Home Automation

How to Control the Xiaomi Mi Vacuum from HomeSeer

rmiles7721October 1, 20172Home Automation

Back about a decade ago we had a Roomba I had received while doing the payperpost . The wife and I liked it and it did a pretty good job. It eventually died as electronics do and I wasn’t able to resurrect it. Eventually it went to the dump. Rather than replace it we just got a normal vacuum. The price of iRobot’s stuff is prohibitive and very much a luxury. A few weeks back I received an email from Gearbest and went to check it out. One of the things on sales was a Xiaomi Mi Vacuum. An extremely good deal so I went ahead and picked it up.

I finally received the vacuum a few days ago. Everything in Chinese, instructions, the voice (it has a built-in speaker), everything. It didn’t take me very long to figure out how to get it working though. The app lets you choose the language you are going to use so that made it a bit easier. I had not planned on doing a write-up of it so if I leave out steps or get something out of order, tough shit.

Since this thing could be controlled via Android remotely I knew that in theory I should be able to control it from Homeseer (my home automation software) with some work. I came across some python scripts and saw that you could control it via Home Assistant (another, free HA software). This “tutorial” is not the only way to do this and there are probably simpler ways to do it in less steps but you have to remember, I am not a coder at all and some of that shit just blows my mind when I look at it.

Anyway, here are the steps I took as best I can remember.

    1. First thing I did was to download the Mi Home app from the play store and set it up. I originally picked the U.S. server during set up but it really didn’t provide a lot of options. After a bit of reading I changed that to the mainland China server which gave me complete control over the vacuum.
    2. Set up Home Assistant. There are only a few things I can’t already control from Homeseer and I also wanted a way to integrate them all so HASS seemed to be the best way to do that. I already have a Raspberry Pi running NodeRED and MQTT for location tracking so figured I would be able to communicate between Homeseer and HASS that way.
    3. Follow the directions here to get control of the vacuum  from HASS. The hardest part is retrieving the access token for the vacuum. You need to be comfortable using the commandline and ADB in order to do so. If you have something other than an Android phone I don’t know any other way to do it. If you have a rooted phone (I don’t) the instructions seem to be even easier. Read through the entire page first before you start following their directions.
    4. The vacuum shows up as a switch on the main HASS page as below. 
    5. In Home Assistant’s configuration.yaml uncomment and set the http api password (near the top of the file).
    6. I seem to be having issues with MQTT and being able to control things back and forth from Homeseer to HASS without using eventghost so I chose to go with a more direct route. It doesn’t offer status updates back to Homeseer unfortunately but it does give me control and uses the HASS api which is why I set the password in step 5 and uses Curl. If you are running HS on a linux PC or raspberry pi Curl is already there. If you run under Windows then download it.  Here is my commandline:  c:\apps\curl.exe -X POST -H “x-ha-access: PASSWORD” http://192.168.86.65:8123/api/services/vacuum/turn_on or /turn_off
    7. In Homeseer create a virtual device called “vacuum” or whatever you want. I made sure to leave the voice control box checked on this.
    8. Create two events. One that triggers when the virtual device turns on and another when it turns off. For the action, choose Run Another Program or Process, browse to Curl and enter the command line parameters above. The turn_on parameter starts the vacuum in cleaning mode and turn_off directs it to go back to the dock.
    9. If you use Alexa, run discovery. Since I left the Voice Control box checked during my virtual device setup Alexa found it and now I can say “Alexa, turn on the vacuum” to start it!

 

I still have several things to do. During my initial setup of the app I set up a schedule for the floor to be cleaned twice a day. I need to remove that and create a scheduled event in Homeseer. This allows for local control and doesn’t depend on control from a server in mainland China. As a matter of fact it’s probably a good idea to block any IPs from China at your router if you have any sort of IOT devices.

I also need to figure out why I can’t just control my Homeseer devices via MQTT. I can send commands from Homeseer to Eventghost and NodeRED but don’t yet know how to trigger HASS switches and other devices via MQTT. Also any MQTT commands that Homeseer receives don’t seem to trigger devices. I have to intercept them in Eventghost and use a Homeseer event to get them working.

Five Free Home Automation Tools

rmiles7721March 14, 2017Home Automation

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.

Today’s Home Automation Deals

rmiles7721March 13, 2017Home Automation

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.

