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    (Last Updated: 25 May 2021)
    • Need help in finding the right smart switch for my kitchen lights

      M

      Hello,
      I have a kitchen light that can be controlled by two switches, using either to turn it off or on. I have been slowly changing things over to be a smart home but this is the first switch I am attempting to install.
      I am in a double wide modular home (mobile) that was built in 1994.
      At first I thought I would need a 3 way switch but when taking the normal switches apart I realized that was incorrect because the wiring on my switches are different than anything I could find online.
      For one a 3 way smart switch requires 5 wires and there are only 2 wires going into the primary switch with 3 wires going into the secondary switch from the primary switch (at least I think the 3 wires connect the two switches together). Images will be attached of the wiring.
      There are two wires (one black and one white) going into the first switch and 3 wires (black, white, and red) going out of that and into the second switch (I assume). The odd thing is the red wire going to the second switch is connected to the white wire going into the first switch and the white wire going into the second switch seems to be a bridge wire or a traveler wire. Not exactly sure. You will see what I mean in the images.
      I need to know what kind of smart switch I can use in this set up with one remaining a normal switch.
      Note that for some reason the images got switched around when uploading them. The image with 2 wires on one side and 3 on the other is what I think is the primary and the image with just 3 wires is the secondary.
      Primary.jpg Secondary.jpg

      General Discussion
    • Short survey

      P

      Hi,
      I am a student and recently i am working on smart home project and writing a seminar paper about the way users handle and manage IoT devices. I you have 3 min, please fill below survey. Its really short.
      Thank you in advance, I really appreciate everyone's help.

      General Discussion
    • OT: Universal Remote

      CatmanV2

      You lot are more likely to have a view than most I know. Our much used Logitech Harmony is (not so) slowly dying.

      And Logitech have discontinued the entire line.

      And no one else appears to be making something similar.

      Was going for a Sofabaton X1, but no numeric keypad. Sofabaton U1, but no favourites.

      Anyone got suggestions?
      Needs to have those features, oh and not be only a phone app.....

      C

      General Discussion
    • The Home Automation Controller Pyramid

      rafale77

      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...

      Screen Shot 2020-05-14 at 07.11.06.png

      General Discussion
    • Thread removed - why?

      Black Cat

      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.

      General Discussion
    • 3-way smart switches in separate buildings.

      D

      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!

      General Discussion
    • X-10 replacement for a new wall switch (HomeKit)

      G

      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.

      ij455pd333061.jpg.jpeg ttsjhpd333061.jpg.jpeg

      General Discussion
    • Looking for alternative to Gcal3 in Vera for MSR and public calendar

      T

      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.

      General Discussion
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    Alexa TTS troubleshooting

    General Discussion
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    • CatmanV2
      CatmanV2 last edited by

      Evening (at least here)
      Alexa TTS has suddenly stopped here (mid afternoon)
      Normally I'd replace the cookie.
      When I went to the domain, I was forced to change my password. Did that and exported the cookie. But still no voice.
      I can't see anything at all in the logs:

      2021-02-12 18:05:02.869   luup_log:0: ALTUI: runLua(local GardenTemp = math.floor(0.5+luup.variable_get("urn:upnp-org:serviceId:TemperatureSensor1", "CurrentTemperature", 20415))
      luup.call_action("urn:dlna-org:serviceId:DLNAMediaController1", "Say", {Text="The temperature outside is" ..GardenTemp.. "degrees.",Volume=40,GroupZones="Everywhere"}, 22))
      2021-02-12 18:05:02.870   luup.call_action:: 22.urn:dlna-org:serviceId:DLNAMediaController1.Say 
      2021-02-12 18:05:02.870   luup_log:22: VeraAlexa: addToQueue: added to queue for 22
      2021-02-12 18:05:04.035   luup_log:0: ALTUI: Evaluation of lua code returned: nil
      

      But I'm sure I need to look somewhere else and damned if I can recall where. Someone give me a pointer?

      TIA

      C

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

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • therealdb
        therealdb last edited by

        Give the oath tool a try. It’s very easy to setup and once done no password are needed.

        --
        On a mission to automate everything.

        My MS Reactor contrib
        My Luup Plug-ins

        CatmanV2 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • CatmanV2
          CatmanV2 @therealdb last edited by

          @therealdb said in Alexa TTS troubleshooting:

          Give the oath tool a try. It’s very easy to setup and once done no password are needed.

          Thanks. Having a nightmare troubleshooting at the moment. Brain seems everywhere :(. First thing I remembered was the cookie this morning! So back up and running.

          Where's the oath tool, chap?

          Cheers

          C

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

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • therealdb
            therealdb last edited by therealdb

            From the original read me on https://github.com/thorsten-gehrig/alexa-remote-control

            In order to use MFA, one needs to obtain the MFA_SECRET from Amazon account:

            • You should have MFA using an App already working before proceeding
            • Add a new app
            • When presented with the QR-code select "can't scan code"
            • You will be presented with the MFA shared secret, something like 1234 5678 9ABC DEFG HIJK LMNO PQRS TUVW XYZ0 1234 5678 9ABC DEFG
            • Now you have to generate a valid response code via oathtool -b --totp "<MFA shared secret from above>" and enter that in the web form

            Going from here the MFA shared secret becomes the MFA_SECRET for the alexa_remote_control script Treat that MFA_SCECRET just like your password - DO NOT share it anywhere!!!
            It is assumed that MFA secured accounts are less likely to get a captcha response during login - that's why MFA might yield better results if the plain username/password didn't work for you.

            --
            On a mission to automate everything.

            My MS Reactor contrib
            My Luup Plug-ins

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • CatmanV2
              CatmanV2 last edited by

              Right gotcha!

              May well give it a try, thanks, as ever 🙂

              C

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

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • LibraSun
                LibraSun last edited by LibraSun

                I'm back to testing Vera Alexa (now rev. 0.97) and thus far no improvement. 99% silence despite being correctly configured.
                Here's a data point to mull over:

                luup.call_action("urn:bochicchio-com:serviceId:VeraAlexa1","RunCommand",{Command='-e weather -d "Living Room"'}, 366)
                

                yields this LatestResponse on Vera:

                sending cmd:weather to dev:Living Room type:A15ERDAKK5HQQG serial:eb48978706f5459f890ef0ec5aa9fce9 customerid:A3SL3Z0HELH3YG
                

                and this in Vera's LuaUPnP Log (among other lines):

                Device_Variable::m_szValue_set device: 366 service: urn:bochicchio-com:serviceId:VeraAlexa1 variable: LatestResponse was: ERROR: unknown option weather /storage/alexa/alexa_remote_control.sh [-d <device>|ALL] .......
                
                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
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