For the time being I have disabled the Guest account on the BBS. In order to access it from here (or via Telnet) you’ll need to spend the extra 30 seconds and set up an account. Bear in mind that accounts without a valid email address will be deleted. I don’t spam folks with crap but I need a way to get in touch for password resets, etc.
For some reason the port forwarding stopped working on my router recently. I’ve temporarily fixed the problem so you should be able to get back in. Sorry about that.
Also, I haven’t been on myself in several weeks so if you have attempted to contact me and I haven’t answered that is why. I’ll log in tonight and respond to everyone. As always, the easiest way to contact me is through email or Hangouts.
My BBS and a few other internal services will be down until tomorrow evening. My router (or at least it’s settings) has gone tits up and reset everything to default including all of my port forwarding settings. I don’t have the time or patience to mess with it tonight but will fix it as soon as I get home tomorrow afternoon.
Looking through the logs this was apparently the result of a pretty heavy DoS attack.
Growing up I played Dungeons and Dragons extensively. The original D&D, Advanced D&D, 3rd Edition, you name it. Really from about 1976 up until the early 90s I was a big fan. Still have most of the books, boxed sets, modules, dice and a crapload of full notebooks where I created my own stuff.
Anyway, that’s what it was all about. Pen & Pencil. Even just getting ready to set up a new campaign took a lot of preparation before you could even begin.
While I haven’t played in years I still occasionally follow news of the game. RPGs are using new technology to help improve game play and make it a little easier and Wizards of the Coast is attempting to join the club by creating D&D Beyond, a new digital toolset to be used with Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition.
D&D Beyond is being built in partnership with Curse and provides players and DMs with a rules compendium, character builder, character sheets, item listings and more.
Back in 2014 they attempted to release a tool called Dungeonscape and that ended up falling through.
D&D Beyond isn’t ready for a full release yet but if you want to sign up to beta test it once they are ready you can check it out here.
So you’ve spent all your money on a crapload of smarthome devices and don’t have anything else to spend on software, or you just like tinkering with stuff and discovering how and why they work, or maybe you’re just a fan of not supporting developers for their hard work and want something for free. Actually that was sort of snide. There are plenty of people that support developers but also like open source software, myself included. Any way you look at it we’ve got you covered.
Here’s a short list of free and/or open source home automation software.
First off is Eventghost. Eventghost is not actually strictly HA software and was not designed for that. What is it then? EG is a Windows based automation tool. It can use different input controls such as infrared, wireless remotes, game controllers, keyboards or input from remote devices to trigger macros. It could be used to control a media center computer but it’s also possible to use for a hell of a lot more than that.
My personal use is sort of as a middle man. There is an Eventghost plugin for HomeSeer that I use for the two to communicate. I also use the MQTT protocol for the same thing. I set up some of the cheap Chinese miLight LED light strips in my kitchen. For some reason the app I use with it won’t communicate with the Wifi hub so I set it up on my personal PC and let EG make sure it’s constantly running. I also have an old Snapstream Firefly remote set up and Eventghost intercepts those commands and forwards them to my FireTV as well as to Homeseer. I also use it with Tasker and Autoremote so that I can control my PC remotely if needed. That’s currently about it. I used to use a convoluted system of macros so that Homeseer would know exactly which HDMI input was on and turn on/off the correct virtual devices via my Globalcache IR devices. Currently that is disabled until I have time to really work out how I want it set up.
Anyway, it supports just about any type of PC connected remote receiver you can think of, tons of built-in program controls as well as hardware via serial port, over Ethernet and USB. For a semi-complete listing you can check out this list.
Domoticz is an HA system with support for quite a few devices and additional support for 3rd party integrations. It was designed with an HTML5 front end so can be accessed via desktop and mobile. It’s pretty lightweight as well and can run on the Raspberry Pi as well as OSX, Windows and Linux. The source code is available on GitHub and is released under the GPLv3.
Home Assistant is available on GitHub and is released under an MIT license. It can be run on anything that will handle Python 3. It supports quite a few commercial and open source devices and hubs and also allows you to integrate with Alexa and IFTTT. I’ve been toying with the idea of running HomeAssistant as another secondary (tertiary I suppose) controller in addition to HomeSeer just because of the amount of stuff it supports and will control. I’m only really familiar with Python 2 but I do know that 2 and 3 can run concurrently from what I understand.
OpenHAB is popular among open source folks that are into HA. There is a large support community and it’s written in Java so will run on just about anything, including the Pi. It supports hundreds of devices and software and also has Android and iOS apps. OpenHAB’s source is on GitHub and is released under the Eclipse Public License.
Open Source Automation is the last one we’re looking at today. I’m not very familiar with OSA yet but it looks promising. It runs on Windows only and doesn’t appear to be open source, only free. There seems to be a wide range of plugins and more in development.
