Home Assistant?

[ano]

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.

I was an early backer of LIFX bulbs. It was a great idea. One becomes a hub and connects to Wi-Fi, and the others all communicate via a mesh network. But it meant two radios in a light bulb, which cost more money, and money always wins.
 
So today you can buy Wi-Fi light bulbs. The con is they usually are only 2.4Ghz, and each one takes on IP address, and home routers aren't good at dealing with all these devices if you have many. The pro is, if you have Wi-Fi your all set. Your phone has Wi-Fi, so you can control them.
 
Other bulbs, like the Hue are Zigbee. Zigbee is cheaper than Wi-Fi, but phones don't have a Zigbee chip, so you need some type of bridge, usually. SmartThings, Habitat, and the Hue Bridge can all work as a bridge.  Newer Echo Shows and Echo Plus also contains Zigbee, so it can be a hub.  
 
Now here is something VERY important. A Zigbee network can only have ONE and only ONE controller.  So like have an Echo Plus, SmartThings Hub, and Omni Controller with Zigbee.  If you have a Zigbee bulb, it can only be on ONE of these networks. That, actually is a pain. Hopefully they will work on a workaround for that. 

 

[ano]

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.

Is Hubitat the answer?  Yes and no. Mostly Yes. Every Zigbee controller will have a limit on how many Zigbee "endpoint" devices it can control, and its really only based on memory size. Hubitat Elevation (the newest) can control 32 endpoint devices.  So you are going, the limit looks like 32? NO!!!  So Hubitat is a "Zigbee Controller" and a doorlock, lets say, is an "endpoint."  Battery devices, like locks, can't be repeaters.  BUT every powered Zigbee device IS a repeater, and each can connect to eight or more devices.  So now you are talking 8 x 32 = or 256 devices.  But repeaters can talk to repeaters and repeaters, SO you can get to over 65,000 devices.  
 
Why all this craziness?  Zigbee devices were designed to be cheap, with limited memory.  Second, battery Zigbee devices were designed to be VERY low power. 10+ years on a battery. So battery Zigbee devices (door locks) use powered "repeaters" to store there state.

 

[heffneil]

Pete on HomeSeer do you still need to say: "Alexa tell homeseer to....."?
 
Thanks,
 
Neil

 

[pete_c]

Yes.
 
Personally using Alexa is low on the WAF so I do not use it much.  I use Alexa for TTS.  

 

[heffneil]

What is TTS?
 
I saw something online that Didn't require the part that says "tell homeseer"?  That was in the early worthington video.  Not sure what is setup now but the HA-Bridge is becoming increasingly unreliable. For the new house I need to figure something out.

 

[macromark]

Pete on HomeSeer do you still need to say: "Alexa tell homeseer to....."?
 
Thanks,
 
Neil

 
We have two separate "skills" for Alexa. The old one requires "Alexa, tell HomeSeer to..." but the newer one does not. Personally, I dumped the old skill myself some years ago and shifted to the new one. The new skill is a bit more limited with commands (no "open" or "close" commands, for example) but you can use it will HomeSeer virtual devices and Alexa routines to do basically anything the old skill did. Routines allow you to create whatever control phrases you want. For example, I have a routine that opens my garage door when I say "Alexa, open the garage door".

 

[macromark]

I use Alexa for TTS.  

 
Pete - how do you have this configured?

 

[pete_c]

Rambling....
 
Historically here with Homeseer have always used Microsoft SAPI for TTS (Text to Speech).  I have hoarded SAPI speech fonts.
 
Today running Homeseer / Home Assistant on the same Ubuntu server utilize Oracle Virtual Box Windows 7 embedded for ~ 6-8 speech fonts and speaker instances.
 
SAPI VR today is much better than it used to be but not as good as Amazon VR.
 
Relating to Amazon TTS (text to speech).  There is a documented methodology on the Homeseer forums using Node Red which I tried a long time ago which works if you want to learn to utilize Node Red.
 
These days do not utilize Node Red as much so went to using Home Assistant for Alexa TTS.  The plugin is constantly updated. 
 
Still testing here so when the garage door opens I hear Alexa and Homeseer TTS telling me the garage door is open (low on the WAF).
 
I also have one Alexa Dot connected with Homeseer (mixing the audio) to the Russound zoned audio system.  There are voices everywhere with zoned audio, Alexa TTS and Homeseer Touch tabletop tablets.  The tabletop tablets also do SAPI speech running Homeseer speaker dot exe.  Any speech font I have in my collection.
 
