Hi All
Hopefully this place looks like a helpful forum as I’m quite new to all this!
I’ve had a few devices all working separately /through their proprietary apps but we’re just finishing off a large house extension and this has added to the list.
I’d ideally like to be able to view/switch a number of different devices on one screen/head end but have no idea where to start.
The devices we have/will have shortly are as follows;
Zigbee Smart Sockets
Zigbee smart switches (for lights)
Heatmiser Neo Underfloor Heating (this runs from a Samsung ASHP but that part is automatic)
Samsung VRF air conditioning (currently using Smart Things App)
Hive (2xLTHW heating circuits in the existing house and Hot Water)
Ring (doorbell!)
Hik Vision PoE CCTV
We have lots of appliances (Neff N70) which we can control remotely but not too fussed about controlling those at the
Moment)
Any help/recommendations would be appreciated!
Thanks
Adrian
I have a legacy home automation set-up running on Windows XP. the computer and software have now died.
I have written a very nice Excel VBA program to replace the software and it can run on any modern Windows system.
My only remaining problem is to output the correct signal to a USB port to trigger the wireless switches.
Has anybody done a similar exercise. Please help.
Hi All,
Kind of new to Home Automation. Started off Using Amazon Echo units and added a Samsung SmartThings hub. I have mostly been using plug in modules for turning lights on and off. I live in a very rural area where the internet goes out a lot. I eventually want to change to to a non internet Hub so things will work without needing an internet connection. But I will post with those questions at a later date.
So, the task at hand is this: I have flood lights at each corner of my house. They are currently controlled by switches at the front and back doors. I would like to add Security Cameras to each corner also. I can easily find small Wifi switches to put into the electrical box where the flood lights are located, then I can terminate the leads together behind the Decora switch to have constant power. Then I can use the constant power up at the lights electrical box to power the security cameras. I would also like to have a wireless switch to take the place of the Decora switch to be able to turn the lights off and on.
I cannot seem to find a product like this. It seems I can find the small wired in switch boxes that will also come with external smart wall switches, but the wall switches are an external box that does not fit in or cover the existing Wall switch electrical box. I can also find Wireless Decora switches that come with a remote wired in small switch box , but they all seem to be RF and do not integrate with a Smart Hub.
I am hoping someone here knows of a product that matches what I am looking for. Any help would be appreciated.
Also any recommendations for Wireless Security cameras are welcome.
Thanks for any help.
Dear Forum,
I am just starting a smart home system. I've wanted to do this for 10 years at most and really would like to get a start. What I have are a couple of SONOFF wifi relays, some 433 (Hz/mHz) switches ( not wifi ) a couple of wifi lightbulbs, and I'd like to expand wifi thermostat, leak/water detectors, garage door openers and what ever else I can think of.
In the SONOFF items I have it's a particular app, the wifi bulbs are another app, and if I do a thermostat there might be another app. My wife is not a Luddite but she damn sure doesn't want to have to trouble shoot if/why a particular app breaks down.
So in what I do understand about smart home things is that I need/want a HUB. I spent 15 years doing some programming so I do have some computer ability, though I'd prefer to stay away from HAVING to line command operate the hub.
I would like a list of HUB's that people have found to be the best. Even better are links to let's say Amazon for that hub.
Regards from Noob Smart Home,
Barry
Hello lovely people. Long time and all that. Hope you're all doing OK.
Bit of a left field one here, looking for extra eyes more than an answer and you're the most logical bunch I know 🙂
Part of our HA system is a Logitech Elite hub and remote control.
This is programmed to control my Cyrus Stereo, our TV, and HDMI switch and our Virgin V6 box.
I've been away for a couple of days. Got back this evening to (eventually) work out that the V6 box appears to be not accepting any commands from the Logitech.
Everything has been rebooted.
Logitech uses IR to control
Cyrus: Fine
TV: Fine
HDMI: Fine
Remote control uses Bluetooth to control Hub.
All commands from the Remote to the hub are executed (one might assume correctly) as the activity LED responds, and if you're controlling (say) the Cyrus, all works fine.
iOS App can be used to control Hub over the WLAN:
All commands from the App re executed (one might assume correctly) as the activity LED responds, and if you're controlling (say) the Cyrus, all works fine.
Native remote (that uses as far as I know bluetooth) to control the V6 box works fine.
V6 box refuses to acknowledge any command other than from the native remote. Remote or app provoke absolutely zero response from the V6 box.