Do you use any of these or something else? There several other free programs available, some of which have been around for a long time as well.
Funny that I wrote about these earlier but Homecontrols is currently having a sale on a few items including Vera. You can pick up the VeraEdge for $69.95 and the VeraPlus for $119.95. That’s a $30 savings over Amazon’s price for the plus. The Zipato Z-Wave RGBW LED Light Bulb is on sale for $39 (that’s $20 off) and there are a couple of other items as well.
HomeSeer also has some items on sale as well, mainly open box and refurbished items. I shop there and have purchased several open box items without any issues. Looks like they currently have about 20 items on clearance including a couple of Global Cache products that I really want. Just not the right time to be spending money considering my upcoming trip.
Smarthome also has some decent deals as well. I’ve used them in the past but not in the last few years. Never had any problems with them either. The carry quite a bit of Insteon products, which makes sense as the parent company for both is Smartlabs. The Smarthome store isn’t limited to their own products however, and they usually have a pretty large inventory.
As far as home automation hubs go, the sky is the limit… as far as cost anyway. There’s a pretty large range in what they can do and it all depends on what you want to do and how technical you are as well.
If all you want to do is control a few items and don’t mind having to open different apps then you are probably good to go just buying those items and possibly even a Google Home or Amazon Echo in order to control them via your voice. Neither of those are true hubs as some web sites claim but for simplicity I’ll include them in the list as well.
Since I brought it up, lets start with Amazon’s offerings first. They range in cost from the original Amazon Echo
The service also allows you to access “skills”, over 10,000 at last count, most of which are useless junk but there are a few gems there.
I don’t want to fail to mention that if you own a FireTV or FireTV stick you can also access Alexa that way as well with one of Amazon’s voice remotes.
Next up is Google Home. Like Alexa, Home is not an actual hub but does allow you to control home automation hubs as well as individual devices. Currently the list of compatible items is shorter than Alexa but Amazon had a two year head start in the area and is currently firmly entrenched in the market. I’m a pretty big Google fanboy and have a Google Home sitting in my kitchen but thus far the Echo and it’s usefulness blows away Home for my family.
Home allows you to play music on Spotify, YouTube Music, Pandora and more. Not Amazon Music of course lol.
While Alexa uses Bing for it’s search engine, Home naturally uses Google. While there are some strange things you can find using Google search I have found that it’s more accurate and inclusive than Bing (fake news aside…)
Home allows you to connect to the Honeywell and Nest thermostats, Wemo, Phillips Hue and Samsung SmartThings. Using IFTTT (Alexa also supports IFTTT as well) you can control ANY other hub or software that has IF support as well. That’s how I have my Home set up to connect to HomeSeer currently.
If you are a Chromecast fan Home will also allow you to control those as well.
Next up is the Samsung SmartThings Hub
There is a dedicated mobile app to access SmartThings as well. I can’t say how well it works as SmartThings is one item I haven’t tested yet.
You can set rules for what you want your devices to do based on time, other device activity (such as motion sensors, etc) and can monitor cameras and other security items.
The SmartThings Hub contains ZigBee and Z-Wave radios and also allows you to control IP based devices. There is also a pretty active community of SmartThings users as well.
I wouldn’t mind hearing from satisfied SmartThings users as to what all it can do as the only ones I know have ditched the platform looking for more robustness in HomeSeer.
A hub I am familiar with is the Wink Hub
The original Wink hub is compatible with devices from GoControl, Nest, Quirky (now defunct), Kidde, Honeywell, Cree, GE, Dropcam, Kwikset, Lutron, Rachio, Philips, TCP, Schlage, Chamberlain and Leviton as well as more.
Wink Hub can control devices that use protocols such as Z-wave, ZigBee, Lutron ClearConnect, Bluetooth Low Energy, Wifi and Kidde.
Currently my Wink Hub is controlling most of my Z-Wave devices, some GE Link lightbulbs and a Pivot Power Genius power strip.
Wink and the Wink Hub 2 are also Alexa and IFTTT compatible as well. I use both to make sure that HomeSeer and Wink are in sync with each other. The original Wink Hub can be found on Amazon for about $60 (you can find it at Home Depot for $50 or less occasionally although they may have run through their stock by now) and the Wink Hub 2 is $96.
The Wink Hub 2 has a faster processor and more memory (512 mb vs 64 mb) so will run faster. The Wifi radio is apparently more powerful as well. A couple of things it has that the original hub does not is auto-discovery of devices and an Ethernet port.
Out of the few hubs I have tested I have to say that I am very pleased with Wink’s products. While it does not offer quite the level of control and automation I am used to, for an entry level system (and about 95% of the users out there) I would definitely recommend Wink.