Home Automation Hubs and How to Pick One

rmiles7721March 13, 2017Home Automation

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 priced at 179.99, the portable Amazon Tap for $129.99 down to the Echo Dot for $49.99. Each of them has it’s own slightly different characteristics but they all allow you to play music from Amazon Music, Spotify, Pandora, iHeartRadio and TuneIn (sadly Google Play Music is not included.) They can answer questions (using Bing), read audiobooks, give you the news and weather and for our purposes here, control smart devices including devices from Wemo, Phillips Hue, Nest and Ecobee and allow you to connect to hubs such as SmartThings, HomeSeer, Wink and more.

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 for about $99. A true HA hub, SmartThings is compatible with Alexa voice control as well as Google Home, Leviton Z-Wave switches and modules (as well as those from other manufacturers), Phillips Hue devices, Sylvania smart bulbs, Netgear Arlo and Ring Doorbell, Schlage and Yale smartlocks, thermostats from Honeywell and Ecobee, Bose soundsystems, Keen Home Smart Vents and a ton of other connected Samsung appliances and devices just to mention a few.

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 and Wink Hub 2. I own the original Wink Hub and while I had a lot of problems with it early on I think that had more to do with my Wifi network than anything. Since I upgraded to Google mesh networking my hub has been rock solid. While I do use HomeSeer as my main software, it’s mobile interface is crap. I have Wink set up as a secondary Z-Wave controller and use the Wink mobile interface to operate my lights. The app is very simple and elegant and just what the family needs. While setting up a complicated home automation network can be confusingly intertwined it should be simple to operate for it’s main users. If it’s faster to just get up off the couch and do something, why bother to automate it?

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. My experience with the Vera a couple of years ago was less than pleasant. The software was buggy as hell and I had a very hard time pairing Z-Wave devices with it. X-10 support was less than stellar and the tech support was crap. I guess “less than pleasant” was an understatement.

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:

  • if the temp (from my weather station) is less than 46 degrees, turn on the heat lamp in the chicken house
  • if the wattage from my washing machine is above 2.5 watts and drops below that it sends us a message and flashes some lights letting us know the cycle is complete. It also tells me via the speaker client running on the PC in my bedroom and in the living room. Once Amazon allows for push notifications that’ll be one of the first things I add to Alexa here.
  • If I tell Alexa to turn on FireTV it runs on the television, changes the HDMI input to the correct one (in my bedroom.) If the TV in the living room turns on, the JVC receiver also turns on (or off)
  • If there is motion in my yard and it’s after sunset the outside lights come one and then turn off five minutes after no more motion is detected. Which ones come on depend on where the motion was. When I open the door in the morning my foyer light, porch light and driveway lights all turn on for 15 minutes.
  • My air conditioner is old and sometimes will kick the breaker during the summer in high usage. If the temperature goes above a certain setting it sends all of us and email and text so we can reset it.
  • If the doorbell is run and we are at home, lights flash and the speaker client lets us know someone is there. If we aren’t at home it just kicks on a few lights and sends us a text.
  • Overall I have a couple hundred scripts running. Most are pretty simple but some are fairly involved.

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.

 

 

How to get into Home Automation on the Cheap

rmiles7721March 12, 2017Home Automation

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 At just under $15 per bulb these are one of the more affordable controllable light bulbs. No color changing and no extra bells or whistles. They require some type of external hub in order to control (which we’ll get into on a later post)

 

Philips Hue White A19 Starter Kit An excellent purchase and good way to get introduced to HA. It’s also compatible with most, if not all, hubs and software (some via plugins) if you want to integrate your system later. These are the basic white LED bulbs but they also include the Hue bridge meaning you can control them via an app on your phone, through the meethue.com website and with Alexa (or Google Home.) Just under $70.

 

INSTEON Home Control Starter Kit An older home automation protocol, Insteon is more reliable than the old X10 stuff but still pretty relevant. At $49 this is a good way to get starter. This beginner’s kit includes the Insteon hub and two dimmer modules. Just plug your lights in and set up the hub and you are good to go. I went straight from X10 to Z-wave and never had much experience with Insteon but know quite a few people who did and they are very happy with it. This hub allows you to set up automation scheduling and expands to let you add both Insteon and Nest thermostats, light bulbs, switches, ceiling fans, etc. It is also compatible with the Amazon Echo and can be controlled via your phone.

 

Echo Dot (2nd Generation) While not a true HA device the Echo and it’s smaller cousin the Echo Dot allow you to control connected HA devices via voice as well as a ton of other things, some pretty neat and others….that are quite useless. $49.99

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.

