Reboot HomeSeer

[concordseer]

Thanks. Too late for that now. When I was evaluating HomeSeer, I would often be using the browser and web GUI. It seemed odd to require starting VNC or SSH separately to restart the system, when there was a perfectly fine web GUI right there which should have been able to do it. I have worked on server software development, including administration interface, and never seen one that didn't have an option to restart at least the daemon, if not the machine. Perhaps I also missed the restart daemon option in the HTTP GUI, though.

So what’s too late. Just buy a licence and you can try it. That’s hardly a deal breaker.

[madbrain]

So what’s too late. Just buy a licence and you can try it. That’s hardly a deal breaker.

That's not the reason I'm not buying a license yet indeed. The reasons are multiple, but the main ones are problems with the plug-ins and support for my existing hardware, unfortunately.

[concordseer]

That's not the reason I'm not buying a license yet indeed. The reasons are multiple, but the main ones are problems with the plug-ins and support for my existing hardware, unfortunately.

There’s no one size fits all in the home automation world and good luck if you find one. Many users here have managed quite successfully to automate their homes and while a number have experienced difficulties along the way the HS community have been more than happy to assist them on the journey.

Could you be a little bit more expansive when you say “problems with plugins and support for your hardware”. I doubt there’s a problem that cannot be overcome as you experienced with the attention you received in the X10 plugin section.

[madbrain]

There’s no one size fits all in the home automation world and good luck if you find one. Many users here have managed quite successfully to automate their homes and while a number have experienced difficulties along the way the HS community have been more than happy to assist them on the journey.

Could you be a little bit more expansive when you say “problems with plugins and support for your hardware”. I doubt there’s a problem that cannot be overcome as you experienced with the attention you received in the X10 plugin section.

I agree the attention I received in the X10 plugin section was great. The bugs I reported were acknowledged and quickly fixed.
Unfortunately, X10 itself is far from 100% reliable in my house due to powerline noise, and I'm looking to phase most of my uses of X10 out, perhaps not entirely, but at least partially.

The issues I have run into mostly relate to 3 different plug-ins :

1) Kasa plug-in is by far the biggest one.
I purchased multiple Kasa energy monitoring plugs (KP115 and now KP125 also), and wanted to use them for various purposes, such as notifications when appliance cycles are complete (washer/dryer/dishwasher/microwave/toaster/etc), notifications if the appliance died (my outdoor water softener), and a few other uses cases. I posted threads of my own, and in several existing threads about the Kasa plug-in.
It turned out the HS4 Kasa plug-in doesn't support energy tracking.
The HS3 Kasa plug-in does support it, and I tried to use it in HS4, but I was never able to implement the logic I wanted. It looks like I'm alone using these smartplugs with HomeSeer, unfortunately. I may well be the first person to have tried using these smartplugs for this purpose in HomeSeer.
Users recommended other smartplugs that needed hardware modifications I'm unable to perform.
The Kasa plugs do everything I need out of the box with the official firmware. Just not with HomeSeer, unfortunately.
Once I gave up on HomeSeer, I started looking at HomeAssistant more closely, as I was also evaluating it, but it doesn't have a 30-day trial period, so I was under less time pressure, and not trying too hard. I just implemented most of the notifications I wanted with HomeAssistant on Tuesday and those Kasa plugs, using a preset blueprint. It was relatively easy. I actually just bought more Kasa plugs today at Target as they are really impressive hardware for the price. $27.99 for a 2-pack of Kasa KP125, ie. $13.98 a piece.
I returned all my KP115 to Amazon. They cost $22.99 each, and are identical to the KP115, except they lack HomeKit (which I'm not currently using).

2) Rainforest Eagle plug-in
I got some help from the plug-in author, who made a fix to it. The plug-in worked initially, but ultimately messed up the device after a few days of uptime, causing the meter data during device downtime to be lost. This isn't something I could live with, so I had to disable the plug-in. I'm not sure how this could be resolved. There may be issues both in the plug-in and the device side. The device is legacy and out of support. There is a newer revision of it, but I'm not crazy about spending $100 just for the hope of it possibly not having the same bug - it very well might, too.The existing hardware still works fine in push mode, as opposed to poll, ie. when uploading to cloud through Wattvision. But there is no plug-in for HomeSeer to download Wattvision data.