Next in line is the set of Vera Hubs
Anyway, it appears that they have upgraded their hubs and you now have three selections to choose from, each going up in cost based on how many devices you want to control. The VeraEdge lets you control up to 75 devices and supports Z-Wave, the VeraPlus 125 and has Z-Wave, ZigBee and Bluetooth support and the VeraSecure up to 200 and supports the same protocols as the others as well as includes a backup battery. If you have more than 200 devices I guess you’re shit out of luck. Including Virtual Devices and Times, etc I currently have 565 devices in my system.
Vera does have a pretty active community and there are quite a few plugin authors as well allowing for supporting more products than those listed above.
Last but not least comes the ones I am much more familiar with… HomeSeer. (yes, that is an affiliate link lol)
HomeSeer started out strictly as software but over the last 20 years has branched into their own line of hubs, switches and sensors. They also sell many other quality products over at their online store. Unlike Samsung and possibly other companies as well, HomeSeer is based in the United States.
Since we are talking about Hubs today let’s take a look at their offerings. As far as all of the hubs I have gone through these are by far the most expensive. You get what you pay for.
The lowest priced hub is the HomeTroller Zee S2. It runs on a Raspberry Pi3 and allows for the use of five plugins, or drivers (Linux based.). technologies it supports includes Z-Wave, Insteon, X10, UPB, PLC-BUS and Modbus. Specifically it support all brands of Z-Wave lighting, Philips Hue and LiFX, Thermostats including all Z-Wave, Ecobee, Nest and HAI Omnistat, all brands of Z-Wave door locks, Audio solutions from Sonos, Russound, Denon, Onkyo , Security systems from DSC, Ademco Vista and Elk M1G, Media from iTunes, Windows Media Player, DirectTV, Kodi, Pool/Spa devices from Goldline, Pentair and Autelis. It has 4 USB ports, Ethernet, wifi, a line out Audio port and HDMI. It runs for $199.
All their controllers offer Alexa and IFTTT support
The HomeTroller-SEL and SEL-PRO range from $399-$699. They are built on Linux and support all Linux plugins including all of those listed above. They offer 2 and 4 times the amount of memory and a 32GB SSD instead of the 8GB SD card that comes with the Zee S2. They also have VGA in addition to the HDMI port.
The two top of the line models that HomeSeer offers are the HomeTroller S6 for $899 and the S6 PRO for $1199. Both of these are Windows embedded systems and in addition to the plugins and controllers listed above also add the ability to control items from Lutron Caseta, Lutron Radio RA2, Marantz, Pioneer, GE Concord 4. They have a mic in (for voice recognition) and line out and instead of a VGA port it includes a DVI port in addition to the HDMI that all of them offer.
A more complete listing of plugins and technologies Homeseer supports can be found here.
Aside from the different technologies available HomeSeer has a very robust events system as well as scripting. Some of my events include:
One thing I almost failed to mention is the mobile interface. Homeseer does have their HSTouch plugin, included in Pro versions and available for purchase as an addon as well. There are clients for iOS, Android and Windows. There are a lot of people that swear by it. My own experience with HSTouch is less than stellar. I found it buggy, unresponsive and a pain in the ass to use. The designer is also difficult to use and non-intuitive. It all seems like beta software that was never finished and anything you say to the developers falls on deaf ears. I keep hoping that they will eventually move to an HTML5 model and update their mobile apps to be on par with other hubs. Until then I’ll keep using Wink or one of the several 3rd party solutions. That having been said, HS is still the strongest HA software packages I’ve used and mobile access aside it’s still the best.
These are not the only hubs available but they seem to be the most popular. Do you have one that isn’t listed that you prefer? Let me know.
Unless you’re like me and spend the next 17 years picking up odd bits of equipment here and there and slowly build up your Home Automation system, one of the biggest barriers to getting introduced to Home Automation is the cost. It’s most definitely not a cheap hobby. If all you want to do is pick up a few lights to amaze your friends (home control, not automation) then it isn’t too bad. If you truly want to make your home smart it can be quite prohibitive.
In that vein of thought here are a few ways to get introduced to home automation (HA) that won’t break the bank.
Cree Connected Dimmable LED Light Bulb
Philips Hue White A19 Starter Kit
INSTEON Home Control Starter Kit
Echo Dot (2nd Generation)
I have the original Echo as well as four Echo Dots scattered through the house and while I like to talk a lot about not counting on the “cloud” for your HA system, Alexa is probable the most important and useful piece of equipment I have added to my set up in the last decade. Most HA hubs and software are compatible with Alexa as are most of the connected devices. If you just want voice control of a myriad of devices and apps but want to tie them together without true automation the Echo Dot is the way to go. Over $100 cheaper than the original echo makes it a great purchase.