Ten Things You Can Do With HomeSeer Home Automation

rmiles7721March 11, 2017Home Automation

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.

  1. Voice Control – While there is a skill for Alexa (which I use extensively now and love it) Homeseer has this baked in and I’ve been using it for a long time. No need to worry if the CIA is listening in because it’s all local. I have found (at least with the hardware that I currently have) that if you have a decent microphone array the voice recognition works very well. It’s only so-so with regular PC microphones.  Using plugins and scripts you can have it function as your own Jarvis with custom responses.
  2. IFTTT support – Even though I prefer to make sure that everything important is 100% local control I like being able to tie IFTTT in with my system. Like Alexa, it adds a lot of value to my system. I also use a few Hue lights and Wemo devices (my coffee maker has Wemo built in) and even though it’s easy to add them in to my Alexa I also like to have my home automation system keep track of an control things. TV show ready to download? Turn my desk lamp red and sends me a text (this can be done without IFTTT actually but that’s what I am using it for.) Last person leaves the house (tracked with the life360 app)…turn down the heat and make sure the doors are locked. I have started using the MQTT protocol as well and am in the process of removing IFTTT from stuff like this.
  3. Cameras! – I am a nut about this and have been since my oldest daughter hit her teenage years. Currently I have about ten or eleven feeds going and a couple more cameras installed. With security cameras you have several choices. Spend a ton of money on a system with compatible cameras or be like me…get whatever is on sale on eBay. Homeseer, using the HSTouch plugin has support for Foscam right out of the box but I chose a more complicated solution. I have seven hardwired cameras all connected to an old Samsung DVR. It’s a Walmart piece of crap basically, at least the software is. I also have two Foscams and a couple of webcams up and running. Everything is password protected. The thing about each of them is that they all have a feed. Rather than using a separate app on my phone to view them I use the Blue Iris software to pull all the feeds into one central place. I can view them all via web browser, the desktop software or the Android app. There is also a Blue Iris plugin for Homeseer. It allows me to have the cameras double as motion detectors to switch on lights, send me notifications, etc. I can also use my actual motion detectors and door/window sensors to tell Blue Iris to start/stop recording, send notifications to my phone and more.
  4. Media control – I am currently using HomeSeer and several Globalcache IR controllers to operate my televisions and dumb audio receivers. Yeah, just as easy to use a remote but I can tell HomeSeer (or, more often than not) to “turn on FireTV” and it switches on my television and change the HDMI input to FireTV, If I say “turn on movie time it does the same but dims my lights and turns on the LED strip backlighting that’s behind the TV
  5. Tell us if someone is at the door – I really like the idea of the Ring video doorbell and things of that ilk and while I will probably pony up the cash eventually to get one I am currently using a combination of Blue Iris and a camera and motion detectors to achieve the same results. I haven’t really been interested in adding it in but I also have a Chromecast hooked to a set of speakers on the front porch so the wife can listen to music out there and I could add in a message for visitors if I really wanted to. “Get off my fucking lawn!” I also have a Z-wave device hooked to the doorbell so that when someone rings it several lights flash and Homeseer hollers “someone is ringing the doorbell”. I think everyone in my house is deaf so this has come in handy with the pizza delivery and UPS several times.
  6. Control the thermostat – I looked at Ecobee and Nest when my thermostat finally crapped out last year and ended up opting for a Honeywell Z-Wave thermostat. Not only is it cheaper but being Z-Wave I am able to control it with Homeseer. It offers me the ability to control with Alexa but I also set the schedules from my HA system. Not only that but if someone has left a window open it will turn off the air (or heat) and tell everyone that a window is open, please shut all the windows and try again. I control the temp based on the time of year, time of day, occupancy in the house as well as the local temperature. Yes, you can use IFTTT and Nest (for instance) to do the same thing, but I prefer to be able to use the local temperature from the weather station on my back deck rather than the temp from a general area. It never matches the temp at my house anyway. Internet down? Some asshat hit the wrong key over at Amazon? Doesn’t matter. Thermostats are system critical and should never be trusted to the cloud.
  7. Tell me when the laundry is finished – This is a big win. My washing machine is plugged into a Z-Wave appliance module that monitors the energy usage so I know when it’s finished running and a couple of computers tell us when it’s complete and a couple of lights flash. I am looking forward to Amazon adding in the ability to push notifications as this will be one of the first things I add to it. I don’t currently have my dryer hooked up but it’s on the list.
  8. Monitoring of STUFF! – Just about anything can be monitored using plugins or scripts and events. Power usage, Internet usage, lights, doors, windows, RSS feeds, web sites, occupancy, the list is endless. I use a combination of text messages and emails to notify me of different stuff around the house.
  9. Actually turn stuff OFF – Most modern appliances such as televisions, receivers, computer gear never really turn off. Even when you turn them off they still continue to draw a minuscule amount of power. If you really want to be green just add an appliance module and have them completely cut off. The cents start to add up over a period of time.
  10. Control TV/Internet usage. Back when my son was in high school and still living with us everything on my network was hard wired (no wifi.) He tended to stay up late playing Soldier of Fortune and probably surfing porn sites. I had his network connection run through a switch and Homeseer automatically cut him off when the timer ran out. The same thing could be applied to televisions. Plug it into an appliance module and set a certain number of minutes per day usage. Overrides can also be added in so that you don’t get inadvertently cut off in the middle of binging on the Walking Dead.

