I’ve been using some Smart Home equipment for a long while(mostly Telldus 433MHz switces and stuff), but have recently also added a HeatIt Bathroom thermostat(the old thermostat died, so if I had to replace it anyway, I might as well install something a bit smarter) and some Philips Hue lights.
So I guess it’s way overdue to start installing OpenHab…
I was going to use a RPi, but my big splurge this summer was a proper Online UPS(PowerWalker) and a Synology DiskStation.
And surprise over surprises, the Synology can run OpenmHab (2.4 is installed, and seems to be running)
My USB Z-wave adapter is pløuigged in, and OpenHab has discovered the Thermostat.
The Hue system is also detected.
Unfortunately, the Tellstick is the Tellstick Net v1 version,
I understand there’s a ‘solution’ for it to work with the online service to make it work, but I’d rather not use that if I don’t have to.
(I’d kind of distrustful of cloud services for things like this, and well… it doesn’t work all that well when my ISP have ‘issues’. Only happened one, yet, but… )
Plans right now;
Find out what to do with the Tellstick…
(I have 2 wall-mounted light switches, about half a dozen switched sockets, both by a receiver behind the panel, and by plug-in module, and a pair of 4channel remotes)
Decide on an UI and also begin to learn setting up the things and scripts.
Thermostat. Get it to lower temp at day when I’m not home, and heat up when I wanbt it to. Probably add a switch to momentarily push the heat up higher, to dry out the floor after a shower.
Lights. I want the lights to only give a weaker reddish light at night, nmo blue light component, so that I can take a toilet break in the middle of the night without waking up too much.
I would like to include the bathroom light in this, but currently that’s a wall-mounted ‘over the mirror’ Fluorescent tube light, (T8? about 43.5cm long tube) I’m looking for possible replacements. (I would like a replacement to cover the ugly screwholes in the wall tiles)
Garage. I’ve accidentally activated the garagedoor opener a few times, when going from the garage to my apartment. Not good since it’s stuffed to the rafters with tools. I need to rig a door sensor and a remote close ability. Probably also a visible signal in my apartment. 433MHz should reach the garage(I have a better antenna than the original on the Tellstick) but this may be delayed if I can’t use the Tellstick.
WiFi is… not entirely reliable.
Some sort of calendar?
I want to be able to mark days as ‘not home’ and have the system do a bit more powersaving than usual, but also to do a bit of ‘pretend’ by switching on and off some lights in some sort of sensible order.
(Timers with ‘Random’ programs just… no… )
Far future is my Air-Air heat-pump, resurrecting my windowgarden, and… whatever else cooky I can come up with.
Right now I could use some suggestions for what to do with the Tellstick equipment.
What’s wrong with my Tellstick is that it’s the Tellstick Net v1, and it only works through Telldus Live. Which means an ugly link into that system, and all kinds of shenanigans if my ISP has a ‘bit of an accident’.
What’s wrong with using my Synology?
Or rather, why should I hook up another device in an already cluttered closet, and hope that I have another spare port on my Switch?
I don’t own it but the binding docs claim to support this if I’m not mistaken.
The fact that it depends on your ISP/Cloud/… has ever been the case and obviously is unrelated to OH, so what sort of answer do you expect ?
Spend some more time on browsing the forum and reading the docs.
A dedicated server is recommended for OH, and the Synology packages usually aren’t up to date as well, resulting in all sorts of problems.
Yes, the binding docs supports the Net v1… somewhat.
Yes, the Tellstick setup I have have always been dependant on the ISP/Cloud.
I got that message loud and clear when someone didn’t do their due dilligence and used a hydraulic digger to destroy the optical fibre bundle supplying my entire neighbourhood.
I’m at a point where I can still discard the Tellstick stuff and replace it with something else without suffering too badly from it.
Or I could switch to a different controller, if I find one that’s compatible and inexpensive.
I’m going to keep OH on the Synology for now. Less clutter, and it seems to be working.
(First rule of technicians is ‘If it works, don’t fix it’)
I understand that the config is mostly text files that can be moved to a different platform later? If so, no biggie.
I’ll keep in mmind that there might be bugs and issues with the port.
Besides, it saves me the trouble of taking apart the iBox Nano 3D printer to salvage a RPi.
(Durn thing never really worked, so why not?)
I can’t help with the Tellstick stuff. But I can provide some advice for your plans.
Don’t stress this part too much. There are lots of options but in my opinion the best UI is no UI. The home automation just does it’s thing and can be overridden intuitively (e.g. temporarily override the lighting program when you manually flip the switch). Wall switches and physical buttons will trump a phone or tablet app any day in terms of ease of use, intuitiveness, and flexibility.
Super easy. The hardest part will be reliable presence detection. Though even that is usually not too hard. There are lots of postings with lots of different approaches. I personally use an hping script that can wake up my phone enough to reply to a standard ping. I can’t use the Network binding because I run in Docker and arping isn’t installed. This is also one of the reasons why you may run into trouble on the Synology. It isn’t so much that OH won’t run, but that there will be other stuff you want to run around it, or get access to USB devices, that will be more difficult or impossible.
This should be super simple as well and there are a number of postings around the forum that shows how to do something like this.
The range issue is going to be the big challenge here. If you were looking to replace Tellstick with something that creates a mesh network like Zwave or Zigbee could probably be made to stretch far enough to reach. I say “probably” because there are too many variables to address. Another possibility is MySensors which is going to be a bit more of a DIY approach but it uses RMF69 which should have a similar range as the 433 MHz stuff.
There is support for integration with CalDav and there are several tutorials for presence simulation. My preferred approach is to “play back” what ever activities occurred at any given time seven days ago. Others will use CalDav events to drive the simulation.
Welcome and good luck!
One of the great powers of OH is that there is a separation between the hardware and how that hardware is represented in OH (Items). This separation means that you can at a later date replace the hardware with something from a completely different technology if you need to and all you have to do is change the Links in your Items. Your UIs and Rules and everything else would remain unchanged.
So my advice would be to make OH work with what hardware you have now. Then at your leisure you can replace the Tellstick stuff if you decide you need to.
You don’t need to get everything correct right out of the gate and it will give you the time and experience needed to make the best choices later on when/if you decide to replace the Tellstick stuff with something else.
I recommend proceeding at risk and use the Tellstick cloud, for now. Then once you are comfortable with OH and have learned more about what is possible and what you may want to do you will be in a much better position to choose whether or not to move off of the Tellstick. And once you do, OH will make it easy for you to change.
I’m not going to bother with something as advanced as ‘Presence detection’ for quite a while, yet.
I tried the NET binding, and yeah, there may be a problem there. Nothing that matters, yet, though.
It’s not really the distance that’s the issue with the garage, but the mass of what’s in it.
My garage is the last in a row of 3, and from my apartment, the signal has to pass through the other two to enter mine. (In a direct line it’s about 25 meters, but with SUV’s bicycles, slalom skies and other crap in between… The wall closest to me is full of aluminium ladders… )
I’ve been busy trhe last week or so, so haven’t really had time to do much…
The Z-wave adapter works, and the Thermostat is found. Haven’t done more on that.
I found a cheap-ish ‘over the mirror’ lamp that I liked, and which happens to take E14 bulbs, so the horrid, white plastic-and-metal fluorescent is out, A pair of coloured Hue bulbs is in, and so is a new dimmer switch.
Both bulbs and switch has been detected and added.
I decided to go with the Tellstic Live hack for now, but…
There’s a long text string you need to edit with Public Key, Private Key and so on, but the description doesn’t say which file to ad it to.
