HA HomeSeer - Messages

For a while I set up my HomeSeer system to play some vocal messages, using the local text-to-speech generator.

The result was not really good, even after installing new tools and libraries.

HA - HomeSeer - connecting to an UPS via NUT

It is very useful to have the hub (HomeSeer in this case) connected to an UPS.

Small blackout will not disrupt the normal working and in case of long blackout will be possible to safely shut down the system.

Plus will be possible to create events to inform about an outtage, like sending an email.

HA - HomeSeer - Introduction

After long time I decided to start to work again on some Home Automation projects.
Mainly because a specific need, but I'm starting to see possible side projects along the way.

I already have some "pieces" of HA around, my glorious and ancient X10 system, an integration with Amazon Echo for the archaic X10, but it was time to start to play with ZigBee or Z-Wave.

So I had to choose and pick up an hub for them.

AirThings - gather data remotely

 During one of my excursions on flea markets, I did find a AirThings Wave Plus.

For 10$ I decided to buy it and try it out (the normal cost is around 230$).

Flipper Zero - introduction

Flipper Zero is defined as "hacking" tool, i.e. is a collection of devices and SW that allows to explore and interact with technology around us.

PiKVM - a KVM <-> IP on System76

Is always better to have a Plan B if the main plan fails.
My server has an embedded KVM (with an extra module installed - see the article Fixing the server - KVM <-> IP) but surprise surprise the actual KVM functionality is not working because the motherboard is not supporting an extension module.

This article discuss about the KVM <-> IP solution with a Raspberry Pi on the open source project PiKVM as a way to have the KVM functionality on my server.

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.

Chamberlain Garage Monitor repair

As usual I love to go exploring in flea market/antique malls.
Last time I did find a new Chamberlain Garage Control. 
Of course the unit ended up in the flea market because not working.

Bathroom fan controller - tests and refinements

 

After building a prototype some more considerations did come up from testing and installation planning.

Bathroom fan controller - installation

After designing and building the first prototype for the automatic bathroom Fan controller, was time to install it in the bathroom.

Here few notes about what I did.

Bathroom fan controller - the idea

Ok, here a quick and dirty project.

The idea is to build a bathroom fan controller.
One of the bathroom I have has no windows, only a fan to remove the humidity.

I'm tired to have manually to turn it on and off, so time to make this automatic.

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

Designing an HVAC monitoring system

Ideas - things to do

The HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning) system, as many other systems, has the bad habit to broke down when most needed.

The idea is to design a monitoring system for HVAC capable to predict problems, with the less possible impact on the system, meaning that the monitoring system should be as much as possible independent from the HVAC itself.

Rebuild my server

Since 2007, I had an IBM eServer machine (xSeries 342 rack) based on CentOS to take care of some services, like my private phone line, home automation, backup data and photo, streaming music, ecc.
After years of service, because a failure, is time to consider now to renew the server, HW and SW.

This article contains some notes about the transition between the old one and the new one.

Service needed

First of all here a list (not inclusive) of  the services the server need to provide:

• VoIP PABX (Apkhnet)
  Based on Asterisk, only VoIP, no PSTN interface
• Multiple Web host
• Streaming of personal music collection (Squeezebox)
• Streaming of personal video collection (Plex)
• Backup data
• Home Automation (X10)
• CVS server
• Jenkins
• Docker
• support for virtual servers

A separate mini server handle a VPN entry.

Hardware

Old server

The old server was a 3U IBM xSeries 342 rack server, based on two Intel Pentium III-S 1.13 GHz.

It was "old" at the time I bought it and put on service, now is definitively obsolete and it uses a lot of
energy.

New server

The new server is a System76 with Ubuntu 15.04.

The new machine should have these basic characteristics:

• use much less than 270W power
• capable to work in hot environment (the server is located in garage)
• possibly less noise generator
• capability of RAID
• multiple HD management
• at least 4 Gbyte RAM 
• at least 1 TB HD 

Optionally

• Double power supply

The server is not located in a "easy" environment.
During the winter the temperatures can be low, but that is not a big problem.
The big problem are the temperatures in summer.
The place is relatively isolated, so the variation is limited, however the temperatures can be over the 38 degrees Celsius in some cases.
Among the services run by the server, exists a temperature monitor capable to turn on an elliptical fan to help to cool the system and if the temperature continue to raise, shut down the machine.