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.

Why Your Home Automation and IOT Shouldn’t be in the Cloud

rmiles7721March 4, 2017Home Automation

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.

Alexa Can Now Control Wink-Compatible Smart Locks

rmiles7721February 28, 2017Home Automation

Recently Amazon has added smart lock capability to it’s Alexa smart home API. I’ve been patiently waiting for the fine folks at Homeseer to update their skill so that I can start doing the same without having to say “Alexa, tell Homeseer to lock the front door” etc….

Anyway, Wink has beaten them to the punch and you can now control or check the status of smart locks from Schlage, Kwikset and Yale.

In the past I’ve written about my Wink hub and how much I hated it because it was unreliable, would lose it’s Internet connection and several other problems. About five weeks ago I did a full factory reset on it and moved it to a new position in the house. Since then it’s been rock-solid. I run my Z-wave network (including door locks) from my Homeseer controller so unfortunately it’ll be a while before I have that capability unfortunately. I am considering using Wink as a secondary controller but there are issues with that such as Alexa duplicating devices so I’m putting it off for a while.

Anyway, if you have a Wink hub and want to connect your locks to Alexa go check out the article over on the Wink blog for directions.

State of the Smart Home?

rmiles7721February 26, 2017Home Automation

So I’m browsing around the other day and came across an article over at Wareable. Haven’t ever been there but I’ll probably stop back by and check it out occasionally.

Anyway, the article is titled “The State of the Smart Home” and they attempt to give a brief history of home automation over the last 45 years. I say attempt because it was obviously written by someone who doesn’t know squat about Home Automation or smart home devices or just decided they didn’t have time to devote to it.. Now don’t get me wrong, later in the article there are some really good points about smart home devices and home control but there really isn’t much about HA. Of course you can’t really say much about the history of home automation in three short paragraphs, which is what the author has attempted to do.

Back in 1966, while everyone else was busy watching the World Cup and debating whether The Beatles’ Revolver was bonkers or brilliant, engineer Jim Sutherland was at home in Pittsburg, quietly creating his ‘Electronic Computing Home Operator’

…some other stuff….

It would be another 44 years before the designer of the iPod, Tony Fadell, took a similar step towards revolutionising home automation with his groundbreaking Nest Learning Thermostat. A wave of launches followed – Samsung announced its SmartThings ecosystem in 2012, though arguably its thunder was stolen by Philips’ Hue lighting system. Belkin’s WeMo app-controlled plug socket arrived at CES in 2013, and by 2014 any tech brand worth its salt was talking smart home, from LG with its HomeChat textable appliances to Apple and HomeKit.

 

44 years? Really?

I will say this. One thing the article mentioned is that it’s still a niche area and they are definitely correct about that, it’s just all the rest of it that’s wrong.

In 1975 the first widespread, general purpose Home Automation products were released. It was called X10 and for the most part it used electric wiring for controlling and also RF transmission.  A lot of other types of control have come and gone in that time including ethernet control, RS-485, IR, Bluetooth, Zigbee (Wink, Hue, etc…), C-bus, Insteon (built upon X10), UPB, xPL, EnOcean and Z-wave, not to mention probably 20 other protocols that I can’t think of currently. I came late to the game and started getting into the hobby in early 2000.

