Amazon Echo

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#1559029 24-May-2016 23:18

SumnerBoy:

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?

No worries. I managed to get my Insteon light to go on and off via OpenHAB. It was a struggle!

Next step - Alexa but that can wait for another night.

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chimera

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#1559154 25-May-2016 08:57

I have an issue at the moment where Alexa does not seem to be able to turn on my TV via the Harmony hub.

I say "Alexa, turn on the TV" - she says "Ok" but the TV won't turn on. It used to work, but has recently stopped working.

Oddly, if the TV is on and I say "Alexa, turn off the TV" it does work.

So the comm's to OpenHAB must be working, just something I'm missing can't quite work it out - any ideas?

chimera

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#1559213 25-May-2016 10:35

Sorry my bad,... ignore my post, I forgot that I had Alexa controlling the Harmony Hub via Yonomi. It is fairly good / fast enough but it doesn't seem to be able to differentiate between "on" and "off", I had created a routine on Yonomi to trigger the TV to turn off but you have to create a separate routine to trigger the TV to turn on - but then you can't name it the same. So would have to have something like "Alexa, turn the TV off" and "Alexa, turn the Television on" or similar. Fairly average, unless I'm doing something wrong...

lchiu7

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#1559220 25-May-2016 10:47

Out of interest anybody trying to use Alexa with Insteon?

The older hub sold in NZ has no direct Alexa support but openHAB and the plugin might solve that problem. Would like to share experiences.

Out of interest I purchased the US hub also since Insteon support said while it might not work with the RF frequenies it should work with powerline frequencies since they are the same across all models.

Alas when it arrived it said 125V only. Now Dllink sell WiFi enabled wall modules in the US that are maked 110V only but in fact work at 240V. They don't want to have dual manufacturing lines for each voltage but for US certificaion they can only say 110V. I didn't want to test this out on the Insteon so used a transformer. Unfortunately that meant the deviice didn't work at all since it can't communicate to the devices over RF (wrong frequencies) and the transformer filters out the power line signal.

So the hub is going to a friend in the US as gift :-(

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richms

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#1559251 25-May-2016 11:22

When I was running some 110v X10 gear, it was as simple as a capacitor between the primary and secondary phase of the transformer, and another between the 2 neutral pins.

I cant recall the value I used, it was a 630v one - if you google for what cap is used to get x10 between phases it should be the same value since the frequancies are pretty close.

Richard rich.ms

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#1559365 25-May-2016 13:42

That looks too hard and dangerous I think I will pursue the Alexa bridge to Insteon first. At least I can't get electrocuted!

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#1559402 25-May-2016 15:15

chimera:

Sorry my bad,... ignore my post, I forgot that I had Alexa controlling the Harmony Hub via Yonomi. It is fairly good / fast enough but it doesn't seem to be able to differentiate between "on" and "off", I had created a routine on Yonomi to trigger the TV to turn off but you have to create a separate routine to trigger the TV to turn on - but then you can't name it the same. So would have to have something like "Alexa, turn the TV off" and "Alexa, turn the Television on" or similar. Fairly average, unless I'm doing something wrong...

This looks interesting, can you do anything else with Alexa/harmony hub like change channel/volume or start different activities or is it just off and on?

lchiu7

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#1559422 25-May-2016 15:31

SumnerBoy:
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?

Quick question. Which addon are you using to enable Alexa support in OpenHAB?

https://github.com/armzilla/amazon-echo-ha-bridge ?

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SumnerBoy

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#1559424 25-May-2016 15:55

Use this fork of the original HA-Bridge (https://github.com/bwssytems/ha-bridge) - more features and more actively maintained. I am using this and it is great - it has its own web server for setting up the devices and then you just tell Alexa to 'start discovery' and she finds them and they are instantly available.

lchiu7

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#1559627 25-May-2016 20:28

SumnerBoy:

Use this fork of the original HA-Bridge (https://github.com/bwssytems/ha-bridge) - more features and more actively maintained. I am using this and it is great - it has its own web server for setting up the devices and then you just tell Alexa to 'start discovery' and she finds them and they are instantly available.

I must be missing something. I have the bridge installed and it can control my switch

But I can't get the Echo to find the devices using discovery. Since the emulation is apparently for Hue devices, do I need to add a fake Hue device?

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#1559641 25-May-2016 20:35

I had trouble with that as well initially - are you seeing any UPNP requests coming in when the Echo is in discovery mode? I was running HA-Bridge on a OpenVZ container and had to setup a proper ethernet interface in order for the UPNP broadcast to get thru.

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#1559725 25-May-2016 22:09

Well my bridge is on a physical PC and physical ethernet adapter and I think I see UPnP traffic but still no dice. And now with all this mucking around I can't even add back a valid device :-(

[EDIT]

Well solved my problem but not sure how. Installed openHAB on a different machine as well as the Alexa Bridge and Alexa found the devices! I must have some services or something on the first machine I tried that are interfering with UPnP or something.

Any it's cool to be able to say Alexa "turn on the bedroom light" etc. and since it's not going via the cloud, it's pretty quick. Now to buy a few more Insteon controllers and switches and automate the home!

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.

chimera

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#1561535 29-May-2016 09:19

Do you need to control insteon from openhab or Alexa? If Alexa just add the insteon skill to it.

lchiu7

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#1561546 29-May-2016 10:00

chimera: Do you need to control insteon from openhab or Alexa? If Alexa just add the insteon skill to it.

The problem is the Insteon skill set is not supported in the Insteon hub sold in NZ. That is the 2242-522

Alexa recognises the hub but then says you need to upgrade to the 2245-222 which is supported because it has later firmware.

I spent time talking to Insteon support and they told me at this time, the only international version is the 2242-522 which is not supported and they could not tell me the newer version might be available.

However by using OpenHAB and the HA-Bridge I can control the Insteon devices with Alexa (Alexa turn on the bedroom lamp) since the bridge emulate Hue devices.

This is running in my Windows 10 box but I did manage to get OpenHAB running on my Pi (which usually is running Kodi on OPENELEC) ok. I am not a *nix person at all and it was a struggle to get Java installed.

Next step is to get the Bridge running on the Pi but for various reasons I need node.js running on it since one of my devices need a Javascript program to activate it and I don't know how to install that.

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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#1561552 29-May-2016 10:24

I am so impressed by ha-bridge. A single jar which is completely self contained. Just run it up and connect to port 8080 and start seeing up devices. Using with openhab means you can control just about anything and it is lightning quick.

This has turned my Echo from a gimmick to something i use everyday. Even the wife lives it, she is able to turn on the tv, avr and sky whilst she has her hands full work our 4 month old.

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