If someone makes a Thread USB dongle, it’ll be possible for OH to serve as a border router. However, I think it might end up being simpler than that, since Amazon/Google/Apple/others are planning to turn their existing hub devices into border routers that can issue commands locally without Internet. OH might be able to just piggyback on a Nest Hub or Amazon Echo.
We can actually already do this with an Echo using the Amazon Echo Control Binding, but there are limitations due to the polling rate. I’m hopeful that Matter will enable something that’s similar but better.
I think this would require OH to identify itself as a border router. So yes, it’s possible, but I’ve no idea what it would take to make it happen. Again, we already have something similar, as OH can make devices appear to be Philips Hue bulbs/switches, or share them with Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa (though that requires the myopenHAB cloud). I’m not sure about HomeKit, as I don’t use it.
Saying that, I think it’s best to do the heavy lifting on automation with OH or HA, and then only share out the devices that you want/need to control through other interfaces. For example, I only have about eight of my devices available in Google Assistant, because they’re the only ones I operate with voice commands.
Yes to all of this. Any state change can be used as a trigger, and many of us use virtual items in OH as variables. I have some that are on/off switches and some that are strings or numbers, depending on the purpose. As for the Night_Flag based on sunrise/sunset, that’s easy to do with the Astro binding.
In my opinion, simple connectivity is the stumbling block for home automation. That’s often the case with technology. Think about how difficult it was to set up a home theatre in the period just before HDMI gained acceptance, when your TV had three different types of video inputs (and three for audio), while your DVD player and cable box each had one or two of the corresponding outputs and your receiver had 20 ports on the back that mostly looked the same. Home automation is going through that right now.
I tell people that my 3D-printing hobby is 50% designing/printing things, 25% fixing my printer, and 25% upgrading my printer (often by designing/printing things). I recently spent an evening designing and printing TPU sound dampeners for a mechanical keypad I bought from Amazon, then sent the keypad back anyway due to other issues. I have no regrets.
FYI, unlike Z-Wave (for which is only one protocol stack since there is only one manufacturer), all Zigbee stacks application firmware use their own proprietary API/CLI, and Silicon Labs Zigbee Stack is named “EmberZNet Zigbee” and Silabs API/CLI for it is called “EZSP” (short for “EmberZNet Serial Protocol”).
The Zigbee API/CLI for different Zigbee stacks are however fortunatly all those are proprietary APIs/CLIs are still somewhat similar to each other and since Zigbee is standardized it is possible for the Zigbee library that your Zigbee implementation use to write hardware abstraction layers for each Zigbee stack API/CLI to allow them to support multiple Zigbee stacks and as such different Zigbee SoC hardware adapers/dongles, and that is what many open source Zigbee implementation libraries have done to workaround this, see example these which have modules or adapters for each Zigbee stack API/CLI:
Note that the SoC hardware for Zigbee can support several different protocols based on the IEEE 802.15.4 specification, though they usually only support one protocol at a tim via different firmware.
You should be able to bridge between the two using MQTT. There is another HA thread here talking about doing that. OH recognizes and automatically discovers HA standard MQTT.
Because SI Labs is requiring the user of their proprietary API library to support the new standard for Zwave. Obviously, such a library cannot be included in an EPL licensed project. So I’m not optimistic that Zwave will remain a FOSS friendly option.
Also, at least for me, the cost/performance calculation does not come out in favor of Zwave when compared to Zigbee.
No, they are completely different technologies. A Matter hub wouldn’t be able to communicate with anything except Matter. But that doesn’t mean there can’t be hubs that speak Matter, Zwave, and Insteon.
Yes, that’s what OH is all about. Bridging between technologies. You might need three separate USB dongles, one for each, but once OH is talking to them it will bridge between them.
Almost certainly yes, assuming Insteon reports it’s been manually switched.
The devil’s in the details. On general you’re best off using a separate Item to store that value. Otherwise the answer is “it depends”.
You would use a Switch Item linked to an Astro sunset Channel with an offset and perhaps an Expire on the Item to switch it off after 30 minutes. Then your rule that runs to set the dimmer would check that Item.
