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skipdogg posted:I replaced my Carrier Cor thermostats with Ecobee's with 2 sensors on each one, and they may be my favorite thing I've done in the house so far. Costco has this bundle and I have been eyeballing it. My furnace is hella old though so perhaps should replace that first 
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Jan 11, 2019 19:00
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That's where I bought mine. I got the Ecobee 4 with 2 sensors for the downstairs, and the 3 Lite with 2 sensors for upstairs. The 4 replaced my living room Echo Dot which is really nice. Luckily my utility has a rebate program right now for 150 back for each thermostat. So the 3 was free and the 4 wasn't a whole lot.
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Jan 11, 2019 19:35
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sharkytm posted:I'll jump in and tell you to NOT buy any Dahua cameras off eBay/AliExpress. They'll have hacked Chinese-version firmware, and you'll never be able to update them. There's a great forum over at IPCamTalk, and a vendor named EmpireTech Andy. He sells the cameras on Amazon, and they've got international (not Chinese) firmware. He's been good to me, and supports the cameras better than anyone else selling Dahua. The Starlight cameras are awesome, and I highly recommend them. You can find Andy on AliExpress as well. (Empire Technology) if you contact him directly, He’ll sell outside of Amazon/Ali for a bit less.
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Jan 11, 2019 20:01
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Discussion Quorum posted:Can you tell it (via HA/OpenHab/whatever) to use a specific sensor based on your own rules, or do you have to use its built-in "follow me"? One of the Amazon reviews indicated it was maybe the latter, but who knows how savvy that person was. So the way Ecobee works is that you create a set of "Comfort Settings" which specify target Temperature(s), and then when you create a schedule you tell it what comfort setting to use at each point in time. For each comfort setting you can also assign a subset of the paired Remote Sensors. For example, I've got all my sensors active for the general "Home" setting, but for the "Sleep" setting it only uses the ones in the bedrooms. In non-"Follow-Me" mode the thermostat "reading" is a moving average of all the active sensors for the current Comfort Setting. In "Follow Me" mode it will average the readings from all remotes which are both (a) active for the comfort setting, and (b) detect that their room is occupied. Actually it does a moving average, so a brief activity in a new room won't immediately cause the overall reading to swing wildly. If no sensors show readings then it averages them all. This is how Follow Me works even at night, and is why it's kind of useful to assign only a subset of your remotes sometimes. As far as driving it from a controller goes, the Home Assistant Ecobee Thermostat platform supports a "Set Hold Mode" service that lets you force the thermostat to a specific Comfort Setting (and its assigned remotes), and a "Resume Program" service that returns it to its assigned schedule. There isn't anway to dynamically say "use sensors X, Y, and Z now" directly, or to say "forget your own readings, use this as your measured temperature" that I am aware of. You do also get feedback in HA for the individual sensors temperature and occupancy readings, as well. For my experience, "Follow Me" has done a pretty good job of giving me what I want. I was working in my basement all day the other day in an empty house, and I came upstairs and was like "man, it's cold in here!" I checked the thermostat and sensors and sure enough it was 66'F in my office (the assigned target temp) but 61-63'F in the upstairs rooms. A few seconds later the heat kicked on as it incorporated the new presence detection, just like clockwork. It has also been smart about dealing with garbage/anomolous data -- my mother left a window open after visiting once, and so the guest room was way colder than the rest of the house. Rather than blasting the heat all day without us understanding why, we got a notification saying "The Guest Room Sensor is differeing greatly from the rest of the house" and informed us it would exclude it from the averages until we reset it (which I believe it does if a sensor is > 10'F from the average for some extended period). It's likewise been surprisingly good about warning me when things get low on batteries. I do wish I had more control over how the sensor data is integrated. Being able to do something like "Incorporate all these rooms, but weight these ones a little more, and also don't ever let any one room get over X or under Y regardless of the average" would be really nice, as would being able to utilize the temperature sensors that come packaged with every single motion sensor I find. However, it hasn't been a dealbreaker for me and I am tremendously pleased with my decision to switch from a Gen2 Nest to an Ecobee4. Discussion