Home Assistant?

[picta]

ano, on 19 Sept 2020 - 21:21, said:
Just look at some of the plugins/integrations out there, and its built-in functions also. Like with no effort it tracks all the drum life of my laser printers. Let's see Home Seer do that. It tracks if the doors, windows, locks, sunroof, hood and trunk are open on my car, and if the parking lights are on, and my can be anywhere with a cell signal, not just in my driveway. It reads how many ads are being blocked in my AdGuard Home Raspberry Pi box. It can monitor my blood glucose from my Dexcom G6 sensor. It can tell me how many Covid-19 or Flu cases nearby. There are literally 100's and 100's of plugins that people have written and they are all free. What do you want to do? I'd be surprised if it can't.

May be I am not looking in the right place? I do not see any plugins for 90% of tech I am currently using or want to use. But the printer idea is cool, too bad my printers are HP and the available plugin is for Brother. Any known plugins for this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3ItwoS4pDs ?

 

[picta]

My next project is to put a presssure sensor on all of the toilet handles in the house and have a program that figures out who is flushing the toilet based on their pressure signature. That way a voice prompt can thank them by name for remembering to flush the toilet. Is there a plugin for that?

Lol, you would not have to do that if you had Toto toilets.

 

[ano]

May be I am not looking in the right place? I do not see any plugins for 90% of tech I am currently using or want to use. But the printer idea is cool, too bad my printers are HP and the available plugin is for Brother. Any known plugins for this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3ItwoS4pDs ?

Here are some, but there are many others in other locations as well. https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/
 
Many others are in Github.

 

[upstatemike]

Maybe there are better bulbs that are cheaper but my Hue kit is sunk cost so no matter how cheap another bulb is it will be additional cost as opposed to free to keep using the Hue bulbs I already paid for.
 
Also Hue is the shortest path for many situations. I want to kick off Alexa routines triggered by motion sensors in several rooms... Hue works directly with Alexa with no further effort beyond writing the routine (approximately 60 seconds). Many rooms that used to have pull chain fixtures now have Hue bulbs and Hue stick up switches instead. (5 minutes per room to make the conversion). Still looking for other brands that can duplicate these scenarios as quickly and easily as Hue.
 
I also have about 20 Lifx bulbs. They look great but it seems 1 or 2 are always offline when I try to access them with the Lifx app or ISY/Polisy. (not the same ones all the time).
 
My ultimate goal with Polisy is to have an Insteon 6 button keypad in certain rooms with the large ON button turning the Lifx or Hue bulbs on white and the 4 smaller buttons (with color filters behind the button labels) setting other colors and the large OFF button turning the lights off. This needs to be rock solid before I can deploy it for family use. 
 
What other bulb brands are cheaper than Hue and have more reliable comms than Lifx? Offering accessories similiar to Hue motion sensors and Hue stick up switches would be a good bonus. Nobody in my house will ever control lights from a smart phone so I don't care if their app sucks. I will only be using it once for setup anyway.

 

Wow! I thought 40-60 posts per day on the ISY994 forum was enough to read. Maybe not many use Hue any more. Mine all sit in a box now after I found better bulbs for  less than 1/8th the price and Philips dumped on the original users.

 
Still curious what you replaced your Philips Hue bulbs with?

 

[LarrylLix]

Still curious what you replaced your Philips Hue bulbs with?

A cheap Chinese knockoff of the MagicHome RGBWW bulbs. About $8-$10 per bulb. I also have about 12 RGBWW strip controllers over and behind cabinets that use almost the same protocol making about 35 units. I had to install a few different styles of addressing the different brands in my own NRbridge software.
 
I command them from my ISY994's Network Resources and convert them to bulb/strip signals in the software running on my polisy box. The built in flashing effects come in handy for warnings for various things (GDO left open) without having to tax the ISY comm ports with flashing programs.
 
I used a few MiLight bulbs and RGBWW strip controllers for a while but every four bulb addresses needed another WiFi/2.4GHz hub. Going to three hubs was when I quit them. although the whites were brighter and colours a little richer.

