Haiku HaikuHelper as middle man Ube Wifi Dimmer

[kaosweb]

New to HA, HAI, and Haiku suite.
 
Prepping to wire my house - new build.
 
I plan to build a HaikuHelper interface for my new setup.  I have a test bench up and running and have been playing with my OP II and the Haiku suite.
 
I have some scripting background so not to afraid to dive in deep.
 
I will be installing 40+ of the Ube wifi dimmers when they come out.
 
My question/thought is that the Ube dimmer will have a open API - Ube says it will be based on Rest.  That should be easy enough to send commands from HaikuHelper with some scripting.  The fun part will be in maintaining states when the dimmers are manually changed - its looks like the switches are going to send unsolicited UDP broadcasts on switch changes - how can we capture this in HaikuHelper and build state out of it.  
 
I am guessing I can use one of the light schemas in the HAI even though it wont be actually controlling anything and trigger scripts with HaikuHelper off panel commands, but I need to be able to keep the panel status up-to-date on manual changes - can HaikuHelper help?
 
Thoughts.  This is all theory at this point, hopefully I will be able to get in on the beta with Ube to play with some real switches.
 

 

[lupinglade]

Hi, welcome!

I would not go with a lighting system that is not natively supported by the controller as the main lighting for the home. UPB will likely get you better reliability and will definitely be much less work.

However, if you are set on using the Ube dimmers, it is definitely doable.

Since HaikuHelper does not currently support a UDP listen socket, you would have to write a script in another language, such as PHP or Ruby to do this for you. Then it could just pass the data to HaikuHelper via URL request. Its strange that they are using REST with UDP, this is not a good combination in my opinion. They should be using HTTP Requests if they are using REST. Then it would integrate much better.

You can set the light states on the controller from HaikuHelper, but its not meant to be used this way -- YMMV. Again, I caution that if you are getting into full blown home automation, you should not use such basic light switches.

 

[kaosweb]

I am set on the Ube dimmers.
 
The details on the API are still fuzzy.  It is HTTP Rest to send commands and query the dimmers.  The UDP broadcast is an unsolicited broadcast when a dimmer is manually switched.
 
In theory I could have HaikuHelper query all my switches every X seconds, but that seems wasteful, when I can just listen for the broadcast.
 
I have to say I am discouraged with your comments around "basic switches."  I agree the switches are new and not yet proven, but to write them off as "basic" seems a tad bit harsh.
 
Did you get a chance to check out the switches - http://myube.co/ and http://kck.st/YjegPU
 
I actually thought they were a good fit with HaikuHelper.

 

[lupinglade]

What I meant by basic is that they seem to be independent of any system. Ie. they are not directly integrated into a home automation network. It seems like they are better suited for a smaller install.

You can do it, but its not the ideal lighting hardware to use with an HAI controller unfortunately.

 

[picta]

Ube switches look cool, but they have not been released yet and will use a brand new technology that may take years to work all the bugs out. That is what happened with Insteon. I have ordered some to play with, but I would not base my home automation around this product. The switches are indeed very basic in terms of home automation requirements: they are not easy to integrate with other systems, they lack essential components like relays and keypads, it's unclear how they can support multi-way circuits and on top of that they are very expensive. They do offer some neat features like local energy use, but we have to see how easy it will be to retrieve this information into anything other than a smartphone. Ube can turn out to be a very good product, but it is very new and you have to be prepared to experiment with it on your own.