Snapmaker is a 3-in-one that I mainly got for the CNC but have only used the 3d printer mode this far printing parts and tools and such. But if slave is your concern, you can get all three in one device.
I love the idea of the Snapmaker, but it’s more than my budget will allow. I’m glad to see them doing well, though. I remember seeing the original Kickstarter and thinking that the concept was smart.
I dunno, Rich. Sci-fi movies featuring robot slaves always start right before the robot uprising or right after the robot victory. If my openHAB server gains sentience, I’d rather that it doesn’t have control over an actual laser.
First, I seriously appreciate all the information everyone is including in this thread. I think I’m learning more than I’ve learned from any question I’ve asked in a forum in decades - and that dates back to the WWIV BBSs in the early 1990s! Thank you!
At this point I have managed to transfer my Insteon PLM to my new Home Assistant system (on a Pi4) and I was glad to see all the devices carried over. That’s a relief and tells me they’ll likely carry over when I add them to an oH system as well. I’ve been looking over the manuals on rules and the screen shots. I do NOT want to try to make this a competition between HA and oH. I love FOSS and I think the community benefits from having more than one project for a particular purpose. (And I have seen projects that can be in one field that actually use code from each other, but still have different theories on how to do things. Hey - if it works, great!) I think HA is a good system that is the result of a lot of work, but after looking over just the one topic (rules) as an example and comparison, I will likely be switching everything over to oH within the next few months.
A lot of this is personal. I feel like I struggle to get things done in HA and what I’ve seen in oH it feels like the interface and the way it works is closer to the way I think things through than HA. Again, not saying HA is bad - just that from what I see, it looks like I think more like oH does.
Interesting way to do it. so if the elevation is 0, how do I distinguish between whether it’s sunrise or sunset? And, on this topic, is elevation the only way to do this, or is there a way to specify time since or until sunrise or sunset?
I’m not fully clear on the term “border router.” I’m thinking that’s basically a device that stands between one system and another to allow an interface between the two?
I had not even thought of a mix like that, but I can see the advantages. Sounds like a good way to use the strengths of each system.
Sounds like a system I could easily get used to and work with!
One reason I was thinking about a flag like Night_Flag was because I had something a little more complex than my original idea in mind. I was thinking that during the day, the switch on the hall lights would go from off to 100%. But then, starting 15 minutes before Sunset and after Sunrise, it’d work differently. It’d follow a pattern: off->30%->100%->off. So during that time, it wouldn’t be just off/on, but would have 3 steps, like a ceiling fan that goes from one speed to the next each time you pull the string.
(Actually, side note, we have a great room that is overlooked by galley/promenade on the 2nd floor - which is in place of a hallway. The stairs are in that same large space. The lights I’m talking about are in that area and turning them to 30% at night is a nice night-level illumination for that entire space.)
I remember it well. Not with fondness, but well! I also remember at one point, when I wanted to split video coming out of the cable box so it’d play in the living room and in my study, what a nightmare it was mixing newer components that were HDMI with older ones using RCA cables.
I think the issue would mean using either wireless or sending a signal over the power line in the house, since I can’t see adding another set of wires going everywhere. But from what I’m reading on this thread, I’m thinking that if Matter/Thread works, a lot of systems would use plain wifi. It’s easy, already exists, and there would be a lot of flexibility there.
I see you’re using an Ender. I got one in February, but also a CR-Touch. Took me 5 months before I could print - turns out there’s a nasty little bug in Marlin for the GD chips Creality switched to around February, when I bought my system. Finally got it working, but, in the meanwhile, bought a Prusa. The two behave dramatically differently!
I’m working on prototyping for things I’ll be printing. My long range goal is to develop the prototypes here and eventually work with a company that can produce my produce on a larger scale, so, ultimately, I won’t be printing massive amounts of product.
The CNC - well, some of the same, but with the laser, I’ll be making signs and doing other work, too.
Nice!
I just added a 2nd webcam to my OctoPi system, but it’s misbehaving. I know, with plugins, I can control both printers with one OctoPi system. That’s my goal. I have an order in for a cage for the Prusa, but they’re not shipping yet. I may just make a cage that goes over the entire table instead of waiting for it. (Since the printers and the CNC are in the same room, along with a drill press and table saw, I want to make sure the printers are kept contained so sawdust isn’t an issue for them.)
