modbus interface definitionsWhat I want to achive:
Something that can be run by systemd och anything else monitoring the status and keeping the Modbus connection alive.
Publish readings over MQTT or whatever fits my setup, the goal is to feed the data into openLuup in someway so Historian can log the data for Grafana and display current production to HomeKit (as a mqttthing light sensor, since there is no other accessory suitable at the moment).Anyone implemented Modbus TCP in similar projects or have any guidance on how to reach my goal?
Open for alternative solutions as well, all suggestions are appreciated!
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Hi to all,
I am user of vera controller. I have a dahua door intercom with relay. Relay activates with username and password authentication. I can activate the relay http://admin:a1234567@192.168.1.111/cgi-bin/accessControl.cgi?action=openDoor&channel=1&UserID=101&Type=RemoteAs you can see intercom username admin and password is a1234567 I build a scene with luup code luup.inet.wget( "http://admin:a1234567@192.168.1.111/cgi-bin/accessControl.cgi?action=openDoor&channel=1&UserID=101&Type=Remote" ) But can not activate relay. Is there any idea?
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Hi to all, I have a bricked vera secure that is replaced with new one. Old vera secure serial numbers are deleted from vera servers so I cannot use it. Vera secure's are orginally Sercomm's NA502 model devices. Recently I install openwrt to the old vera secure unit without problem. Is there any way to use it any automation system with internal z-wave. I install domoticz but I cannot setup internal z-wave unit, it only accept usb zwave radios. Is there any ideas?
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I ordered a Fibaro Dimmer 2 and Bypass device for my upstairs landing / hallway lights.
I have 2 light switches one at the bottom of the stairs and another one upstairs on the landing.
But I am struggling to make sense of my current wiring, more details / photos on the Vera forum.
Jan 27 Anyone good at electrical wiring for light switches? Anyone good at electrical wiring for light switches?Hi I ordered a Fibaro Dimmer 2 and Bypass device for my upstairs landing / hallway lights. I have 2 light switches one at the bottom of the stairs and another one upstairs on the landing. I have no neutral wires in the house behind the light switches. These are photos of the light switch...
Thanks
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Hello,
Looking to all the dev's and tinkerers on this community for ideas on how to implement a solution to my problem. Kind of a long intro, sorry.Problem statement:
I have a geothermal heat pump that has a loop that is slightly undersized. During the cold weather months in the Pacific Northwest (one or two months of the year), the loop can get below 32 degrees. If it goes on for a few days, it can generate significant frost heaving in my yard and under the flagstone deck, Actually fixing the issue is cost prohibitive.Current mitigation:
I have DS18B20 tied into Home Assistant and monitoring the temp of the fluid coming out of the loop and if it drops below 35 degrees, MSR triggers a Fibaro Implant to add a resister into the external temp circuit and fool the Venstar to think the outside temp is below 32 degrees and issue a Heat Pump lockout and switch to AUX heat. While this is working fine and the AUX heat is only coming on once or twice a day, I would like to simplify the setup so it runs on something other than HA and MSR. I think they are overkill for my issue. Also want this to be independent of anything else in the house so it can stay behind if I am not around to maintain.I only have two inputs and one output:
Inputs: Loop temp, Furnace running
Outputs: Switch relay to drop resistance to external thermostat connection on thermostat.
Logic is super simple:
If temp is below 36 degrees and furnace is running, turn on relay
If furnace stops, turn off relay.
I am sure even I can figure that out on Python.Trying to determine the best platform for a set it and forget it black box that works with as close to zero maintenance as possible.
Options I have thought of are:
Pi zero with a GPIO controlled relay ESPHome (Not very knowledgeable about that platform, but willing to explore) Arduino Anything anyone else suggestsAny ideas are appreciated.
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Greetings,
I’m researching a migration from Vera+ to Hubitat C7 and want to know if anyone has successfully connected the Hubitat to the “HA Bridge” for local Alexia calls.
The HA Bridge does not callout Hubitat natively from what I see.Thanks for your assistance.
The Home Automation Controller Pyramid
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Since one member asked at one point about the "front end" and "back end", I drew this showing the controller from the base to the tip along with what I have found to be the best options from my testing. Almost every controller will try to integrate all elements, especially commercial ones but... they all have strengths and weaknesses so if one can have a medley of the best ones...
