15+ Smart Home Automation Ideas from Pros

[PerH]

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?

Also at the devices tab:

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!

[akbooer]

This is a bit of a puzzle.

• How did you install the system initially?
• Were there any error messages at that time?
• What were you doing when you got that log message?

Also, what do the devices look like on openLuup's console Devices page?

http://openLuupIP:3480/openLuup?page=devices

[akbooer]

Just another thought. This might be a permissions problem. Are you running the system under a different account from the one you used during installation?

[PerH]

I just installed debian, and then followed the installation guide for openluup.
No errors as i can remember, no.
The log message is from a shift from home to "devices", and is one of many. I assume its how its trying to build the appearance?

Openluup devices:

Permissions in linux is something i have little clue about. I have one admin user and one root user as far as i know. Pretty sure i installed using Sudo.

[sebby]

strangely, i am having the same issue on a fresh install on a Pi.

[rafale77]

Do you guys see the icon files in your openLuup installation folder under the subfolder /icons?
Could be that somehow they did not get downloaded properly from the vera or that the vera now on newer firmwares is storing them in a location where the openLuup installation script is not grabbing them properly?

[akbooer]

Quite likely a permissions issue. Look at a full directory listing of cmh-ludl/ cmh-ludl/icons using the shell command (possibly from AltUI of openLuup Command Line UI)

ls -l icons

giving something like:

For me, this is OK, since openLuup on this machine (unwisely) runs under the root account.

[sebby]

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

Quite likely a permissions issue. Look at a full directory listing of cmh-ludl/ cmh-ludl/icons using the shell command (possibly from AltUI of openLuup Command Line UI)

ls -l icons

giving something like:

For me, this is OK, since openLuup on this machine (unwisely) runs under the root account.

that is exactly it. in mine it's running as pi, so i changed it. all good now

[PerH]

all of mine are there, but is 0 bytes except for 2 or 3 files.. So how do i fix this? How do i set permissions so it can download the files properly?

[rafale77]

https://linuxize.com/post/chmod-recursive/

sudo chmod -R 777 /etc/cmh-ludl

[PerH]

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..

[PerH]

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..

[akbooer]

@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?

[a-lurker]

@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.

[CatmanV2]

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

[PerH]

@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.

[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?

[akbooer]

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.

[PerH]

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?

[akbooer]

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.