Automation – HomeKit – N4N.US

MQTT – Finally!

After a few months of off and on again trying to get my data parse, collect and displayed the way I wanted it. I finally found a little tid bit of info that pointed me in the right direction.

rtl_433 -F “mqtt://192.168.1.15:1883,retain=0,devices=Pipedream/TempSensors/[protocol]/[id]” -M utc

As you can see I am using rtl_433 to receive data from various sensors around the buildings. It gets sent to our MQTT Broker for redistribution to computers that have subscribed to selected topics. Since we have a few sensors of the same model we use [protocol] to group those sensor together, but each sensor has its own feed.

Funny thing is we are now finding sensors, we didn’t know about. We will be watching the data being collected and see if we can figure it out.

Below are the sensors we need to figure out (what they are) 211 and 17. All the rest (so far) we can already id and parse the data correctly.

MQTT – Finally

Finally able to Subscribe and Post Data to a MQTT broker/server.

As always, examples found on the internet, are incomplete, or are just copies of someone else’s post. One of the most popular examples has both Post and Subscribe in one, but of course doesn’t really work without a great deal of review.

Basically you have a server, what they call a broker, that receives all the MQTT traffic., then it allows others to subscribe and monitor the data being posted.

So my setup has a rtl_433 receiver that collects all the sensor data from 433 devices and parses it. Sensors include weather stations, remote temperature, door switches and motion detectors. At present all I am handling is the temperature sensors. Each sensor has an ID which I track, noting it location on the property. Then they also have temperature (of course) and humidity. The sensors sends a lot of other data, but that is all I really need. I then send the data back to broken parsed, into another channel for my use..

The coal is to parse the incoming data into a control panel that will display sensor data, like a dashboard. Basement sensor always in same location, for example. Graphically.

Sensor appear to just send data in a timed manner, once every few minutes. They don’t care if anyone receives it, just throw out over the airwaves. The SDR receives the data, parses it, the Posts to the Broker. The Broken in turn basically doesn’t the same thing as the sensor, it just rebroadcasts the data for anyone that has Subscribe to that Topic. My webpage Subscribes to the Topic and reparses the data and displays it.

Getting there!

Wink – Update – Subscriptions

All I can say to Wink is, “WTF”!! They have dropped Spotter and Nimbus and now they want to charge $5 a month, FOR WHAT!! I’ve tried to contact them. Had to settle for a contact form asking if they are planning on adding support for Spotter and Nimbus, since they are basically adding nothing, but charging us $60 a year for their service.

Not a happy camper!

This is a copy of the eMail they sent us:

Dear Wink User,

Wink’s mission for the past 5+ years has been to provide users with a ‘Simpler, Smarter Home,’ while maintaining privacy for our customers. Our approach to simplicity and security has driven our design from the user experience to the technology behind the scenes.

We understand that a smart home is something that needs to be trusted and dependable, and we recognize that recent events have created some uncertainty around the reliability of the system. We apologize for these inconveniences and want to share some background information as well as the path forward.

Since 2014, Wink has grown to support more than 4 million connected devices. During this time, Wink has relied solely on the one-time fee derived from hardware sales to cover ongoing cloud costs, development and customer support. Providing users with local and remote access to their devices will always come at a cost for Wink, and over the years we have made great progress toward reducing these costs so that we can maintain that feature.

Wink has taken many steps in an effort to keep your Hub’s blue light on, however, long term costs and recent economic events have caused additional strain on our business. Unlike companies that sell user data to offset costs associated with offering free services, we do not. Data privacy is one of Wink’s core values, and we believe that user data should never be sold for marketing or any purpose.

We have a lot of great ideas on how to expand on Wink’s capabilities and satisfy the many requests from our user base. In order to provide for development and continued growth, we are transitioning to a $4.99 monthly subscription, starting on May 13, 2020. This fee is designed to be as modest as possible. Your support will enable us to continue providing you with the functionality that you’ve come to rely on, and focus on accelerating new integrations and app features.

Should you choose not to sign up for a subscription you will no longer be able to access your Wink devices from the app, with voice control or through the API, and your automations will be disabled on May 13. Your device connections, settings and automations can be reactivated if you decide to subscribe at a later date.

