OmniLinkBridge to integrate Home Assistant, SmartThings, Node-RED

[ricks]

Sorry, didn't mean to imply OLB was HA specific but rather most of the audience seems to be HA users. That alone should tell me something about ST.
 
Am I correct in assuming that I can use OLB to link OP2 and Smartthings through the web api? Without using mqtt? I thought that was how I originally had it set up. It seemed to work great with the Smart App and Device Handlers. 
 
Thanks,

 

[rsw686]

Isn't Alexa dependent on the cloud?
:rofl:
 

 
You got me there! I was trying to limit the cloud as much as I could. With Home Assistant and NodeRED everything besides Alex happens on the local network. I have the Alex Smart Home Skill talking directly to Home Assistant. Since moving to this setup Alexa has been extremely reliable has almost no delay.

 

[rsw686]

m I correct in assuming that I can use OLB to link OP2 and Smartthings through the web api? Without using mqtt? I thought that was how I originally had it set up. It seemed to work great with the Smart App and Device Handlers. 
 
Thanks,

 
Yep that is correct! MQTT is not required if you only want to integrate with SmartThings.

 

[rsw686]

I have just started using the OB to see if I could transition from HaikuHelper, so far it looks very promising and thank you for the great app! I did find one limitation though: no audio zones, or am I missing something?

 
Unfortunately there is no audio zone support. I don't have an audio system connected to my OmniPro II to test against. Depending on your audio system Home Assistant might be able to directly talk to it.

 

[rsw686]

Nice to know you are still around. Everything is going good so far, only issue I had was with the sensors I used as thermostats but the generic thermostat in Home assistant works just fine using the temperature sensor and the output I use on the OPII for running my heat valves.
The only small issue is some objects are randomly not recongnized, I just have to cross my fingers with every reboot of the Rasberry Pi that none of the important switch is left behind.

I'm interested in which objects are sometimes not recognized as I haven't had that happen. Do they show in MQTT explorer and just not in Home Assistant? If so does the Home Assistant log show anything?

 

[tigers]

As I said they are not always the same. Right now I'm missing two: one is a flag that I used as a dummy to let the OPII aware if it was "winter" or not (I turned on the switching schedule and stopped automatic irrigation, tings like these). The other one was a "button" as OPII called them, a macro I used to open a roller shutter. But they change almost everytime I reboot the Raspberry and OLB with it), they stay the same if I reboot only the Home Assistant server. I did a couple of test of restarting the OLB service in the beginning but then i gave up.
EDIT: Had to restart tonight after installing ConBee and I noticed some voices in the log of HA. These are just "buttons" that are configured in the OPII but I never actually used them (none of them is one of the ones that disappear); they show up in HA and seem to work fine, so I don't know if it's a real error or if it has connections to my previuos issue.  
Dettagli registro (ERROR) Logger: homeassistant.util.logging Source: util/logging.py:141 First occurred: 23:41:24 (4213 occurrences) Last logged: 23:42:22 Exception in availability_message_received when handling msg on 'omnilink/status': 'online' Traceback (most recent call last): File "/srv/homeassistant/lib/python3.7/site-packages/homeassistant/components/mqtt/debug_info.py", line 34, in wrapper _log_message(msg) File "/srv/homeassistant/lib/python3.7/site-packages/homeassistant/components/mqtt/debug_info.py", line 24, in _log_message messages = debug_info["entities"][entity_id]["subscriptions"][ KeyError: 'switch.tapfmapri' Exception in availability_message_received when handling msg on 'omnilink/status': 'online' Traceback (most recent call last): File "/srv/homeassistant/lib/python3.7/site-packages/homeassistant/components/mqtt/debug_info.py", line 34, in wrapper _log_message(msg) File "/srv/homeassistant/lib/python3.7/site-packages/homeassistant/components/mqtt/debug_info.py", line 24, in _log_message messages = debug_info["entities"][entity_id]["subscriptions"][ KeyError: 'switch.tapcucapri' Exception in availability_message_received when handling msg on 'omnilink/status': 'online' Traceback (most recent call last): File "/srv/homeassistant/lib/python3.7/site-packages/homeassistant/components/mqtt/debug_info.py", line 34, in wrapper _log_message(msg) File "/srv/homeassistant/lib/python3.7/site-packages/homeassistant/components/mqtt/debug_info.py", line 24, in _log_message messages = debug_info["entities"][entity_id]["subscriptions"][ KeyError: 'switch.tapsalasxapr' Exception in availability_message_received when handling msg on 'omnilink/status': 'online' Traceback (most recent call last): File "/srv/homeassistant/lib/python3.7/site-packages/homeassistant/components/mqtt/debug_info.py", line 34, in wrapper _log_message(msg) File "/srv/homeassistant/lib/python3.7/site-packages/homeassistant/components/mqtt/debug_info.py", line 24, in _log_message messages = debug_info["entities"][entity_id]["subscriptions"][ KeyError: 'switch.tapsaladxapr' Exception in availability_message_received when handling msg on 'omnilink/status': 'online' Traceback (most recent call last): File "/srv/homeassistant/lib/python3.7/site-packages/homeassistant/components/mqtt/debug_info.py", line 34, in wrapper _log_message(msg) File "/srv/homeassistant/lib/python3.7/site-packages/homeassistant/components/mqtt/debug_info.py", line 25, in _log_message msg.subscribed_topic KeyError: 'omnilink/status' 
 