Transition notes

After unpacking the new server and turned it on, the first thing noted was the noise !
Compared with the old IBM the noise is more high pitch and much less louder, also if during the bootstrap the machine "shows" what is capable of, simulating the take off of a F117 :)

The main doubt I had was about the transition from a 32 bit machine to a 64 bit machine.
The majority of the programs I used in the old server is available for both formats, however I had a couple of  services were I didn't have any clear information.
The two packages were heyu for my X10 home automation and the Logitech SqueezeBox server.

In the end it turned out quite easy.
I recompiled heyu from the scratch and is running happily on the 64 bit machine.
The SqueezeBox server exists only for 32 bit machines but with the appropriate libraries is running happily too.

Many other services exists natively in the Ubuntu repository and was only matter to install and configure them.

The main problem to solve remains now the setting for old Joomla 1.0 websites.
Joomla 1.0 needs PHP 5.2, the latest Ubuntu 15.04 LTS has PHP 6.x.
Due some incompatibilities the Joomla 1.0 websites are not working at all.

Gnuplot on Raspberry Pi

gnuplot is a program capable to produce graphs starting from set of data.
Ideal to graphically represents sensor readings.

This article assumes to use Raspbian on a Raspberry Pi, specifically in my case the Raspbian version is the one used with Dexter for GrovePi.
Since GrovePi allows to easily connect sensors to the Raspberry, gnuplot is the perfect companion for that environment.

Installation

Simple, open a terminal and digit : sudo apt-get install gnuplot

That's it :)

Use

Once gnuplot is installed, is possible to open a terminal and digit the command gnuplot.
An interactive environment command line based will be available.
However the best way is to create a file containing the commands needed to generate a graph and have gplot reading that file to produce the graph as described in these instructions.

Data file

The file containing the data need to be in a specific format.

The time/date in the format of yyyy-mm-dd:hh-mm-ss (see the timefmt line in the command file), then the light value and (in this example) the voltage measured.

Each field is separated by a tab and each line ending with a newline (/r).

Example of data saved in the fhelper_datalogger.txt

# 2016-12-05:10-52-42 - Starting datalogger - time - light - volt 

2016-12-05:10-53-02 758 4.43

2016-12-05:10-53-24 758 4.43

2016-12-05:10-53-44 758 4.43

2016-12-05:10-54-05 758 4.43
..........................
..........................
..........................

Command file

Here an example of a gnuplot file (called testfile) used to display some information collected in the data file.
Specifically the goal is to create a graph showing the data stored in the second column of the file (light)

set title "fHelper light data vs. Time"
set datafile sep '\t'
set xlabel "Time"
set ylabel "Light"
set xdata time
set timefmt '%Y-%m-%d:%H:%M:%S'
set yrange [0:1000]
set style data line
set terminal png size 1500,800 enhanced font "Helvetica,20"
set output 'displight.png'
plot '/home/pi/Desktop/fhelper/fhelper_datalogger.txt' using 1:2

The file is taking a file called fhelper_datalogger.txt (located in the directory /home/pi/Desktop/fhelper) and will produce a file called displight.png.
The file will be saved in the same directory where this file exists and is executed.

To execute it just digit from the prompt : gnuplot testfile

Here a couple of examples of graphs obtained from the log file.
One shows the light reading and the other the voltage reading.
To obtain the voltage reading was enough to change a couple of lines from the command file.
Specifically I changed the Y axis range (0:1000 for light, 0:5 for Volt) and the plot command telling to use the first and third column in the file rather than the first and the second column (plot '/home/pi/Desktop/fhelper/fhelper_datalogger.txt' using 1:3)

Office gadget - the Fhelper

Ok, this is just for fun.

5V Solar Power Supply for Raspberry Pi - first results

The introductory article was about describing the feasibility of the project.
Let's see some preliminary results.

The measurements

Until now I did run the system with an external voltmeter to see if the solar panel was able to keep up with the system.
It seems that so far the answer is no.

The graph shows the battery level measured in few days.
Note that basically there was no real load to the battery, only the Dc/Dc converter, so very few mA were drawn from the battery.
The days were pretty cloudy all the time, so no full sun for long time. In the best scenario (see the latest days) the battery level barely reached the 2.9V, well well below the minimum of 3.5V, and again I stress the fact there was no real load on the system.

The solar panel used so far is a 6V 2W, capable to provide in full sun a current of 330mA.
Definitively not enough to keep the battery charged AND powering something else (the Raspberry Pi has an estimated drawing current around 300-350mA).

Until there was sun the system did run happily, but as soon as the solar panel was not in full sun, the system had to use more and more the battery to power up the project and of course there was no battery charging there.

The battery is a nominal 3.7V 6600mAh and can last just few hours when not charged, so the system starting with a loaded battery in a sunny day can run almost all the day, but that only the first day.

