Hello Everyone!
There's been many good discussions over the years about HomeSeer and RGB fixtures/strings, DMX, and yes, even ARTNET (just once!). I think it may be time to revisit this since the cost of everything involved has come done significantly within reach of everyone, and the related technology has matured. The way I see it now, it's all how you choose to put it together.
With that, I wanted to come out of the woodwork and share my vision and direction for lighting at home.
One cannot deny the potential energy savings a home automation system can generate. Care has to be taken to not offset the savings gained by using a computer that's a power hog. I use a low power ATOM Nettop which costs only about $20/year to operate. I can't speak to the capabilities of the new HomeTroller Zee, but power wise, it sure can't be beat. Pi's are pretty amazing things, more on that later...
LED lighting provides low power, long life and many flexible form factors. My home lighting strategy includes plenty of them. I'll be installing 30 or so LED Down Lights and RGB LED tape spattered around. The down lights aren't you're typical local hardware store variety. They're RGB and they're powered directly from 12v DC and controlled by HomeSeer. Imagine dialing in any color room by room and saving power at the same time! I'll power them from a central 12v "plant": a 360 watt DC power supply, a deep cycle battery/charger, and a transfer switch to fail over to the battery during a power failure. Yes, full lighting during a power failure for a minimum of 24 hours. The lighting will be controlled by DMX, yes, more on that later...
It's "later" time. I've already come up with a flexible, yet simple hardware configuration for $60 - $85. That'll buy you an OLA/ARTNET server/DMX controller which can be configured in about an hour. I'm trying to vet the HomeSeer side now and certainly open to all comments, I do need help here. I'm using a Raspberry Pi ($35-60), OLA server (free), and a inexpensive USB DMX adapter ($25). I have the (very) basics working now. I can on/off web control an RGB LED fixture using a combination of a virtual device and an event which triggers on a status change that executes a script. I currently have two scripts/events for each device and little flexibility. I know there are better ways. Could this be something that can be added to HomeSeer Zee, yes I do believe it would be a perfect match?
Turn off:
Sub Main()
dim s
const SetUrl = "http://192.168.1.179:9090/set_dmx"
const headers="Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
s = hs.URLAction(SetUrl,"POST","u=1&d=0,0,0",headers)
End Sub
Turn On:
Sub Main()
dim s
const SetUrl = "http://192.168.1.179:9090/set_dmx"
const headers="Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
s = hs.URLAction(SetUrl,"POST","u=1&d=255,255,255",headers)
End Sub
The "u=1" sets the Universe #. ARTNET can support up to 32768 universes of 512 devices each, certainly no scalability issues there. The "d=" is a CSV list of the 512 channel levels, starting at channel 1. Pretty simple, huh?
The server can also be queried for current status of lighting levels, here's a script to log the output:
Sub Main()
dim g
const GetUrl = "http://192.168.1.179:9090/get_dmx?u=1"
g = hs.URLAction(GetUrl,"GET","","")
hs.writelog "DMX Values", g
End Sub
Returns a somewhat easy to parse line:
{
"dmx": [255,255,255,0,0, ...and on for 512 CSV colums total... 0,0,0],
"error": ""
}
My design grey areas are:
* Creating a script or plug-in to control many devices. Have each device specify a start address and three channel values and pass that info to a parser which sends the correct HTTP POST. This is tricky as the script/plug-in will need to track the current values of all channels as to not overwrite them. This could be done by doing a GET first to obtain the current levels.
* creating a custom lighting device that has 8 programmable preset buttons, perhaps: R,G,B,C,M,Y,W,off (or custom colors)
* updating the device status on the devices web page. Do I have individual R/G/B indicators? Can I actually create a dynamic graphic that changes colors matching the actual output?
I'm doing this on HS2PRO. I'm really new to the HS scripting and have done only a little other scripting in the past. Any thought on whether this is a script or Plug-in? Is there a big demand for this? Is it worth making this open to everyone? is there volunteer help out there?