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Good picture, but isn't home assistant not also a bit of Front-end?
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You could argue the same for the Z-way, since there the possiblilty to create virtual devices and scenes.
@rafale77 said in The Home Automation Controller Pyramid:
Almost every controller will try to integrate all elements
...so there's bound to be some fuzzy edges.
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The controllers on the drawing are the best ones in that box in my opinion. As I said, almost every controller actually tries to fulfill the pyramid. Home Assistant has a pretty good GUI now though its controls of automation from the GUI is poor and the automation logic itself is pretty incomplete causing some people to run node-red as the front end for Home-Assistant. I run openLuup...
For the Integration layer, I run both Home-Assitant with all its integration component and openLuup and its many vera plugins, manually bridged together.
For the backend, I run z-way into openLuup and Bellows into Home-Assistant.All boxes are important but each box depends on the box below it. As an illustration, when I start my system, I have to start it from bottom to top. When a controller is built and tested, it should be done from bottom to top as well in order to make sense and be effiscient.
The z-way-server also does all three and each API: the zwave API, JS API, Automation API, pretty much corresponds to each of the APIs I drew in order from bottom to top. It is just very good at the bottom layer but not as good as others as you go up the boxes. The best part of vera was the middle box with the community plugins and pretty complete virtual device set and is what openLuup has improved on.
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From my reading of different forums it doesn't look like Homeseer is doing all that great with their HS4 release. So between them and vera going down dead ends, it looks like Z-way and the in beta openzwave-QT will soon be the only contenders for zwave and I would slide in hubitat as third in spite of their lack of S2 support... Pretty sad to see good choices get smaller and smaller.
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I think part of the problem is that there are too many standards to chose from. None of them have a complete offering in terms of the hardware, the big boys have tried to create closed ecosystems (also not complete, or lacking in some other way) and very few (none) of the current offerings are succeeding at supporting the whole shooting match.
Feels like there are no decent devs / architects out there with a focus on a clear end model and some decent funding that's not making bad technical decisions.
C
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I think also that there is a business problem issue. The controller is absolutely critical and getting the right hardware and software is a lot of work. However they are being sold as a very low cost to attract new customers into the ecosystem while the real business is actually in the devices. The controller is only an enabler. Homeseer was the only one selling theirs at a high price... And then there is open source... Vera tried very hard to differentiate from the rest, attempting self maintenance and trying to get a lot of smart in the zwave management, taking control away from their customers. It tanked because not only was it mostly unnecessary but above all, it was very poorly designed. Let's see how the others do...
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@rafale77 that's a good point.
However, I fear that seeing how the others 'do' is pretty much how they've 'done' I had a X10 system running off a USB 'thing' and Indigo automation software. That was about 15 years ago. If anything it was easier and more reliable than stuff today (let's talk about how my magnetic door sensors don't un trip if you don't have the door open for more than about 3 seconds).
There is a significant difference that I have more money to throw at it than I did then, but progress seems, well, erratic. What do we have? Switches, dimmers and thermostats really.....
C
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I run QT-openzwave... beta but very steady and very easy! After the holiday it will by bye bye vera... almost all logics are already transferred to home assistant and node-red just some pleg and the "garaga door plugin" running on vera... I moved all problematic devices to QT and since then it's rock solid. Even Vera is fast. And since zwave devices are included (secure) in qt zwave I did not even know they were also so good and fast
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Vera’s zwave is a mess and I’m giving them a compliment.
I still think the idea behind Vera was good, the execution made it what it is. With more attention to details and the ability to really fix bugs, it could have been a good solution.I still want a plug and play solution with easy customization, but maybe we’re just at the beginning and this market needs to reach its peak to become more mainstream.
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The closest to a plug and play local all in one is probably Hubitat at this point but they have their limitations in each area. For a large system with a lot of plugins, it seems like the RAM and CPU on their unit is a limiter.
Home Assistant is also going through some strange strategic changes and is really not plug and play... though that's what they aim towards but the rate of breaking changes and tedious "templating" for automation has me much prefer openLuup at this point. It is a bit of pitching lua vs. python+yaml... -
@rafale77 said in The Home Automation Controller Pyramid:
much prefer openLuup at this point
AT THIS POINT ...?