3) Enphase Envoy plug-in
I have a legacy Enphase Envoy-R device for my solar PV system, which is not supported by the AK Enphase Envoy plug-in.
The Envoy uploads all its data to cloud through Enlighten, but there is no way for the plug-in to download data from Enlighten yet. The author is aware of the issue.
Unlike the Eagle, this is not a $100 fix unfortunately. The newer revision Envoy-S costs $600+ new. The newest revision Envoy IQ is not compatible with the 40 micro-inverters on my roof, so this would be a very expensive major project to upgrade to the newest Enphase hardware, and I won't be doing that anytime soon.

For now, I subscribed to a service called PVoutput which is able to pull my Eagle data in the cloud from Wattvision, and Enphase data from cloud through Enlighten. I'm not sure how long this is going to be viable as it seems the manufacturers of solar & other energy devices are all trying to close access to the user's data. This provides monitoring only, though. There is no Kasa integration, also.

Many of my use cases for automation have to do with energy management of some sort. Turn devices (not just lights) off when there is no motion, etc. There is other hardware I will need and end up using (likely ZWave and/or Zigbee), but I didn't get around to it yet. I wanted to get existing hardware working first.

I would really like to have a single place where I could see where all the energy is being consumed, at both the smartplug level and house meter level (Eagle), as well as solar energy generated (Enphase). And be able to turn loads off when they are not needed, first manually, and then in an automated fashion. The main idea is to save on the power consumption, and therefore the electric bill, so this is a price sensitive application. Spending too much on the project yields a negative ROI I am also unemployed right now, so I prefer to spend only on things that have a positive ROI. At $13.98 for each Kasa smartplug, and about 40 cents per kWh, each smartplug pays back for itself in a year if it saves about 35 kWh a year, or an average of 4 constant watts. 4 years ROI if they each save an average of 1 watt.

Obviously, use case like notifications for appliance completion are convenience, and won't pay back for themselves, although they can help a bit there with vampire power too, but at the expense of appliance clocks blinking 12:00, which is not normally worth it. Usability goes down a lot if you have to use your phone to turn on the appliance, or reach behind the appliance cord to press the button (not always possible). So I probably won't go that far. Notifications do help a bit with shifting loads in less expensive TOU utility periods. If I know right away when clothes are done washing, I can dry them right away before utility starts peak hours.

Knowing when the water softener dies is very valuable, and can save hundreds or even thousands in plumbing/appliances repairs.
I'd love to have something that checks tap water hardness automatically too, but if it exists, it's probably going to cost way more than just using weekly or monthly test strips to check.

[concordseer]

I agree the attention I received in the X10 plugin section was great. The bugs I reported were acknowledged and quickly fixed.
Unfortunately, X10 itself is far from 100% reliable in my house due to powerline noise, and I'm looking to phase most of my uses of X10 out, perhaps not entirely, but at least partially.

The issues I have run into mostly relate to 3 different plug-ins :

1) Kasa plug-in is by far the biggest one.
I purchased multiple Kasa energy monitoring plugs (KP115 and now KP125 also), and wanted to use them for various purposes, such as notifications when appliance cycles are complete (washer/dryer/dishwasher/microwave/toaster/etc), notifications if the appliance died (my outdoor water softener), and a few other uses cases. I posted threads of my own, and in several existing threads about the Kasa plug-in.
It turned out the HS4 Kasa plug-in doesn't support energy tracking.
The HS3 Kasa plug-in does support it, and I tried to use it in HS4, but I was never able to implement the logic I wanted. It looks like I'm alone using these smartplugs with HomeSeer, unfortunately. I may well be the first person to have tried using these smartplugs for this purpose in HomeSeer.
Users recommended other smartplugs that needed hardware modifications I'm unable to perform.
The Kasa plugs do everything I need out of the box with the official firmware. Just not with HomeSeer, unfortunately.
Once I gave up on HomeSeer, I started looking at HomeAssistant more closely, as I was also evaluating it, but it doesn't have a 30-day trial period, so I was under less time pressure, and not trying too hard. I just implemented most of the notifications I wanted with HomeAssistant on Tuesday and those Kasa plugs, using a preset blueprint. It was relatively easy. I actually just bought more Kasa plugs today at Target as they are really impressive hardware for the price. $27.99 for a 2-pack of Kasa KP125, ie. $13.98 a piece.
I returned all my KP115 to Amazon. They cost $22.99 each, and are identical to the KP115, except they lack HomeKit (which I'm not currently using).