Quorum posted:More fundamentally, I didn't want to rely on the cloud for my gol-durn thermostat I'm 100% on board with that, though I am actually not sure what the failure mode there is. If I just lose connection to the web app and my HA machine (because you go through the cloud to interface the two) then I'm perfectly fine with that since I don't really expect to be without internet for extended periods anyways. Discussion Quorum posted:Yeah, the thing I don't like about that (edit: I messed up the quote, I'm referring to the Aeotec) is that it's $60 vs $10-$15 for a comparable Zigbee device like the Sylvania controller. Something that expensive should really have better reviews than 3.5 stars on Amazon. Also it sounds like it has a non-replaceable battery, WTF? I think I recall that the Z-Wave alliance has something like a $10-15 per-device license fee? So that raises the floor on every single thing you purchase. Looking now I've found remotes as low as like $40, but I agree that's still silly for what some of these products are. See the Lutron Caseta picomotes for what I would really expect to find for Z-Wave scene controllers. Discussion Quorum posted:I'll look at Insteon. There are some really nice-looking lighting controllers in the Z-Wave products database (like this) but it looks like they're not actually available anywhere. I think the Lutron Caseta is the other standard for light controls, and they have some nice remotes at affordable prices there. Personally I went with the "if I am going to build a mesh I should commit to one standard" approach and so went with Z-Wave, but if you're primarily interested in lighting that's another route. Of course, if you've got a hub like HomeAssistant, you could just have both a Z-Wave and Zigbee bridge (I think they're on different bands, right?) and just use the Zigbee scene controllers to trigger actions on the Z-Wave devices...
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Jan 11, 2019 21:36
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Hubis posted:So the way Ecobee works is Thanks, this is 100x more helpful than anything I've read on it so far. It sounds like it works a lot like I'd want my DIY approach to work. I'm actually not dealing with a huge space - just a ~1,050sf apartment with an open kitchen and living area plus bed/bath/study. However the temperature differential between the thermostat and the bedroom or study (where my wife works from home) is definitely noticeable to the point that it affects comfort. The runtime reporting would also be nice. Costco is selling the ecobee4 with 2 remotes for $230, which looks like a decent deal. Hubis posted:I think the Lutron Caseta is the other standard for light controls, and they have some nice remotes at affordable prices there. Personally I went with the "if I am going to build a mesh I should commit to one standard" approach and so went with Z-Wave, but if you're primarily interested in lighting that's another route. If I wasn't a renter, Lutron would be pretty compelling, despite my dislike for single-vendor standards. I do plan on asking the leasing office about changing out switches, but I am expecting the answer to be some variation of  which means smart bulbs are all I have to work with on the lighting front. Due to the cost I need to be choosy about what I want to accomplish.Realistically, my apartment isn't so big that a Zigbee remote wouldn't reach my hub from anywhere (though the 2.4GHz space is really congested here - maybe I would need a smart plug or something to act as a repeater at the far end). I'm just being OCD about having everything on the same mesh, but the fragmentation on the Zigbee side of things is shaping up to be a real headache.
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Jan 12, 2019 00:58
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Doesn't look like anybody else has posted about actually using these here, but I bought a condo last year that came with line-voltage baseboard and in-wall, fan-forced heating, and I wanted to get some better thermostats than the ancient ones it came with, so I got some Mysa thermostats and they've been working great. I've had 'em installed and running for a little under a week now. Installation was kind of a pain because getting all the wires and wire nuts into the box after getting poo poo wired basically required shoving poo poo in there until it fit, and I had to wire things a bit differently than their web site said for one of my thermostats (their support was really helpful with figuring that out, especially since if it's wired wrong, it doesn't even power on to give any kind of diagnostic info), but since getting them installed, they've been pretty fantastic. I never knew that baseboard/in-wall heating had the possibility to not suck, but these have been keeping my temperatures pretty much exactly at the setpoints I set them to, and the energy usage report has given me some more data to use to cut my heating bills. So, if anybody else is in a similar situation and can't use Nest or any of the other 24V thermostats, Mysa's worth looking at.
