Home Assistant - evaluation

Recently I started to experience problems with HomeSeer.
My Homeseer HomeTroller (basically a Raspberry Pi) started to experience constant crashes.

In the end is the mono environment very critical, a plugin with problems, a service below not working properly, and mono crashes.

So I started to search for alternatives to HomeSeer, because spending more money on a platform that anyway is faulted, doesn't make any sense.

Home Automation - controlling lights with CURL and HA-Bridge

 In order to control lights are years I'm using HA-Bridge, running on a server I call HA server.

Originally (and possible it will return there) was hosted by Opus, my main server.

It is quite  a while now is running over a Raspberry Pi.
This article is about how to control X10 via HA-Bridge from another computer in the network (hint, the network is not exposed to the outside)

Server chronicles - HA temporary server (UPDATED)

Among many other services, my server hosts some HA services to control my X10 lights and some operations.
Since my glorious server need to be rebuilt and as usual I don't have time, I needed to find a quick solution for my X10 server.
I decided to use a spare Raspberry I have around and create a temporary HA server, until the main one will be restored.

Home Automation - fixing Ha-Bridge

Are now years I'm using a program called Ha-Bridge that basically simulate a Philips Hue hub.

The peculiarity of this program is that can be recognized by Alexa and it can control my X10 lights via Heyu. I did set up this system in the 2016, as described in the article of this blog Playing with Alexa and Echo

Privacy anyone ?

I did find a project related to Amazon Echo or Google voice and is somehow interesting, under some points of view.
This project is basically a "piggy back" contraption  to be put over an Echo or Google device.
The gadget constantly send out noise to the "home assistant" until a specific word is said.
This supposedly should solve the allegedly privacy problem.

Entertainment system evolution

After long time I decided to do something to improve little bit my entertainment system.

In the past I played with some streamers and lately I ended up to use the glorious Wii to watch Netflix or Chromecast with the same purpose.
For a while I tried to use some Android sticks without much success.
They did work but all suffered by a bad video quality and connection problems.

In fact the connection to the network is the real problem.
The TV is located far away from the WiFi router and even using a repeater it didn't improve much the connection reliability.

So after a long time experimenting with cheap and wireless streamers, I decided to set up something better.
Here my basic requirements :

• Wired connection
• Faster streamer
• Decent user interface
• HD quality
• Possibility to be connected to the main network
• Possibility to stream from my server
• Possibility to stream from local memory (flash pen)
• Support for all video formats
• More streaming choices than Netflix
• Possibility to receive local HD program via antenna

Looking for something capable to cover these requirements, I ended up with two choices :

• Wetek Play 2
• Amazon Fire TV

Wetek Play 2 is a nice and faster streamer with also the possibility to install a digital HDTV receiver (ATSC).
It is Android based and uses Kodi as main streaming management.

Amazon Fire TV is an Android based streamer with Alexa (the Amazon voice interface) integrated in it and very nice intuitive way, plus it supports Plex for streaming.

I tried to install Kodi on the server but I had some problems, then it was not clear when the Wetek Play 2 would be available.
I then installed as media server Plex on the server, after reading some interesting reports, and it went perfectly, plus Amazon Fire TV was readily available.

Because of that I decided to go with Amazon also if is missing the possibility to connect an ATSC receiver in order to see local HDTV channels.

As bonus it has Amazon Alexa that helps to integrate vocal commands to search for programs or activate applications. 

So after a while, here some pros and cons of using Fire TV.

Pro

• Easy to configure and handle
• Fast streamer. No I mean ... FAST.
• Nice to search/select some programs using Alexa
• Fast streaming from my server using Plex
• Quite reliable
• Very small, very easy to hide

Cons

• Vudu is blocked because competitor of Amazon
• No possibility to connect an ATSC receiver
• Not integrated with Amazon Echo even if both are using Alexa
• Too many apps require subscription (I guess is the same for all streamer though)
• Quite close system. Is Android but is not open to install whatever you want

Playing with Alexa

It is amazing how time's fly !
Are already almost two months since my last post !

Many things happened of course, busy life, work work work and only recently I restarted to play with something new, for fun.

Amazon made public a demo project to use a Raspberry Pi to be like an Echo, the Amazon  vocal command toy.
So I decided to try, I did put my hands on a Raspberry Pi 3 (in order to have embedded WiFi and Bluetooth), a nice USB microphone and a speaker (as suggested in the Amazon project) and one evening, with a friend, we followed the instructions and installed Alexa on a Raspberry.

Here few notes about

Time

It took about 4 hours to install everything. The longest time was spent updating Raspbian, probably the update alone was about 1 hour and half.
The installation of tools and environment (the project is in Java, uses Node.js and Maven) took the other long part and the configuration the rest.
And yes, we did enjoy ourself watching Youtube (comedians) while waiting :)

Is it working ?

YES ! Amazingly it did work immediately and all considered is not bad at all !
It is possible to hear some static/digital noise in the speaker, especially if a monitor and USB keyboard is connected to the Raspberry, but the audio quality is not bad.

Let see some pro and cons

Pro

• Relatively cheap
  A Raspberry Pi, a speaker and a microphone is what is needed. Many of us have this stuff in some box by sure :)
• Easy to install
  The instructions are quite clear, some not updated to the last version parts but for somebody who plays with Raspberry or somebody with a basic computer science knowledge is not a problem.
• It works
  Well yes, is a pro :)

Cons

• You need an Amazon account. No problem for me but is important to realize that Alexa become a part of the Amazon account.
• Is not an Echo !
  This is important !! The project is a demo and has some not intuitive/cumbersome way to activate Alexa, so don't expect Echo performances !
  In details :
• A X11 graphic environment is needed ! Specifically they suggest to use VNC in order to connect from other computers.
  Is not a real embedded system like Echo.
• Everytime the Raspberry is turned On is necessary to open terminals and start a local server plus a client.
• When the client starts it is requested an https connection to retrieve a certificate.
  A browser is needed thus plus some manual operations.
  Once retrieved the certificate Echo works until the Raspberry is shutted off or the application is stopped
• Some functionalities are disabled by default, like streaming music.
  Need to investigate if is possible to enable them.

Capabilities

So far I tried different things. The default of course is asking Alexa things like the time, the weather, news, etc.
And I have to say I'm impressed with the capability to recognize my accent !
I tried many vocal command systems in the past and all of them, ALL OF THEM, always failed to recognize my English.

I estimate for Alexa a recognizing average of 90/95% of what I say !

Simply amazing !!

Then I was able to interface Alexa with my google calendar and now I can handle it via voice. Cool.
Another interface was with IFTTT, so I can now create different triggers. So far I installed a trigger to call my cell phone.

So .. what is for ?

Fun ! :)

And is a relatively cheap way to test the capabilities of Echo.

I'll investigate few things in the next week or months (no time as usual ..) to see if is possible to modify the code to build something more close to the real Echo with maybe some custom capabilities. 

For example connecting a bluetooth microphone, controlling I/O, interfacing something personal like my Logitech Squeezebox, enabling the streaming music, connecting a bluetooth speaker and so on.

Surely the evaluation aspect of this project is worth alone the time spent to put together the gadget and playing with it