This is part of our (mine and my wife’s) lifetime dream. While we’ve only been together 10-12 years, both of us have wanted to live out in the woods for all our lives. So we got it - a 24 acre lot, mostly wooded, with a house that has a bit of a fantasy feel to it, and we renovated the old pig barn that was here before us. That has a workshop for me and a studio for her creative work. Like I said, it’s a lifelong dream, something we’ve both been working towards on our own for decades.
Doesn’t that create a serious mess with devices having different functions and features? Maybe I’m misunderstanding it, but it shoulds like you could have lights from different manufacturers that work differently.
I love it when I’m learning something new, but there are people ahead of me to guide me. That sounds like a great way to do it until I reach the point where I want to unify it all. But there are also the notes I made at the start of this post. The more I look at oH, the more it seems that my work flow and style are more like oH than HA.
Side note: Currently I have an MQTT server in the barn that uses the HA as a broker and the HA instance can (or could, before it started dying after a thunderstorm) control everything in the barn through MQTT. But I’ve had people tell me there are issues with ZWaveJS2MQTT and HA having problems if one updates before the other. That’s what’s made me think that whether I use HA or oH (and I’ve decided to switch to oH after I’ve had more study time and can plan it out), I think I’d rather have two instances of the same type of system, with one in charge. It’s one less package to learn and keep track of.
I see. I would think that there are people who would keep things going so those of us with Z-wave devices aren’t left high and dry. When it starts fading, I’ll make plans for replacing all my Z-Wave devices over time. (Right now I’m more worried about Insteon devices. While I figure most of these things, in either system, will keep working for many years, I feel like I’m tempting fate by continuing to use Insteon now.)
That’d be good for many of us, since it allows preserving systems we have while upgrading to a new one over time, as budget and available work time permits.
I have a friend who loves his Snapmaker. I considered it. It looked pretty good, but I went with Shapeoko for several reasons - and that was over a year ago, so I couldn’t list the reasons if anyone asked! (When I got the CNC, I had not expected to get a 3D printer, too. I find I, too, am using 3D printing much more than CNC - at least at this point.)
If it gets that smart, it’ll figure out how to print out a laser!
There’s a reason I don’t call any of my systems names like Skynet or Landru. It’ll be kind of scary when Apple moves from their M1 and M2 chips and offers M5 computers.
(But I figure I can always pull a Kirk and ask the computer illogical questions until it starts pulling too much power and it lets the smoke out of all its chips!)
In my rules, I don’t really care whether it’s sunset or sunrise because they are simply using the elevation to decide whether to perform something or not. For example:
“if someone turned off the living room light, and it stays off for 10 minutes, and the sun is not visible (elevation < 0), then turn off the wall mounted display screen”.
rule 'Turn off photo frame' do
changed gLivingRoomLights, to: OFF, for: 10.minutes
only_if { Sun_Elevation.negative? }
run { PhotoFrame_Screen.ensure.off }
end
If on the other hand you actually need to run specific tasks on sunset e.g turn lights on 10 minutes before sunset, and turn them off 5 minutes before sunrise, the Astro binding has that covered using offset.
For a task to be performed after the event (sunset/sunrise) you can have your rule fire on the event (so you don’t have to configure the “offset” as per the above link), and then inside your rule, create a timer that will execute the task X minutes later.
Others can probably give you more ideas. If you can describe the exact scenario, we’ll be happy to go into it further.
Most importantly do not hesitate to ask here if you are stuck. We’ve all been there. I am constantly learning new things about openhab.