2) Rainforest Eagle plug-in
I got some help from the plug-in author, who made a fix to it. The plug-in worked initially, but ultimately messed up the device after a few days of uptime, causing the meter data during device downtime to be lost. This isn't something I could live with, so I had to disable the plug-in. I'm not sure how this could be resolved. There may be issues both in the plug-in and the device side. The device is legacy and out of support. There is a newer revision of it, but I'm not crazy about spending $100 just for the hope of it possibly not having the same bug - it very well might, too.The existing hardware still works fine in push mode, as opposed to poll, ie. when uploading to cloud through Wattvision. But there is no plug-in for HomeSeer to download Wattvision data.

3) Enphase Envoy plug-in
I have a legacy Enphase Envoy-R device for my solar PV system, which is not supported by the AK Enphase Envoy plug-in.
The Envoy uploads all its data to cloud through Enlighten, but there is no way for the plug-in to download data from Enlighten yet. The author is aware of the issue.
Unlike the Eagle, this is not a $100 fix unfortunately. The newer revision Envoy-S costs $600+ new. The newest revision Envoy IQ is not compatible with the 40 micro-inverters on my roof, so this would be a very expensive major project to upgrade to the newest Enphase hardware, and I won't be doing that anytime soon.

For now, I subscribed to a service called PVoutput which is able to pull my Eagle data in the cloud from Wattvision, and Enphase data from cloud through Enlighten. I'm not sure how long this is going to be viable as it seems the manufacturers of solar & other energy devices are all trying to close access to the user's data. This provides monitoring only, though. There is no Kasa integration, also.

Many of my use cases for automation have to do with energy management of some sort. Turn devices (not just lights) off when there is no motion, etc. There is other hardware I will need and end up using (likely ZWave and/or Zigbee), but I didn't get around to it yet. I wanted to get existing hardware working first.

I would really like to have a single place where I could see where all the energy is being consumed, at both the smartplug level and house meter level (Eagle), as well as solar energy generated (Enphase). And be able to turn loads off when they are not needed, first manually, and then in an automated fashion. The main idea is to save on the power consumption, and therefore the electric bill, so this is a price sensitive application. Spending too much on the project yields a negative ROI I am also unemployed right now, so I prefer to spend only on things that have a positive ROI. At $13.98 for each Kasa smartplug, and about 40 cents per kWh, each smartplug pays back for itself in a year if it saves about 35 kWh a year, or an average of 4 constant watts. 4 years ROI if they each save an average of 1 watt.

Obviously, use case like notifications for appliance completion are convenience, and won't pay back for themselves, although they can help a bit there with vampire power too, but at the expense of appliance clocks blinking 12:00, which is not normally worth it. Usability goes down a lot if you have to use your phone to turn on the appliance, or reach behind the appliance cord to press the button (not always possible). So I probably won't go that far. Notifications do help a bit with shifting loads in less expensive TOU utility periods. If I know right away when clothes are done washing, I can dry them right away before utility starts peak hours.

Knowing when the water softener dies is very valuable, and can save hundreds or even thousands in plumbing/appliances repairs.
I'd love to have something that checks tap water hardness automatically too, but if it exists, it's probably going to cost way more than just using weekly or monthly test strips to check.

That’s good. You found something you like and it didn’t cost you anything. Best of luck with it.

[gregdeux]

under linux it is very easy to do a sudo reboot -f -n from a shell and an event under hs4 ;-) so you can execute this event remotely ;-)

good fun

[Tillsy]

under linux it is very easy to do a sudo reboot -f -n from a shell and an event under hs4 ;-) so you can execute this event remotely ;-)

good fun

Holy moly don't do that - that will yank the power cord out from HS4 without cleanly shutting it down.

[gregdeux]

Holy moly don't do that - that will yank the power cord out from HS4 without cleanly shutting it down.

by experience it is the best way to not lose anything from the db (json) and in general when you want to restart remotely its which has a big problem so in this way we are sure that everything restarts
if you prefer you can stop the hs4 service wait 1 min and do the sudo reboot -f -n
by server experience too often I had to remove the rope because the reboot bugged and as you are at a distance its the surest way to find a system that restarts
if he would have been at home I would have told him to do a sudo reboot -n 60 or 120 ;-)

[jamesdally]

How can I reboot the system running HS4 remotely ? This question came up a few years ago for HS3.

https://forums.homeseer.com/forum/ho...110555-reboot-homeseer

BLShutdown and restart plugins don't appear in the list when do a search. Are there other options ?

i am also looking for its solution please do share with me if you have found