Newbie questions - tenured automater

[kraig109]

Hello, new to HS, but been around ST and Hubitat for years. Using a brand new HomeSeer HomeTroller Pi Smart Home Hub (Thus HS4-Pi). Struggling to get my feet under me. Lots of questions. Are there general guides for using HS? Are these forums the best place?

1) Can I have two HomeSeer HomeTroller Pi Smart Home Hubs running, one for ZWave and one for the plugins? We are limited to 5 PIs on the Pi software, and ZWave requires several. Can we connect multiple hubs together? Feels like yes, based on how some of the bundled hubs include both a hub and a separate Z device (HomeSeer HomeTroller PRO Smart Home Hub & Z-NET Lite), but I can not figure that out. Would happily get a second Pi for the ZWave and keep the Events and PIs on the first hub. (several spaced out $100 purchases are easier to hide from the misses vs 1 larger $500-1,000 purchase).

2) Simple sunset/sunrise lighting question. I want a light on around sunset and off around sunrise - fine I wrote an Event for that. I can not find an ELSE clause, so it looks like it requires a second Event to turn the light off. Is that correct?

3) Can you nest IF clauses? Looks like everything is simple IF/THEN logic. I am used to IF/THEN/ELSE IF/ELSE IF, and IF (A or B) logic. Is that possible, how? For my thermostat control I query the status of temperature, alarm state, a local override and door/window open/closed. This required 12 Events without nesting. Fine, its done - but could it have been done with one large statement?

For #2 & 3: Not the end of the world, just used to WebCoRE and / or Rule Machine with macro logic.

4) Struggling to get the SimpliSafe PI running on my system, getting a 403 Forbidden error. Any ideas? I posted a link in that PI's specific forum too, but so far no responses, so I thought I'd try here too!

5) Can you @ mention people in this forum, everything is so different, struggling to get comfortable.

Many others, but getting started here!

Thanks in advance for any pointers and help!


WHO MOVED MY CHEESE! OH, I DID. 🤣

[rmasonjr]

Hello, new to HS, but been around ST and Hubitat for years. Using a brand new HomeSeer HomeTroller Pi Smart Home Hub (Thus HS4-Pi). Struggling to get my feet under me. Lots of questions. Are there general guides for using HS? Are these forums the best place?

Yes, the forums will contain invaluable information for you.

1) Can I have two HomeSeer HomeTroller Pi Smart Home Hubs running, one for ZWave and one for the plugins? We are limited to 5 PIs on the Pi software, and ZWave requires several. Can we connect multiple hubs together? Feels like yes, based on how some of the bundled hubs include both a hub and a separate Z device (HomeSeer HomeTroller PRO Smart Home Hub & Z-NET Lite), but I can not figure that out. Would happily get a second Pi for the ZWave and keep the Events and PIs on the first hub. (several spaced out $100 purchases are easier to hide from the misses vs 1 larger $500-1,000 purchase).

I suppose you can, but Z-Wave only takes up 1 plugin slot, not several. What other plugins are you needing?

2) Simple sunset/sunrise lighting question. I want a light on around sunset and off around sunrise - fine I wrote an Event for that. I can not find an ELSE clause, so it looks like it requires a second Event to turn the light off. Is that correct?


3) Can you nest IF clauses? Looks like everything is simple IF/THEN logic. I am used to IF/THEN/ELSE IF/ELSE IF, and IF (A or B) logic. Is that possible, how? For my thermostat control I query the status of temperature, alarm state, a local override and door/window open/closed. This required 12 Events without nesting. Fine, its done - but could it have been done with one large statement?

For #2 & 3: Not the end of the world, just used to WebCoRE and / or Rule Machine with macro logic.

The Event Clinic is an invaluable resource. Even though it was created with HS3 in mind, it will work for HS4 as well:
https://forums.homeseer.com/forum/ho...3-event-clinic

4) Struggling to get the SimpliSafe PI running on my system, getting a 403 Forbidden error. Any ideas? I posted a link in that PI's specific forum too, but so far no responses, so I thought I'd try here too!

I feel certain the plugin author will reply - keep checking back

5) Can you @ mention people in this forum, everything is so different, struggling to get comfortable.

Yes you can - just @ and type the first few letters of their login name. You'll see the dropdown appear. This will alert them via notifications and/or email.

Many others, but getting started here!

Thanks in advance for any pointers and help!


WHO MOVED MY CHEESE! OH, I DID. 🤣

[kraig109]

rmasonjr, thanks for the replies.


1) PlugIn limitations: ZWave seems to be 2 PIs out of the box. a) ZWave and b) ZWave UI They were both there by default. Initial pass for PlugIns needed: SimpliSafe, Ecobee, ZWave, ZWave UI (I guess), Sonos, Hubitat, AmbientWeather, SolarEdge and probably sprinkler stuff - that's before I even look at any A/V equipment (other than Sonos).

So how does one tie multiple hubs together? Or have a ZWave hub separate from an Event hub?

2 + 3) I will start to dig into the Event Clinic, thanks for the reference.

4) Waiting. .... waiting .... waiting patiently 😁

5) I guess I seem to always be getting logged out from the forums. Maybe that is why the @ mentioning did not work when I was trying before. Any settings to lengthen the time out script? I just reviewed all the settings I could find, nothing seems to stand out.

Anyway, thanks.

[rmasonjr]

No, Z-Wave is just one plugin - the smarts and the UI are all there together.

I'm not sure how you would tie multiple hubs together. Some plugins can run remotely, but I'm not sure which ones.
I would start small and build your system slowly until you hit that limit. I'm running HSPro on a Pi, so I dont have the plugin limitation, so that might be an option for you later.

When you login to the board, there should be an option to 'remember me' or something to that effect. Mine stays logged in forever as far as I know