If you only want to use it for voice (and speech responses) it can be used as is. If you also want to be able to play music I recommend connecting it to a set of speakers via Bluetooth or the 3.5mm jack.
Controls lights, fans, switches, thermostats, garage doors, sprinklers, locks, and more with compatible connected devices from WeMo, Philips Hue, Samsung SmartThings, Nest, ecobee, and others.
There are also several other cheap ways to get into the hobby including Wemo switches, TP-Link plugs and others but these are a good start. Next time we’ll talk about Hubs and a quick intro into actually automating all of the devices you’ve managed to pick up.
I’ve been a pretty loyal HomeSeer user for the last 17 years or so, ever since I got into Home Automation. While there are plenty of pros and cons about it, mainly because it’s paid and everyone wants free beer, that’s not what this is about. I’ll touch on that later. One of the things I like about it so much isn’t even part of the software itself. It’s the user forums. The HomeSeer forums are for user to user support (the devs are also somewhat active there as well and monitor it) and it is one of the oldest home automation forums currently online. Over the years the support from the company has been hit and miss for me but I can almost always find the answers to what I need in the forums.
Anyway, here are a few things you can do with HomeSeer.
There are a lot of other things NOT on this list and some pretty amazing things I’ve seen/heard people do. Control of holiday lighting (damn, I still need to get those icicles off my front porch), starting your vehicle, intercoms, weather reports and news, automatic animal feeding, etc. You also get what you pay for. I’ve seen quite a few different home automation systems and hubs come and go over the years, particularly in the last five to ten, but Homeseer is still here for me. Staples Connect? Dead and discontinued. Revolv? Nest purchased them and shut it down. If you were customers that purchased either of these in the last couple of years you are shit out of luck. Homeseer was originally designed to work on Windows but now it also runs on Linux and the Raspberry Pi.
Updated 3/12/17 – It was mentioned that the Nest Thermostat does not work without Internet connectivity. That’s not entirely true. The thermostat does continue to function as normal, it is the remote control features that won’t work without Internet.
Last week’s little “hiccup” with Amazon AWS servers and a large portion on the web basically going down because of it sucked for a lot of people. There were a lot of websites that were down and reports of people sitting in the dark because they couldn’t control their lighting, they had no access to their media, etc. First world problems, right? What about folks that couldn’t turn their heat on in the middle of winter and had pipes freeze? That’s a bigger deal. I don’t know if that actually happened but the outage did effect Nest thermostats. I’ve made this point before and the incident with AWS just goes to prove it.
Don’t get me wrong. I have an Echo and several Dots scattered throughout the house in addition to a single Google Home in my kitchen. I extensively use IFTTT and also have a couple of Wemo’s (one is my coffeemaker) and Hue lights. They are nice accessories in my overall system but the system isn’t dependent on them. They are just value added things.
My lights are all locally controlled as my Home Automation system is hosted on a PC in my basement, but a Raspberry Pi would work just as fine. It runs it’s own web server as well so I can access it locally on my phone if that’s how I want to do it. Most of the lights are normal bulbs as I use Z-Wave (and a few remaining X10) switches that can also be turned off and on manually. Wow, light switches you turn on with your hand? Whoulda thunk it.
I use HomeSeer Speaker on a couple of PCs and while it doesn’t work nearly as well as Alexa, if I really wanted to go back to local voice control I could. Even though the girls all use Pandora or Play Music, the same stuff that’s in my Play Music library is also hosted on my Amazon Account for redundancy and oh, by the way, I also keep a duplicate on my Home Automation server as well. The Echo and Dots work just fine as bluetooth speakers with or without Internet.
I considered for about five minutes getting a Nest Thermostat or Ecobee before I said fuck it and spent slightly LESS money for a Z-Wave Thermostat I purchased from the Homeseer store. It’s a win/win for me. Cheaper and not dependent on the Internet or the vagaries of a company going out of business or deciding to kill off support for their hardware.
My heat lamp in the chicken house turns off and on based on the outside temperature which I get, not from IFTTT or Internet based weather service, but from an Oregon Scientific temp sensor. I have a couple outside and two or three more scattered throughout the house so if one craps out I’m still good.
Worst case scenario, the PC in my basement bites the dust? I perform an automatic backup of it every single night onto my personal PC and another copy is kept offsite just in case it temporarily goes offline.
Bottom line is that while the “Internet of Things”, IFTTT, Stringify, Google Home and the rest of the stuff in the cloud are all cool, awesome addons to a system they should not form the basis of your HA system. The Wink Hub and other hubs that are dependent on the Internet should not be your only control over your HVAC, lighting, media, etc. Before you go investing in Smart Home stuff think about it and get what you pay for. If you don’t or can’t spend the money on something like Homeseer or Control4 that’s fine. There are plenty of open source options. They may take a little more work to set up and have slightly less support options but they are just as robust.
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