This is annoying, but damned if I can think of any logical reason. One might assume a firmware update on the V6 box, but given that the Hub simply emulates the native remote, that seems unlikely.
I'm struggling to think of where even to start troubleshooting this, so any random thoughts would be appreciated.
My initial approach is to buy another hub in case there's a different radio set that's failed in the hub...
TIA!
C
I currently have an HVAC system in the attic - for heating and A/C. 120v is supplied to the unit to run the gas heating. A/C uses 240v. I have an ecobee thermostat...which sometimes goes offline....not often. When it goes offline, I need to turn the 120v power to the HVAC system off and then back on (the ecobee gets its power from the HVAC system). That resets the ecobee and all is fine. I spend the summer away from this house and if the ecobee goes offine..I have no current method to reset the HVAC 120v power remotely. My idea is to replace the current 120v plug in the attic with a smart plug...then I can remotely turn the 120v power off and the ecobee will reset and come back online. I use Wyze and Lutron Casita in the house currently and was hoping I could find an in-wall smart plug from Wyze or Lutron. Obviously, I don't need diming, etc...just the ability to turn the plug power on/off. I've seen some options...but one problem I have is the attic can reach up to 135F in the summer...many of the smart plugs I've seen are not rated for that temperature. Might any of you have any thoughts on a smart plug I might want to look at? I don't want to invest in anything that would require a new hub - so either WiFi based or Casita HUB based. I need 120v and 15amp ratings. Thanks in advance.
I am trying to run a reaction that turns on lights if a sensor has not been tripped for 2 minutes. Basically, when a garage door is open, turn on inside lights if nothing has been sensed for 2 minutes. My question has to do with the expression/variable for "Last Seen". The variable never gets updated over time since the last seen event never changes.
Screenshot 2024-09-02 191632.png
In the screenshot above, the reaction checks for any garage door as well as the variable called "GarageLastEntry". The expression for this variable is displayed below:
Screenshot 2024-09-02 191651.png
The problem that I am experiencing is that the variable never changes over time. I understand that this is because the "last seen" variable does not change over time when there is no activity. In this screenshot, the value shows 0.029... This can also be seen as the current value in the original reaction screenshot above. After 10 minutes, this value should be 10. However, when a garage door is opened, the variable does not get updated and thus the rule does not become true since .029 is less than 2.
When I go to the variable and click on the > icon, the variable then gets updated as expected as seen below:
Screenshot 2024-09-02 191711.png
So the ultimate question is, how do I use a rule that can use a variable such as "last seen"? Do I need to create another variable or reaction that multiplies this by 1 every minute? From what I read in the manual, a variable is evaluated every time it is included in a reaction. But this is not what I am seeing.
I also want to ask another question related to this variable. It seems like Reactor continuously deletes this variable and I have to keep recreating it? I have never experienced this with MSR so wanted to ask if this is a common problem or if my definition is causing this.
Any info is appreciated!!!
BACKGROUND
I have been using 4 x Yale Contactless Connected Door Locks for several years (they use either a rfid tag or code to enter)
I have also been using 1 x Yale L1 Door Lock on the main front door and this connects via Yale Software
Yale contacted me to advise the L1 Lock software was being withdrawn and I needed to install a Yale Access Module into the existing lock and a Wi-Fi Bridge to link it with the newly released software
ALL of the above was working just fine.
RECENT
Yale emailed to advise I should add a Yale Access Module to each of the 4 other locks as this would link with the updated software via the Wi-Fi Bridge.
They offered a deal of just £4 each for these Modules so I got them.
THE PROBLEM
I found that only 2 of these modules would slot easily into the locks - two of them bent the pins and one of those snapped the female part in a lock (I do have a spare lock but thats not the point).
Anyway, I began to set-up the two fitted Modules with the Wi-Fi Bridge and I eventually found (thanks Google, NOT Yale) that I now need 1 x Wi-Fi Bridge PER LOCK (£50 each).
QUESTION
Does anyone know of a compatible Wi-Fi Bridge which works with Yale AND can handle multiple connections (ie 5 all 5 of my locks) ?
THANK YOU
Hello,
I had an iCOMEN boiler switch that worked for many years. And I used iCOMEN app on my phone to manage it. Short time ago app started to have an error message that it cannot connect to the server, and after some time the device also stopped working.
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)?
Hello forum instigators.