I would write something like this (in jruby):
# cycles the light from OFF -> 30% -> 100% -> OFF
def cycle_light_level(light)
light << case light
when OFF then 30
when 100 then OFF
else 100
end
end
# Returns a range from sunset to sunrise, minus/plus the given offset
# can be given as argument for TimeOfDay#between?
def sunset_to_sunrise(offset = 0.seconds)
astro = things['astro:sun:home']
pre_sunset = astro.getEventTime('SUN_SET', nil, nil).minus(offset)
post_sunrise = astro.getEventTime('SUN_RISE', nil, nil).plus(offset)
# convert to DateTimeType range
DateTimeType.new(pre_sunset)..DateTimeType.new(post_sunrise)
end
rule 'Hall light switch' do
updated Hall_Switch, to: "click" # assuming this switch sends "click" when it's tapped / clicked
run do
if TimeOfDay.now.between? sunset_to_sunrise(15.minutes)
cycle_light_levels(Hall_Light)
else
Hall_Light << 100
end
end
end
Or you can have two other rules that control Night_Flag and then use Night_Flag in the “Hall light switch” rule as others have suggested above. One thing to consider when using a “Night_Flag” type system: you’ll also need to set this flag when openhab starts up, so you’ll still need to actually obtain the sunset/sunrise time and not just rely on the astro trigger event. This is to cover the time when openhab gets restarted after the set time for night flag, otherwise your rule will run incorrectly until the following day.
This is the way.
If you want to use HABApp (python3) there is also the possibility to use the Scheduler to run a callback.
There you can also chain boundaries, e.g.
There are countless ways how you can achieve your goal and it’s only limited by your time and imagination.
Just try different things and use what suits you best!
Just make sure that you document the location and type of each device by device id. This will make setting up in OH considerably easier. When the Insteon binding finds new devices it adds them to the inbox with the address of the device name based of the address of the device. (device address AA.BB.CC → device name AABBCC).
Since I’m using modules rather than switches for devices in the house, and these modules go in the j-box or wall box (or ceiling box) for a light or fan mount or for a switch, I’m recording the Insteon address for each device before it goes into the wall!
That’s a good way of putting it. Someone just went in the other direction recently, and they’re always welcome back. We try to keep things friendly around here.
It’s basically for connecting a Thread network to an IP-based network over WiFi or ethernet. But unlike a Z-Wave controller, you can have multiple border routers in your network that all talk to each other and to your Thread devices).
That’s exactly it. OH needs to have all of your devices, and my various interfaces only show the devices I want to use through them.
@JimT covered this pretty well from the rules side, but you’ll also need to think about the hardware. I think you’ll want a switch that can act as a scene controller, so that you can have different button presses for your two scenes (30% and 100%). Or just add a separate scene controller like this one. Otherwise, you may find that pressing the physical switch doesn’t always give you the results you want. That can be maddening.
Some folks advocate for adding wires whenever you can, while others advocate for wireless. Both will say that they’re trying to avoid obsolesence in the future. I don’t think there’s any way around that, because technology continues to move forward. You can still find lots of houses that don’t have neutral wires, and thrift stores have shelves full of old WiFi routers. Nothing is safe.
I can envision a future in which the 110/220V AC sockets in our houses are mostly replaced with 5V/12V DC ports. They’d be safer, more efficient, and get rid of all the AC adapters plugged into our walls. This is a very, very distant future. Very.
Close. It’s a Creality CR-6 SE, which has auto-levelling via a strain gauge built into the hotend. The auto-levelling works pretty well, but I’ve read that the CR-Touch is still better.
This is odd. I wrote a long response, doing what I usually do: Responding to a number of comments, from different people, in one response, so I don’t make 3-5 responses in a row. I see @rpwong saw that response and everything in it, but now, when I look at it, I see where I quoted from one post with a one paragraph response. I cannot see the rest of the post - but it must have shown up since he’s quoted from parts of it I can’t see.
I appreciate that. I also saw how HA and oH can work with each other through MQTT. Nobody gains when someone makes it more about winning than building good code.
Eventually I may get some battery powered switches, or multi-switches. I think it was Aeotec where I saw something like that - 4 buttons or switches in a rechargeable device. You can just leave them on the table and they’re easily reachable.
I’d like to see something like that setup for TV remotes, too, connecting oH and HA to infrared controllers. I have something like that partially set up with HA, but never got all the way through it. While it sounds good to just make a control panel on the app for your phone, that can be a pain, since it means having to wait for the phone to recognize you and then running the right app - it’s not like picking up a device and just pushing the buttons on it.
