Hometroller Zee Questions

[tarbat]

I'm considering getting a Raspberry Pi and the HS3-Pi software, but have some questions before I proceed. I will be using this with both X10 and Z-Wave primarily for lighting and curtain control.

1. Can the HS3-Pi software read the status of switches on an X10 Slimline Wireless Switch SS13A?

2. Can I download the HS3-Pi software and try it out before buying - is there a 30 day trial on the HS3-Pi software?

3. If I want wireless networking, do I have to use the Homeseer specific Wifi Adaptor, or will any Blackberry Pi compatible WiFi adaptor work okay?

4. Does HS3-Pi work okay on a B+ Pi?

Many thanks.
Christopher (in Scotland)

[tarbat]

Anyone know the answers to these questions. I don't want to buy a Raspberry Pi until I'm sure I can try out HS3-Pi on it, and which Wifi adaptor it will work with. I don't want to commit too much money on this until I'm sure it will do what I want it do do.

Thanks.

[Pete]

Here tried HS3 Pro on my Zee (which is the model B - 512Mb of memory) and it wouldn't run with most current update a couple of days ago.

Linux ICS-HomeTrollerZEE 3.12.28+ #709 PREEMPT Mon Sep 8 15:28:00 BST 2014 armv6l GNU/Linux Hard Float

Looking some more and it is the B model with 512Mb of memory. It might work. Rich mentioned though I would need 1Gb to run HS3Pro on it.

That said HS3 Pro runs fine on my Joggler running Ubuntu 14.04 (Atom CPU with 512Mb of memory).

Wireless is no big issue.

I cannot find the HS3 Pi download to try; where is it? Nevermind; downloading image now to see. From the base will extract the HS3 stuff only to test (well if it will run in demo mode?)

I have other ARM based devices to test it on with more memory.

Not sure that it even has a 30 day test thing on it though....

Guessing that it runs standard HS3 plugins....so it should work with the stuff mentioned above. B+ should work too.

Downloading image was slow such that I left on some errands.

Just copying over the image to NAS and will write it to an SD card shortly.

OK - installed

HomeSeer-HS3Pi-Image.img

on 16Gb SD card and booted it.

Looks to be running:

HomeSeer Version:HS3 Zee Edition 3.0.0.106 (Linux) in trial mode.

The above noted give it a try as I had no issues writing the image above to an SD card and booting up into HS3 Lite.

Trying HS3 Pro again overclocking and changing some memory stuff after default updates to it.

[Pete]

@Christopher

With the above done and installed; worked fine and it goes right to trial mode.

You shouldn't any issues with the wireless stuff.

None the less post your stuff when you give it a try.

1. Can the HS3-Pi software read the status of switches on an X10 Slimline Wireless Switch SS13A?

It should if you have a CM15 and maybe a CM19A

Mochad is in the Homeseer directory

Mochad is a Linux TCP gateway daemon for the X10 CM15A RF (radio frequency) and PL (power line) controller and the CM19A RF controller.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/mochad/

2. Can I download the HS3-Pi software and try it out before buying - is there a 30 day trial on the HS3-Pi software?

Yes - validated

3. If I want wireless networking, do I have to use the Homeseer specific Wifi Adaptor, or will any Blackberry Pi compatible WiFi adaptor work okay?

I think that it will work with a Generic WiFi Adaptor. I tried it with a tiny ReakTek and it worked right away.

4. Does HS3-Pi work okay on a B+ Pi?

I don't see why not. After you run it the first time update it.

[Pete]

I was able to install HS3 Pro on my Rasberry Pi after overclocking it to 900Mhz.

The above noted; install the image; rename the Homeseer directory to Homeseer-Zee and copy over the HS3 Pro directory to your Rasberry Pi such that you can try both HS3 lite and HS3 Pro on your Rasberry Pi.

Current Date/Time: 7/18/2014 4:53:01 PM CDT
HomeSeer Version: HS3 Pro Edition 3.0.0.125 (Linux)

Not really sure how it will do though but you can run HS3 plugins with HS3 Pro.

