Correct installation instructions for Raspberry Pi3

[Pete]

Here wanting to upgrade the Pine64 2 Gb computer to Ubuntu 18.04 and noticed yesterday that none is available. I am at Ubuntu 16.04 64 bit running from an SD card. 2 years now.

ICS-Pine64:~# lsb_release -a
LSB Version: core-9.20160110ubuntu0.2-arm64:core-9.20160110ubuntu0.2-noarch:security-9.20160110ubuntu0.2-arm64:security-9.20160110ubuntu0.2-noarch
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 16.04.5 LTS
Release: 16.04
Codename: xenial

Pine64:~# uname -a
Linux ICS-Pine64 3.10.105-bsp-1.2-ayufan-77 #1 SMP PREEMPT Sun Jul 9 12:09:30 UTC 2017 aarch64 aarch64 aarch64 GNU/Linux

Temporarily moved the HS3 Lite build over to a D510 Shuttle with 2Gb of RAM and Ubuntu 18.04 64 bit. Slower than the Rock64. Working fine.

[phillb]

Thanks, I was trying to de-cypher other posts on the licence issue. So to be clear I can run a Linux/Pi version and a windows version of HS3 on the same licence? This is important to me as it will probably take me more than 30days to migrate as i am a linux virgin. I think I can get everything going including chartdirector but not sure how to do some of the underlying DBase stuff. That's my next research topic....

[Timon]

Yes, you license is for either windows or any UNIX or Linux system. During the first 30 days don

[Timon]

Choose you OS version on your Rock64 wisely. A lot of instability and lack of peripheral support in various versions. Personally I use the Rock64 Armbian OS from the armbian.com project.

I

[phillb]

So I have followed all tips and hints here and have a working HS3 on my Pi it was much easier than i thought to get up and running so thanks to all for doing the hard yards.

I am now starting to migrate from my windows HS3 set up to Pi. I am in the early stages is there a recommended approach? The ones on the board all seem to suggest back up of the directory but this wont work of course for me.

I have backed up the zwave.me zwave network and restored it to the pi. I have also restored config using the option in set up. I have about 95% success (I know i will have to look at all my scripting paths etc separately) as some of the zwave devices seem to "partially match up' ie the node number stated does not match the device but appear to work. So I have obviously broken something any suggestions on where to look? I am now going to try and restore in the opposite order ie config first then zwave netwotk

So I have now physically taken the same zave.me stick out of the windows machine and put it in the pi. I had suspected it was a problem with the zwave restore but even using the same device the transpositions are the same so i now suspect some inconstancies in the config file back up or something is not being backed up correctly or at all

[Pete]

The ones on the board all seem to suggest back up of the directory but this wont work of course for me.

It might work and you cannot break anything trying if you have backups of your Windows / Linux stuff.

1 - Copy the Homeseer windows directory contents to the linux directory contents
2 - update the Linux Homeseer directory with whatever version of HS3 you are running
3 - you will see errors maybe related to the forward and backslash stuff. The databases should be the same.

as some of the zwave devices seem to "partially match up' ie the node number stated does not match the device but appear to work.

Except for ZWave as the ZWave Windows plugin is different than the Linux ZWave plugin.

The ZWave nodes are in the firmware of the ZWave controller and these do not change. The ZWave database might be different because the ZWave plugin is unique to WIndows and Linux.

From Windows you can utilize Putty and WinSCP. From a Linux desktop you can utilize Linux File manager (SFTP) and an SSH terminal.

[phillb]

Pete Thanks for the tip I will try over the next few days. My main system is windows and I have purchased 4 sd cards for such playing about on the pi and for backing up....I'm also new to linux so a great way of learning
Phill

[Pete]

Good news Phill!!!!

Here original base was using 16Gb SD cards and updated these to 32 Gb SD cards which mostly just increase the time of an image backup and the actual build usage is less than 8Gb.

Relating to Linux commands google is your friend. Really the most important backup in Linux is the Homeseer directory.

You can build from scratch a new base image with Stretch / Mono in about 15 minutes now a days.

Here upgraded ARM computer to Linux Ubuntu 18.04. Temporarily installed Homeseer on a Shuttle D510 / 2 Gb of RAM and noticed how much slower it was than the ARM computer. The RPi is very light power wise and faster than the old generation of Atom nettops.

[phillb]

I agree my first experience on the pi and Linux in terms of getting up and running was very good I need to test to see if I can get chart director dll working with mono older versions did but chart director haven’t tested under mono for a while. I have been playing round with gnuplot very very powerful but not as pretty. Also I have to find away to do IR transmit and learn I was using usbuirt on windows reading I think this is also possible on Linux. Then of course this irritating issue on zwave needs to be solved. I don’t want to go round learning all devices again as this will probably trash current working system. It worries me that some devices map correctly and some don’t especially when you suggested the plugins are different! I have even tried sending directly from one controller to the other and changing the master to an internal zwave board in the pi the miss maps are the same ;(

[Pete]

Yeah here purchased Chart Director many years ago for the Windows Homeseer 2 boxes. It was reasonably priced way back.