 

[ano]

Just remember, you could be comparing apples with oranges, or maybe plums.
 
The original LIFX bulbs (I have some) Used both WiFi and 802.15.4 mesh network.  802.15.4 is the physical layer Zigbee uses, but LIFX bulbs didn't use Zigbee. One bulb would connect to WiFi, and that bulb would act as a hub to the others that connected via 802.15.4.  New LIFX bulbs (because of cost) only use Wi-Fi.  
 
So I liked the original LIFX bulbs because only one Wi-Fi IP address was used. This ISN'T the case with the current ones, and they are less stable.  (And cheaper to produce)
 
Hue bulbs started out with Zigbee, not regular Zigbee, but an offshoot called Zigbee Light Link.  At the time, regular Zigbee didn't support color. Zigbee Light Link did. To talk with these bulbs, Philips sold a hub that basically translated Wi-Fi to Zigbee Light Link.
 
So over time, Philips Hue bulbs changed also. Instead of Zigbee Light Link the new bulbs use Zigbee 3.0  Zigbee 3.0 supports color, and home automation stuff and much more.  Newer Amazon Echos, and other hubs now speak Zigbee 3.0, so they can talk to Hue bulbs directly.  Also, Philips updated their hub to support Zigbee 3.0 as well.  
 
In my opinion, if you have LOTS of bulbs, Zigbee is the way to go, not Wi-Fi, as Zigbee was designed for VERY large number of nodes, Wi-Fi, at least home Wi-Fi was't.  If you have 3 or 4 Wi-Fi bulbs, no big deal, but if you have MANY, go with Zigbee 3.0.  In other-words, Philips went the right way, LIFX didn't. But Philips also has many Zigbee Light Link bulbs, which are now orphaned.  

I should add, Zigbee 3.0 IS backward compatible with "Classic Zigbee" but, of course, newer features are not supported with older Zigbee.

So old LIFX, new LIFX, old Philips Hue, new Philips Hue ALL used different technology. They may look the same on the outside, but they are not on the inside.

 

[upstatemike]

Just remember, you could be comparing apples with oranges, or maybe plums.
 
The original LIFX bulbs (I have some) Used both WiFi and 802.15.4 mesh network.  802.15.4 is the physical layer Zigbee uses, but LIFX bulbs didn't use Zigbee. One bulb would connect to WiFi, and that bulb would act as a hub to the others that connected via 802.15.4.  New LIFX bulbs (because of cost) only use Wi-Fi.  
 
So I liked the original LIFX bulbs because only one Wi-Fi IP address was used. This ISN'T the case with the current ones, and they are less stable.  (And cheaper to produce)
 
Hue bulbs started out with Zigbee, not regular Zigbee, but an offshoot called Zigbee Light Link.  At the time, regular Zigbee didn't support color. Zigbee Light Link did. To talk with these bulbs, Philips sold a hub that basically translated Wi-Fi to Zigbee Light Link.
 
So over time, Philips Hue bulbs changed also. Instead of Zigbee Light Link the new bulbs use Zigbee 3.0  Zigbee 3.0 supports color, and home automation stuff and much more.  Newer Amazon Echos, and other hubs now speak Zigbee 3.0, so they can talk to Hue bulbs directly.  Also, Philips updated their hub to support Zigbee 3.0 as well.  
 
In my opinion, if you have LOTS of bulbs, Zigbee is the way to go, not Wi-Fi, as Zigbee was designed for VERY large number of nodes, Wi-Fi, at least home Wi-Fi was't.  If you have 3 or 4 Wi-Fi bulbs, no big deal, but if you have MANY, go with Zigbee 3.0.  In other-words, Philips went the right way, LIFX didn't. But Philips also has many Zigbee Light Link bulbs, which are now orphaned.  

I should add, Zigbee 3.0 IS backward compatible with "Classic Zigbee" but, of course, newer features are not supported with older Zigbee.

So old LIFX, new LIFX, old Philips Hue, new Philips Hue ALL used different technology. They may look the same on the outside, but they are not on the inside.