Will let it run for a few days on the Rasberry Pi to see how it does.

[tarbat]

Many thanks for the replies.

I now feel confident enough to order a Pi (B+) and get HS3-Pi running in trial mode. I'll also order a generic wifi usb device and see if that works okay.

I'll report back once I'm up and running.

[Pete]

Note too here while I still always SSH into the Raspberry Pi Zee. I also installed Webmin and the RPi-Monitor utility. You can utilize HS3 to script a similiar interface to the RPi-Monitor utility. I mostly utilize Webmin to keep tabs on the updates to the OS and updating the OS. Its not super fast. I also utilize a Windows only utility called WinSCP.

I did oversize the SD card a bit (16Gb) and you should be fine with 8Gb. It is easy to remove the card and image it. The Homeseer 3 directory is also very easy to just copy to external storage - USB or NAS or another computer.

Relating to WiFi the newest standard is 802.11AC Gb. That said the drivers for said wireless devices are being updated dynamically as manufacturers add this devices to their wares. I tried an older Realtek (Patriot Memory) USB mini stick when I tested.

[tarbat]

So, got a Pi this morning, complete with an 8gb micro SD card in the starter package.

Trouble is, this 8gb card only appears as 7.3gb in Windows. So, when I try to use Win32diskimager to copy the HS3-Pi image to it, it says the image is too big for the card.

Is there a special type of micro SD card that I need to use to get the full 8gb?

Or is there an HS3-Pi image that is small enough to fit on a 7.3gb SD card?

[Pete]

Here I am looking cuz I only had 16Gb. The original SD Zee card that I used was 16Gb from the stock 4gb that I got.

Here is what you can do; let me know if you have issues with this methodology. SD cards / USB Sticks can vary in size sometimes.

I can also take the image, make it smaller and post it for download if the below is an issue.

1 - Write the image to a USB stick first using a 16Gb stick

2 - Then using Gparted reduce the image on the stick to 7Gb.

3 - Use GParted to copy the 7 Gb image (partition by partition) over to your new SD card.

4 - use GParted to expand the image to the rest of the 8Gb SD card.

If you want download an live ISO of Ubuntu to use while doing this.

Geez just tried to write it to an 8 Gb stick and noticed that its saying its only 7.6Gb.

Will write it to a 16Gb stick then reduce the image to an even 7Gb. 16Gb says there is only 15.5Gb on the stick for me to write to.

OK so wrote the image to another 16Gb stick. Will reduce the second partition such that the whole image is 7Gb; then will zip it up to make it smaller and post it on dropbox.

[tarbat]

Pete, many thanks. Managed to follow your process, copied to a 32gb USB key, used gparted to resize, and then wrote to SD card. Will try it out in my Pi shortly.

Maybe Homeseer need to reconsider the size of their image files. Reading around other forums it is VERY common for 8gb SD cards to only have 7.3gb space. Given that the actual drive size is only around 2gb, I'm sure Homeseer could reduce their image to something like 7gb and so save end-users the problems when using an 8gb SD card.

[Pete]

It should work fine and yes this will cause issues for those wanting to purchase the software / download current 8Gb Rasberry Pi image.

Yup; here just wrote a new image to (8) 7.3Gb stick. Will image the stick and zip and post it here anyways.

[tarbat]

So, got it running on my Pi. That's the good news. The bad news, there is NO trial version. All I get is this error message:



Same message no matter what options I select. So, I still can't see if this is going to work in my setup

[Pete]

Very odd as I didn't see that when I wrote the 8Gb image to the 16Gb SD card. There expanded the image with GParted to 16Gb and its running now; but with HS3Pro instead of the HS3 Lite for Linux.

HomeSeer Version:HS3 Zee Edition 3.0.0.106 (Linux) in trial mode.

Try shutting HS3 down and edit (only a guess here) your settings file ini from:

gFirstTimeRun=False

to

gFirstTimeRun=True

and or download most current HS3 for Zee tar file and use that instead?

The license bin file if from July, 2014 on the directory I see.

I did notice too that first time running indicated no settings.ini file could be found. It created one right away though.

