I don't have time to understand Home automation yet but....

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#1599229 26-Jul-2016 20:46

We very rarely use locale specific stuff. I managed to get the NZ timezone setup using one of those hacks you mentioned, but that only really helps when you ask her "what is the date". You can't (that I know of) set the location/address so weather requests have to be of the form "what is the weather in Christchurch, New Zealand" - i.e. not much use.

What it is very good at is recognising spoken commands. Regardless of our Kiwi accent. We use it a LOT for shopping lists, Spotify/music, and home automation stuff. It is a great little speaker and integration with Spotify is now much tighter - you setup the Echo to use Spotify as the primary music service and then it is simply a matter of saying "Alexa, play some Foo Fighters" and away she goes.

Her ability to recognise commands from across the room is quite incredible. She doesn't get things right 100% of course, but she has a much higher hit rate than I ever imagined.

And once you integrate with something like openHAB using HA-Bridge (effectively a Hue bridge emulator) you can turn on/off anything you have automated. We use this heaps for turning the TV on and off, coffee machine, garage door, lights etc. Really is more than a gimmick - it is actually very useful. All of this is completely independent of the locale settings so really has no bearing.

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#1599234 26-Jul-2016 20:50

There is a harmony hub binding I believe, but I have never used it. From what I understand it works pretty well tho, so is probably worth a look. You can setup *scene* items (virtual switches) in openHAB which you can switch via Echo commands. Then in your openHAB rules you can do whatever you like when that switch is _switched_. This allows you to have a single Echo trigger which can set of a sequence of commands and events. I do this for my "turn on TV" Echo command - it turns on my Yamaha AVR (via the openHAB Yamaha binding), turns on my TV (via an HTTP request to a 3rd party IR blaster I have), and sets the lighting in my living room to dimmed (via Z-Wave dimmers and RFXCOM wall switches).

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#1599242 26-Jul-2016 21:00

Ta, very helpful thanks.

I'm also interested in the IR blaster. We're about to drop $lots on a central heating system. Ideally I'm aiming to have the ability to turn it on (remotely) from my phone - i.e. heading home, let's start heating up. I haven't been able to find any "direct" home automation options for the models available here, but they all seem to have a remote, so was working on the theory I could teach some commands to an IR blaster and have it work that way. Does that sound about right?

SumnerBoy

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#1599243 26-Jul-2016 21:03

I have a Daikin heat pump which has an IP module you can buy (expensive tho!). I wrote an openHAB binding for that so I have full control over IP - much more reliable the IR and you get feedback on the system state as well. Other heat pumps like the Mitsubishi (I think) have a WIFI module but everything goes via their _cloud_ server so not sure if it is possible to control directly via openHAB - might not be a problem tho if you can still control by your phone using their separate app?

Otherwise an IR blaster would be ok - I always think of IR as a last resort.

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#1599244 26-Jul-2016 21:04

mdf:

Ta, very helpful thanks.

I'm also interested in the IR blaster. We're about to drop $lots on a central heating system. Ideally I'm aiming to have the ability to turn it on (remotely) from my phone - i.e. heading home, let's start heating up. I haven't been able to find any "direct" home automation options for the models available here, but they all seem to have a remote, so was working on the theory I could teach some commands to an IR blaster and have it work that way. Does that sound about right?

Keep Talking...

I'm about to build a house and at the moment trying to decide between an in-ceiling heating system or a couple of heatpumps. I too would like to have them able to be controlled by something other than the included remotes, all the way through to something like a Nest if possible, or directly from a HA system based on time and temperature if needs be.

Very interested in what the most HA friendly brands and solutions are. My current Panasonic Heatpump seems to be the worst in the world for having a working set of IR commands. I have tried literally half a dozen or more different sets of commands on mobile apps, through the Harmony etc and I get some commands working, but not on the right buttons. Ugh.

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

Talkiet

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#1599251 26-Jul-2016 21:06

SumnerBoy:

I have a Daikin heat pump which has an IP module you can buy (expensive tho!). I wrote an openHAB binding for that so I have full control over IP - much more reliable the IR and you get feedback on the system state as well. Other heat pumps like the Mitsubishi (I think) have a WIFI module but everything goes via their _cloud_ server so not sure if it is possible to control directly via openHAB - might not be a problem tho if you can still control by your phone using their separate app?

Otherwise an IR blaster would be ok - I always think of IR as a last resort.

SImple question... I get what you mean about state (temperature, mode, fan speed etc)... Do the IR commands typically always send a complete state to the unit and therefore the state is in the remote, or is there 2 way comms (which sounds silly now I type it)?

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

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mdf

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#1599253 26-Jul-2016 21:09

We're looking at gas ducted central heating, likely either a Braemar or Bonaire unit. Nothing obvious popped up on a very limited search, but I will have a word to the installer about what kind of wired options might be available. They seem to have some pretty smart controllers available, so you would have hoped they had though of this. But we'll find out.

The other one on my wish list would be to start the oven pre-heating when I've stayed out too long and need to get dinner into my hangry little monsters. Any ideas on that score?

mdf

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#1599275 26-Jul-2016 21:46

Talkiet:

Keep Talking...