Before we built this house and moved in, I lived in a brick house that my grandparents had built in the 1940s, after he came back from WWII. The phone system had 3 wires. We didn’t find that out until my ex and I came back one night and found the Verizon installer had installed our 2nd line on 2 out of 3 of those wires and, in so doing, had disconnected our main line. I had to scramble to run a normal phone line so we’d have both working that night. (We were expecting calls and this was in the '80s, and we needed to get both lines up and working.) Later I ran all new phone lines, including to every room in the house. Later I had to rewire the whole house. As you pointed out, no ground line, but, even worse, was “Megafuse!” There was an old fuse panel in the house, in a closet. 4 fuses and two larger cartridges. The original power line went in there. They ran it to a new breaker box, but one line from the new box went to the old one and spidered out from there, covering 2 bedrooms, a bath, halls, and the living room. Plug in a hairdryer and the TV and one computer stopped when it blew the fuse!
I ended up rewiring ALL the powerlines in that house (using #12AWG for 15 amp breakers - I overwired for expansion and safety), running ethernet to all rooms, good phone lines to all rooms, and coax to every spot where I thought it’d be needed - and set up one closet as a hub for any switches or splitters.
I put a lot of what I learned to use when we built this house and I planned out the coax, ethernet, phone lines, and power lines carefully. I also planned power lines to make it easy to upgrade by adding home automation modules. For instance, the great room is 2 floors high, so instead of running wire to the light and fan hanging from the ceiling, then just a wire loop to the switch, I made sure power went to the switches.
I could see someone coming up with putting wires to all devices, but it’d be a mess. Extra wiring in the walls carrying data to places connected to AC, so the data wires have to be shielded or kept away from the AC lines. Plus most people move into old houses where things like that often can’t be added. If I had to bet, I’d say they go with wireless or, like Insteon can do, signals over the power lines.
I’m thinking there’d be several types of outlets, including some with multiple USB plugs, others AC only, and others mixed. (Like you can already get.) I may be wrong, but I’ve heard trying turn 5V or 12V DC through a house would have issues with power loss. So my guess is the AC in-wall wiring is here for a good while longer, but that we’ll see more outlet designs including USB connectors/chargers.
I got seriously nailed on my Ender 3 Pro. I got the CR-Touch for it, and it would NOT work properly for 5 months. I finally found out it was because my logic board had a GD chip, not the older STM chip and Creality firmware was still being compiled for STM. That created a bug Creality was not acknowledging or working with for, when I checked, 5 months. I finally found firmware someone had compiled that worked with the Touch on the GD chip.
I haven’t gone into the full details, so this may be in the TL;DR category.
I never had lightning issues at my old house. My guess is because it was in the ‘burbs, with power lines nearby, and that lightning often went through those or otherwise was not actually hitting near houses. Out here, we’ve had one lightning strike that hit near the house. It blew out 40’ of ethernet cable that tested find when I put it in during construction (and after the insulation and drywall was put in place), but was dead later, when I was going to use it for our new internet connection. It also blew out two HDMI ports, one on a TV and, on the other end, on an HDMI splitter. That was just a “near miss” strike and the current must have been from induction.
But the real problem is the barn. I have 500’ of trench from the house to the barn. It includes 3 lines of 4/0 aluminum and a ground wire. Also a 2" black poly pipe for pumping sewage up the hill to our tank. There are two 1 1/2" (or 1 1/4" - I can’t remember) black poly pipes in that trench, too. One for water and the other for fiber optic lines. The barn used to be a pig barn. Concrete floor, but not even. Two trenches that ran almost the full 50’ length of the barn, both 2’x2’. Originally used for pig waste, but that was 30 or more years ago. I bleached the hell out of 'em! We had to put down a new concrete slab floor because the original floor was uneven. Those trenches became tunnels and I designed things so all the wires and water lines that needed to go under the 1st floor went through those trenches.
That included 30’ of ethernet running from the converters for the fiber lines from the house to the switch in a tech closet. It turns out that was a bad idea. The ethernet lines in that trench had to go on a wall or the ceiling of that concrete tunnel and lightning strikes nearby sent current through those lines via induction and, on multiple occasions, blew out ethernet ports on connected devices. I finally replace that last 30-40’ of ethernet with fiber and that issues stopped.
Also, when we finally got Starlink (our first good, solid internet service!), there were a few issues there. That’s when I ran into issues with that one HA setup acting up.