What to do ?

There are few things to try.

1. Use a bigger and powerful solar panel.
   A bigger solar panel, still 6V but maybe 6 or 9 W, probably can give more energy even with less light.
   In full sun the power should be enough to charge the battery AND power the system.
   Adafruit has a 6V 5.6 W solar panel, capable to give up to 930 mA in full sun and presumably more juice even in less than ideal conditions.
    
2. Implement an intelligent power management
   We can assume to don't have the system running 24 hours a day.
   An external circuit (like the RPOf) can monitor the charge of the battery and shutdown the Raspberry when the battery level is below a specific threshold.
   When the battery threshold level is above a specific value the circuit can power on back the Raspberry.
3. Reduce as much as possible the Raspberry Pi current needs.
   It can be done disabling every thing not needed, like the HDMI port or the LEDs.
   Even better adopting a Raspberry Pi 3, eliminating also the need to power the USB ports (currently the USB ports are in use for the WiFi dongle).

Very probably all the solutions will be needed.

Sensor modification

To better handle the solar management, a modification is needed on the light sensor.
Currently the light sensor is based on a photoresistor.
It can indicate if there is light or dark but is not enough to determine the "quality" of the light.
In other words the value returned is not enough to determine if the light is enough to generate ppower via the solar panel or not.
To do so a better light sensor is needed.  So in the near future I'll use a solar light sensor rather than the generic light sensor.

Playing with Alexa and Echo

After my first tests with the Raspberry Pi and Alexa it was time to try an Echo.
Since now is available a more cheap version, the Echo Dot, I bought one of these and started to play.
Here some notes about.

Is it good ?

Yeah :) It is good.
Of course is not perfect, there is a huge space for improvements, but it is already something, especially when I was able to link it with my HA system.
But let see some details.

What it can do

Well, like the things I tried with the Raspberry Pi  you have the usual activities, asking the time, setting timers, creating lists, emulating Eliza :)
Other than that, the big advantage of Echo Dot is the possibility to ask and listen music, podcast, etc.
Of course to have decent results is better to pair it with an external bluetooth speaker.

Then, with some plugins and extra work, is possible to interface Alexa with different things, like my HA system (based on X10) and other appliances.
Now is really nice to turn on/off/dim the lights of my house simply asking Alexa to do it.

Yeah, nothing really new, already 20 years ago it was possible something like that, but the cost to set up a system capable to respond to vocal commands was huge and the system was surely less responsive and less easy to use.
Alexa really is impressive and all considered is easy to set up.

Well, OK, easy relatively speaking.
For example, in order to connect Alexa to my HA system I had to do some vodoo :)

Interface Alexa with X10

As I said, my HA system is still based on the old, glorious X10 protocol.
Why ? Well, I had around tons fo X10 modules and the newer systems, like Zigbee or Zwave, are still quite expensive.
I would love to migrate on Zigbee for example, but I still have a lot of still good X10 working modules.
I hate to trash away something that still work.

I have a server running Heyu that controls the lights and it handle some macros and timer.
So the natural question was, is it possible to interface Alexa with my server ?
A quick search with google said yes !

I found a very nice and detailed article from Corey Murnaghan : Amazon Echo X10 Home Control.
From there actually there was a link to an update : UPDATED Amazon Echo X10 Home Control

The two articles (I strongly suggest to use the updated version) discuss about how to interface Alexa with a Raspberry Pi running Heyu.
I already had a server running Heyu, with the glorious Ubuntu 16.04, so I used that article as main guideline, changing things here and there and in the end, voila', everything worked just nice.

The main differences from the Corey's article were about of course the Heyu installation and setting, since I already had that done years and years ago :)
In the end I just installed the Ha-bridge and configured little bit differently, also because my server hosts some websites, so it was impossible to follow some suggestions like erase the /var/www/html directory.

I had to change also some ports, since I was already using the port 80.
At least my version of Echo/Alexa requires to use the port 80 to recognize the Ha-bridge>
In order to have Alexa recognizing the server, I had to change the UPNP IP Address, forcing to use the one of the server.
Of course I had also to modify some firewall configuration for security reasons, to make the HA system local to my network and not be accessible from outside.

But in the end, I have now a very nice and useful way to control my lights :)

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

Cooling the server area

Problem, cool down the server area.

The server is placed under a stair and the server area is insulated.
The area is in contact with the garage and the laundry room and of course the garage of course is not an insulated area, but the laundry it is.
Thus the idea : drill a hole in the stairs and connect a fan to aspire the fresh air from the laundry room.