[tarbat]

......but with HS3Pro instead of the HS3 Lite for Linux.

Maybe that's the difference. I'm not interested in HS3Pro, I'm trying to run a trial version of HS3-Pi which I understand is a different product to HS3Pro.

Can anyone confirm that they can definitely run HS3-Pi as a trial version? And if so, which img file are you using.

[Pete]

Yup; already confirmed that the HS3-Pi image goes right to trial mode.

Tested the HS3-Pi running HS3-ZeeLite version first and it went right to trial mode. It is what the Zee did before I registered when I first purchased it when introduced.

I have not registered it and its still in trial mode.

Rasberry Pi / 16Gb SD / Original Homeseer Zee device and using HS3-Pi image.
Initially though did shut down HS3 ZeeLite and updated the downloaded build which took a bit of time.

7/20/2014 9:36:49 AM:[Database]->Opening (Mode=Read Only) up HomeSeer LOG database /tmp/HomeSeerLog.hsd
7/20/2014 9:36:51 AM:[Startup]->Loading Settings
7/20/2014 9:36:53 AM:[Startup]->Settings Loaded.
7/20/2014 9:37:01 AM:[Startup]->
7/20/2014 9:37:01 AM:[Startup]->*********************************************************** *********************
7/20/2014 9:37:01 AM:[Startup]-> HomeSeer version 3.0.0.106 Edition: HS3 Zee Starting Now
7/20/2014 9:37:01 AM:[Startup]->*********************************************************** *********************
7/20/2014 9:37:01 AM:[Startup]->
7/20/2014 9:37:01 AM:[Startup]->Creating Class Objects...
7/20/2014 9:37:01 AM:[Startup]->COM port classes started.
7/20/2014 9:37:01 AM:[Startup]->Application interface class started.
7/20/2014 9:37:02 AM:[Startup]->Web server class started.
7/20/2014 9:37:02 AM:[Startup]->E-Mail SEND class started.
7/20/2014 9:37:02 AM:[Startup]->E-Mail RECEIVE class started.
7/20/2014 9:37:02 AM:[Startup]->Plug-In Interface class started.
7/20/2014 9:37:02 AM:[Startup]->Local voice recognition class started.
7/20/2014 9:37:02 AM:[Startup]->Database SAVE process started.
7/20/2014 9:37:02 AM:[Startup]->Loading configuration file ...
7/20/2014 9:37:02 AM:[Database]->Opening (Mode=Read Only) up HomeSeer database /usr/local/HomeSeer/Data/HomeSeerData.hsd
7/20/2014 9:37:03 AM:[Database]->Loading Devices...
7/20/2014 9:37:03 AM:[Load Config]->2 total devices loaded.
7/20/2014 9:37:03 AM:[Load Config]->Loading Event Groups...
7/20/2014 9:37:03 AM:[Load Config]->Loading Events...
7/20/2014 9:37:04 AM:[Load Config]->1 total events loaded.
7/20/2014 9:37:04 AM:[Load Config]->Loading COUNTERS...
7/20/2014 9:37:04 AM:[Load Config]->Loading TIMERS...
7/20/2014 9:37:05 AM:[Startup]->HomeSeer version is: 3.0.0.106
7/20/2014 9:37:05 AM:[Startup]->Creating Speaker Client Interface Object...
7/20/2014 9:37:05 AM:[Startup]->This version of HomeSeer is not registered and is running as a trial, 29 days remaining.
7/20/2014 9:37:05 AM:[Startup]->Checking for available plug-ins

That and it was the first Linux version of HS3 to come out such that I tried it on Ubuntu 32/64 bit machines and it ran fine and I was very impressed that HS3 was running in Linux.

Before copying over HS3Pro I overclocked the Raspberry Pi and tweaked the memory stuff on it. I had tried running HS3Pro earlier and I could never get it to run.

Then just shut down HS3 Lite and copied over HS3 Pro and ran it to see if it would run and it did.

Still trying to shrink the smaller image down to a manageable size this morning; now using 7 zip instead.