Discussion Forum to share and further the development of home control and automation, independent of platforms.

    SmartHome Community

    • Register
    • Login
    • Search
    • Categories
    • Recent
    • Tags
    • Popular
    • Unsolved
    (Last Updated: 25 March 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
    For those who registered but didn't received the confirmation email, please send an email to support@smarthome.community with the email you used

    Vera watch variable / startup LUA how ?

    General Discussion
    3
    12
    164
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as topic
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with topic management privileges can see it.
    • cw-kid
      cw-kid last edited by cw-kid

      I want to set something up natively if possible on Vera, so a virtual motion sensor device is tripped / not tripped by following the tripped variable state of a real device.

      This LUA code works if I run it manually but I don't know how to have this running all the time and watching for that "tripped" variable to change ?

      local istripped = luup.variable_get("urn:micasaverde-com:serviceId:SecuritySensor1", "Tripped", 100) --Real Device
      
      luup.variable_set("urn:micasaverde-com:serviceId:SecuritySensor1", "Tripped", istripped,101) --Virtual Motion Sensor Device
      
      return true
      

      How do you add something like this in to Vera's startup LUA feature ?

      Thanks

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

        I've already posted in the old place, so I'll post here again and save to my GitHub, for future reference:

        devices = {
        	[61] = {sensorID = 89},
        	[65] = {sensorID = 94},
        	[63] = {sensorID = 95}
        }
        
        function copyVariable(dev_id, service, variable, oldValue, newValue)
        	if tonumber(oldValue) ~= tonumber(newValue) then
        		luup.log(string.format("Setting %s - %s for #%s to %s", service, variable, tostring(deviceID), tostring(newValue)))
        
        		local deviceID = devices[dev_id].sensorID
        		luup.variable_set(service, variable, newValue, deviceID)
        	end
        end
        
        for deviceID, _ in next, devices do
        	luup.variable_watch("copyVariable", "urn:micasaverde-com:serviceId:SecuritySensor1", "Tripped", deviceID)
        end
        

        Where 61, 65 and 63 are the master and 89, 94 and 95 are the children. I've just included a version that could work with more then one device, but you could just remove the other two and it'll work anyway.

        --
        On a mission to automate everything.

        My MS Reactor contrib
        My Luup Plug-ins

        cw-kid 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • cw-kid
          cw-kid @therealdb last edited by cw-kid

          @therealdb Thanks, so you just copy the code in to the Vera Startup Lua area ?

          I never understood properly how the Startup Lua thing worked? Presumably you can't just keep pasting code snippets in to it for various different things ?

          This is what I have in there currently:

          2859d982-68be-4018-8cf4-38d7a22dde14-image.png

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • cw-kid
            cw-kid last edited by

            If I run this in the test code area in Vera, it does not trip the virtual motion sensor (290) the real device (696) is currently tripped.

            devices = {
            	[696] = {sensorID = 290}
            }
            
            function copyVariable(dev_id, service, variable, oldValue, newValue)
            	if tonumber(oldValue) ~= tonumber(newValue) then
            		luup.log(string.format("Setting %s - %s for #%s to %s", service, variable, tostring(deviceID), tostring(newValue)))
            
            		local deviceID = devices[dev_id].sensorID
            		luup.variable_set(service, variable, newValue, deviceID)
            	end
            end
            
            for deviceID, _ in next, devices do
            	luup.variable_watch("copyVariable", "urn:micasaverde-com:serviceId:SecuritySensor1", "Tripped", deviceID)
            end
            
            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • therealdb
              therealdb last edited by

              yes, but you could just add to VeraScenes as a function, and call it. remember that in this case, copyVariables should be initialized in startup code as follows

              VeraScenes = require("VeraScenes")
              copyVariable = VeraScenes.copyVariable
              VeraScenes.startWatches()
              ... other code...
              

              and in your VeraScenes, add

              devices = {
              	[61] = {sensorID = 89},
              	[65] = {sensorID = 94},
              	[63] = {sensorID = 95}
              }
              
              function copyVariable(dev_id, service, variable, oldValue, newValue)
              	if tonumber(oldValue) ~= tonumber(newValue) then
              		luup.log(string.format("Setting %s - %s for #%s to %s", service, variable, tostring(deviceID), tostring(newValue)))
              
              		local deviceID = devices[dev_id].sensorID
              		luup.variable_set(service, variable, newValue, deviceID)
              	end
              end
              
              function startWatches()
              	for deviceID, _ in next, devices do
              		luup.variable_watch("copyVariable", "urn:micasaverde-com:serviceId:SecuritySensor1", "Tripped", deviceID)
              	end
              end
              

              --
              On a mission to automate everything.

              My MS Reactor contrib
              My Luup Plug-ins

              cw-kid 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • cw-kid
                cw-kid @therealdb last edited by

                @therealdb said in Vera watch variable / startup LUA how ?:

                yes, but you could just add to VeraScenes as a function, and call it.

                I will try and do that for me.

                However I am writing a user guide for a particular Z-Wave device for others to follow on the forum and I am stuck on this part of the setup.

                So I need to make this as generic as possible.

                So I can just post the code directly in to the Startup Lua window ?

                Thanks

                therealdb 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • therealdb
                  therealdb @cw-kid last edited by

                  @cw-kid Yes. Code is here, if you just want to point to it 😉 https://github.com/dbochicchio/vera/blob/master/Scripts/CopyVariables.lua

                  --
                  On a mission to automate everything.

                  My MS Reactor contrib
                  My Luup Plug-ins

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • cw-kid
                    cw-kid last edited by

                    @therealdb OK its working ! I just pasted the raw code in to the startup LUA area and the virtual motion sensor now follows the real devices tripped status.

                    I am writing a user guide for the Everspring EH403 Floodlight device, as it doesn't configure correctly after pairing with Vera.

                    I will credit you for your code in the guide when I publish it on the forum.

                    Thanks

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                    • cw-kid
                      cw-kid @therealdb last edited by

                      @therealdb said in Vera watch variable / startup LUA how ?:

                      copyVariable = VeraScenes.copyVariable
                      VeraScenes.startWatches()

                      OK I am trying to add this code in to the VeraScenes.lua file now for myself.

                      This is what my startup looks like:

                      452be9f3-3305-44c9-a50c-daf8d736b8c4-image.png

                      I have just pasted the LUA code in to the end of my VeraScenes.lua file and uploaded it again to Vera

                      5b1fe877-d6c4-422f-80e5-0beccb13d01e-image.png

                      However I am getting an error in the blue banner in the Vera gui.

                      "ERROR : Error in lua for scenes and events"

                      Crille 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • Crille
                        Crille @cw-kid last edited by

                        @cw-kid Looks like you forgot to declare the function in VeraScenes

                        function startWatches()
                        therealdb 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                        • therealdb
                          therealdb @Crille last edited by

                          as @crille noted, I posted a specific version for the libs, in my second reply.

                          --
                          On a mission to automate everything.

                          My MS Reactor contrib
                          My Luup Plug-ins

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                          • cw-kid
                            cw-kid last edited by

                            Thanks guys that's all working OK now

                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                            • First post
                              Last post

                            Welcome. If you’d like to participate in the discussion, rather than just read, then you can join the forum. As a member, you can interact with others here to share your experience and ask the questions you need answered.

                            Powered by NodeBB | Contributors
                            Hosted freely by PointPub Media Communications Inc. | Contact us