And ST is down for the count

💬 Lounge
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Goodbye ST it is time to go....

I have now officially moved 100% of my home automation to HE. A total of 107 devices, (6) virtual devices and 100% home automation from WebCORE to RM. As you can see HE can really do it all with anything you choose to utilize.

Here is my list of fun at the home:

Motion Detectors:

  • Zooz 4-n-1
  • Smartthings Motions Sensor
  • Bosch
  • EcoLink

Switches:

  • Zooz Toggle and dimmer switches

ZWave Outlets:

  • Remotec
  • Zooz Power Strip

Zigbee:

  • Peanut Outlets
  • Wink Fan controller(s)
  • RGB Bulbs

WiFi:

  • Hubduino
  • TPLink Bulbs
  • TPLink Outlets
  • Harmony Hub
  • SmartLife RGBw (H801)
  • WeMo Insight
  • Sonos Speakers
  • Samsung M3 Speaker
  • Alexa TTS

Locks/Doors:

  • Kwikset 888
  • GoLinear Garage Controller

Contact Sensors:

  • Monoprice Recessed Door Sensor
  • Monoprice Door/Window Sensor
  • Visonic

Applications Used:

  • Alexa TTS Manager
  • Amazon Echo Skill
  • Cobra Apps
    • Message Central
  • Ecobee Integration
  • Groups/Scenes (11 Groups/No Scenes)
  • Homebridge
  • Hubitat Dashboard
  • HSM (3 Rules)
  • HSL (1 Rule)
  • HousePanel (in development)
  • IFTTT
    • Ring Doorbell
    • Sense Home Automation
    • Roomba
  • Life360 Connector
  • Logitech Harmony
  • Mode Manager
  • Rule Machine (45 Rules)
  • Samsung WiFi Audio
  • SharpTools.io
  • SmartLife RGBw Light
  • Sonos Integration
  • TP-Link Cloud Connect
  • WeMo Connect

Raspberry Pi:

  • OpenVPN (absolutely LOVE!!)
  • HousePanel development
  • Homebridge for iOS support (much better than Alexa TBH)
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Congratulations.

Are you using the Raspberry Pi as a node.js server. if so, you can divorce the cloud for TP-Link devices using the Hub version. (In about a month, I will be developing a Smart App to install these (porting my new one over from SmartThings). I am also transitioning - one reason is to be as independent of cloud as possible!

I would love to see your dashboards.

PS - I can't help but be a little proud since I authored the Samsung Speaker and TP-Link Connect apps.

DAve

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Congrats! I'm looking forward to the day I can make a similar post. 3 things holding me up at the moment:

  1. Google Home integration
  2. Logitech Harmony instant status updates
  3. Custom commands in Maker (to replace IFTTT -> webCoRE -> RasPi node.js app automations)
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@djgutheinz

Yes you were a BIG reason why I was able to move over. Without TP-Link and my Samsung M3 working I wouldn't be close to moving over. :slight_smile:

As for my rPi I do not use the node.js service as I am good with the cloud service at this point. I don't have ANY issues with your TP-Link cloud code with HE. No delays, no downtime, etc. Local execution would be nice but if you are porting the SmartApp over to HE soon then that will be a mute potential issue too. :slight_smile:

As for dashboards to be honest I don't have anything ellaborate. I just created room/function based dashboards for quick access through the phone. After implementing homebridge we now almost exclusively utilize Siri and HomeKit as the interface is SO much better on a mobile device. Also using presence detection through Homebridge with automations.

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Google Home integration would be nice. As for the Logitech Harmony instant updates I decided I really didn't "need" them as I use a WeMo Insight to detect when the TV is on/off. That then executes automations accordingly.

What are you doing with WebCORE that you can't jump off onto RM? I had this issue with my car starter automation but eventually figured it out thanks to the new boolean advancements with RM.

