My HE, HA system status, and where I am going. Sanity check please

Yes. You can program it to only water on permitted days and times. You can pause the program. Total control and flexibility really.

Well the watering / sprinkler system is a ways off for me at this point. But noted...

I have accomplished a little this weekend.

The fan automations are in place and working as expected.

I have given an offer for, and went ahead and purchased 6 of the Iris V3 smart plugs. I love how well the Ikea Tradfri plugs work, but they do block the second recepticle in a duplex, the Iris ones don't.

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Aaaaand what are the odds that after I get off work today I can get time to take the hub offline, and power off the circuit the back bedroom is on so I can install the fan controller...

I also digging through, appear to be missing a pair of the rubber spacers for the fan mounts. I need to go to my local hardware store and get some sheet rubber and make my own.

Well the odds shot way up. I conned my wife into listening to the old fashioned thing called a radio while she took a shower and I did the controller install...

So I am 4 of 6 controllers done. Honestly since I rebooted the hub and just let it rebuild the Zigbee network mesh it's been right as rain.

I did discover the bulbs in this fixture however are non dimmable. Not super thrilled with that. Another thing on the shopping list...

More discussion with the wife, and we are now onto, replace the fans in the master suite with new ones. Most notably I need to match the fixtures, in the dining room, guest bath, vanity, kitchen. It's an oil rubbed bronze ornate floral kind of thing. probably describing it wrong. But I have to find the right fans now.

For the time being, I will just stow the remaining controllers away in my supplies box, and continue with the other projects.

While I would prefer no cloud, to do what I want, I can't avoid it, so I am doing some more Alexa routines, but only stuff that HE can not do locally. I.E. My morning alarm routine is bring the bedroom lights on, read me some gibberish feel good trivia, then my news feed, and finally the weather and traffic reports. By the time the weather is done I am up, moving and the coffee is brewed via program from prior night.

I need to get my wife set up account wise so we can use her phone as a secondary presence sensor. I'd like to when BOTH of our phones arrive after sundown run lighting routines and turn on some ambient music on the echo dot group... That sort of stuff...

I am still heavily and actively seeking out more ways to utilize the system to our benefit, for now we are golden...

Well, not HE / HA system directly, but I got a smidgeon more done today.

The HE system started initially as I started the home remodel, one of the items on the list was to get rid of the puke beige toggle light switches with bright white Decora switches with backlights, and the puke color duplex outlets were getting replaced with bright white Decora outlets.

Well, the back bedroom / nursery had not been done yet. Since I am in there futzing around with automating the fan / light it seems like this was a good time to swap it out.

Now mind you, I still need to swap the outlets but my knees are far too painful to get down to their level. But given some time on the mend, and automation that keeps me from having to get up, and down, and up and down to adjust fans and lights, I see this coming soon...

Tracking my eBay order, it shipped, has been accepted and has left the origin facility. Knowing USPS tracking, the smart plugs will likely be here probably Friday, and the next status in the tracking will be updated probably oh.... Next Wednesday...

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So the Iris V3 smart plugs are in. I removed 5 of the Tradfri plugs, and swapped over the Iris plugs, so I have a total of 6 Iris plugs installed, and 2 Tradfri left. I have 1 spare Iris plug not yet deployed.

I appear to be missing one of the Tradfri plugs. It's the one we used at Christmas for the lights in the dining room. I suspect my wife stuffed it into a box of decorations...

I had a weird hiccup in the middle of the night. My wife got up to let the dog out at 03:00 and entered her code in the keypad, opened the door, and the siren went off. I heard the siren, I heard her fussing, and knew immediately what happened. Tried opening up the app on my phone only to have the hub non responsive.

I power cycled the hub manually (bad but no choice), on reboot it wanted a firmware update, so I updated. However when it came back online the trouble prone Hampton Bay controller threw a fit.

So I powered down the hub. Let it sit about 20 to 30 minutes, and powered it back up. We went to get some lunch and came back home. Since then all is well. Sort of...

I mentioned the Iris V3 smart plugs. Well Zigbee pairing mode timed out when trying to join one of them, and it required a factory reset, again, to get it to play nice. And then I forgot to change the driver type from "device" to "generic zigbee outlet". Ooops.

I have one left I am about to set up, and use it as merely a power monitor for the living room TV. I am hoping to be able to use it to allow me to automate the living room lights where lights are turned off when the TV is powered on.

So off I go again...

Welp, there is already a Rachio Hubitat integration app. I couldn't resist. It installed and connected with my Rachio flawlessly.

I still don't know what to do with it.

HSM integration. Alert action, turn sprinklers on.

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So... wife jumped in the shower, nobody else watching living room TV, swapped the power around, bumped the hub offline accidentally (same surge supressor). Booted it back up and yet another firmware update presented.

