Home Assistant is great and if you don’t want to roll your own server an ODROID-N2+ ARM based are pretty easy to get via Amazon or Ameridroid.
It autodiscovers most devices and you can arrange your dashboard however you like to expose whatever degree of controls you want. And with Node-RED you can script the automations you want.
The rate of progress that Home Assistant has been rolling out new features is mind blowing. Not even 2 years ago you had to do almost all configuring in Home Assistant by editing yaml files, now virtually everything is done via the UI.
This month’s release has made the dashboard (previously called Lovelace) config even more user friendly.
Also, there’s some good news for anyone with Insteon gear. You can still use it with Home Assistant, they put out this blog post with some more info:
Yes, it has been running so well that I have not needed to touch a thing. I logged in when this topic came up and was amazed after I did an update. I even discovered my UPS on my Mac and gave me more control than the software app has.
I thought I’d drop in my notes about experience migrating to HomeSeer after Insteon went down. Their basic software is $29 and the Insteon plugin is $59 (one time), and there are no ongoing charges for Alexa access (unlike HomeAssistant). The plugin uses your old hub as the “power line modem” for the new system; hopefully you haven’t reset it, though there are people who report that a reset isn’t fatal. They have a 30 day trial, if you want to test drive. They have Linux, Windows, and Mac installs, I chose their Pi version since I had a Pi4 waiting for another project. I have MINOR linux experience (every command I need, I have to google), but it was not hard. I started the project last Wednesday morning, and had everything back to pre-InsteonApocolypse functionality by dinner the next night (“Alexa, turn on LivingRoom lights”). I’m super-happy, and I think there’s a ton of additional flexibility that I didn’t have before, that’s waiting to be tapped.
Things I learned
You need 32Gbyte microSD cards for Homeseer install, but 64Gbyte cards are cheaper and fast to get, and $14 or so each. I got Samsung PRO Endurance cards, which come with an SD-to-microSD adapter. Format on mac to MS FAT32 (not exFAT)
The Pi4 boots to one video port for NOOBS Debian build, and the other for the Homeseer linux image. At first I thought it was busted.
When you first go through the initialization of the homeseer server install from a web browser on your mac (URL: find.homeseer.com), the process of making a username for homeseer.com login somehow changes the password of the ‘homeseer’ user on the machine from the default (hsthsths4) to something else, and I don’t know what it is. But you can still log into root w/ pwd homeseerpi,
They ask you to see if you can log in to the insteon hub by browsing to the IP:port and entering the device user/pwd, all of which is found on a sticker on the underside of the hub.
You will not be successful installing the Insteon plugin until you UPGRADE the new homeseer install to the latest version, which you can do from the browser menus. Takes about two minutes. This took me a considerable time to figure out, because I didn’t know about the log viewer, which tells me exactly what the issue was.
From the plugin menu, you can get a list of all your device ID’s from plugin > interface > display links option, which you will then need to manually enter and add, one by one. I found the easiest thing to do was to add a bunch of ID’s, and name them “unknown1”, “unknown2”, “unknown3”, etc for device name, and “unknown” for device location. This will make it easier to find and edit the device in the plugin list after you figure out that “unknown2” is the hallway, for instance. It was easier to add a bunch in a block, as it seems that I needed to restart the homeseer server before the newly added links would control the switches. You can restart from the browser tools > linux menu.
NOTE! the Insteon Plugin > Device > Feature Name is the thing that shows up on the phone app. Some people mentioned that, if your residence has a single “floor”, they are using the Floor field for DeviceType, and that’s what I did (Dimmer/ Outlet/ Switch, etc).
ALSO NOTE! while you’re going to all the trouble of editing all these names, also come up with your desired voice shortcut for Alexa and enter that at this time too, to save more futzing later (see paragraph just below).
For Alexa integration, I went here:
https://docs.homeseer.com/display/HSPRODKB/Alexa+Smart+Home+Skill+Integration
This specific ALEXA skill lets you say “Alexa, turn on kitchen light”, rather than “Alexa, tell homeseer to turn on kitchen light”. Also, the base Alexa skill wants the wordy command which includes FLOOR+ROOM+DEVICE (“Alexa, turn on dimmer living room cove lights”), but you can shorten that with a voice command shortcut for each device in the Insteon plugin device page. See:
As always, any edit of a device in Homeseer will require that the Alexa skill be disabled, then reenabled, for Alexa to discover the new edit.
Delete all the old Insteon dimmer/ group manes from Alexa before you discover new devices, so she won’t be confused as to which switch to switch!
29Apr2022: backup, then upgrade to Homeseer beta to allow dimming with Alexa (“Alexa, turn on living room lights 40%”)
To enable the Raspberry Pi Wifi connection, go to Setup > Network and enter the info into SSID and Passphrase fields. SHUTDOWN the Pi, (and this is the key) UNPLUG power, then restart and you’ll be back up with a wireless connection.