Not sure who host/runs the forum software but a couple of challenges:
The chat is not currently usable, as the scrolling is all not right and it's not possible to read chats or send chats reliably.
There are a lot of female members that should perhaps be on another forum; where they can advertise their skills more appropriately. Note: I agree it's a job, like any other.
Whoever you are - thank you for your invaluable work.
I run a B&B and am looking for a way to turn the lights off whenever a room is unoccupied for X amount of time. The guest should still be able to turn the lights on and off manually, but should not be able to disable the auto turn off feature if the room is unoccupied.
I guess I am looking for a light switch with a built in presence sensor? I guess a presence sensor would be better as if it is a motion sensor, the lights may go off unwanted if the guest fails to make sufficient movement e.g. if the guest is lying down watching a film.
Are there any products on the market that would work for my application?
Hello,
I am in search of a device capable of using Bluetooth to connect with a smartphone and serve as its primary sound source on demand. This device should function similarly to conventional Bluetooth headphones, which automatically become the phone's sound output upon activation. However, this device should differ in that it transmits the audio signal to an amplifier via a jack, SPDIF, or similar connection. Alternatively, it could be an integrated amplifier that directly sends the signal to passive speakers.
The control of this process should be manageable through an API such as MQTT, REST, MODBUS, or similar. Are you aware of any devices that operate in this manner?
The concept is as follows: upon entering the bathroom, I would press a wall-mounted switch. This switch would send a signal to the Bluetooth device, prompting it to connect to my smartphone and seamlessly continue playing the audiobook I am currently listening to. Instead of using the phone's speakers, it would seamlessly start playing through ceiling-mounted speakers.
Many thanks 🙂
Hi folks,
I currently have some cheap Zigbee hub and some Amazon Alexas running my smart home which mostly consists of Zigbee power strips and Zigbee battery powered switches.
It all worked OK originally, but now whenever I press a Zigbee switch the light in the corresponding plug switches on then immediately off again.
If I ask Alexa to turn the light on it works fine. Likewise if I switch it on from my phone.
Any ideas what the issue could be?
I've tried unplugging the hub a number of times but that doesn't seem to fix it.
I was thinking about getting a Homey Pro 2023 to speed things up (tmas the Zigbee hub seems to be really slow now as well, for some reason) but I'm not sure about that either.
Any suggestions greatly appreciated!
Looking for a recommendation:
Locksmith is trying to talk me into the Yale Assure Lock Touchscreen with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth - the original 1st generation because they said it's built better than the Assure Lock 2. Any thoughts on this? Which would you recommend?
I see Mul T Lock makes a cylinder (KW-KIDYRL) for Yale Smart Locks. Would this fit the 1st gen Assure Lock, as well as Assure Lock 2? Has anyone tried replacing the cylinder with this on either lock?
Other smart lock I was considering is the Schlage Encode Plus.
Thanks!
Hi. So when I had my house build I ran a bunch of stuff, one of which being two pairs of speaker wires to each bedroom and to 4 spots around my living room… Over the years I have used them here and there with different success.. But today they sit in my walls just unused.
I converted all the cat6 or 5e (I don’t remember) over to basically eithernet jacks. The cable coaxial well it’s there but now unused. But I was thinking there has got to be some use for two pairs of speaker wires to each room. Can I make them usb plugs? Not sure so looking for ideas.
Thanks in advance for your thoughts on this.
Kevin
Hey guys...
We are replacing the heat pump and furnace this week and I will also need to replace my nest thermostat at the same time 'cause Nest is ending the cloud thing end of the month.
Anyway, I'm looking to use the
That's what the heat pump installer recommend BUT, using Nest I was also using it to control the home humidifier using a single wire connected to nest... but no low voltage thermostat is able to do that, I checked all of them...
So I need some help on how I can do that, to connect the home humidifier using zwave also....
Hi
We are looking for a solution where we can detect presence of a «thing» (people , car , dog, cat, and more..
We need:
fast detections, 1-3 seconds in range from 0 to 20 m from «base» fysical «client» , chip , transmitter , unit. base , receiver placed at a door, gate, house, etc uniq Identifying wirelessThe client:
no need for pressing any thing (no buttons) battery , hoply 2-5 years battery time.Have someone done anything like this?
What technologi will be best?
Apple Homepod mini
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It seems to be specific to my set of gen2 echo dots.
