Hi Everyone,

I've been working on an Alexa integration using MSR as the entity source. It seemed to make sense that if we use MSR for a variety of hubs and integrations, why wouldn't we populate the devices we want to use in Alexa from MSR rather than a separate integration from each controller?

It's a few Docker containers (bridge, provisioner, and mosquitto), a Lambda function, and an Amazon Developer Skill for Smart Home. State changes flow through MSR's MQTT add-on (using its "echo" feature) to a small bridge service, which reports them to Alexa — so it's not just polling, Alexa actually finds out the instant something changes.

There's also a small web UI for picking which MSR entities get exposed to Alexa and naming them — no editing config files by hand, just check a box and type a name.

Token management seems solid at this point, and I've been running it for about 4 days while refining it, and I think I'm ready to move everything over to it.

Right now, I've got switches, dimmers, and contact sensors, and I plan to add thermostats in the next few days as I have time.

If there's interest, let me know, and I'll publish the project with some docs when I think it is good enough to release.

Thanks for reading, and big thanks to Patrick for MSR.
Mike

@toggledbits

Willing to help however I can.

@catmanv2 Same here, it works but not 100% reliable. A few misses that seem to correlate to if I am on the phone or not. I really miss the reliability iPhone locator.

Happy Birthday!

@toggledbits I used something like that to dampen solar panel logic. I am not "legally" allowed to hook up, but I still wanted to play with them. I still have a dumb meter and it's easily possible to end up negative for the month. I used a couple of RIB relays to turn panel groups off if the consumption target for the month was trending under what would be considered believable.

(I also turn them off by the driveway entrance sensor logic on the days that I know the meter reader will show up. I don't particularly need an observant reader seeing the meter flying around backward)

@therealdb wow, that is what I was just looking at beacons. Looks promising if they are reliable.

I don't have gates, but I would not mind a few automated defensive turrets.

@catmanv2 Yeah, my use case is a little more particular. I don't have an issue with never getting notification changes, they are just more delayed than I would like. I think once you get MQTT and MSR talking a 5km is going be more than relievable enough.

I had iPhone locator poll/force location refresh when I came in my driveway and triggered the magnetic sensor. I needed the location to be accurate and updated by the time I reached either my house or my building on property. The driveway is about 300m long as the crow flies for region radius purposes, and traversal to either location is much less than 45 seconds.

For what it is worth, I do see instant (and I mean instant instant) location changes like @therealdb and @gwp1 reported when the app is open or recently accessed. The delay seems to come from the app being backgrounded and the phone idle for a long period.

@gwp1 with HASS iCloud3, can you remote request a location refresh of the phone? Meaning, could I have polling suspended until I ask for an update? I think I could get exactly what I am looking for with a combination of the two and some MSR logic.

@catmanv2 iPhone. I just returned home and it got a location trigger, but it was far from an instant trigger. The phone was in sleep for at least 30 minutes before I crossed the perimeter, and I would say the delay was in the area of 45 seconds.

Thanks for all of the input.

For whatever reason I am having the same spotty relationship with OwnTracks that @CatmanV2 has. One minute I think it's solved, the next minute it's missed a trigger.

With the success others have had, including @gwp1 with the same method of deployment, I must have something wrong. I'll keep working on it as time permits.

Thanks again

Something of note from OwnTracks with iOS.

"Why do location publishes sometimes seem to cease to work?
Here's what happens:
If the app goes into Background, the connection is disconnected because the app cannot maintain the TCP connection in background.
If you bring the app back into foreground, the app will re-connect.
When a location change is recorded (no matter if manual, significant, move or region mode), a message is prepared and an attempt to connect to the broker is started. If there is an error, connect will be retried after 2, 4, 8, ..., 64, 64, .... seconds until it succeeds.
BUT...
If the application is in background or is sent to the background, retries are restarted eventually - depending on iOS' background execution model about every 10 minutes.
With automatic modes switched off, even when bringing the app to foreground, no new location updates are generated."