Our user community is integral to Wink, and we want to continue to be your trusted smart home provider. Visit subscription.wink.com to subscribe.

Wink Automation Future

A few years ago I started using Wink to automation and home monitoring, there were issues with loss of contact with sensors, and relocated to a new state. We packed up and forgot about the Wink hardware and planned on using it again some day. Well that day has come, and sadly, passed.

The hub, was tiny, and absolute, and we had 5 of them. Wink now had a new Wink Hub, much bigger, and a Wink Hub 2, now with an Ethernet connection.

Ok, first off, you need a smart device that has the newest bluetooth in order to configure and setup the Hub(s). Using an iPhone 6, didn’t work. But an iTouch ken 6 works. (Just a heads up.)

After just a couple of times, I was finally able to setup a pivot power strip, which has two switchable outlets and two un-switchable. Excitement builds.

Finally I can try the Spotter, the little environmental sensors, and to my surprise, they are no longer supported.

And finally, we were very sad to see they no longer support the Nimbus displays. That was heart breaking, we were so looking forward to using these.

We were really wanting to use these items, but without support we are at a loss. Wink as a company seems to have had gone dormant, no new product, lacking real support. It is hoped a larger company like Google, Amazon or Apple purchases Wink and revive life in their product line.

New Weather Station – 1 of 2

[:en]After a long absences I’ve finally be able to return to my technology projects.

The first one I needed to get out of the way is the weather station. Had built one a few years back, but it was destroyed by an ice storm. Therefore I had to built a new one with a more permanent foundation.

Attempted to make the system completely wireless but somehow no matter what I tried it would be limited in one way or another. So I ended up using a Raspberry Pi that has a UPS board attached to network using a POE adapter. So the Pi gets its power from the network, although the Pi connects to the network wirelessly. And since we had to run one wire, we ended up pulling a 12 volt dc wire also, this allows the addition of more ‘features’ to the pole.

As you can see there are 4 solar panels, 2 – 6 volt and 2 – 12 volt. At this point they are only being used for a string WS 2801 RGB LEDs powered through solar chargers. Sort of controlled Christmas lights. I am attempting to make the LEDs controllable from web site.

The Weather Station consists of an Arduino with a Sparkfun Weather board and sensor array, with a lightning detector attached. A Raspberry Pi connects to the Arduino and a Relay modular. Currently everything is crammed into a plastic project box mounted on the pole. Will clean it up once new boxes come in.

My neighbors have a hill behind their house, the hill top is about 300 feet away and the hill is maybe 50 feet high. My plan is to add another weather pole on top of the hill, to see how that affects wind and temperature.

[:de]After a long absences I’ve finally be able to return to my technology projects.

The first one I needed to get out of the way was the weather station. Had one, but it was destroyed by an ice storm a couple of years ago. Therefore we rebuilt a new one with a more permanent foundation.

We attempted to make the system completely wireless but somehow no matter what we tried it would limit us one way or another. So we ended up using a Raspberry Pi that had a UPS board attached network using a POE adapter. And since we had to run one wire, we ended up pulling a 12 volt dc wire also, this allows us to add more ‘features’ to the pole.

As you can see there are 4 solar panels, 2 – 6 volt and 2 – 12 volt. At this point they are only being used for a string WS 2801 RGB LEDs powered through solar chargers. We are also attempting to make the LEDs controllable from web site.

The station consists of an Arduino with a Sparkfun Weather station and lightning detector attached. A Raspberry Pi connects to the Arduino and a Relay modular. Currently everything is crammed into a plastic project box mounted on the pole. Will clean it up once new boxes come in.

[:]

WeMos D1 Mini

Being that they were ordered from China, I ordered a few items from WeMos. OLED Display Shield, Temperature Sensor, Relay and Button shields. All were cheap and using Arduino fairly easy to program just took awhile to get to USA (say a month to the day) [Not complaining, just stating, pay a little more get from USA seller MUCH faster].

We were able to create a web server, that reads and displays Temperature (T), control a relay over the web (R) and have it display its IP number (within our subnet). HOWEVER, you can’t read temperature and control relay, in the same ‘stack’. So more parts are on order to deal with that minor complication.