Had an issue with Kodi on Ubuntu 18.04 and IR. Over the years I have continued to utilize the old MCE media remote control (USB). IR worked with Ubuntu 18.04 except for audio controls which was odd. One Kodi author suggested using scripts and direct chit chat with dbus. I did the keymap thing validating each of the IR buttons one by one and they were mapped fine. Only issue was volume up and volume down and mute buttons. Audio has changed now from optical to HDMI to DisplayPort for Kodi. Never did automate IR with HS. I did repeat IR using coaxial RG6/59 cable many years ago. Now you can utilize CEC and that is included with the RPi stuff these days.

Personally too much to do so another Kodi person suggested and posted a way to digress to the old IR use and methodology which is a new version but broken in 18.04. The fix is to use the Ubuntu 16.04 version. Install it. Enable it from being upgraded then remove the APT references to it. It works perfect now.

[e8link]

Can anyone share the install instructions for RPI3 - assume 3B+ plus is supported (?). I wanted to try the trial version against home assistant, openhab as a replacement for SmartThings. I burned the image with Etcher - installed it in the PI and all I see are rainbow colors. Since I hadn't placed a ssh or wpa file - I assumed it needed to be connected to ethernet, so I plugged it into the switch and nothing.

Am I missing some steps?

[zwolfpack]

What size SD card are you using? Check post #7, card size greater than 32GB caused issues for the original poster.

I have no experience with Etcher so can't comment on that.

[phillb]

Can anyone share the install instructions for RPI3 - assume 3B+ plus is supported (?). I wanted to try the trial version against home assistant, openhab as a replacement for SmartThings. I burned the image with Etcher - installed it in the PI and all I see are rainbow colors. Since I hadn't placed a ssh or wpa file - I assumed it needed to be connected to ethernet, so I plugged it into the switch and nothing.

Am I missing some steps?

So I started off with the default noobs install provided as standard provided on pi website. I then enabled VNC and ssh as suggested on this board just for convenience. Then installed all the MONO components again just as suggested earlier in this thread. I have been using a 32 gig card for testing but may suggest 16 may be better if you plan to do a lot of mucking about as the larger the card the longer it takes to copy so if you are like me just started with the pi and linux I find having "a couple of images" that you can restore back to really helpful as there is no fear of worrying about breaking something lol much more convenient than windows!

[Pete]

Yeah you will be at way less than 16Gb on your 32Gb SD card. You do not really need to access the desktop (VNC) on your new RPi as HS3 doesn't provide a desktop GUI in Linux. You can do everything via SSH.

1 - by default now SSH is enabled on your new computer
2 - personally here create a root and homeseer user password and adjust SSH to allow remote root access
3 - install mono plus mono-vnbc
4 - install flite
5 - test start your HS3 box remotely using the ./go command
6 - add optional Webmin
7 - use any one of the many documented ways to auto start Homeseer 3 and reboot RPi remotely via SSH (type reboot at ssh prompt).

You cannot break Linux and Homeseer is just running from a directory. Most important after you have finished is to have a copy of the Homeseer directory.
One image replicated to another SD card will serve as a DR recovery image. Tape the micro SD card to the cover of the RPi.

[zwolfpack]

Can anyone share the install instructions for RPI3 - assume 3B+ plus is supported (?). .... Am I missing some steps?

What steps are you following? Unfortunately the HomeSeer documentation is sadly lacking...
If you follow the instructions (discussed at the beginning of this thread) found at HomeSeer.com -> Help -> User Guides ->HS3-Pi3 Quick-Start Guide, the link in the document will have you downloading from http://www.homeseer.com/updates3/hs3pi3boot.zip. That download has a Last-Modified header of Tue, 19 Jul 2016 20:21:18 GMT and size of 28555891 bytes.

On the other hand if you download from HomeSeer.com -> Software Downloads -> HS3 / HS3PRO -> Download HS3-Pi, you will get https://homeseer.com/updates3/HomeSeerPi.zip, which has Last-Modified: Mon, 23 Apr 2018 18:28:04 GMT and size 2459787992 -- 86x the size of the other!! Reason for this is that the former utilized the Raspberry Pi 'NOOBS' model, where the downloaded file is small and the remainder is downloaded by the Pi from the internet during the install process. The newer version contains the whole shebang, thus internet access is not required during install.

So, if you are following the Help documentation, you are getting an old version. This won't run on the 3B+, since that model requires Raspbian 'stretch' OS, which wasn't around in 2016. Not sure about the version on the newer one - I will check on that.