Home Automation

New Gadget

rmiles7721March 5, 2016Home Automation

So my thermostat crapped out yesterday after 16 years. Luckily it’s the time of year where it’s not a humongous deal. Picked up a Zwave thermostat on sale at Home Depot, which is awesome.

Putting the damned thing in proved to be a trick. Only four wires in the thermostat but the one I got (and most modern thermostats it turns out) require a C wire (common ground.) It won’t power up without that bad boy. I ended up having to get a wire adapter thingy overnighted from Amazon just so I could hook the damn thing up.

It actually wasn’t too difficult fortunately. Got the thermostat wired up and placed on the wall and then had to tackle switching a couple of wires on the control board in the basement. All in all it took maybe 30-40 minutes. Then the fun started.

Somehow my router and homeseer server had turned off in the process which was weird as shit as I didn’t touch the breakers they are on. Once I had everything back online pairing the Honeywell to Homeseer was a cinch. Control from my HA page as you can see from the below pic.

HomeSeer Web Control
A portion of the HA server web page.

Since I’m using Homeseer’s Amazon Alexa api for voice control that seems to be working ok. Still have some work to do on that though. It’s cool but not something I use all the time anyway. What’s nice is that I can set up heating/cooling schedules on my HA server (in addition to the thermostat itself) or just have it completely cut off during nice weather if I want.

Home Control

rmiles7721February 26, 2016Home Automation

Finally finished the move of my home automation software off of my PC on to it’s own server (actually an unused laptop.) For a while I had it running on one of my Raspberry Pi’s but unfortunately with all of the logic and events it really bogged things down. Not only that but not all of the different pieces I use are compatible with Linux (at least not without great effort and workarounds.) That freed up the Pi to be turned into an emulator anyway. I’ll post some pics of that later.

Currently the HA system tracks house occupancy, turns on and off lights based on motion, occupancy (including vacation), time of day, etc. I get emails and pics if there’s motion and the house is unoccupied. Eventually I’ll add streaming video into the mix so that I can check up on things.

I am able, through and Alexa skill, to control everything through the Amazon Echo that I can control through my HA software, even though it’s not one of the “listed or included” systems. I am also running a remote Alexa instance on my PC that gives me voice control from my bedroom as well. Later this week I’ll be adding an unused Kinect in my living room into the mix. The mic’s on the kinect are much better than my pc or the Echo so that will be nice. On my todo list is to write my own skill so that I can just use a local server and not worry about having to parse everything through Amazon.

Slowly but surely I am replacing all of my 15 year old X10 hardware with Z-Wave devices. I have played around with Wemo and Zigbee, along with a Wink hub, and have a few things in use but Z-Wave by far has been more reliable. One of the downfalls of Zigbee is that people (the wife and kids) have a tendency to turn off the lamps via the lamp toggle and that disables any sort of control or monitoring of the device. As I add voice control that should help. I’ll also mention that I have added control of the Hue bridge to Homeseer (my HA software) as well.

Once I have added a few more pieces I’ll post a couple of videos to youtube explaining some of what I am doing with all this junk.

Yet Another Reason I Won’t Be Using Spotify

rmiles7721October 15, 2015Home Automation

spotify

 

I signed up for Spotify when they first started and used it briefly. Really didn’t like it and it doesn’t offer me anything I don’t already use between Amazon Prime, Google Play Music and my 30,000 mp3 library. That having been said I can see where it could be useful to folks.

I was given yet another reason to not use their service. Recently (like as soon as they were released) I picked up a Chromecast 2015 and Chromecast Audio. For the price the Chromecast Audio is awesome. Unfortunately even though Spotify has added Chromecast support, they are treating the Chromecast Audio differently and you have to be a premium user in order to cast to it.

Just weird that they are treating the devices differently.