My wife got really upset the other day because I tried to open my garage door 3 times with it and instead it each time actuated some blinds and some other lights which made her freak out. I have seen this occasionally after I run a router upgrade for example whereby the echo lost connection to the amazon cloud and goes crazy switching wifi networks to see if it can reach a DNS back into its server again. I already had a bias against anything cloud dependent but this behavior of disconnecting its wifi in search of cloud server (It has multiple wifi APs on the same SSID to pick from) is just not good and the resulting craziness even worse. These will be the first ones to go. -
Ha yeah indeed. Not everything can be automated so some human intervention is still required. The HomePod though seem to be doing most processing locally and only fail back to the cloud when its local voice processing can't resolve the command. That's why it is so much faster. I will be testing it and if it works out, I may consider taking out all the echos which seem to still be much too cloud dependent for my liking. The voice processing is also by far the slowest part of my system taking more than 1s to do anything.
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@rafale77 said in Apple Homepod mini:
Ha yeah indeed. Not everything can be automated so some human intervention is still required. The HomePod though seem to be doing most processing locally and only fail back to the cloud when its local voice processing can't resolve the command. That's why it is so much faster. I will be testing it and if it works out, I may consider taking out all the echos.
I'm going to check a little closer but while we don't have a 100% hit rate with Alexa (sometimes the internet connection fails. More often she just gets the command wrong, and she gets confused by status not being where she is) but gut feel is response time is a lot under 1s. Granted it's not instant, but I would say sub 0.5 and by a chunk.
Will try and quantify a bit more (I guess I just found it so much quicker than Vera which was several seconds, if at all, it never worried me!)C
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Yes of course it's all relative. When you come from the vera even the ezlo feels fast of course and the speed of the echo was never a deal breaker as it is actually quite reasonable. But if it can be done locally and faster and with better privacy... I gotta try it.
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@rafale77 said in Apple Homepod mini:
Yes of course it's all relative. When you come from the vera even the ezlo feels fast of course and the speed of the echo was never a deal breaker as it is actually quite reasonable. But if it can be done locally and faster and with better privacy... I gotta try it.
This way progress lies
C
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I just tested a few commands from my mac mini which also provides the TTS service to my SONOS/openLuup and if the homepod is this fast, it will be a stunning difference... It is indeed processing locally first on macos for the homekit commands. There is no delay whatsoever that I can observe.
Edit:
An interesting read on local voice processing of the new echos:
Amazon’s AZ1 Neural Edge processor will make Alexa voice commands even faster
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Saving you hundreds of milliseconds per query.
Edit 2:
After further testing today, I confirmed the findings from the hubitat forum thread and have pretty much decided to wind down my echo installation. I have a device in every room and this will take some time but clearly the dots are pretty poor devices in terms of speaker and microphones, the cloud dependency is excessive to the point where they behave erratically when they lose connection to their servers. In comparison my macOS, iOS devices are processing locally, faster and with much greater privacy from what I observed from my firewall. Of all the HK devices I tested, only the apple watch seem to act at the same slower speed as the echos. ciao Alexa.
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I'm not sure this is a viable long-term solution, because Apple isn't reaching a real customer base and they'll eventually disinvest, imho. In fact, they just stopped selling the HomePod and they'll only sell the mini.
Alexa has already won this battle and Google has won the personal assistant one. No space left for Apple, imho.
All that said, I'm with you on privacy and local only control.
I think we're still too early to have full local processing, even if something is moving (part of my job is about AI/ML, so I'm obviously extremely interested in these evolutions). I'll probably get a Fiat 500e later this year (since I'm more local for the medium-term future, all electric makes sens to me), and they started integrating Alexa natively - and it's really cool. https://www.media.stellantis.com/em-en/corporate-communications/press/amazon-s-alexa-voice-experience-now-available-on-fca-s-new-fiat-500 They'll eventually add it to all Stellantis cars (Peugeot, Citroën, Fiat, Jeep and so on). even BMW has more integration with Alexa lately. even if I have CarPlay (and I'm loving it), Hey Siri is flakey and rarely her responses are OK the first time. I have to tell her every time who my mom is, she tells me that she's taken note, and the next time she's eventually ask again... Maybe things are better in english, but here in Italy Alexa and Google Home are hands down better in comprehension.
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You might be right, though they stuck with the homepod for 4 years now and IMHO now really have a product entry for in this market with the mini. The original homepod was just too much of a speaker and not enough of a home assistant.