That literally makes 3 in the last 2 days.

Makes me wonder about testing / release schedules for the firmware... But I digress...

I am hopeful the zigbee will play nice, or more accurately the Hampton Bay controller will play nice with the Zigbee.

I have all 7 of my Iris V3 Smart Plugs in place and configured now. I found the missing Ikea Tradfri smart plug and got it stowed back in my spares box.

I am considering grabbing 4 more of the Iris plugs and selling my Ikea plugs all together, but I may stow them aside, grab Iris V2 contact sensors, and as I pull the smart bulbs out in favor of switches, order another HE hub and gift it to my BIL and his girlfriend. They could use it. He's got some health issues that automation would actually be useful for....

Once the firmware update to 2.2.7.122 is done, I can get to work on that living room light automation. Although I am sure I will write it, scratch it off, write it over again...

I sure would like this in a more like a plain text editor with auto fill / suggestions like some other IDEs, but I will work with what we've got here... And I sure don't want to WebCore or anything cloud based...

Well I'll be plugged like I ate aunt Marthas meatloaf for dinner. It would appear that V1 and V2 Iris smart plugs support power monitoring, but he iL03_1 or V3 smart plugs don't... Still want to keep them around due to the space efficiency, and aside from monitoring the one TV, I have no real use I can think of for power monitoring. So.... that leaves me with a quandry.

I want a good Zigbee smart plug, that is form factor wise on par with the Iris V3 so that it won't block the second outlet in a duplex, and of course, will do power reporting.

I guess I got my documentation crossed between generations. Bleh.

The Jasco / GE Zigbee smart switch is in, and of course my hub is wanting yet another firmware update. I must admit I like frequent updates, but this is starting to seem a little silly. I have been prompted for 4 firmware updates in the last week...

I had no idea when I got into HE that development was going so hot and heavy, but here we are... I should have dove in to HE instead of ADT Smartthings 2 years ago. My Iris V1 support would have probably been available in less than a months time...

Anyway, applying the update and about to test the Jasco switch to see if power monitoring works. Curious though, it shows up to Alexa as a light and won't let me change it. I want it to show up as a switch so it doesn't accidentally get grouped in the all lights category...

For those probably 2 people keeping up with my tales of victory and woe in expanding the art as it were in my experience with Hubitat Elevation Home Automation, here is my current status...

I'm not really sure if this thread is doing anyone any good other than allowing me to talk through my thought process. And maybe give some people even newer than me some insight into how migrating from Smartthings can work for them, especially if they are among the group that had also been on Iris by Lowes and still has Iris components leftover.

The hub itself.

It's mounted to the backside of our entertainment console in the living room, about and centralized to the house as I can physically get. The ethernet line it is using was run originally for Iris and is a dedicated line back to the ethernet ports on the router, no hop through any switches. Power is presently connected to the constant on side of the Jasco 45853 smart switch. More on that later. Not sure if this is a good, or bad idea, but I did not want a power strip here, I wanted it connected straight up.

Permimeter sensors. All moving panes of glass, and garage doors are covered by Iris V1 contact sensors with the funny Zigbee, but it works so no harm no foul. The entry doors are covered by Iris V2 contact sensors.

I have Hampton Bay Zigbee ceiling fan / light controls FINALLY working and they seem to be happy in the kitchen, front, middle and back bedrooms. AKA guest room, home office, and nursery.

I have Sylvania Smart+ 60w cool white equivalent Zigbee bulbs in the front bedroom closet, front porch light, driveway light, guest vanity, guest bathroom, laundry room, master bedroom ceiing fan, and dressing room ceiling fan.

I've got Zooz Zen27 dimmers in the dining room, living room, and master vanity. I have Zooz Zen22 dimmers in the master bathroom, front / entry hallway, and bedroom hallway. I have a Zen22 that I was going to install in the guest bathroom but I disovered the disaster that was the wiring in that box. I need pro help there...

A single GE / Jasco 3 speed Zwave Plus ceiling fan controller is in the living room controlling the fan. This is the only fan / light combo that had separate switches in the house...

I've got NuTone NWS15Z Zwave on / off switches controlling the main kitchen light fixture (4 4 foot LED light tubes) and my garage workshop that at present has 7 4 foot T8 Flourescent fixtures, to be upgraded to LED fixtures when other budget items are done. I.E. the flourescent still work well, and LED conversion bulbs failed miserably in these fixtures. Just gonna replace the fixtures with preloaded 4 foot LED shop lights.

I have Iris V3 motion sensors in the guest bathroom, 2 in the guest vanity, 1 in the laundry room, 1 in the master vanity, and 1 in the master bath.

I have Iris V2 motion sensors in the kitchen (2), front hallway, front, middle, and back bedrooms, living room (2), and master bedroom.