 
I agree that going all Wi-Fi does not make sense. Lifx suggest a maximum of 20 bulbs and with 22 bulbs in my "Lifx testbed" I can see where they are starting to struggle a little bit.... and that is with the load spread across half a dozen wireless access points.
 
Unfortunately Hue isn't much better. While Zigbee may be able to handle tons of devices the underpowered Hue bridge is limited to 63 (realistically just 40). Multiple bridges is no answer because Alexa can only support one bridge (the way hue has implemented the integration).

I would like to find a hub that can support hundreds of Zigbee devices and make them available for control by Alexa. Is Hubitat the answer? Something else? It is clear that Wi-Fi and Hue are never going to scale enough to cover an entire house full of automation.

 

[ano]

... and that is with the load spread across half a dozen wireless access points.

Wow, your house must be bigger than mine.  :wacko:
 
So with the "new" Philips Hue, you don't have to use the Philips bridge. You actually didn't with the old one, but that's another story. 
 
I'n not sure why the Philips Bridge is the problem. Have you spoken to them?  Zigbee 3.0 can control 65,536 devices. It must be a Philips restriction because its not a Zigbee restriction.
 
Update:  I see this problem. Must be a memory size limitation in the bridge.  Again, I'm sure its a money limitation and not technical limitation. 
 
You can use multiple bridges, BUT they would be on different Zigbee networks, which is stupid, because they wouldn't "mesh" for each other. (Each Zigbee network can have one and only one controller.)

 

[picta]

Just remember, you could be comparing apples with oranges, or maybe plums.
 
The original LIFX bulbs (I have some) Used both WiFi and 802.15.4 mesh network.  802.15.4 is the physical layer Zigbee uses, but LIFX bulbs didn't use Zigbee. One bulb would connect to WiFi, and that bulb would act as a hub to the others that connected via 802.15.4.  New LIFX bulbs (because of cost) only use Wi-Fi.  
 
So I liked the original LIFX bulbs because only one Wi-Fi IP address was used. This ISN'T the case with the current ones, and they are less stable.  (And cheaper to produce)
 
Hue bulbs started out with Zigbee, not regular Zigbee, but an offshoot called Zigbee Light Link.  At the time, regular Zigbee didn't support color. Zigbee Light Link did. To talk with these bulbs, Philips sold a hub that basically translated Wi-Fi to Zigbee Light Link.
 
So over time, Philips Hue bulbs changed also. Instead of Zigbee Light Link the new bulbs use Zigbee 3.0  Zigbee 3.0 supports color, and home automation stuff and much more.  Newer Amazon Echos, and other hubs now speak Zigbee 3.0, so they can talk to Hue bulbs directly.  Also, Philips updated their hub to support Zigbee 3.0 as well.  
 
In my opinion, if you have LOTS of bulbs, Zigbee is the way to go, not Wi-Fi, as Zigbee was designed for VERY large number of nodes, Wi-Fi, at least home Wi-Fi was't.  If you have 3 or 4 Wi-Fi bulbs, no big deal, but if you have MANY, go with Zigbee 3.0.  In other-words, Philips went the right way, LIFX didn't. But Philips also has many Zigbee Light Link bulbs, which are now orphaned.  

I should add, Zigbee 3.0 IS backward compatible with "Classic Zigbee" but, of course, newer features are not supported with older Zigbee.

So old LIFX, new LIFX, old Philips Hue, new Philips Hue ALL used different technology. They may look the same on the outside, but they are not on the inside.

This is very useful information, makes sense at explaining my experience with Lifx. I have observed decrease of stability in my lights based on the date of purchase, but since they were also different models I thought it was model dependent. Lifx mini is the most recent and the least stable.

 

[picta]

I would like to find a hub that can support hundreds of Zigbee devices and make them available for control by Alexa. Is Hubitat the answer? Something else? It is clear that Wi-Fi and Hue are never going to scale enough to cover an entire house full of automation.

You should check out Homeseer, they have been focusing on z-wave but also have a zigbee controller, integrate with Alexa and people are generally happy with their product.

