Amazon Echo

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#1549195 10-May-2016 12:17

I've been thinking about ordering an Echo or a Dot not quite sure yet which one. Just a quick question what is everyone doing for power adapters?

chimera

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#1549197 10-May-2016 12:21

Its DC powered and adapter works from 110-220V so don't need to worry about it. Just need a "US to NZ" plug adapter is all (or bend the pins on 45's if you're game lol!)

richms

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#1549198 10-May-2016 12:21

sign:

I've been thinking about ordering an Echo or a Dot not quite sure yet which one. Just a quick question what is everyone doing for power adapters?

Ive bought several universal powerstrips over the years and have one beside the bed so that one just plugs in. The kitchen one I have a chinese deathdapter as bigclive calls them to run it, No stupid people around here to stick their fingers in the gap to worry about.

Richard rich.ms

richms

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#1549199 10-May-2016 12:22

chimera:

Its DC powered and adapter works from 110-220V so don't need to worry about it. Just need a "US to NZ" plug adapter is all (or bend the pins on 45's if you're game lol!)

Dont do that, it ruins the sockets. If you do use a cheap powerstrip since the sockets get ruined on those anyway so it will just be business as usual for it.

Richard rich.ms

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#1549202 10-May-2016 12:24

chimera:

Its DC powered and adapter works from 110-220V so don't need to worry about it. Just need a "US to NZ" plug adapter is all (or bend the pins on 45's if you're game lol!)

The fire service don't recommend pin bending.....

My views (except when I am looking out their windows) are not those of my employer.

chimera

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#1549207 10-May-2016 12:33

It was sarcasm... Of course I wouldn't recommend that, it does weed out the stupid though.

In fact, based on NZ regulations the adapter itself is not even NZ legal so as it stands right now, it wouldn't be permitted to be sold here. To be legal, it needs an earth pin. Even on DC power supplies. Only reason I know this is coz an (unrelated) listing I had on Trademe got removed recently... part of the email I got from them here...

...

The Electricity (Safety) Regulations 2010 state that fittings or appliances with foreign plugs (such as those from America, the UK, EU or Asia) are unable to be sold in New Zealand. This also includes most adaptors sold to fit these types of plugs to make them compatible with a New Zealand power outlet. Note too that plugs must have the appropriate insulation on their pins.

As a supplier of electrical goods, it’s your responsibility to ensure you’re selling items that are safe and legal. We recommend you look through the Energy Safety website to learn about your obligations as a seller:

http://www.med.govt.nz/energysafety/appliances-fittings/electrical-appliances-fittings

Energy Safety has also prepared this guide for suppliers:

http://www.med.govt.nz/energysafety/documents/about/publications/publications-for-industry/compliance-guides/guide-to-safe-electrical-gas-products.pdf

You can also contact Energy Safety on 0508 377 463 if you require further information.

Finally you can check out our Trust and Safety blog post about this policy:
http://www.trademe.co.nz/trust-safety/2012/11/30/foreign-plugs-cannot-be-listed-on-trade-me/
...

richms

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#1549217 10-May-2016 12:37

Not legal to sell, fine to use for yourself.

The adapters that come from china are not legal as they will allow misinsertion of the plug and will massively fail the finger tests and also usually have unsheathed pins since they dont have those in china.

The adapters which are prohibited are the small little ones that are barely larger than the pins themselves, and the folding pin types where you can eject 2 sets of pins from it and have live pins flapping in the breeze. Prohibited items mean that it is illegal to use them. Not sure about to have them or not, but certainly you cant use them. They are on the list alongside things like xmas lights with wires so thin that you wouldnt use them for headphones and no strain relief on the controller box etc.