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haha... yeah and for the foreseeable future. I just started learning a little python because all the machine learning libraries seem to have a python API so it makes things much easier... But for home automation, I for one am way too invested in lua and two, don't see python as being suitable... which is, I am guessing, why Home Assistant has supplemented it with yaml. Gosh and I am not even a coder/developer by trade... I just am enjoying the learning.
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to be fair, ezlo seems to have implemented Zwave (and Zigbee) stack in a modern way. but I'm not convinced at all by their new programming environment. they're adopting an approach very similar to HA's, where you can launch scripts to intercept events, instead of having services always executing. So, openluup it's probably the safest bet in terms of features and stability for luup refugees.
--
Vera+MQTT+HomeAssistant+my own framework all orchestrated via MSR
70+ Zwave Devices, a bunch of ZigBee light strips and a lot of codeMy Luup Plug-ins => https://github.com/dbochicchio/vera
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and yes, I don't like python neither. I learned LUA quite easily (being a dev for the latest 25 years helped) and I was really tempted to build my own engine running C# (on Linux, it's xplat now thanks to .NET Core) at some point, and move all my logic there, and use some hub just to send ZWave commands. I have already tons of code doing integrations with Vera, MiLight, OpenSprinkler, MQTT running in my own C# service, but it was just for fun.
The real problem is more about building a compelling UI, today, and offer side services (Alexa/GoogleHome, remote access, etc) than anything else.
A couple of friends approached me (because you know, home automation addiction has grown in me) because they wanted to build something and I always told them to not do anything like I did, because it needs maintenance. I dream of a day when we'll get a real plug&play system. We're not there, clearly. -
@therealdb said in The Home Automation Controller Pyramid:
to be fair, ezlo seems to have implemented Zwave (and Zigbee) stack in a modern way.
But what they (appear) to be shipping a beta seems way too immature. When would you think there's a production product? Feels to me like 2021 some time?
C
The Ex-Vera abuser know as CatmanV2.....
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@CatmanV2 said in The Home Automation Controller Pyramid:
But what they (appear) to be shipping a beta seems way too immature. When would you think there's a production product? Feels to me like 2021 some time?
yes. current system is barely usable. They are targeting next September, and they can improve fast, because they want to release a new build every 2 weeks. The real problem is their priorities: in order to migrate, you have to unpair and pair again all your devices. It's impossible for me (70+ devices, sometimes buried into boxes I really don't know where, since they were first installed by my electricians when building the house) and for many more people.
The concerning problem is that it's quite impossible for them to have plug-ins ready, because their new runtime is completely different and porting is not easy. But from a Zwave standpoint, they seem to have learned the lesson, by decoupling devices from implementation, and by allowing device definition to be updated separately. We'll see, it's probably too early and a lot of customers will migrate to anything better when the product will be really ready.--
Vera+MQTT+HomeAssistant+my own framework all orchestrated via MSR
70+ Zwave Devices, a bunch of ZigBee light strips and a lot of codeMy Luup Plug-ins => https://github.com/dbochicchio/vera
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@therealdb said in The Home Automation Controller Pyramid:
next September
2020 or 2021? 2021 seems more likely. Short sprints only means lots of progress if you're actually capable of writing code. Given the number of recurring issues, this seems something that may be beyond them.
And who's going to hang around for 2021?C
The Ex-Vera abuser know as CatmanV2.....
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@rafale77 said in The Home Automation Controller Pyramid:
I just started learning a little python because all the machine learning libraries seem to have a python API so it makes things much easier... But for home automation, I for one am way too invested in lua and two, don't see python as being suitable...
My view entirely! Python is a huge language compared to Lua. Its real plus is the vast number of libraries, but the huge minus is the size of the system. Parts of openLuup (the Historian's
graphite_cgimodule, and theWhisperdatabase were translated from Graphite's Python code, so I had to learn it a bit.@CatmanV2 said in The Home Automation Controller Pyramid:
I think part of the problem is that there are too many standards to chose from.
Indeed... always the problem with 'Standards'.
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Indeed... always the problem with 'Standards'.
Of course, we only need one. TCP/IP would do just dandy!
C