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Jan 14, 2019 03:20
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Is there such a thing as a device with a long lasting battery that I can put in my apartment's mailbox (it's the kind of box where you fit the mail through a slot, not swing it open) then it'll send my phone some kind of alert when it detects something's been dropped inside? I imagine putting a cheap phone in there would not only be overkill but would also require me to charge it multiple times a week. edit: I know about the USPS having something for that but I am not American and we certainly do not have anything like that here. Argue fucked around with this message at 07:40 on Jan 14, 2019 |
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Jan 14, 2019 07:31
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Argue posted:Is there such a thing as a device with a long lasting battery that I can put in my apartment's mailbox (it's the kind of box where you fit the mail through a slot, not swing it open) then it'll send my phone some kind of alert when it detects something's been dropped inside? I imagine putting a cheap phone in there would not only be overkill but would also require me to charge it multiple times a week. In order to send your phone something you'd probably need something custom that could take a SIM card and send texts or some other alert to you. I haven't seen anything like that but I'm sure there's enough arduino modules to make something like that if you were inclined to develop it. Most of what I see online is for notification in a house or apartment near the box like: https://smile.amazon.com/Mail-Chime-MAIL-1200-Wireless-System/dp/B00103FDDU Obviously not quite what you wanted. Maybe you could stuff an Arlo or other new battery powered security camera in it and get notifications on motion, but that's probably overkill and it'd have to be able to connect to your home wifi which might be a challenge if your mailbox is metal.
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Jan 14, 2019 09:54
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Yeah, I saw that too and I imagine the people minding the lobby would not appreciate that being in there. And yeah, it's metal, and way out of range of the home wifi, so that might not be the best idea. I'll have to stew on this for a while I guess. Hrm.
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Jan 14, 2019 10:14
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Discussion Quorum posted:Trip report: Sounds like the devices you have aren't using the ZigBee reporting cluster thus appearing to not have this support. Remember not every device is created equally.
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Jan 14, 2019 14:03
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It was a Tradfri color bulb and a Sengled tunable white bulb. They were powered off for nearly 24h and still showed as online. Doesn't it at least poll periodically?  The Ikea Tradfri bulb also wouldn't respond to inputs when power was restored. I am likely converting my setup from Openhabian to Docker so I put further testing on hold. Maybe it's just a Tradfri problem.
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Jan 14, 2019 17:48
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Is there a forum or site I can post a picture of my thermostat wires to see if it's Nest compatible? I got one as a gift and based on everything I've seen it seems like it should be but there's still some iffyness in my head.
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Jan 15, 2019 01:34
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Medullah posted:Is there a forum or site I can post a picture of my thermostat wires to see if it's Nest compatible? I got one as a gift and based on everything I've seen it seems like it should be but there's still some iffyness in my head. I assume you already hit the Nest site? If you don’t have a C wire you might need an extender kit, despite Nest claiming it will work. Mine worked fine on heat without a C wire, but not cool.
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Jan 15, 2019 02:40
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Medullah posted:Is there a forum or site I can post a picture of my thermostat wires to see if it's Nest compatible? I got one as a gift and based on everything I've seen it seems like it should be but there's still some iffyness in my head. Either here or the HVAC thread would probably be appropriate and have enough people who know what they're talking about. If the thermostat has three (heat only) or four (heat + AC) wires you're probably fine aside from the possible C wire situation noted above, but if you want to be sure then the best two pics you could give us would be one clearly showing which wires go to which terminals on the back of the thermostat and another showing the point where they connect to the main unit (typically behind a maintenance panel). That plus model information for each end will tell everything. wolrah fucked around with this message at 15:44 on Jan 15, 2019 |
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Jan 15, 2019 15:38
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The sign up is weird but the filters in IFTTT seem to make it what I actually want and aren't that hard to play with (I don't really know javascript but there's enough examples to copy).