My hardware/software:
DMX Adapter: http://www.opendmx.net/index.php/OLA_Raspberry_Pi
DMX dimmer: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/24-CH...072723125.html
USB DMX: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/DMX51...145068190.html
Downlight: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/9W-LE...025979986.html
There's been many good discussions over the years about HomeSeer and RGB fixtures/strings, DMX, and yes, even ARTNET (just once!). I think it may be time to revisit this since the cost of everything involved has come done significantly within reach of everyone, and the related technology has matured. The way I see it now, it's all how you choose to put it together.
With that, I wanted to come out of the woodwork and share my vision and direction for lighting at home.
One cannot deny the potential energy savings a home automation system can generate. Care has to be taken to not offset the savings gained by using a computer that's a power hog. I use a low power ATOM Nettop which costs only about $20/year to operate. I can't speak to the capabilities of the new HomeTroller Zee, but power wise, it sure can't be beat. Pi's are pretty amazing things, more on that later...
LED lighting provides low power, long life and many flexible form factors. My home lighting strategy includes plenty of them. I'll be installing 30 or so LED Down Lights and RGB LED tape spattered around. The down lights aren't you're typical local hardware store variety. They're RGB and they're powered directly from 12v DC and controlled by HomeSeer. Imagine dialing in any color room by room and saving power at the same time! I'll power them from a central 12v "plant": a 360 watt DC power supply, a deep cycle battery/charger, and a transfer switch to fail over to the battery during a power failure. Yes, full lighting during a power failure for a minimum of 24 hours. The lighting will be controlled by DMX, yes, more on that later...
It's "later" time. I've already come up with a flexible, yet simple hardware configuration for $60 - $85. That'll buy you an OLA/ARTNET server/DMX controller which can be configured in about an hour. I'm trying to vet the HomeSeer side now and certainly open to all comments, I do need help here. I'm using a Raspberry Pi ($35-60), OLA server (free), and a inexpensive USB DMX adapter ($25). I have the (very) basics working now. I can on/off web control an RGB LED fixture using a combination of a virtual device and an event which triggers on a status change that executes a script. I currently have two scripts/events for each device and little flexibility. I know there are better ways. Could this be something that can be added to HomeSeer Zee, yes I do believe it would be a perfect match?
Turn off:
Sub Main()
dim s
const SetUrl = "http://192.168.1.179:9090/set_dmx"
const headers="Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
s = hs.URLAction(SetUrl,"POST","u=1&d=0,0,0",headers)
End Sub
Turn On:
Sub Main()
dim s
const SetUrl = "http://192.168.1.179:9090/set_dmx"
const headers="Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
s = hs.URLAction(SetUrl,"POST","u=1&d=255,255,255",headers)
End Sub
The "u=1" sets the Universe #. ARTNET can support up to 32768 universes of 512 devices each, certainly no scalability issues there. The "d=" is a CSV list of the 512 channel levels, starting at channel 1. Pretty simple, huh?
The server can also be queried for current status of lighting levels, here's a script to log the output:
Sub Main()
dim g
const GetUrl = "http://192.168.1.179:9090/get_dmx?u=1"
g = hs.URLAction(GetUrl,"GET","","")
hs.writelog "DMX Values", g
End Sub
Returns a somewhat easy to parse line:
{
"dmx": [255,255,255,0,0, ...and on for 512 CSV colums total... 0,0,0],
"error": ""
}
My design grey areas are:
* Creating a script or plug-in to control many devices. Have each device specify a start address and three channel values and pass that info to a parser which sends the correct HTTP POST. This is tricky as the script/plug-in will need to track the current values of all channels as to not overwrite them. This could be done by doing a GET first to obtain the current levels.
* creating a custom lighting device that has 8 programmable preset buttons, perhaps: R,G,B,C,M,Y,W,off (or custom colors)
* updating the device status on the devices web page. Do I have individual R/G/B indicators? Can I actually create a dynamic graphic that changes colors matching the actual output?
I'm doing this on HS2PRO. I'm really new to the HS scripting and have done only a little other scripting in the past. Any thought on whether this is a script or Plug-in? Is there a big demand for this? Is it worth making this open to everyone? is there volunteer help out there?
My hardware/software:
DMX Adapter: http://www.opendmx.net/index.php/OLA_Raspberry_Pi
DMX dimmer: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/24-CH...072723125.html
USB DMX: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/DMX51...145068190.html
Downlight: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/9W-LE...025979986.html
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