 

http://ift.tt/1jocdNc

MiCasa Verde Vera 3 Review Part 2

rmiles7721July 4, 2014Home Automation

… So after messing with the Vera for a couple of days and figuring out that I was not going to be able to get X10 working properly with my TI103 interface I broke down and ordered an Insteon PM from Amazon after a conversation I had with Doug Gregory from DKC Automation (a very helpful guy and a great site by the way. I’ll post a link in the sidebar when I get the chance, or you can just Google it)

I received the insteon modem and hooked it up successfully as far as I could tell. The logging mechanism on the Vera sucks balls so I was never very sure about what I was doing. Anyway, I added a couple of my devices and managed to get them to each turn off once and that was it. Couldn’t dim, wouldn’t turn back on unless I did it manually.

By this time I was pretty pissed off. It works fairly well for zwave but I only have a couple zwave devices right now and I have an existing Aeon Labs stick for my Homeseer computer for those.

I shipped my Vera 3 and the Insteon modem back to Amazon and have already gotten refunds for them. I’ll probably order a couple of zwave modules now and call it a day.

Overall the Vera 3 is a good idea but definitely not mature enough for a robust home automation system, at least not if you use a lot of diy stuff like a lot of people. If you are strictly zwave and don’t need a lot of events and intelligent decisions it’s not bad. I’d say for the beginner it’s probably even great but it’s frustrating for several reasons :

1. Lack of documentation and help files. The links to the are there in the interface but they are broken.

2. No support for a lot of existing automation hardware except for plugins (that you might or might not be able to access)

3. Tech support that won’t give you a clear answer or help. I was forced to go to an outside vendor for help with items. He’s great but I didn’t even buy the main product from him, just a lamp module (which I’m still using by the way.)

4. A backend in the cloud that is broken and doesn’t communicate well together.

There seems to be a growing community for the Vera and as it matures and grows I’m sure the how to’s and help files will improve but until then I’ll be sticking with Homeseer.

Vera 3 Review Part I

rmiles7721July 1, 2014Android, Home Automation

So a few months back my old laptop that ran Homeseer, my home automation software, finally died.

I’ve used it for quite a long time and mostly ignored it. I’ve been running Homeseer for about 13 years now and ported my setup from a couple different PCs but always managed to save my configuration through the transfers and upgrades. This time I don’t have a backup unfortunately.

I’ve invested a lot of time and money into the system over the last decade and a half. Most of it is x10 hardware but there are a few other kludges in there as well. My weather system, a zwave module or two and a boatload of scripting. The last five years or so I’ve deactivated a good bit of it but left the core system up and running that I didn’t have to tinker with.

After my system died I figured it was time to move on to some newer technologies. Zwave is supposed to be more reliable and it’s wireless so I wanted to make sure that I could use something that was compatible with old and new. Homeseer is but I also wanted a dedicated controller as well.

After reading some (obviously not enough) reviews and docs I settled in the Vera 3 from MiCasa Verde. Quite a few of the other Tasker users I communicate with use the Vera and there is a plugin that let’s you communicate and hook Tasker up with it. Pretty cool.

The Vera (the lite version and the 3, which is what I purchased) are pretty cheap for HA hardware. According to their web site it’s compatible with Zwave, insteon and x10. I figured it would be a win/win. Something to help me move into new territory but still stay on a budget.

I received my unit last week and immediately set it up. Several things I noticed right off the bat. Initially you go to getvera.com and create and account, which redirects you back to the home network and finds your vera(s). This has its good and bad points which I’m not going to get into.

Anyway, I set up my account through them, found my unit and started the setup. I was able to add my one Zwave module with no problems but that’s where the ease of use ended. You’re supposed to be able to go to apps.mios.com and browse/download apps from there. Sort of like the Google Play store. Not a bad idea at all. Unfortunately even though my Vera was linked to my account when I tried to go to the external app store it told me I had no units linked to my account. The answer from their text support? Download the apps from within the Vera interface. That’s fine and dandy but NOT what I was trying to do. I guess that’s not something they are trying to fix.

Another glaring omission is there are absolutely NO help files or documents to access from the Vera. Apparently a previous firmware upgrade in the last two years broke the links and they just haven’t bothered to fix it. Tech support did say they are working on a new release within the next two weeks that fixes the issue. We’ll see I guess.

I’m tired and have to work in the morning so will finish the second part of the review then…