X10 had it’s good and bad points. One thing I can say about it is that even though I have moved on to mostly Z-Wave devices and a smattering of quite a few other technologies I’m playing with, I still have several X10 modules that I purchased in 2000 and they still work just fine. 17 years. I doubt there’s anything I’ve purchased in the last five that will still be up and running in 2034. Maybe my X10 modules.

By 2012 there were supposedly over 1.5 million households that had HA systems installed. Yeah, that’s a niche but a pretty decent sized one.

Back in 2,000 I was using wireless technology, voice recognition, infrared and scheduling along with true home automation; devices and parts of the house that react to different things (motion, time, light, heat, etc.) I say true home automation because most of the products offered are really just home control, not automation.

The article says that 2017 is the year of Voice. I would agree 100% with that. While I have used VR and text to speech all along, it’s so much easier now. The Amazon Echo, and to a much lesser extent Google Home, are awesome and have helped to turn my system into something that the whole family wants to use. The Wife Approval Factor (WAF) has gone through the roof with Alexa.

I think what really bugged me about the article was that it (and most of the other ones I’ve now read there) is about gadgets. There’s really nothing about making your home a true “smart home”. Having a smart home isn’t about having to use 20 different apps on your phone in order to control everything. As a matter of fact, you shouldn’t ever have to take your phone out of your pocket unless you just want to (or are accessing it remotely). Not only that but most of the products they talk about force you to rely on the cloud. What happens to all of your gadgets and apps when your Internet connection goes down? Mine keeps humming right along, minus a few non-necessary items (Alexa, Wemo Mr Coffee, etc).

 

 

Google Home Review

rmiles7721February 10, 2017Android, Home Automation

So I set up Google Home a couple of weeks ago and figured it had been up and running long enough for me to give a preliminary review.

So far the WAF factor (as well as children) has been meh…

Don’t get me wrong. I love gadgets. I love Google stuff. I was a big fan of the Nexus program and now am using the Pixel XL. I have several Chromecasts scattered throughout the house and am on Google Wifi. For the time being though (and maybe only temporarily, I don’t know) Alexa is kicking Google Home’s ass at my casa. Maybe because we’ve been using the Amazon product for two years now and it definitely has a place in our home. I have an Echo in the living room and three Echo Dots in other rooms. I also use Fire TV (a lot more than my Chromecasts the last few months) and they have become an extension of my home automation system (Homeseer). I can control all of the lights with Alexa as well as my thermostat, TVs, audio receivers, my CCTV system, my coffee maker, etc. Can’t do that with Home, not easily anyway.

There are workarounds. I have Autovoice set up and can ask Google home to “tell Autovoice to…” but that’s such a pain in the ass. “Alexa, turn on the TV” just comes naturally.

I don’t use very many skills with the Echo, so won’t even compare how many are available. Most of them are crap anyway.

As far as setup and ease of use, Google Home is awesome. It was painless to set up and quick. Currently I have it in my kitchen (one of the places I DON’T currently have an Echo or Dot. I spend the majority of my time in our bedroom though, so it’s not getting used as much as the other devices.

The speaker itself is decent. I’m not an audiophile so don’t have anything to complain about as far as volume and range and all that other stuff. It sounds good to me so that’s all that’s important. I like Google Home for playing my music. That’s one thing I don’t normally do with the Echo. My wife and daughter listen to Pandora all the time so Alexa is good for them. I’m not a huge Pandora fan, or spotify for that matter. I prefer listening to what’s in my own library and all 18,000 songs are on Google Music. A very small portion of it is on Amazon so if I’m listening to music it’s through Google Music casting to one of the Chromecast Audio’s here, or through Google Home.

I also like the integration with other products. Keep for instance. Except for my oldest daughter, who has an iPhone 6, we all have androids here and there are a few Keep notes that we share with each other. Our menu and grocery list are two of them. I can use workarounds and IFTTT to get that stuff from Alexa if I want but it’s a pain in the ass and as anyone who uses IFTTT can tell you, it’s not instantaneous. Usually it’s fairly quick but occasionally there’s a delay of up to an hour. With Google Home if I add something to the shopping list it’s immediately added to a Google Assistant Shopping List in Keep. Now if I could just get the wife to use THAT one instead of the one she keeps creating and sharing.

There’s a lot of other stuff I could be doing with Home, particularly with Tasker, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet. As I integrate it more fully with my system I’m sure I’ll start to like it more and more. Whether the rest of the family can get used to saying something besides “Alexa…” remains to be seen.