Richard rich.ms

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lchiu7

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#1558231 23-May-2016 21:04

SumnerBoy:

Fair enough - I am a bit of an openHAB fanboi so try to push it wherever I can - the beauty of it is even if you have Insteon devices and a hub, you might also want to integrate your Kodi clients, or weather information, or sunrise/sunset times, or Squeezebox/Sonos devices, or Yamaha/Denon AVR, or MQTT powered devices, or Freeswitch VOIP server, etc. etc. And once integrated with the Echo, ALL these devices would be controllable by voice.

But as you say, it is more work, more bits to get working, and if you only want simple lighting control then probably a case of over-engineering.

Good luck, and I hope you post back with your experiences. I have been thinking about getting an Echo for quite a while, but have been putting it off to see how others find it.

Belated response to this query but I have the Dot and can operate Insteon devices using the Dot and IFTTT. It works okay but having to say Alexa trigger <command> is a bit verbose.

The US model Insteon hub has full Alexa support but there is no international version. What I like about Insteon though is, I can control lights without having to buy expensive WiFi bulbs by just installing micro-controllers in the wall switch in series with the switch itself and use regular bulbs. They would last much longer than WiFi bulbs.

Staying in Wellington. Check out my AirBnB in the Wellington CBD. https://www.airbnb.co.nz/h/wellycbd PM me and mention GZ to get a 15% discount and no AirBnB charges.

richms

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#1558235 23-May-2016 21:10

lchiu7:

Belated response to this query but I have the Dot and can operate Insteon devices using the Dot and IFTTT. It works okay but having to say Alexa trigger <command> is a bit verbose.

The US model Insteon hub has full Alexa support but there is no international version. What I like about Insteon though is, I can control lights without having to buy expensive WiFi bulbs by just installing micro-controllers in the wall switch in series with the switch itself and use regular bulbs. They would last much longer than WiFi bulbs.

Unfortunatly the controllers in the wall approach gives you single control over all connected lights, and the resulting crap dimming that a phase angle dimmer has when driving LEDs.

The limitless lights are pretty cheap I find. Not absurd like the wemo or some of the other lights, but you do need the gateway which is pretty limited compared to zwave etc since it only supports 4 groups, so that is a 1 or more gateway per room situation with it stock.

Richard rich.ms

lchiu7

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#1558273 23-May-2016 21:44

richms:

lchiu7:

Belated response to this query but I have the Dot and can operate Insteon devices using the Dot and IFTTT. It works okay but having to say Alexa trigger <command> is a bit verbose.

The US model Insteon hub has full Alexa support but there is no international version. What I like about Insteon though is, I can control lights without having to buy expensive WiFi bulbs by just installing micro-controllers in the wall switch in series with the switch itself and use regular bulbs. They would last much longer than WiFi bulbs.

Unfortunatly the controllers in the wall approach gives you single control over all connected lights, and the resulting crap dimming that a phase angle dimmer has when driving LEDs.

The limitless lights are pretty cheap I find. Not absurd like the wemo or some of the other lights, but you do need the gateway which is pretty limited compared to zwave etc since it only supports 4 groups, so that is a 1 or more gateway per room situation with it stock.

A good point but since if my switch controls a bank of lights, then I am happy for the Dot to control the same bank. I am not sure I understand your comment about phase angle dimmer when driving LED's but dimming is not an issue for me and in the only room in the house that has a dimmer, I would install incandescent bulbs if I wanted to dim the lights for say watching a movie. Or even finding (if they exist) dimmable CFL's

Staying in Wellington. Check out my AirBnB in the Wellington CBD. https://www.airbnb.co.nz/h/wellycbd PM me and mention GZ to get a 15% discount and no AirBnB charges.

SumnerBoy

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#1558302 23-May-2016 22:51

Apparently the new Fibaro Dimmer v2 is much better at handling LEDs, although I haven't tried one myself. I have 4-5 sets of lights being dimmed by the original Fibaro Dimmer and they work pretty well. Get the occasional flickering if the microwave is going, but generally speaking they work fine - had to hunt around for some bulbs that played nice tho.