I’ve found that, for the barn, ethernet lines in some areas are doing okay, but if it goes through one of the tunnels, I need to use fiber. The same is true for the upstairs. It’s a Dutch roof and I now have fiber used for any lines in the ceiling or that run along the outside walls very far. That’s stopped the ethernet ports blowing out.
We have a standby generator, so I have a LOT of UPS systems here. They only have to last about 45 seconds or so before the generator kicks in. Now I also have a UPS inline for the Starlink receiver, which is out in a field out front, with a total of about 1,000’ of fiber cable to bring the signal to inside the house and about 800’ of power lines from our garden shed to the post with the dish on it. (All that is, of course, in a 2’ trench!) It was while I was working out just how to set up the UPS on the Starlink line (which also was related to some of what I was doing in the tech closet) that I had issues with that Home Assistant install.
Everything is protected now - fiber instead of ethernet in places where lightning is likely to be a problem and a UPS protecting anything electronic - computers, Pis, printer, CNC, TVs, and so on. Lights and such, no, but things with circuitry, yes. So at this point, when power goes off, our internet, TVs, computers, and so on, can continue like nothing happened. We could still get a freak lightning strike that might cause damage, but that’s a danger any house faces.
A Logitech Harmony Hub works for this if you can still find one for a cheap price. Logitech has discontinued the hardware but continues to support the devices. Who knows when that will be, but I have two that I’m content to use until they stop working.
Yeah, that’s why I say it’s a very distant future. DC does suffer power loss over distance (which is a big reason why we use AC for transmission), but within a building it would be possible to account for it. You’ll still need some AC plugs for high-powered appliances (vacuums, hair dryers, toasters).
What I’m suggesting isn’t a better solution unless a central AC/DC converter is significantly more efficient than the current AC adapters (which are typically ~80%). The concern I have is that is that the influx of wireless chargers is sending us in the opposite direction. They’re hideously inefficient.
Wow, that is a crazy story. Great work getting to where you are now.
I have a Logitech universal remote - can’t remember the model number right off. Overall, I’m not a huge Logitech fan. Both our big TVs are projection. Logitech (and Apple does this in some things, too - but not as frustrating, in my experience) has a tendency to set up one solution and make it hard to do things in another way. So when we switch from the DVD/BD player to AppleTV, it tries to turn the projection screen off, which means it starts rolling it up - then it tries to turn it on, by rolling it back down. That’s a small issue, but I remember when setting up the Harmony remotes, there were similar issues. Also, with a projection TV behind us, we have to hold the remotes just right when turning things on or off or the TV doesn’t receive a signal. I’m working on switching to Broadlink at this point. I have two controllers in our house great room, one in the front and one near the TV and that controls both of everything. One controller in the barn rec room (which is a big screen - and I mean BIG, for having friends over for movies) is by the TV. The signal from the remote does hit the TV there just fine.
Broadlink, in both places, will remove the need of “IR Calisthenics” to make sure everything gets turned on or off or gets the signal.
While it impedes progress, I think too many won’t get that and will just say how much they like not having to plug a phone in. And it’s hard for people to get how small devices can draw a lot of energy.
It’s more of a pain than that. In my workshop, the CNC is in the middle of the floor. My plan was to put USB-over-ethernet converters in place, one at the shop computer, and one in the middle work area, so I could have the signal go from workshop computer->USB/Ethernet convert->fiber converter->fiber optic lines-> - and then, on the other end, the same converters in reverse. That didn’t work because the USB over ethernet converters use the wires for their own signals and not for doing it over ethernet.
I’ve asked about that on forums, since it’s either use multiple Pis for printer and CNC control OR find a way to do USB over ethernet (real ethernet, not just the ethernet cables). There are commercial ways to do it and one FOSS project for it. (Sadly, the FOSS doesn’t work on a Mac.) I’m still working on the best way to handle that. What’s frustrating is that some people think they’re helping and don’t get how unusual the situation is and think that, these days, I can just go out and spend $200 or more for a new Pi when they’re really hard to find and super-expensive now.