Here is the Wiki for Alexa Media player ==>
 
hxxps://github.com/custom-components/alexa_media_player/wiki
 
I started to tinker with this around 2018 when it was first proposed.  It is way better today then back then and now an official Home Assistant plugin.  Rich from Homeseer looked at this.  The issues have mostly been relating to authentication and keeping connected.  I have not had issues to date.
 
The above noted I started to play with Microsoft SAPI in the 1990's at home and at the Bank I worked for back then for telebanking.  (LaSalle Bank of Chicago).  At the bank we were utilizing recorded snippets and using MS SAPI worked better at this.

 

[heffneil]

So you are saying you can have your amazon echo's say "Garage Door Open"?

 

[macromark]

Pete - thought you would be using the Node Red Alexa Remote2 module... I'm tinkering with that now.

 

[pete_c]

So you are saying you can have your amazon echo's say "Garage Door Open"?
 
Yes.  The GDO combo MQTT sensor is a hybrid wireless DIY'd GDO device with wired garage door open and garage door closed.
Plus it has a GDO digital button and a temperature sensor.  All of this works via MQTT.  The HA OmniPro 2 panel plugin talks MQTT and talks to Homeseer and Home Assistant.  The Homeseer Omni Plugin only talks Homeseer at this time.
 
Concurrently use TTS on Homeseer that is using the wired Zone sensors from the OmniPro 2 combo panel.
 
So most of the Alexa TTS is coming from wired alarm zone sensors these days.  I shut off the Homeseer TTS on many events these days.
 
House #2 is using a different approach with all wireless sensors these days with a Ring Alarm system and using a Ring to MQTT for control and sensing.
 
Also installing all Tasmota MQTT switches in House #2.

 

[pete_c]

Pete - thought you would be using the Node Red Alexa Remote2 module... I'm tinkering with that now.
 
Here used Node Red before Rich implemented it with Homeseer.  Node Red is running but haven't configured it with the Homeseer Node Red Module yet.
 
 

 

[macromark]

Pete - thought you would be using the Node Red Alexa Remote2 module... I'm tinkering with that now.
 
Here used Node Red before Rich implemented it with Homeseer.  Node Red is running but haven't configured it with the Homeseer Node Red Module yet.

 
It took me less than a minute to do! However, now that I have it, I'm struggling a little with what to do with it. I did find a couple videos on the Alexa/Remote2 module but I have not figured that out yet.

 

[heffneil]

So you are saying you can have your amazon echo's say "Garage Door Open"?
 
Yes.  The GDO combo MQTT sensor is a hybrid wireless DIY'd GDO device with wired garage door open and garage door closed.
Plus it has a GDO digital button and a temperature sensor.  All of this works via MQTT.  The HA OmniPro 2 panel plugin talks MQTT and talks to Homeseer and Home Assistant.  The Homeseer Omni Plugin only talks Homeseer at this time.
 
Concurrently use TTS on Homeseer that is using the wired Zone sensors from the OmniPro 2 combo panel.
 
So most of the Alexa TTS is coming from wired alarm zone sensors these days.  I shut off the Homeseer TTS on many events these days.
 
House #2 is using a different approach with all wireless sensors these days with a Ring Alarm system and using a Ring to MQTT for control and sensing.
 
Also installing all Tasmota MQTT switches in House #2.

Can we see a video of this?  I am VERY interested - but I want to see ANY demo of it.

 

[pete_c]

I typically just write about my endeavors here or on Homeseer.
 
Here is the GDO stuff.  It is basically a Sonoff Basic modded not to use 120VAC (cut board for this) and continuing to use the relay on the board for the digital GD button.
 
The rest of the mods are just tapping in to the GPIO ports and a custom Tasmota current firmware than Michael from MCS wrote a couple of years ago and recently upgraded it.
 

SonOff WiFi Basic GDO multisensor - button - temperature sensor project
 
I customized my kitchen under / over kitchen cabinet lighting with the following posted project.
 
1 - used a micro 12VDC LED power supply inside of the switch box.
2 - hand made my aluminum with diffuser LED strips cut to size.  You do not see the LED tracks.
3 - with wall switch it works fine except that it defaults to 100% brightness
4 - Hardware modded a MagicHome controller to use one channel for the LED lamps, put a digital pot on it for on and off and dim level.  Michael customized the Espurna MagicHome firmware to allow for use of the digital pot.  I also added a combo temperature / humidity sensor to the magic home controller.
 
This project had very high WAF.  I ran LED lamps under the microwave / fan over the stove.  No drilling as I used the screws under the microwave to mount the LED strips.  Way brighter than the built in LED lamps over the stove.
 

Under kitchen cabinet LED lamps with mcsMQTT control
 
Lots of soldering with this project.  The MagicHome controller only had pads to solder to.  I used drops of hot melt glue to keep the wires in place.