EDIT 2: I'm putting all my experience here so I can maybe help someone else who gets the same problems: after a reboot many many units and switches were gone and I couldn't get them back even after many reboots. So I made a couple of tries (cancel the topics with MQTT explorer, monitoring communication). In the end what worked for me is a complete restart of the Mosquitto service with a SSH command. The only downside is that after that in Home assistant the original buttons don't work anymore, I have new istances of them with a trailing _2 (Ie if I had switch.button_to_do_things I now have an entity named switch.button_to_do_things_2).
I have to mention that I also added some buttons to the HAI console in PC ACCESS, and they didn't show up until the moqsuitto restart.
I'll try to dig deeper in the weekend and will leave here my results.

 

[ano]

Hi sorry to jump into this, but it seems appropriate for my problem. I decided to load Home Assistant with the Hass.io build because it gives you the option of the community store. I never got the community store working on Docker/home Assistant on Raspberry Pi4.
 
So in Hass.io/Home Assistant/Raspberry Pi4, I am trying to add OmniLink from the store. I've added Excalibur Partners, LLC Add-ons, BUT when I try to install the OmniLink Bridge I get: "Failed to install addon, Unknown Error, see logs"
 
Any idea what I'm doing wrong?  And where are these "logs" they mention? This Hass.io build is so much easier than the Docker route, but I need the OmniLink bridge to work.  
 
(if this was covered in the previous 26 pages, please point me there. I tried looking.
 
Thanks.

 

[tigers]

As I said in my previous posts I couldn't find a way to get OmniLinkBridge under HASS because it's a C++ library that needs mono (a C interpreter that allows "windows" exe to run under Linux machines). Mono is not available for HASS, that is a particular bare Linux install, some parts not needed to run Home Assistant are missing, and without them mono can't be installed and thus OmniLinkBridge can't run.
The only way I found is detailed in my messages: install Raspian OS, add mono and OmniLinkBridge to it and then install HA core.
I agree that some ease of use gets lost in the process, but HACS is a nice substitute, and I found anything else quite easy to setup, with the exception of duckdns and the SSL certificate and backups, but there are plenty of guides on how to do everything manually and if you have a little background in command line interfaces and PCs in general it's tedious but quite straightforward to get everything up and running.
There's also HACS that is a very good substitute for the community store.
Visual studio is also a nice plugin that goes missing, but it everything can be nicely done with alternatives.
Once you got HA and HACS running, and that has to be done only once, I dare to say that there's no difference in getting everything else to work.
I did many experiments (and many errors) in the 2 months I've been tinkering with HA, and it's constantly growing very well.
I can help you with everything if you want.

As a final advice I'd not suggest to install Hassio in a docker container manually since this was deprecated not long ago, and they said it will not be supported anymore; even if they lately changed their mind I think is not a very good solution compared to Raspbian+HA core install.

 

[ano]

Thanks.  I did get HACS running in the docker version, at least the big HACS shows up like its installed, but HACS doesn't appear in the sidebar, so....How do you even use it?
 
I now understand about OmniLinkBridge under HASS, but then why is this still there?  https://github.com/excaliburpartners/hassio-addons
 
If I can get HACS running in Docker HA, but haven't yet, that would be great. 

 

[tigers]

I know it's still there, but it doesn't work. Tried that way myself before giving up and going with Raspbian.
Maybe the author could make it to work again, HA development pace is pretty quick and some update may have broken it.
I don't have the technical capability to fix it, but believe me: the Raspbian option is still a very good one, I'd say under many aspects better than Hassio install; for instance you're free to install anything else on the raspberry and use it for many other things, sacrificing only some ease of use, but most of it is during one time install and setup procedures that can be done with an alternative route in Raspbian.

I haven't find a single operation I'd be able to do in Hassio that I can't do on Raspbian and core HA. I may miss some features like having a ssh terminal inside HA, or being able to edit the config files from inside HA, but I can do these things easily with alternative methods.

I repeat: there's not a single useful function of HA itself you won't be able to use fully without installing Hassio.

That said you might have problems with HACS if you install it under Hassio, because it's specifically designed to work without it. Anyway remember it needs a restart of HA.

Also note that HACS won't solve the problem of OmniLinkBridge not working under Hassio: you need to install mono for that and by my researches there's no version of mono available for the Hassio Linux "flavour".