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I'm using webCoRE as the interface to allow commands from external services to trigger non-HE actions inside my network. For example, I can tell Google Home "tell living room volume up 10 times". The flow looks like this:

Google Home triggers IFTTT, which makes a web request to my webCoRE endpoint with parameters "location=living_room&command=volume_up&count=10". webCoRE then uses the ST hub to make a web request (including the parameters sent from IFTTT) to my internal node.js server on a Raspberry Pi, which issues a volume up command 10 times to my living room Harmony hub.

Right now there's no easy way to use HE this way. HE Maker has an external endpoint that I can hit, but there's a whitelist of device commands it accepts and they are pretty basic. I could probably use 20 or 30 different virtual HTTP switches, one for each combination of command and count that I need, along with the same number of IFTTT applets to turn them on, but that's crazy. Support has indicated that they are going to remove the Maker API whitelist in a future release and allow any command to be sent to devices.

In preparation for this, I created a virtual Harmony HTTP switch for both my living room and master bedroom hubs that accepts commands like volume_up, volume_down, select, mute, play, pause, etc along with counts for each, and makes HTTP requests to my node.js server with the Harmony hub IP, command, and count.

Once the whitelist from HE Maker API is removed, I'll be able to do the following:
Google Home triggers IFTTT, which makes a web request to my HE Maker endpoint, which sends custom commands to the Harmony HTTP switches, which makes the HTTP requests to the node.js server inside my network, which will translate & forward the commands to each Harmony hub.

I have another piston that operates in much the same way, except that I can tell it to start a movie in the living room or master bedroom. This piston turns on my Fire TV activity on the appropriate Harmony hub, launches the Kodi app, then hits a different node.js app that queries Kodi for a list of movies I have on an external HDD, selects the right one, and starts it. Very convenient when I'm in the middle of something and the kiddo wants to watch a movie :slight_smile:

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What is the reasoning for not using the Harmony Hub "Skills" in Google Home?

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Last time I looked into this they were only allowing activities (not individual device commands) and did not support multiple Harmony hubs. I'll take another look, it's been awhile.

**edit - seems like individual commands like volume up or down are now supported, but I still have to choose one hub when linking accounts, no support for multiples. This will probably solve one of my problems though, I can't remember the last time I used voice commands for the Harmony hub in the master bedroom. Thanks for the reminder to check it out. Got my accounts linked, will test functionality when I get home to see if it covers enough that I can replace the node.js solution.

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Tested tonight, the GH -> Harmony integration works great! Thanks!

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My sticking point is actiontiles ... I keep revisiting sharptools but I just don’t find the UI as responsive. You press a button and there’s a notable delay before it updates the UI... do you see this?

Personal preference but I also find the actiontiles styling cleaner.

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@daniel.john.edge

Yes I had the same issue but actiontiles has no initiative to support anything but ST. The developer (who has some really cool apps similar to rBoy) just doesn’t see HE as a viable source of future revenue for them. So I am ok with that. The staff/developers of HE have been very gracious to include features natively to HE upon request that were only in paid or ST only apps. Because of @mike.maxwell, @bravenel, the rest of the HE staff AND the incredible HE community I have been able to remove 100% of my reliance on ST because that functionality now exists for free in HE.

Just my $0.02. Also no-one used actiontiles at the house because of how ugly it was. I catch the household checking Sharptools every now and then.

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New to HE so wondering why you guys don't use the Dashboards in HE?

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@TechMedX

I do use them but only for my phones. The dashboards are very minimalistic for displaying your devices. It also takes a lot of effort to modify each tile for color, size and arrangement to have anything that resembles ActionTiles or SharpTools.io. Since ActionTiles refuses to integrate with HE I went with SharpTools.io. SharpTools.io provides a richer interface for my wall displays and just looks great and is easy to customize. .

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How did you get your peanut outlets to pair??? I've tried everything. Nothing. not a damn hint of a response from hubitat.

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You need to start close to the HE for the first one. Just follow the pairing process and you should be good. I have 4 of them throughout the house acting as repeaters.

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Oh wow. Well the previous piece of advice I got was to change my zigbee channel to under 20. I'd been at 21, so I set it to 18. Still nothing. Out of desperation I just moved again to 15 and bam both peanuts showed up instantly. Must be some interference on 18.

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