I now have my Echo and have just setup the HA-Bridge (https://github.com/bwssytems/ha-bridge). Have to say it is pretty awesome - all locally managed and controlled so the Echo itself makes HTTP requests on my local LAN (no need to expose my system to the internet). It has a built-in web server for setting up and testing your devices. And it works without any trigger words - e.g. 'Alexa turn on coffee machine' and away it goes.

lchiu7

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#1558306 23-May-2016 23:01

I just downloaded openHAB and the HA Bridge and I think I will play around with it in the weekend. I might be posting back to the thread to get some assistance

Staying in Wellington. Check out my AirBnB in the Wellington CBD. https://www.airbnb.co.nz/h/wellycbd PM me and mention GZ to get a 15% discount and no AirBnB charges.

Rikkitic

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#1558381 24-May-2016 08:02

richms:

Not legal to sell, fine to use for yourself.

The adapters that come from china are not legal as they will allow misinsertion of the plug and will massively fail the finger tests and also usually have unsheathed pins since they dont have those in china.

The adapters which are prohibited are the small little ones that are barely larger than the pins themselves, and the folding pin types where you can eject 2 sets of pins from it and have live pins flapping in the breeze. Prohibited items mean that it is illegal to use them. Not sure about to have them or not, but certainly you cant use them. They are on the list alongside things like xmas lights with wires so thin that you wouldnt use them for headphones and no strain relief on the controller box etc.

Over the years I have purchased a number of small electronics devices, both overseas and in NZ. From Trade Me I have had several items with AC adapters, most recently a satellite receiver, that came with foreign plugs and a loose NZ adapter. One such adapter, from China, of course, was so badly made even I didn't dare use it. Bending the pins, which I have done more than once, was definitely the lesser evil (I do use cheap power strips with these). If all this is illegal to be sold in NZ, they sure don't bother to enforce it. Which raises a question that has often occurred to me in different contexts: If laws are passed but not meaningfully enforced, doesn't that just invite contempt for the law?

Plesse igmore amd axxept applogies in adbance fir anu typos

lchiu7

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#1558972 24-May-2016 21:38

SumnerBoy:

Apparently the new Fibaro Dimmer v2 is much better at handling LEDs, although I haven't tried one myself. I have 4-5 sets of lights being dimmed by the original Fibaro Dimmer and they work pretty well. Get the occasional flickering if the microwave is going, but generally speaking they work fine - had to hunt around for some bulbs that played nice tho.

I now have my Echo and have just setup the HA-Bridge (https://github.com/bwssytems/ha-bridge). Have to say it is pretty awesome - all locally managed and controlled so the Echo itself makes HTTP requests on my local LAN (no need to expose my system to the internet). It has a built-in web server for setting up and testing your devices. And it works without any trigger words - e.g. 'Alexa turn on coffee machine' and away it goes.

Well I got openHab working but am struggling with how to configure the Insteon hub (2242-522)

If you could post a sample of your openhab.cfg file for your hub that would be great. I am struggling with deciding to use either the Insteon Hub or Insteon PLM binding and it's not clear to me how to define the hub and then how to configure devices based on the samples in the Wiki

For example I am using

insteonplm:port_0=/hub2/logon:password@192.168.2.68:25105,poll_time=1000

to define the hub based on the example but I am not sure that is correct. And then it talks about an items file but there is no description of the syntax for each device

Any help really appreciated

Thanks

Staying in Wellington. Check out my AirBnB in the Wellington CBD. https://www.airbnb.co.nz/h/wellycbd PM me and mention GZ to get a 15% discount and no AirBnB charges.

SumnerBoy

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#1559013 24-May-2016 22:45

Sorry mate - I don't have an Insteon hub - all my lighting control is via Zwave. There are heaps of helpful users in the openHAB forums however, I am sure you will get help on there pretty quick.

Also, have you checked out the Insteon Hub WIKI page - https://github.com/openhab/openhab/wiki/Insteon-Hub-Binding?

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