 

[pete_c]

Here switched running OmniLinkBridge from an ARM CPU to an Intel CPU.  Mostly cuz I did have it running fine in a 32bit ARM CPU but then had issues with it running on a 64bit ARM CPU.  At the time there were no libraries found for the Docker Version.  
 
Since (a while ago) have moved the HA / MQTT / OmniLinkBridge over to an Intel CPU and have not had any issues with it.
 
Note that Ryan's first OmniLinkBridge was running on an Intel Linux Box and I do believe today it is still running on an Intel Linux box.
 
That said thinking new RPi4 today does run ARM 64 bit Linux.  Here switched build over to an 8 Core Arm box which was smaller than the RPi and included USB 3.0, Gb NIC, Bluetooth using Armbian and ran on the internal Emmc or an external SD EMMC.
 
A few months ago tried a bit to help a user run a 3rd party ONVIF to MQTT plugin in HASSIO on a NAS box.  That said noticed that the HASSIO was a thinned down OS which while lite didn't include some basic Linux features. 
 
What I did that worked was created a NAS box VM running Ubuntu Linux, then added HA docker, Mosquitto Broker, et al on it and it worked perfectly.
 
Since then too noticed that I could install the HA "Communitiy Store" in my base HA build which is helping me now upgrade what I am running for HA if it is included in the Community store.  This way cuts out the "long math" way of editing configuration files and adding plugins manually.
 
BTW there are still some issues with the HA Alexa Media plugin that I see occassionally.  IE: this morning the Alexa started to chat out answers of questions that I did not ask and the Alexa Media Player disconnected itself so I had to reauthenticate.
 
I am still using the OmniStat 2 with my HA set up and it works fine with last revision of the OmniLinkBridge and Home Assistant 0.110.1.
 
I have created a weather, temperature thermostat page in HA now.  Right now though cannot change my Lightning sensor from KM to Miles.
 
[sharedmedia=gallery:images:1388]
 

 

[grantlewis]

My setup is similar to what pete_c has: Apple Mac mini Core 2 Duo running 64bit Ubuntu.

I followed this great video tutorial by JuanMTech to get Hass.io running in Docker. Surprisingly easy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekVfLXnoM7k

Then spinning up a Docker container for OmniLink Bridge was also really easy. https://github.com/excaliburpartners/OmniLinkBridge#docker-hub-with-configuration-file

All the power/stability of a Linux distro plus all the ease, convenience and features of Hass.io. I suggest also installing Portainer. Once that's done you can kind of forget the whole Linux side of things and just focus on Hass.io. You can create snapshots and perform upgrades simply and easily. When you install a package from the Add-on Store, it appears as its own container in Docker/Portainer (though I don't think I've ever had to do any tinkering with those containers). Add-ons I'm running:

Duck DNS
ESPHome
Mosquitto broker
Node-RED
Samba share
Visual Studio Code
 
OmniLink Bridge is absolutely a no-maintenance affair. Once it's operating, it's set-and-forget.

I'd previously installed HA as a VM, and I've run it on an RPi3. What I have now is by far the easiest and most stable.

 

[pete_c]

Here also running Portainer except for whatever reason it will not automagically start for me in Docker.

 

[grantlewis]

Here also running Portainer except for whatever reason it will not automagically start for me in Docker.

Same! Any time I reboot the server I have to

sudo docker run -d -p 9000:9000 -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock portainer/portainer
 
Maybe someone else in the thread can help us fix that, Pete.

 

[tigers]

Just to complete the topic my hardware setup is a RaspberryPi 4, where I installed the 32 bit version of the OS because the 64 bit was still in beta and I didn't want to face more issues.
I believe that using a box with an ARM processor could be better for OmniLinkBridge but I must say that it's really the thing that got me the less thinking: once I configured it and added to run as a service at boot I never ever touched it again. It also somewhat sorted itself out about the missing entities and now everything is available in MQTT and HA just fine (the issue is still with the OPII that sometimes goes crazy, but I believe it's just the X10 part that has become completely unreliable - too much noise in today's power line.
 
I later switched the install from the SD card to a 128 Gb SSD I had lying around using the new boot from USB capability of the Pi4, and added a USB stick to store backups and setup a shell routine to make a backup of the config files on Google Drive (I can give you the code if you like).
 
About using a container I point out what's currently going on - so again beware if you're starting a new install:
https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2020/05/09/deprecating-home-assistant-supervised-on-generic-linux/
 
@Pete: I'd suggest you to try out the custom:mini-graph-card add on for graphing, it produces very nice and customizable output, much better than the stock card. Here it's a mix of sensors coming from my OPII and from a DHT22 I have in the bathroom used to control the ventilation with a "generic hygrostat" that works MUCH better than I could achieve with just my OPII and HAIDUINO pushing in the data: