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    Newbie hardware/software/plugin questions

    Hi guys,

    First off, I'm new to both Homeseer and this forum, so please forgive me if I posted the thread in the wrong section, or if I ask too many newbie question.

    My house is currently running semi autonomous, but I've got multiple systems which dont talk together very well, and I'm hoping to integrate the current installation in a better way and also expand it quite a bit.

    Currently I have the following systems running, but none of them are talking to each other in a very intelligent way, only some IFTTT bindings.
    Philips Hue lighting control
    Ikea lighting
    Mitsubishi Heat Pump/AC (MELCloud controlled)
    Millheat electric heaters, wifi controlled
    Verisure alarm installation (door/window sensors on every door, smoke detectors with temp sensors in all sleeping/living room, power plug adapters and integrated with Yale doorman smartlock).

    Furthermore I would like to integrate the following:
    -Electric floor heating (4 rooms), using Heatit Z-wave thermostats
    -Fibaro light switches (using verisure and/or z-wave motion/lux sensors)
    -Additonal heat control for electric heaters, either MillHeat cloud integration (is this possible) or with fibaro equipment.
    -Somfy io homecontrol (I know this is currently hard/impossible)
    -smart charging of VW eGolf EV (using tibber or something like that)

    What I hope for with this thread is some guidance in software and hardware, as I'm have some trouble understanding HS plugins, I dont know quite how many I would be needing for the intended integration.

    The two options I'm considering is either HS3-Pi-3 or HS3 running on a Intel NUC. I already own a NUC, currently serving as a rarely used HTPC, so price wise I guess it would differ much. The advantage of the RaspPi option is that it would fit into a technical cabinet centrally located in the house. Also the goverment (Enova) would sponsor 20% of the hardware cost. But I dont know whether the 5 plugin max-limit of this version would be limiting. I know I also require some addtional hardware, most certainly a z-wave interface of sorts.

    All help and guidance is very welcome, please let me know if more information is required. I'm also very open for hints and tips for products other than the makes I already have outlined above.

    #2
    There are unfortunately no quick answers to questions like this, but in very general terms one plugin is likely to support one type of technology/hardware, be it X10, Z-Wave, Sonos or whatever. Sometimes there is more than one offering for a type of technology (UPB I think is one, Insteon could be another??) and are likely developed by different people and each of those could have good bits and bad bits.

    Some plugins control no hardware at all, those could be something like a logging/charting plugin.

    Certainly from your list it appears that there is going to be a reliance on the Z-Wave plugin and you are going to be somewhat reliant on HS support for the devices you intend to use, EU devices by the fact they are rarer sometimes get a bit of a back seat in terms of support. All I would say is do your research by searching through this board as much as you can, sometimes the devices can be known not to work and you can save yourself considerable headache buying hardware. I had a 30 second look at the Tibber site and it does look like they have a very nice API to get data from their services which could be done in a HS script with relative ease.

    Looking at your existing hardware however there could be some issues, Ikea Tradfri lighting is well supported by the plugin from Moskus (I use it), Hue I believe is by the JowiHue plugin. However the others I am afraid I have never heard of, generally speaking if there is not a plugin/script already available then unless they are particularly easy (I wouldn't say an alarm would be) to interface with then you are likely to be stuck without integration. If there is an interface for the alarm for example then writing scripts/plugins is not always trivial.

    I guess in reality coming from a house already fairly full of technology is a difficult position to approach from because then you are reliant on the integration platform being open to that existing technology OR replacing/modifying it. When I started with HS there was good support for X10, Z-Wave was still gathering speed and WiFi GPIO type devices were not particularly common. As such I moved with HS rather than moved to HS, seems that is a much easier path to follow than expecting HS to deal with a house of disparate technologies already existing. Just from my observations of people in a similar position it seems rare that HS can offer 100% integration with everyone's systems and there is always some compromise.

    Comment


      #3
      Use the NUC. Windows better supported than Linux.

      tenholde
      tenholde

      Comment


        #4
        Homeseer 3 / Windows run fine on Intel / AMD based computers.

        Homeseer 3 / Linux run fine on Intel / AMD / ARM CPU's.

        Here using a small Pine 64 2Gb (same price as an RPi) computer running Homeseer 3 on Ubuntu 16.04 64 bit.

        Newer Rock 64 is the same size as an RPi and runs with 4Gb of RAM and uses either a microSD card or an eMMC card.

        You mention a little utilized NUC HTPC. Repurpose that computer for Homeseer 3. (Windows or Linux).

        Here running Homeseer 3 Pro on an Intel computer in Ubuntu with a side of a Windows Virtual Box for some Homeseer Windows only features.
        - Pete

        Auto mator
        Homeseer 3 Pro - 3.0.0.548 (Linux) - Ubuntu 18.04/W7e 64 bit Intel Haswell CPU 16Gb
        Homeseer Zee2 (Lite) - 3.0.0.548 (Linux) - Ubuntu 18.04/W7e - CherryTrail x5-Z8350 BeeLink 4Gb BT3 Pro
        HS4 Lite - Ubuntu 22.04 / Lenovo Tiny M900 / 32Gb Ram

        HS4 Pro - V4.1.18.1 - Ubuntu 22.04 / Lenova Tiny M900 / 32Gb Ram
        HSTouch on Intel tabletop tablets (Jogglers) - Asus AIO - Windows 11

        X10, UPB, Zigbee, ZWave and Wifi MQTT automation-Tasmota-Espurna. OmniPro 2, Russound zoned audio, Alexa, Cheaper RFID, W800 and Home Assistant

        Comment


          #5
          Originally posted by StormFurby View Post
          Hi guys,

          First off, I'm new to both Homeseer and this forum, so please forgive me if I posted the thread in the wrong section, or if I ask too many newbie question.

          My house is currently running semi autonomous, but I've got multiple systems which dont talk together very well, and I'm hoping to integrate the current installation in a better way and also expand it quite a bit.

          Currently I have the following systems running, but none of them are talking to each other in a very intelligent way, only some IFTTT bindings.
          Philips Hue lighting control
          Ikea lighting
          Mitsubishi Heat Pump/AC (MELCloud controlled)
          Millheat electric heaters, wifi controlled
          Verisure alarm installation (door/window sensors on every door, smoke detectors with temp sensors in all sleeping/living room, power plug adapters and integrated with Yale doorman smartlock).

          Furthermore I would like to integrate the following:
          -Electric floor heating (4 rooms), using Heatit Z-wave thermostats
          -Fibaro light switches (using verisure and/or z-wave motion/lux sensors)
          -Additonal heat control for electric heaters, either MillHeat cloud integration (is this possible) or with fibaro equipment.
          -Somfy io homecontrol (I know this is currently hard/impossible)
          -smart charging of VW eGolf EV (using tibber or something like that)

          What I hope for with this thread is some guidance in software and hardware, as I'm have some trouble understanding HS plugins, I dont know quite how many I would be needing for the intended integration.

          The two options I'm considering is either HS3-Pi-3 or HS3 running on a Intel NUC. I already own a NUC, currently serving as a rarely used HTPC, so price wise I guess it would differ much. The advantage of the RaspPi option is that it would fit into a technical cabinet centrally located in the house. Also the goverment (Enova) would sponsor 20% of the hardware cost. But I dont know whether the 5 plugin max-limit of this version would be limiting. I know I also require some addtional hardware, most certainly a z-wave interface of sorts.

          All help and guidance is very welcome, please let me know if more information is required. I'm also very open for hints and tips for products other than the makes I already have outlined above.

          Based on your region and if you have a HomeSeer licence all you mentioned above can be done! I can assure that there nothing you mentioned above that I can't do with my system. How ? ====> There is a lesser known or mentioned plugin for HomeSeer ====> Jeedom Software Plug-in for HS3 ====> If a plugin isn't there in HomeSeer, Jeedom has it and the plugin author is very helpful. You don't even have to know French. The plugin does the heavy lifting and imports your devices into HomeSeer for you to manage and control. Use Window 10 Translator for any wording of interest (copy, paste and translate into as many languages as you like!)

          For a preview of what am on about go here : https://forums.homeseer.com/showthread.php?t=178571 and read all about it.

          The systems are interlinked and work beautifully ====> HomeSeer, Jeedom, Node-RED, MQTT, Evok ....etc. HomeSeer as the master controller!




          Eman.
          Last edited by Eman; April 18, 2018, 04:31 AM.
          TinkerLand : Life's Choices,"No One Size Fits All"

          Comment

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