 

[upstatemike]

Wow, your house must be bigger than mine.  :wacko:
 
So with the "new" Philips Hue, you don't have to use the Philips bridge. You actually didn't with the old one, but that's another story. 
 
I'n not sure why the Philips Bridge is the problem. Have you spoken to them?  Zigbee 3.0 can control 65,536 devices. It must be a Philips restriction because its not a Zigbee restriction.
 
Update:  I see this problem. Must be a memory size limitation in the bridge.  Again, I'm sure its a money limitation and not technical limitation. 
 
You can use multiple bridges, BUT they would be on different Zigbee networks, which is stupid, because they wouldn't "mesh" for each other. (Each Zigbee network can have one and only one controller.)

My house is old but not that big. Mostly it is constructed of lathe and plaster and stone so it is a penetration issue not a distance one that forces me to use so many APs. 
 
Yes the problem is Hue Bridge horsepower combined with Philips failure to compensate by writing an Alexa integration that supports multiple Bridges on one account. The only reason I use Hue is because of they make switches that can be linked with their bulbs natively within their app. No need to mess with multiple brands of hardware and write routines to create the associations. Sets up in a minute or less and just works. Eventually I will replace Hue with something better but nothing is jumping out as being as polished as Hue at this point in time.

 

[upstatemike]

You should check out Homeseer, they have been focusing on z-wave but also have a zigbee controller, integrate with Alexa and people are generally happy with their product.

 
I'm running HS3 but was planning to wait until I move to HS4 before testing Zigbee on it. I would prefer HS4 to run on Linux to end the Windows update cycle but have too many Windows only plugins to move right now so that is a "next year" kind of solution.

 

[pete_c]

Here still only testing Homeseer 4 and running Homeseer 3 in production.  Not sure if the new HS Zigbee plugin works with Homeseer 3 and Homeseer 4.
 
Not relating to OP....

Personally shifting over to Intel / AMD CPUs running Linux lately and using ARM CPUs more as single purpose appliance like devices (or controllers).
 
32bit ARM always works where as 64bit ARM applications are still catching up.
 
Like using Docker these days for mini VMs.  It is light.

 

[upstatemike]

Here still only testing Homeseer 4 and running Homeseer 3 in production.  Not sure if the new HS Zigbee plugin works with Homeseer 3 and Homeseer 4.
 
Not relating to OP....

Personally shifting over to Intel / AMD CPUs running Linux lately and using ARM CPUs more as single purpose appliance like devices (or controllers).
 
32bit ARM always works where as 64bit ARM applications are still catching up.
 
Like using Docker these days for mini VMs.  It is light.

 
I never really understood the logic of docker or VMs in general. By running multiple things on a single box aren't you creating a single point of hardware failure that can disrupt a lot of things at once? Doesn't that kind of go against the whole concept of distributed computing?

 

[pete_c]

Still making servers autonomous boxes here; like CCTV, NAS and automation servers.
 
The heartbeat of the automation core here is still the OmniPro 2 panel which is connected to the lighting (always works), thermostat, wired sensors such that if all of the automation servers debended tomorrow the OmniPro 2 panel would continue to automate.
 
IE: if my Alexa devices lose their internet connectivity the house continues to automate just fine. (well too added a secondary ISP failover connection here a few years ago).
 
Over the years relating to the Homeseer boxes have had two boxes.  (IE: two HS2, HS3 and now HS4 boxes). 
 
The tinkering automation servers while running Virtual boxes / Docker are doing only automation.  Went to Homeseer in Linux many years ago.  I wanted to keep using Microsoft SAPI speech fonts so I went to using Microsoft SAPI fonts on a lite Windows virtual box.  I have added an instance of HS3 for Windows for must have Windows only plugins (very lite). The Windows Virtual box configured for SAPI is "portable" and stored on the NAS drive.  I just copied over the VB to the new HS4 server.  I have done the same for Home Assistant Docker configurations copying them from the HS3 to the HS4 server.
 
The old PCs hardware failures were typically relating to a power supply or exploding capacitors on the old servers.  Today the new multicore CPU servers are much more "solid state" using lower powered passively cooled CPUs with no fans, tiny power supplies, et al.