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Jan 15, 2019 22:23
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Excuse me, is the best best place to ask Google Home/Assistant questions, or is there somewhere better? I'm trying to figure out some sort of combination of IFTTT and a task/to do app that will let me add tasks to specific named folders/lists via Google Home/Assistant. Anybody know of such a combination? Or a better place to ask?
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Jan 16, 2019 12:38
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Finally got around to updating my HomeAssistant to .85.1 last night, and also switched to the new UI system called LoveLace. LoveLace is pretty drat nice; being able to live edit the GUI from the GUI itself is pretty drat nifty. No more editing config files and restarting HA constantly! At this point they have nearly got it to where you don't have to edit config files at all, for anything. If you haven't yet switched to LoveLace, do so now. If you are using HA via Hassio, there is a add-on that will convert your existing setup to LoveLace and then you can set the LoveLace page to be your default. I am also interested in playing around with the new ESPHome stuff. Looks like it makes messing around with ESP based devices pretty easy.
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Jan 16, 2019 15:10
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chippy posted:Excuse me, is the best best place to ask Google Home/Assistant questions, or is there somewhere better? Seems fairly straightforward to use IFTTT to add to a Google Sheet/Doc if that's something you'd be interested in? Since Assistant can't work with Keep you're looking at a third party integration somewhere and it's going to be a bit more difficult if that's the route you're taking.
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Jan 16, 2019 16:53
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Got to play around with the new ESPHome integration in Home Assistant.. Its awesome if you like doing DIY stuff. It is basically a easy way to configure any ESP32/8266 device using YAML. Said devices then integrate with Home Assistant. Changes can be sent via OTA to the ESP, and custom code running on the ESP can directly call into Home Assistant's API if you want to do so to trigger things. Install the ESPHome addon in Hassio. (Instructions here: https://esphomelib.com/esphomeyaml/guides/getting_started_hassio.html) Plug your ESP device into the computer or PI running Hass.io The ESPHome dashboard will see it. Once your initial configuration is uploaded, you can disconnect your ESP device from USB, any further changes can be done over the air. In Home Assistant, Configure the ESPHome integration by adding the name of your newly configured ESP device, all the configured sensors on the ESP device will automatically appear in Home Assistant. I took a Adafruist Huzzah ESP8266 I had and connected a BMP280 Temperature and Pressure sensor to it. Some screenshots!  ESPHomeYaml Dashboard with configured ESP device.  Editing ESP device configuration using YAML. Documentation here:https://esphomelib.com/esphomeyaml/guides/getting_started_hassio.html Adafruit Huzzah with BMP280 I2C sensor and ESP Wifi signal strength exposed.  Soon as you upload any changes to the ESP configuration to the device itself, any new or changed nodes appear in Home Assistant immediately.  New ESP Sensors as they appear in Home Assistant. ESPHome devices send updates to Home Assistant using either MQTT, or writing into Home Assistant's API directly. The latter is the preferred and default method. The api: flag in the ESP device config enables this.
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Jan 17, 2019 01:15
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That is really, really cool.
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Jan 17, 2019 03:38
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Been messing with it all night... Makes it really easy. Have hooked up a button, a LED and a 10k POT, just to see how it worked.  Defined the config as such:  Which results in this in Home Assistant:  The OTA upload is really neat.. Change config, Validate, and then Upload. Depending on what you changed, you might have to wait for it to recompile the firmware. It uploads, and then reboots the ESP. Any changes to entities are reflected in Home Assistant soon as the ESP reports in the first time. Thinking about putting this into a box and mounting it in my garage. The Huzzah has enough input/output pins I could hook up some door contact sensors to replace both Zwave door sensors (I have use for them elsewhere), and also add a small relay to toggle my garage door opener. Making a sort of "sensor hub" if you will.