@CatmanV2 Well, at least I know it was not just me. I knew this day was coming because he had said something in August when it was broken that he didn't know if it was fixable because of Apple's API. I am thinking they kicked everything that did not use 2FA authentication.

@therealdb I set up Owntracks on Hubitat because it was easy, and I could play with it. Looks like it is very flexible. How hard is it on the battery? I realize mileage will vary a lot on this, but that was a feature I liked about the iPhone locator app. It ran using Apple's "Find My" that was already running on the phone. It's slow to update, but if I needed to know where the phone was, I would force a poll of location from the app. Since I started refining my logic in MSR I have been using manual polling almost exclusively. Thanks again for the point in this direction.

@therealdb Thanks DB. I also looked at that, but I will check it out more thoroughly.

I wanted to try to keep the force refresh option available, but looking quickly, I didn't think there was a way to do that. I really liked the behavior of asking the phone, "where do you think you are, and do me a favor and double-check just to be sure." Using that one feature stopped a lot of delayed or false location reports during a critical event, but in fairness, maybe this stuff has gotten good enough that it won't be an issue.

@akbooer Thanks again, I will poke around a bit. I have not explored anything with HomeKit yet, but it was something on my list.

@akbooer Thanks, can you force an update of the phone location remotely, or does it rely on last reported?

Reposting here because core people seem to be here daily.

Hello Everyone,

I am using iPhone locator on Vera, and yesterday it stopped working. Looking at the logs, I can see the connection is refused, but nothing on my end changed. iPhone locator is really important in my particular setup, so I guess I have two questions.

Is it broken, or is it me?
I don't see anyone else saying there is an issue, but I am not sure how many people are still using it (or Vera for location) at this point. I installed it on a blank Vera test controller, same issue. It might be something with the iCloud account, but it works everywhere else.

Is there something similar on another platform?

Mainly what I would like is the ability to force a poll of iCloud location on demand. I have a bunch of triggers setup, including magnetic sensors in my driveway to sense vehicles and determine if the motion is egress or ingress. These triggers in conjunction with MSR have been a great way to double check phone location, and I would hate to lose this functionality. It looks like HA might have something with "iCloud3". Is anyone using it?

Thanks,
Mike

Hello Everyone,

I am using iPhone locator on Vera, and yesterday it stopped working. Looking at the logs, I can see the connection is refused, but nothing on my end changed. iPhone locator is really important in my particular setup, so I guess I have two questions.

Is it broken, or is it me?
I don't see anyone else saying there is an issue, but I am not sure how many people are still using it (or Vera for location) at this point. I installed it on a blank Vera test controller, same issue. It might be something with the iCloud account, but it works everywhere else.

Is there something similar on another platform?

Mainly what I would like is the ability to force a poll of iCloud location on demand. I have a bunch of triggers setup, including magnetic sensors in my driveway to sense vehicles and determine if the motion is egress or ingress. These triggers in conjunction with MSR have been a great way to double check phone location, and I would hate to lose this functionality. It looks like HA might have something with "iCloud3". Is anyone using it?

Thanks,
Mike

False alarm with both work and MSR. I went back to look and it cleared up on it's own.

Hi Patrick,

I don't know if this might be related, but I just saw something strange with a missing attribute as well. It looks like after the last update the Schlage lock attribute on Vera systems lost:

x_vera_svc_micasaverde_com_DoorLock1.sl_UserCode_updated

(missing) is after it when looking in rule>entities>triggers.

Something just came up at work as I was writing this, so I'll look through the logs when I am freed up.

@cw-kid I was thinking along these lines myself when I asked that question. Any device brought into MSR could then be brought into Home Remote regardless of Home Remote's native support.

Unless I am not understanding something correctly, MSR could be brought in essentially as a hub. If MSR could talk to it, Home Remote could talk to it. More importantly, for something I would like to do, I would like a specific triggered Home Remote function to interact with MSR. (I think you had done this already if I remember correctly)

I think this would open lots of additional automation avenues.

@toggledbits

Fair enough