If you have to do this, then you have a Harmony IR remote. A Harmony Hub is a smallish box that sits next to your equipment (like the Broadlink), and the companion remote uses RF. It’s way better, but still has some usability issues. Notably, it knows that if you switch activities and the TV is already on, it doesn’t have to turn the TV on again.
I’ve got a Broadlink RM4 Mini, but haven’t done much with it. It was more about experimenting for the day when my Harmony Hubs stop working.
All of them have magnetic back + a metal plate you can stick on the wall if you so desire. This means that you can put it on the metal plate on the wall, or take it off and put it on the table. They are also cheap.
They use zigbee. You simply need to add a zigbee dongle and run zigbee2mqtt. You can use it with HA or openhab, or both - it’s just mqtt. They all support multi-clicks, so you can come up with all kinds of combinations to use them, e.g. double click cycles the brightness / colours, or double click toggles different lights or even mutes the TV etc.
It’s perfectly fine using both zigbee and zwave together. I don’t have any zwave because zwave devices are much much more expensive and rare, choices are also very limited at least here in Australia.
I love my LG TVs. Openhab can control all of them directly over the network without any IR bridges. See if your TVs are supported?
I’ve downloaded oH for Pi and put it on a USB stick. That’ll be for testing. Right now I have a lot of USB sticks and not many good SD cards. (I’ve had problems with some lower quality SD cards in the past and need to order more good ones.) I’m going to set this test install up in my barn and take the Z Wave dongle and move it from the Pi down there running ZWaveJS2MQTT to the oH Pi. I’m also copying the secure keys from the ZWaveJS2MQTT config and see if I can use them with Oh. (Down there I only have 3 locks I’d have to reset, so if it doesn’t work, it’s not a big problem.)
I’m going to use this, with the app on my phone, so I can get used to oH and learn it. Then, when I’m ready, and I’ve read over linking to oH systems, I’ll setup another Pi with oH and use it in the house, to replace Home Assistant. Then I can just move my Z Wave and Insteon dongles to the new oH setup there.
I notice you have two examples in Ruby and I have read that I can use Python with oH, or use a REST interface. Would I have to use something like Ruby (or Python?) to make up a more complex rule like this, or can that be done directly with the rule editors in oH?
Missed that before. (Now I’m thinking of people in helmets and Mandalorian armor!)
Catching up and making sure I haven’t missed things. I do remember seeing this before.
I had Logitech’s “MyHarmony” program, or something like it, on my Mac, but then it stopped working on the newer versions and it took them a LONG time to come out with something to replace it so I could change any programming on my remotes. I thought about getting one of their hubs, but I’m not exactly crazy over Logitech. I was using the full-house Squeezebox music system by SlimDevices. Logitech bought it out and removed everything that made it worth having. It seems to me they have no problem dropping a line in a hurry and moving on. I know all companies do that, but Logitech seems especially quick to do it.
I have something that works for now - not great, but it works. There’s problems, as I mentioned. So if I’m dealing with back issues, and in the easy chair that really helps me when that happens, it’s hard to use the remote to turn on the entertainment system. I just can’t get into the right angle from that spot. But overall it works, so my plan has been to just go straight to Broadlink. The only thing that’s changed is that now I’m going to be figuring out how to do that on oH instead of HA.
I’ll be looking over those. I do have one light switch style button with adhesive on it that I’m going to use in a bathroom where the “real” light switch is a bit hard to reach when walking in the door.
That’s one thing I like about HA and oH - I can use different systems together. I think I’ve mentioned I have two ISY994i devices (I think the maker is Universal Devices) and I got them because they handled both Insteon and Z Wave, but then I would have had to spend decent cash to replace BOTH of those units to work with newer devices. Also, I found the rules I could make in their system rather limited - so the paid-for system was less capable than the open source ones.
I’ve looked into that before. My Epson projector is from about 2017 and I think it was near EOL at the time. There’s a remote control program for my iPhone, but all I ever need to do with the actual TVs is turn them on and off. I also have DVD/BD players, HDMI switches, and Apple TVs in both entertainment centers, so I need to control multiple devices in each place.
I’d rather do it without an IR bridge if all components could be controlled directly, but some devices don’t have that option. I figure it’s better to use the same system for all the devices in both entertainment centers than mixing them up.