The biggest issue was getting the OLED display to work. Seems there was an issue with one of the libraries;

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/36768562/wemos-oled-sparkfun-print-text-does-not-display

Just a matter of deleting two lines of code, and it worked. Course that took two days to find.

Being a true believer in scattering projects over over the place, wireless would be great. But as always, there is the matter of POWER. If I have to run power, I can run an ethernet cable.

Quirky – Wink Home Automation

Wanting to get my feet wet with HomeKit I started looking into newer home automation equipment. Finding Quirky items cheaper on eBay I decided to give them a try.

First, gotta open one. This is a Quirky Plink-Hub1, a second generation less hackable version of their Hub.

I was able to pry open and stick paper clips in to keep the case open long enough to remove guts.

This is what it looked like inside. Very clean, power supply on one board, wifi and wireless on second.

The big down side is that the Quirky Wink automation system is made to be controlled by a phone, not a computer. At least not in Yosemite.

We were able to create some applescripts which react to emails sent from the Wink Robots. From there I was able to update a web page. So all and all not all that bad. Yes far from what I wanted, but for the cost I can’t complain.

We also installed a few GE LED lights, which are very limited in usage. Limited by the software. So hopefully HomeKit allows more features at a later date. (also get these really cheap off eBay).

There is a Pivot Power Genius, power strip (with two controllable outlets [not very functional/features]) , Spotter (multi-sensor unit [VERY FUN and useful]), Porkfolio (Piggy Bank, [which we never got to work after many hours of work]) and of course the GE LED bulbs.

There is also Nimbus, a desktop digital display. Very easy to setup, but very limited on what can be displayed. If you can find it cheap it is fun, but not worth the $50 asking price (think we paid less than $20). Would like more control over what can be display, say something we send it.

The system also works very well with DropCams. We normally use Network cameras, but wanted to give it a try. We purchased a few DropCam HD units, which we are very happy with. On doing more research the PRO costs almost $100 more, and requires a yearly subscription. We will stick with the HD.

We are awaiting a Insteon Hub and automation kit to try as well.

UPDATE (07/18/2015 #1):

After using Wink and its assorted hardware for over a month, I can not recommend this system.

Wrote tech support for help hooking up Porkfolilo, problems with getting second Nimbus working and issues with second Spotter. All I got back was a canned reply, that wasn’t helpful at all. – Will a second hub help, does Wink support Second hub, does it increase coverage area? (they didn’t bother to address any of that).

The hub has ‘disconnect’ and I can no longer communicate with lights, nimbus or anything else that was working. And I am unable to add new devices. Wink must have built in limit… Or it could be interference or wifi noise, whatever, the system isn’t working.

I’ll continue to play with the system as time allows and see if I can get something working.

Update (07/18/2015 #2):

Played with Quarky, Wink a little today. Notice my hub was off-line.. Reinstall/configured, yeah. Then! WHAT? None of my devices are listed, no lights, Numbis, Spotters or Pivots, all gone. Meaning they all have to be reconfigured. So if you were thinking of using this system in a vacation home, DO NOT DO IT!

WebIOPi – Wait through a couple versions before using!

Over the last couple of months I’ve been playing with a new web development system, WebIOPi.

Nice system, I’ve been reading wonderful projects that people have built using the system, most duplicates of the same projects. Temperature sensors and garage door opener.

I was able to get two temperature sensors up and working on the system, fairly easy. However when I attempted to develop my own ‘programs’ for the system, I ran into a minor, well major problem. No where in the documentation does it tell you where WebIOPi gets installed. So I search the Raspberry Pi for known code, find the html part but not the python. So I posted a question on the developers site, which was passed over with a boiler plate answer, that it wasn’t within the realm of the site. Oh! Great help. Great place to send students for help. Seems the program was written for engineers for engineers.

Feel free to check out their site above, read the instructions completely before trying to use this system. As easily as it installs, it not how easily it is to use!

Well, if your need extend beyond what they have fed you.

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My ‘out there’ goal was to have my raspberry pi send me a text message when a GPO changes state, basically an alarm. I have a remote connected to one GPO that it will monitor to arm and disarm the system (when disarmed don’t send text messages). Seems simple enough.

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Haven’t given up hope, still working on the project. Will post if I figure it out.