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So, I think I'm in a bit of an unusual situation. I work at a camp & retreat center that has wifi throughout. I want to put a few switches in the office that can control outdoor lighting throughout the camp. We currently have switches in each of the buildings, but it is a particularly frustrating job to get all the lights on in the evening when it is brutally cold out or we are short staffed.
Most of our staff is not very tech savvy (my boss literally has his wife print out his emails for him each day!!!) so, I'd love to avoid having to set up any sort of raspberry pi or new phone app.
Is there type of 3-way switch that can connect to the wifi, turn on a light in another building AND turn on an indicator light in the office, without having any sort of wire running between the buildings? Hopefully looking for a simple solution without breaking the bank too.
I greatly appreciate any input that you can give. Thank you!
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I have a X10 wall switch system and I want to get rid of it. What would be the easiest transition to something more modern and easy to use with either wifi/homekit capabilities? My current X10 controls 3 zones in my bedroom. All zones are dimmable.
Zone 1 is 4 canister ceiling lights. LED bulbs
Zone 2 is 1 canister ceiling lights. Halogen Bulb
Zone 3 is 1 canister ceiling lights. Halogen Bulb
I have an old plug-in remote from Radio Shack and a wall switch with 3 buttons, each controlling one zone. (images attached)
My wall switch has one two wires from the wall. One black, one white.Is there any solution easy to install without the need of an electrician? Thanks for any feedback.
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I was just going to add my support for a Update Button for the bare bones version of MSR and find the thread has been removed.
I'm wondering what was so provocative that required it's removal?
Have we become as paranoid as an owner of another forum?Anyway +1 for an Update Button.
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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?
Favorite lightweight linux distro?
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Not having a background in IT, I only stumbled into linux because of home automation.
I got familiar with OpenWRT because of vera and ubuntu server because it is the newbie friendly, seemingly most supported distro.I am looking for a super lightweight linux distro to act mostly as a server (potentially to host the whole home automation controller pyramid) either for a laptop or a mini PC. I just gave peppermint a shot and was surprised to see a CPU 6C temperature drop at idle vs. ubuntu server in spite of it having an additional GUI. Being a laptop, the GUI is convenient.
I am now thinking of Elive (Debian based) and WattOS (Ubuntu based).
Any recommendations? -
For our workloads (web and apps, mainly in cloud), in combination with Kubernets, we regularly use Alpine. it's very lightweight, but you can build an image with exactly the things you need: https://alpinelinux.org/
--
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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Hi Raf, i know Debian because it runs on a Pi and the headless version looks pretty small and quick.
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Debian all the time, anywhere!
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At PointPub, we use Debian anywhere, either on rPI, pine64, rockpro, servers, VMs, etc.
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Thanks, I definitely looked at both Debian and Alpine.
On Debian, it seems like you all like the hardcore base OS. Any reason not to consider the seemingly lighter offshoots like Elive?
I am struggling a bit to already see big differences between debian and ubuntu which is based on it but then they each have other distros spawn off of them too... They share the same linux kernels, following different version update strategies. Maybe I am wrong but shouldn't programs and packages compiled on one be able to run on the other?
For having dug deep into openWRT for example, the shift after chaos calmer to the LEDE branch led to binaries no longer being compatible due to a change in the C library used in the kernel. I don't seem to see anything similar between ubuntu and debian. Merely different apt repository differences?
@DesT, what is preventing you for example from running the ubuntu build of z-way-server on your debian install? -
@rafale77 I can try and let you know! Should work!
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@rafale77 The binary is working, I can start it. I would need to do a test to "upgrade" my real setup!
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@rafale77 Looks like I can be able to do something, I just need to find which file I need to check to make sure I don't override something!
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@rafale77 said in Favorite lightweight linux distro?:
Any reason not to consider the seemingly lighter offshoots like Elive?
None at all
I am struggling a bit to already see big differences between debian and ubuntu which is based on it but then they each have other distros spawn off of them too... They share the same linux kernels, following different version update strategies. Maybe I am wrong but shouldn't programs and packages compiled on one be able to run on the other?
They might, and probably will. But sometimes they wont't. I can't honestly recall the lat time I found that happening, and I can't also recall the last time I tried to do something on Ubuntu that wouldn't work on Debian (or any of the derivatives) that didn't
Most of the issues that I used to struggle with were installation methodologies and locations.
C
The Ex-Vera abuser know as CatmanV2.....
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The files in the folders /opt/z-way-server/config and in /opt/z-way-server/automation/storage are the ones related to your backups in the expertUI and smarthomeUI respectively.
The plugin files typically don't get overridden but just in case, they are stored in /opt/z-way-server/automation/userModules. -
Thanks! I think I will test Elive next! Then maybe Arch(Bang?) or Bohdi.
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I used to love Mint but have no idea what it's like now.
C
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I am testing the spicier peppermint!
It's more lightweight and so far I am liking it. The use of the laptop for the home automation controller has the advantage of including a built in UPS... and a screen and keyboard when needed. When I look at what one can get for ~$100 for laptops these days, it's starting to challenge the use of SBCs. -
@rafale77 said in Favorite lightweight linux distro?:
I am testing the spicier peppermint!
It's more lightweight and so far I am liking it. The use of the laptop for the home automation controller has the advantage of including a built in UPS... and a screen and keyboard when needed. When I look at what one can get for ~$100 for laptops these days, it starts challenge the use of SBCs.Yes, but, well, big and prone to overheat if you try and run them with the lid shut. If you run them with the lid open, then dust.....
C
The Ex-Vera abuser know as CatmanV2.....
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True! but it also depends on how old the CPU is and what you buy. The Chromebook class of Gemini Lake CPUs have TDP of 8W! From my testing they consume about the same power as a rPi 4 (with the screen off) at peak and run much cooler while offering 3-4X the performance. Yeah they are more expensive but not by much. My N4100 mini PC is one such example... passively cooled and powered by POE. power requirements are even lower than for an rPi4.
I am testing a refurb laptop with an i7 8550u 15W-TDP which is now completely passively cooled idling at 34C (ambient of 22C) and needs to be "benchmark stressed" to hit 65C. (ok I admit it, I modded the cooler to get to this result. The laptop offers more room for passive cooling solutions...) Surprisingly as I reported above the peppermint OS made a difference vs. ubuntu which led to my question.
I left the laptop on with the lid closed overnight and to the touch, I can't tell that it is on... No warm spot anywhere. With ubuntu server it would slowly creep up and steady at 42-43C which was detectable to the hand.
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Hehehe. Chromebooks are a bit different I accept. And not what I was thinking about running laptops. Some laptops are fine running with the lid shut. Others not so much
C
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I think that a rock64 from pine64 can be a very nice board to run a bunch of "home automation" stuff!
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I end looking at alpine and turns out the show stopper is musl vs. glibc... the same problem as LEDE vs openWRT so there will be compatibility issues with most of what we run which are compiled with glibc.
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@rafale77 I never tried with complex setup, because IOT/web loads have usually few dependencies, but I was always fascinated because of the ability to create a container of few megs and the easy load on the target system.
Moving away from Alpine
