Any word on HS4 compatibility?

[Wazoo]

Even though we live in the age of dying landlines, I still have one for backup (I use an Ooma for VoIP) and my 'ol trusty Way2Call Hi-Phone still whitelists/blacklists calls coming into the home, silencing the ringers, etc.

Anyone hear about whether this will still work in HS4?

[drhtmal]

Even though we live in the age of dying landlines, I still have one for backup (I use an Ooma for VoIP) and my 'ol trusty Way2Call Hi-Phone did whitelist/blacklist calls coming into the home, silencing the ringers, etc.

Anyone hear about whether this will still work in HS4?

HomeSeer has stated multiple times that HSPhone fuctionality will be removed for HS4 so there will be no support. HomeSeer has offered the code for HSPhone for any developer to run with and create a driver for HS4. There is a forum post about crowd sourcing HSPhone development by a third party. You might take at look at this post https://forums.homeseer.com/forum/ho...e-over-hsphone and pledge some money to the bounty to encourage further development.

My personal thought is that there are currently not enough people willing to provide funding up front in advance for a developer to take on the monumental task of writing and supporting a HSPhone driver for HS4.

[upstatemike]

I think the official position is for people who need HSPhone to run an instance of HS3 for that purpose and a separate HS4 server for everything else. Now it is a matter of determining the best way to pass data from the HS3 box to the HS4 box for integration into touch screens etc. Some folks might not bother with the link and just run HS3/HSPhone a a stand alone product. It all depends on what your needs are.

The only thing for certain is that the need for HSPhone (or something similiar) will not completely go away any time soon. Certainly not within the lifecycle of HS4.

[drhtmal]

I think the official position is for people who need HSPhone to run an instance of HS3 for that purpose and a separate HS4 server for everything else..

I think a few members are doing exactly that. I have never run a secondary HomeSeer server to run plugins remotely. Perhaps some of the members that have done this can provide some guidance.

[Wadenut]

HS3 and HS4 evidently can't run on the same machine, however, no-one has mentioned that HS2 can't co-exist with HS4. Still not ideal.
I've had both HS2 & 4 running simultaneously (HS2 on port 81, 4 on 80). No apparent problems. You'd just need to ensure there's no attempt to share ports & probably need to disable Speaker in HS2.

[drhtmal]

Sure they can. Run HS3 in a VM. https://forums.homeseer.com/forum/ho...omeseer-server

[ITguyHS]

HS3 and HS4 evidently can't run on the same machine, however, no-one has mentioned that HS2 can't co-exist with HS4.

HS2 is probably a better choice anyway. Some features of HSphone got broken in the HS3 version and never got fixed - multiple mailboxes is one of those, but there are probably others.

[Richel]

HS3 and HS4 evidently can't run on the same machine, however, no-one has mentioned that HS2 can't co-exist with HS4. Still not ideal.
I've had both HS2 & 4 running simultaneously (HS2 on port 81, 4 on 80). No apparent problems. You'd just need to ensure there's no attempt to share ports & probably need to disable Speaker in HS2.

Where can I get HS2? I am facing this issue, too, with HSPhone being absent in HS4. Thanks. Elliott

[drhtmal]

Where can I get HS2? I am facing this issue, too, with HSPhone being absent in HS4. Thanks. Elliott

There is a legacy download page here https://homeseer.com/legacy-downloads/

[Richel]

There is a legacy download page here https://homeseer.com/legacy-downloads/

Thank you!

[Pete]

I still run a couple of scripts (HS2) for tinkering with W2C in HS2 and yes you can run it in a Virtual Box as here totally Linux these days and run Windows 7 embedded in Virtual boxes.

You cannot run Oracle Virtual Box on an ARM CPU though only an Intel or AMD CPU. Currently testing Homeseer 3 Lite on a BeeLink BT3 Pro which is an Intel CPU CPU and 4Gb of RAM. It is running on the 64Gb eMMC (all solid state).

Jon00 has a variables agent you can run on HS2/HS3 for use of HS2 variable on HS3 (and maybe HS4).

Sub Main (Parm As Object)

Dim time As DateTime = DateTime.Now
Dim format As String = "M/d/yy hh:mm"

HSP.LINEAnswer (1)
HSP.HIPcmd(1,&H14,&H0)
HS.WaitSecs (1)
HSP.HIPSendLocalCID (1,"Doorbell",time.ToString(format))
' HSP.HIPSendLocalCID(1,time.ToString(format),"DOORBELL")
HS.WaitSecs (3)
HSP.HIPcmd(1,&H04,&H0)
HSP.LINEReset (1)

End Sub

[upstatemike]

Maybe Homeseer should create an appliance using a Zee running HS2 dedicated to W2C with some code to pass data to a separate HS4 system. Somebosy would need to write an HS4 plugin to talk to the appliance but I suspect that would be much easier than writing a full HSPhone plugin for HS4.

[Stuart]

Way back someone mentioned the program CallClerk for the phone, has anyone tried this out ? looks like it has a ton of features.

Stuart

[ITguyHS]

Way back someone mentioned the program CallClerk for the phone, has anyone tried this out ? looks like it has a ton of features.

Stuart

It does have a ton of features - but no way to communicate to HS3 to do things like CID display, call announce, etc. I talked to the developer about adding a few more "run external program when this happens" options that would have allowed us to use JSON to talk to HS. He thought there just wasn't enough demand to warrant the time involved. Still, if you don't need HS integration, this would be a great, reasonably-priced option.

[drhtmal]

Maybe Homeseer should create an appliance using a Zee running HS2 dedicated to W2C with some code to pass data to a separate HS4 system. Somebosy would need to write an HS4 plugin to talk to the appliance but I suspect that would be much easier than writing a full HSPhone plugin for HS4.

That would be nice but it does not seem make business sense. A dedicated appliance running HSPhone to use W2C would cost a lot of development time and money. HomeSeer has stated that there are not enough people interested in using HSPhone for them to continue development of just the code. A dedicated Windows 10 server running HSPhone would have to cost as much as an Hometroller S6 Pro which costs in the $1,000 price point. There are only 15 people who have responded in the HSPhone bounty thread that they would be willing to financially support an HSPhone plugin with a total bounty at this time of less than $1000. It would be nice but I can't see HomeSeer investing the time and money in such an appliance.