I'm about to build a house and at the moment trying to decide between an in-ceiling heating system or a couple of heatpumps. I too would like to have them able to be controlled by something other than the included remotes, all the way through to something like a Nest if possible, or directly from a HA system based on time and temperature if needs be.

We're in Wellington on reticulated gas and so keen to get as much as possible on that. If there's an underfloor cavity, we've been told a subfloor mounting with floor ducts is preferable (makes sense; heat rises). Friends of ours have theirs mounted in the roof though and it still seems to work fine. But I haven't seen anything with off-the-shelf smarts.

In terms of home automation, there seems to be much tighter integration with heat pump options and some at least have it all built in - I've heard some good things about Mitsubishi.

There some good info on these threads.

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#1599295 26-Jul-2016 22:12

I'm considering the IntensisHome controller for a Fujitsu ducted heatpump, as it doesn't have IR. IntensisHome might do something for gas type systems not sure

It gets wired in like a second controller, draws its power from the 3 wire bus. But will cost about $350-$400 to get here so may be bumped down a few months

richms

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#1599302 26-Jul-2016 22:19

Every time I fiddle in the alexa app it seems to set the timezone back to oregon which is where the billing address is for amazon, so I just dont bother now.

I can always say "what is the time in new zealand" if I want to know the time, and I tend to set wake up alarms by hours rather than at a certain time so " set time for 5 hours" works fine for that.

I have finally got around to getting a ras pi for installing openhab on sorted, but only got it serving up the default house so far, it looks rather ugly like an old iphone for the UI so will have to sort that out before I put too much effort into it. Just not been in the right frame of mind to take on an open source product battle recently.

Richard rich.ms

SumnerBoy

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#1599303 26-Jul-2016 22:19

Talkiet:

SImple question... I get what you mean about state (temperature, mode, fan speed etc)... Do the IR commands typically always send a complete state to the unit and therefore the state is in the remote, or is there 2 way comms (which sounds silly now I type it)?

I am guessing you misread my message, my Daikin controller is *IP* based, not *IR*. So the controller is installed inside the indoor unit, and has an ethernet cable plugged in. The controller has a little web server built in and I can use HTTP GET/POST requests to retrieve the current state and send commands.

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#1599305 26-Jul-2016 22:22

richms:

Every time I fiddle in the alexa app it seems to set the timezone back to oregon which is where the billing address is for amazon, so I just dont bother now.

I can always say "what is the time in new zealand" if I want to know the time, and I tend to set wake up alarms by hours rather than at a certain time so " set time for 5 hours" works fine for that.

I have finally got around to getting a ras pi for installing openhab on sorted, but only got it serving up the default house so far, it looks rather ugly like an old iphone for the UI so will have to sort that out before I put too much effort into it. Just not been in the right frame of mind to take on an open source product battle recently.

The standard app is pretty basic (very functional, but not the prettiest). If you want a nice UI check out the Rotini project on the openHAB forums. There is a guy (Igor) doing some pretty awesome work with a new UI which is much more pleasing to the eye. The app is by invite only via a Google+ group but everyone is granted access. He is likely to make it a paid app once it moves out of beta but I think it will be worth every penny.

Talkiet

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#1599306 26-Jul-2016 22:22

SumnerBoy:

Talkiet:

SImple question... I get what you mean about state (temperature, mode, fan speed etc)... Do the IR commands typically always send a complete state to the unit and therefore the state is in the remote, or is there 2 way comms (which sounds silly now I type it)?

I am guessing you misread my message, my Daikin controller is *IP* based, not *IR*. So the controller is installed inside the indoor unit, and has an ethernet cable plugged in. The controller has a little web server built in and I can use HTTP GET/POST requests to retrieve the current state and send commands.

Sorry, it was meant to be a general question about automating IR heatpumps (from my fruitless exercise with my Panasonic)... I note that most of the other IP controllable heatpumps seem to use cloud services. Ugh. Is Daikin the only one you're aware of that enables local IP control (and gives back state information) by something like OpenHAB?

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

SumnerBoy

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#1599308 26-Jul-2016 22:27

It is the only one I know of, but I haven't really done an exhaustive check - I just happened to put a Daikin in when I built my place in 2011 (before I knew anything about HA) and was lucky enough to find out about the IP controller after the fact.

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#1599323 27-Jul-2016 00:06

Talkiet:

SumnerBoy:

Talkiet:

SImple question... I get what you mean about state (temperature, mode, fan speed etc)... Do the IR commands typically always send a complete state to the unit and therefore the state is in the remote, or is there 2 way comms (which sounds silly now I type it)?

I am guessing you misread my message, my Daikin controller is *IP* based, not *IR*. So the controller is installed inside the indoor unit, and has an ethernet cable plugged in. The controller has a little web server built in and I can use HTTP GET/POST requests to retrieve the current state and send commands.

Sorry, it was meant to be a general question about automating IR heatpumps (from my fruitless exercise with my Panasonic)... I note that most of the other IP controllable heatpumps seem to use cloud services. Ugh. Is Daikin the only one you're aware of that enables local IP control (and gives back state information) by something like OpenHAB?

Cheers - N

We have a Panasonic multi split setup in the bedrooms, I was going to automate them using IntensisHome when we purchased them last year but $400 x 3 units that's not going to happen. To automate them now, I’m looking at using an Arduino IR blaster controlled with the Openhab mqtt binding.

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