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Jan 17, 2019 03:57
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chippy posted:Excuse me, is the best best place to ask Google Home/Assistant questions, or is there somewhere better? You can tell Google Home to create any list and add things to it. You don't need IFTTT or anything. Instead of Notes or any other list app it saves it in the assistant directly. The only downside is to see the list you have to ask the assistant on your phone to show you your lists, there's no app or link you can just click.
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Jan 17, 2019 07:11
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You can view your lists in the Google Home app, which is actually just a link to a webpage, which you can then bookmark.
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Jan 17, 2019 07:28
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I was only able to find the shopping list in the Google Home app. Any other list I created wasn't listed there.
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Jan 17, 2019 07:38
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All the home assistant stuff sounds really cool, I really need to make the time. I already have a raspberry pi just chilling doing nothing. This seems like the easiest way to do the temperature triggers that I always am trying to get around to doing as my next project.
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Jan 17, 2019 08:08
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FISHMANPET posted:You can view your lists in the Google Home app, which is actually just a link to a webpage, which you can then bookmark. I thought they removed it from the Home app in the big UI update? Even if they didn't I couldn't find it without asking Assistant on my phone to show it to me.
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Jan 17, 2019 10:10
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stevewm posted:<Cool Stuff> I'm looking to set up a couple of little led lights in my workshop that link back to my Home Assistant, to indicate when my wife is home/I have unread emails, that kind of thing. Do you reckon this would be a decent start point interface for that? I havent put much thought in to it so far, my original idea was to base it off a Pi Zero.
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Jan 17, 2019 11:27
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McPhearson posted:You can tell Google Home to create any list and add things to it. You don't need IFTTT or anything. Instead of Notes or any other list app it saves it in the assistant directly. The only downside is to see the list you have to ask the assistant on your phone to show you your lists, there's no app or link you can just click. FISHMANPET posted:You can view your lists in the Google Home app, which is actually just a link to a webpage, which you can then bookmark. LastInLine posted:I thought they removed it from the Home app in the big UI update? Even if they didn't I couldn't find it without asking Assistant on my phone to show it to me. Anyone know the exact commands? I've only been able to get it to add stuff to the shopping list, and that's all I can find instructions for in Google's help pages. That said, I don't really like the UI for managing those lists much anyway. For now I'm experimenting with Todoist which has its own voice app you can access. It's a bit verbose, but I can create some IFTTT then shortcuts to make it a bit less wordy. I'm still interested in those voice commands though. e: Also, didn't know this thread was here before, and I'm really interested in getting Home Assistance up and running on my spare RPi now. chippy fucked around with this message at 12:41 on Jan 17, 2019 |
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Jan 17, 2019 12:36
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Maneki Neko posted:I assume you already hit the Nest site? If you don’t have a C wire you might need an extender kit, despite Nest claiming it will work. Mine worked fine on heat without a C wire, but not cool. wolrah posted:Either here or the HVAC thread would probably be appropriate and have enough people who know what they're talking about. Yeah I was still a bit confused as it LOOKS like everything will work but I couldn't find this exact model listed.   
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Jan 17, 2019 14:12
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chippy posted:Anyone know the exact commands? I've only been able to get it to add stuff to the shopping list, and that's all I can find instructions for in Google's help pages. To create a list say, "create a [topic] list" and to add stuff say, "add [entry] to [topic] list." I couldn't find a link to any list other than the shopping list on the Google Home app so the only way I know to look at the lists is to say, "show me my lists" on the phones assistant. Here's an article about it: https://www.androidpolice.com/2018/12/19/google-assistant-notes-and-lists-are-live-for-some-still-no-keep-integration-though/
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Jan 17, 2019 15:45
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MeKeV posted:I'm looking to set up a couple of little led lights in my workshop that link back to my Home Assistant, to indicate when my wife is home/I have unread emails, that kind of thing. Perfect start point... Get a cheap ESP device, hookup some LEDs to the GPIO pins, set them up as a GPIO switch in ESPHomeYAML.( https://esphomelib.com/esphomeyaml/components/switch/gpio.html) They will appear as a normal switch in Home Assistant, which you can then turn on/off from any automations inside HA.