One thing to think about and which actually made me decide this is the native integration of the functionality in the macOS and iOS devices. When I surveyed my home, I realized I could replace 12 echo devices with only 4 homepod minis... why? Offices already have a macos computer, some rooms have an ipad. For the rarely used rooms, I will have my phone or my watch. For the purpose of home control and basic vocal assistance, this got a much higher WAF for me. It was there all along and I only have a small number of locations where the addition of a device will be valuable. The echo shows will be replaced with much more capable and versatile ipads for example for similar prices.($250 vs $299). There is no question about Alexa's dominance but... for my use case, I had siri available all that time without realizing that it was superior. I haven't even received and tested the homepod yet... I just came to the realization that I could benefit from using siri a lot more and alexa a lot less... and in the interest of WAF, a fewer number of higher quality devices is better than a large number of cheap ones.
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Hah, it's a bit like French food... I will take quality over quantity any day.
It's a very similar design philosophy difference. Alexa and all its skills (and even more so Google Home) are cloud centric just like SmartThings. Moving to HomeKit for voice control is analogous to moving from SmartThings to HomeAssistant or Hubitat. It is not cloud free. It is just not cloud dependent or even centered.
This is coming full circle for me actually since my first attempt at voice control was actually to use an iPad mini and the vera 6 years ago... The homekitbridge I am using for openLuup today is that old... -
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I didn't even go as far as running homebridge. I installed this 6 years ago and never touched it since. This was a very large thread in the old forum.
I start the bridge server with a dependency on openLuup with a 3s delay. It starts and stops with openLuup running on the same machine.
Note that there is a 150 device per bridge limit so my fork is preventing scenes from being bridged as I have over 150 scenes alone. I am also not bridging sensors for the same reason... but if you don't have that many devices, nothing prevents you from doing it. Note also that I am running on nodeJS10 without any problems. No need to go find nodeJS5. I should probably update the readme. -
Yup,
I just received my HomePod mini and I have to say the migration of the voice command from alexa to siri resembles in some ways to my migration from vera to z-way. I can't get over how much faster it is. There are some pros and cons though.
- Homekit's use of device grouping and rooms is much better used than on Alexa. I can walk to any room ask it to turn lights on and it won't ask me which ones, it will just turn the ones in the room and is able to either recognize group of device types.
- The darn thing works without cloud at all and so the HomePod doesn't go crazy jumping from wifi AP to another when the internet connection drops like the echo devices.
- The sonos integration in homekit seems to be useless. I am going through home assistant's homekit component to control them now but still can't control the volume using voice like I used to with alexa/habridge.
- It is the size of an echo dot with the sound quality of a full size echo.
- Locking down to apple music is the part I don't like and won't use. I will stick with sonos for music.
- It is fast... Did I say that again? The echo didn't feel slow... 1-2s response time is not bad but it was inconsistent and occasionally would act up with some long delays. So far, the HomePod has been instantaneous. Yup I can't get over how fast it is.
This was the last frontier on my installation to full cloud independence and I have looked left and right at DIY localized home assistance and never found anything cost/effort effective. This is the best compromise and quite a leap. I am trading in a bunch of echos... shipped 8 out already.
My setup:
Z-way + home assistant -> openLuup -> HomeKitBridge -> Homekit
Replacing habridge ->AmazonCloud/Alexa
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@akbooer said in Apple Homepod mini:
@rafale77 said in Apple Homepod mini:
The darn thing works without cloud at all
Well that all sounds great. You are saying that no voice data is ever sent? ALL processing done locally??
Correct, it looks like the processing is local first. For all the home commands it is all local. Obviously if you are asking for news, music or weather, it will go get some data from the cloud but it isn't the voice processing. Also the logic processing is local. It relies on an apple TV or a HomePod inside the home. Without this, homekit won't fully work.
@CatmanV2, It is definitely the only of the big 3 which is local processed at the moment. The only one which have devices capable of it too. It looks like amazon is making an effort as well with their latest generation of devices but are nowhere close.
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@rafale77 said in Apple Homepod mini:
@akbooer said in Apple Homepod mini:
@rafale77 said in Apple Homepod mini:
The darn thing works without cloud at all
Well that all sounds great. You are saying that no voice data is ever sent? ALL processing done locally??
Correct, it looks like the processing is local first. For all the home commands it is all local.
We are talking about voice commands here?
C