I have Iris V3 smart plugs in the kitchen, front, middle, back, and master (2) bedrooms for various functions, and to act as Zigbee repeaters for the Hampton Bay fan controllers. These Iris smart plugs replaced Ikea Tradfri Wireless Control outlets. No fault of the Tradfri aside from the over generous form factor blocking outlets immediately above or below them. This literally leaves me with 8 spare Ikea Tradfri Wireless Control Outlets in my inventory. Not sure what to do with them as of yet. Keep reading...

I have a couple of lighted Christmas star decorations, basically large 18" oiled bronze finish stars with white lights, that adorn my living room walls that are controlled with 1 each Ikea Tradfri Wireless Control outlet. They are simply too Texas homey to go back up with the rest of the Christmas stuff...

The previously mentioned Tradfri plugs will be put back into service for the Holidays, then taken back out. We have Christmas trees / lights for every room. The main tree is on a funky rotating base my wife found at Home Depot about 3 years ago that we just LOVE... So yeah, literally every Christmas tree inside the house will be controlled by a Tradfri. Go figure...

I am refinishing a 1990s Hampton Bay ceiling fan that started life out as bright brass, but is now seriously annoying looking, so we are converting it to oil rubbed bronze and will be installing it in the master vanity, along with one of the remaining 2 Hampton Bay Ceiling Fan / Light controllers.

The remaining fan in the master suite needs to get a new fan. The original fan is some lousy designed never ran smoothly 1980s Taiwan import job that never should have been sold in the first place, but I digress... I am looking to find a Hampton Bay Caffe Patina ceiling fan, or, well honestly something similar but with a completely different style light kit as the factory one is kind of, well not what we want in the bedroom...

My automations so far are motion lights in the middle bedroom / home office and kitchen. Motion lights with modes in kitchen ceiling fan, laundry room, guest vanity, guest bathroom, master vanity, and master bathroom.

Living room ceiling fan lights are on a rule I set up and tested tonight, it seems to work. On modes it will turn the lights on at a defined intensity IF the TV is off. If the TV is on, the lights are kept off.

The controlled ceiling fans have rules that respond to temp readings of the motion sensor in the room they are in, and starting at 68 degrees F, for every 2 degrees, the fan speed increments up on speed, so low, medium, medium high and high for the Hampton Bay controlled fans. For the living room fan that is controlled by a GE 3 speed Zwave fan controller, the start is 70 deg F, and just goes high, medium, low.

I've got HSM / Nickelharpa set up using 3 Iris v2 keypads for arming / disarming / panic button duties. And 4 Utilitech 100db Zwave sirens disbersed throughout the house and place to insure they are hard to take out, and annoying as possible when running.

I've got an Echo in the living room, and 2nd gen Echo Dots in the kitchen and garage / workshop, 3rd generation Echo Dots in the front, middle, back and master bedrooms. This allows me all the normal Echo functions, and is integrated with HE for voice control. I know not everyone is a fan of voice control, but it lets me do my thing.

My thermostat is one of those Honeywell Smart WiFi thermostats.

Video monitoring and motion reactive lightint outdoors is via Ring Spotlight cam wired (2) a Ring Floodlight cam, and video only is via 2 Wyze Cam V3s.

I have Alexa routines that bring up my lights in my bedroom, read the weather and news as I wake up in the morning, remind me it's Sushi Wednesday at our local Sushiya, and, well a mess of other stuff.

I have a LOT of ideas for things I want to continue to automate. I feel like I am just getting started. Most notably, I am working on my wife to get her to agree to losing dust ruffles to history, and allowing me to install LED strips under the edges of the beds to illuminat the way for fragile toes while not blinding the eyes during a middle of the night bathroom journey. Under cabinet, and hard to describe but above cabinet. Well I have a wall dividing the kitchen from the living and dining rooms that doesn't go all the way up, it's just upper cabinet high and I have vaulted ceilings. That wall is the ONLY place in the house due to the vaulted ceilings I have crown molding, or at least something approximating crown molding. I want to put RGBW LED strips all the way around that molding, The automation for that is going to be tricky and will likely require some IFTTT integration as I want it to come on and change colors depending on the genre of the video being shown on the TV. Horror flick? Red. Nature show? Green. Sci Fi? Blue. Romantic comedy for the wife? Pink... and so on....

Lastly and this is only oh so slightly automation, ish... I have a couple of Orbit hose timers that control my garden hose sprinklers. I do not currently have an in ground sprinkler system. I want long term an in ground system, well we've discussed it before, but with a controller smart enough to know if the lawn needs water, doesn't waste water, and won't get me a huge fine if I water when I am not allowed to...

