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    (Last Updated: 21 April 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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    Caller ID in HA workflow

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    • LibraSun
      LibraSun last edited by LibraSun

      Has anyone successfully incorporated incoming call(er) information** within an automation workflow?

      I'm talking about having Alexa speak out the name and/or phone number of a caller, or activating a routine/scene based on that info.

      Always been a dream of mine. Wouldn't know how to achieve it! Do they make an Ethernet/WiFi-connected CallerID box?

      **from a LANDLINE, not a MOBILE PHONE (although in the case of my Google Voice #, both lines ring, and if my smartphone is home and turned on, I could see invoking Tasker somehow)

      REFERENCES:

      NCID - Network Caller ID

      [Please file under proper category, as you see fit]

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

        As a proof of concept, I rustled up the following workflow, and it works fantastically!

        ON VERA:
        Created a virtual sensor (dev #365) of type "Generic" using the Virtual Sensor plug-in by @toggledbits

        ON SMARTPHONE:
        Created new Tasker Profile that activates when Phone is Ringing > Runs task: HTTP Request (GET) > payload =

        http://<my_vera_ip>:3480/data_request?id=variableset&DeviceNum=365&serviceId=urn:toggledbits-com:serviceId:VirtualSensor1:SetValue&Variable=newValue&Value=%CNUM
        

        where the built-in Tasker variable %CNUM automatically substitutes the caller's 11-digit phone number.

        Works a charm! Now, I can have MSR simply monitor the 'New Value' variable on the VS and react accordingly.

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

          I have something similar to get the status of my home office PC when in a VOIP call. It will trigger a virtual switch that's driving a BusyLight oustide my office, sending a notification to my TVs and running a couple of scenes based on the time, to turn on a couple of lights automatically when I'm in a videocall.

          --
          On a mission to automate everything.

          My MS Reactor contrib
          My Luup Plug-ins

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

            For funsies, I took things a step further using Pushover (recommended by the creator of MSR). After setting up a Desktop notification endpoint in Pushover, I simply instruct MSR to send a push notification to my browser whenever a phone call comes in.

            The process starts, as mentioned above, in Tasker. I modified the value= component of the GET URL so that it sends more than just the phone number; now, it passes %CNAME, %CNUM, 'Libra cell' as a comma-separated list of three items: the caller's name, number and the name I assign to my mobile device.

            In my Caller ID Log rule in MSR, that information (as explained above) gets routed through a virtual sensor on Vera, then pulled into an Expression with:

            callerNum  :=  getEntity( "vera>device_365" ).attributes.x_vera_svc_toggledbits_com_VirtualSensor1_SetValue.newValue
            

            and turned into a 5-element array using:

            callerArr  :=  split( "IN," + timeStamp + "," + trim(callerNum), "," )
            // yields [ "IN", <call_time>, <caller_name>, <caller_number>, <device_label> ]
            // NOTE: timeStamp is a Global Expression that I defined separately in MSR
            

            from which MSR can easily pluck the pieces needed to compose a Pushover notification.

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

              For anyone into formatting phone numbers using MSR's built-in Regex engine, here's one possible Expression to try. It takes an 11-digit U.S. phone number string, extracts the digits using capture groups, and formats them with dashes, all in one go:

              phNum  :=  
              a="+12345678901",
              b=substr(replace(a,"(\\d{1})(\\d{3})(\\d{3})(\\d{4})","$2-$3-$4"),-12,12),
              b
              

              // yields (string) "234-567-8901"

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

                Slight tangent, but I’ve been using sipgate voip service ( https://www.sipgate.co.uk/ ) for years, and I’ve never really explored its API..

                There seems to be a wealth of capabilities in there.. - https://api.sipgate.com/v2/doc

                If it’s of interest to you or any others, my initial attempt to authenticate / use it is below..

                #!/usr/bin/lua
                
                print("start of whole code")
                
                local https = require "ssl.https"
                local mime = require "mime"
                local json = require "dkjson"
                --local http = require "socket.http"
                local data = ""
                local username = "sipname"
                local password = "sippass"
                
                local function collect(chunk)
                  if chunk ~= nil then
                    data = data .. chunk
                    end
                  return true
                end
                
                local ok, statusCode, headers, statusText = https.request {
                  method = "GET",
                  url = "https://api.sipgate.com/v2/history",
                  headers = {
                    ["Accept"] = "application/json",
                    ["Authorization"] = "Basic " .. (mime.b64(username ..":" .. password)),
                    },
                  sink = collect
                }
                
                print("data = ", data)
                local sip = json.decode(data)
                print("---------")
                for k, v in pairs(sip) do
                	print(k, "\t", v)
                  end
                print("---------")
                for n, a in pairs(sip.items) do
                	print(n, "\t", a)
                end
                print("---------")
                for p, k in pairs(sip.items) do
                	--print(n, "\t", a)
                print("---------")
                for d, e in pairs(sip.items[p]) do
                		print(d, "\t", e)
                end
                end
                print("---------")
                
                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • LibraSun
                  LibraSun last edited by

                  So many of the Callback / VOIP / SIP / SMS / etc. services also provide code templates to use against their API, which is awesome. But you bring up an interesting point, @parkerc ... I've never seen "Lua" among the languages they offer, lol!

                  Nice to see you rolling your own. And if it works, perhaps send the company a copy for them to add to their library?

                  parkerc 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • parkerc
                    parkerc @LibraSun last edited by

                    @librasun said in Caller ID in HA workflow:

                    . But you bring up an interesting point, @parkerc ... I've never seen "Lua" among the languages they offer, lol!

                    Exactly !, I noticed that too, no one seems to promote Lua

                    @librasun said in Caller ID in HA workflow:

                    Nice to see you rolling your own. And if it works, perhaps send the company a copy for them to add to their library?

                    It took me a while to just get that working, I don’t think those types of companies will want to use my pieced together bits of code 🙂

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
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