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Jan 17, 2019 15:58
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Medullah posted:Yeah I was still a bit confused as it LOOKS like everything will work but I couldn't find this exact model listed. That looks like a pretty standard 4 wire thermostat, and the manual I found here seems to agree. https://www.comfortbydesign.net/webapp/GetFile?fid=%7B7E6C1A09-571D-4BFD-B226-DA302B7DE95E%7D Your red wire is the R wire (24vAC power), which is jumpered to both RH and RC terminals on the thermostat as normal for a combined heating/cooling unit. The white wire is W, which is the heat trigger signal. The black wire is G, which is the fan trigger signal, and last the orange wire is Y, the air conditioning trigger. A Nest should work with this setup by just moving the wires over to the matching terminals on the Nest base almost exactly as they're currently connected. Nest doesn't need the jumper between the R terminals but it uses the RH terminal as the default in those cases so you'll want to put it there instead of RC. Being a four wire setup it's possible that the Nest may have trouble charging, or its method of stealing power might inadvertently cause the system to operate in undesirable ways. This is rare but can happen, in which case you will need to either have a new 5+ conductor wire installed with a "C" wire or install something like this: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0013LVDQA/. My first-gen Nest has worked fine three different systems in four-wire mode so I wouldn't worry too much about this.
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Jan 17, 2019 18:18
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McPhearson posted:To create a list say, "create a [topic] list" and to add stuff say, "add [entry] to [topic] list." I couldn't find a link to any list other than the shopping list on the Google Home app so the only way I know to look at the lists is to say, "show me my lists" on the phones assistant. Huh, well there you go. Typical Google not to provide a decent UI for actually looking at the lists. I'm kind of balls-deep in Todoist now, but my wife was asking me how to do this the other day, so she'll be pleased.
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Jan 17, 2019 18:42
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wolrah posted:That looks like a pretty standard 4 wire thermostat, and the manual I found here seems to agree. To add to this with my own anecdotal experience, I have a four wire setup and installed a Nest last June, been working pretty normal. Everything wolrah said up there correlates exactly how my old Honeywell was wired and this is how the Nest translated:   
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Jan 17, 2019 20:00
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Awesome, thanks guys!
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Jan 17, 2019 20:20
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The default list is shopping list and you can get it at this URL: https://shoppinglist.google.com (from phone or desktop). Not sure about multiple lists, I thought I'd read in documentation that multiple lists were no longer supported, but I think that was a bit before that article was posted.
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Jan 17, 2019 22:27
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Also, you guys checking for c wires...look further back in the wall. Frequently a higher conductor count wire is used and the unused wires are just cut off or left disconnected. If you have an unused conductor, you can hook it up to a common on your equipment and stat. I used to design hydronic heating controls. I know that frequently a thermostat like nest works well with no c wire, but when it doesn't you can have very erratic system operation and potentially a no-heat situation. I would personally not install a wifi thermostat without a c wire, it's not a risk I'm willing to take.
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Jan 17, 2019 22:53
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TacoHavoc posted:Also, you guys checking for c wires...look further back in the wall. Frequently a higher conductor count wire is used and the unused wires are just cut off or left disconnected. If you have an unused conductor, you can hook it up to a common on your equipment and stat. I had the unused C wire but the previous owner cut it far enough back that it would’ve been a real pain to extend.
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Jan 17, 2019 23:23
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In my case, the C wire was present at the thermostat, but disconnected furnace-side. That was easy enough to fix.
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Jan 18, 2019 04:32
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I popped my thermostat off the wall to check if I had the wiring for an ecobee, only 2 wires.. The furnace is ancient anyway so I will hold off until we update it and then get a nice smart thermostat. I know I could do some wiring to get it to work but  . Oh well will get a smart lock or homekit enabled video camera instead! Also, lol: Facebook employees busted leaving 5-star reviews for Portal on Amazon
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Jan 18, 2019 05:06
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