That should more or less be it for now. my next update will hopefully be that I got the fan painted, reassembled and installed ready for the Hampton Bay controller, and with any luck, a related post saying oh so how easy (yeah right) pairing and getting that Hampton Bay fan controller was...

There are some integrations I was used to with Smartthings, but nothing I seriously miss. There is no integration I know of for my Thermostat, nor the Ring devices. And while I don't expect to be able to view video in the HE app, it would be nice to be able to trigger and turn off the Ring cams lights and sirens from within HSM...

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So I am not sure if I mentioned this in this thread before or not, but I had a similar thread when I migrated from Iris to ADT Smartthings.

Why do I do this?

Simply put, I feel like I can't possibly be the only one going through this, at one point or another, AND I am crash coursing on a new to me platform while needing to maintain services.

My updates as you might notice, are coming a LOT slower now. Mostly because I am spending more time studying in depth how to smooth off the rough edges of the system now.

With the the exception of the one Zen22, I have all of the hardware I currently own, that is going to be used shortly installed and configured, excluding of course the 2 ceiling fan controllers, which are pending fan replacements and work.

I spent some time on the fan for the master, and found that the original bright brass finish was making the paint literally walk off of the pieces, and so I spent some time soaking the arms in hot soapy dishwater and then wet sanding them. A gold tone goo came off leaving me with jammed up sandpaper before I could even really touch the finish, so I switched to a scotch brite green pad. The goo came off, and the finish underneath is a funny dark tone chrome, not quite black chrome, but REALLY close...

Once that is dry. I try again, but I going to sand it with slightly more coarse sandpaper, maybe 120 grit, to give the paint a surface to bite to...

I have the living room light automation in my other thread rewritten and we are testing. I am not sure it is going to work though. No idea if the dog is in the living room moving around right now, or it just fails to turn the lights off.. Ugh...

Oh, and after fussing about the barrage of firmware updates, I set up the announcments and I think releases to notify me, and saw the changelog for 2.2.7 125 and found they bug fixed the zigbee child object handling that MIGHT be part of my Hampton Bay controller issues. So I bit the bullet and applied it, hoping for the best...

Still trying to figure out how to tie everything together into one cohesive system, I am sure I will get there, but when is the question. I suspect how is going to have to involve Alexa, and most likely IFTTT. I haven't messed with IFTTT for 2 years now, so relearning time for me on that too.

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Welcome to the rabbit hole. I have 1 suggestion. The HE antennas are directly under the logo on top of the hub. I propose placing the hub on top on the entertainment center will yield better results, instead of the antennas radiating directly into an obstruction(the wall).
I have my hub on top of a tall china cabinet in the DR, central in my home. Logo facing up toward ceiling. It seems to work very well so far. Still have crazy pairing issues with the C7, which a reboot usually takes care of.

PS- if you have a compressor, invest in a cheap sandblaster, use black diamond grit. The arms will take paint perfectly, in every single nook & cranny

Actually, I do have an air compressor, but sandblasters require an obnoxious amount of CFM. My BIL has a body shop with a blasting cabinet. I might try to borrow that...

I got a cheap ■■■ 1 from Sears(RIP), it's just a gun & a hopper. I use it on my 30 gal Sears 7.5cfm, which supposedly is not enough to power the blaster. However I've used it to do 10 cast iron radiators, just took a little longer

(Insert your best Cleetus impression here...)

Oooh boy you are using one o them fancy Sears ones huh? I got me one o dem Harber frayt corn pressers...

(Okay let's be done with poor old Cleetus for now..., FWIW, Cletus is my ex FIL so I get to pick on him...)

In all seriousness, I have an older 2.5HP Central Machinery oil lubricated 29 gallon air compressors. A bit different from the current model and I believe it would deliver 7.5 scfm @ 90psi. I see their 20oz media blaster gun will suck down 7 scfm @ 90psi. So yeah, blast, wait, blast, wait, blast, wait.

FWIW, I CAN run an HVLP with it, but ended up with a traditional LVLP gun. I may be the only nut job in my neighborhood to use an automotive style spray gun to apply Thompsons Water Seal to the fence and deck... Oh yeah, and attempt, and FAIL badly to help a buddy respray his Saturn... Long story, lots of orangepeel...

Rachio 3 can do that EXCEPT for the local authority part.. that probably a little to granular, and would require your local authorities to put that into some kind of central data base the Rachio would have access to, (but it dows allow ability to progrma for watering restrictions). In June my Rachio skipped 23 times due to either predicted rain fall or soil saturation. You have the option of EITHER weather intelligence (NWS) or a local PWS. I wish they would take BOTH into account. Here in North Texas our weather people aren't used to actually having to predict the weather, so they tend to go overboard if they see a cloud formation and call for a cat 5 hurricane, inland..

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