Home Assistant 0.107

[carealtor]

[JayC]

Absolutely no arguments from me.  Been using home assistant for a long time now.

[asbril]

I have had HA for two days now (0.117) and I am greatly impressed, except for my dimmer devices (lights and fans) that do not work well in HA.  Has anyone experienced the same and/or have a solution ?

[Screw Loose Dan]

I've been using Home Assistant for about a week now (and upgraded to 0.117 the other day), and I too am impressed.  I haven't noticed any issue with dimmer devices.  They just seem to work as expected.  What issue are you experiencing?

[asbril]

5 hours ago, Screw Loose Dan said:

I've been using Home Assistant for about a week now (and upgraded to 0.117 the other day), and I too am impressed.  I haven't noticed any issue with dimmer devices.  They just seem to work as expected.  What issue are you experiencing?

I am on 0.117 as well (updated this morning).

• When dimmer light X is OFF and then in HA I switch ON or select a specific percentage (for instance 40&), the status change shows in HA but nothing changes at the light, nor is there a change of status in the ISY AC.

 

• If I switch light X ON in the ISY AC, the change of status shows in HA and then if I switch the light OFF in HA, it does indeed switch OFF the light.

 

• If I change % of light X in the ISY AC, the change of status shows in HA but at a different %; if 50% in ISY then  30% in HA. If then, I change % in HA to 100%, the light (and in ISY AC) changes to 75%).

I wonder whether I should uninstall HA and start again from zero.

[asbril]

On 11/1/2020 at 9:12 AM, asbril said:

I am on 0.117 as well (updated this morning).

• When dimmer light X is OFF and then in HA I switch ON or select a specific percentage (for instance 40&), the status change shows in HA but nothing changes at the light, nor is there a change of status in the ISY AC.

 

• If I switch light X ON in the ISY AC, the change of status shows in HA and then if I switch the light OFF in HA, it does indeed switch OFF the light.

 

• If I change % of light X in the ISY AC, the change of status shows in HA but at a different %; if 50% in ISY then  30% in HA. If then, I change % in HA to 100%, the light (and in ISY AC) changes to 75%).

I wonder whether I should uninstall HA and start again from zero.

I was in contact with HA and they identified the dimmer issue to be because of a "translation"  issue between HA and ISY. HA use 0-255 and ISY 0-100. They are working on the resolution.

Amazing customer support from HA.

[carealtor]

@asbril

Did they identify it as an IOS problem?  Because I don't experience this issue at all.

[asbril]

1 hour ago, carealtor said:

@asbril

Did they identify it as an IOS problem?  Because I don't experience this issue at all.

No it is not related to IOS. It is a conversion conflict, that they had already identified earlier,  between  their 0 - 255 and ISY's 0-100.  In fact they pointed out to me that my dimmers do work in HA, but because ISY uses 1-100,  100=39,  and HA does not recognize anything above 40. If I move the dimmer (in HA) between 0 and 39, it does in fact work.

I must say that, other than this temporary dimmer issue, HA is very nice. Even though I am not a fan of subscriptions, I plan to keep their cloud program ($ 5 /mo) as the HA App is more convenient than Mobilinc. 

[carealtor]

I see.  With this info I can see that maybe my experiment was flawed.  

[Michel Kohanim]

@asbril,

Thank you for the feedback. If you know the person with whom you spoke, please have them contact us since 0-100 and 0-255 are 100% protocol based, i.e. Z-Wave = 0/100 while INSTEON is 0-255 and hence the problem you are having (since all your devices are Z-Wave). My worry is that they may fix your issue and then cause issues for everyone else on 5.x and INSTEON. This is one of the underlying reasons for 5.3 and node servers: so that each protocol/device can define its own range.

With kind regards,
Michel

[asbril]

12 minutes ago, Michel Kohanim said:

@asbril,

Thank you for the feedback. If you know the person with whom you spoke, please have them contact us since 0-100 and 0-255 are 100% protocol based, i.e. Z-Wave = 0/100 while INSTEON is 0-255 and hence the problem you are having (since all your devices are Z-Wave). My worry is that they may fix your issue and then cause issues for everyone else on 5.x and INSTEON. This is one of the underlying reasons for 5.3 and node servers: so that each protocol/device can define its own range.

With kind regards,
Michel

Hi Michel

 

I just sent them an email with copy to you.

[carealtor]

34 minutes ago, Michel Kohanim said:

 (since all your devices are Z-Wave)

Ahh.  That's why I don't see the same problem.  Makes sense now.

[asbril]

Just now, carealtor said:

Ahh.  That's why I don't see the same problem.  Makes sense now.

Indeed.......... That's why we have Michel & Chris  ?

[asbril]

I now have been using Home Assistant for several weeks and it is really amazing. While setting up and changing automation is much easier within the ISY Administrative Console, controlling lights and other devices works great in my browser and Iphone.

[carealtor]

4 hours ago, asbril said:

I now have been using Home Assistant for several weeks and it is really amazing. While setting up and changing automation is much easier within the ISY Administrative Console, controlling lights and other devices works great in my browser and Iphone.

Yup.  This is why I have mentioned several times on this forum that there is no need to complain about the lack of a great user interface for the ISY.  It already exists.

[Screw Loose Dan]

Yes, I agree the UI of Home Assistant makes a very good front end for the ISY.  It's gotten the stamp of approval from a very non-technical significant other. 

I've also found their integrations to seemingly work in a much more consistent manner than the Polyglot integrations.  I realize with any open source project, there's probably many variations and I have a pretty limited view.  But, there's several things I can do with HA that I can't (easily) do with ISY. 

I haven't committed to the Polyglot/Polisy yet.  I have run polyglot on a RPI and currently run it on a Ubuntu server.  But, I haven't found it reliable nor useful enough that I would spend money for the Polisy (yet).  But, several of the Home Assistant Integrations I immediately put to use and they seem relatively stable, so far.

I had been figuring I would eventually need to buy a Polisy, but now I'm wondering if Home Assistant might be the solution I need.

[jwagner010]

Is it likely Home Assistant will be ported to Polisy one day soon? I have invested in a Polisy and have no desire to build an Rpi. 

[mwester]

3 minutes ago, jwagner010 said:

Is it likely Home Assistant will be ported to Polisy one day soon? I have invested in a Polisy and have no desire to build an Rpi. 

No.  The Polisy runs a subset of the FreeBSD operating system, and cannot support any of the currently-available means for making Home Assistant work on it.  There may be a possibility that someone could fork and modify Home Assistant so that it would work with the Python that's available on the Polisy, but given my experience with FreeBSD, that's going to be a lot of work, and for a very small market.

[carealtor]

15 hours ago, jwagner010 said:

Is it likely Home Assistant will be ported to Polisy one day soon? I have invested in a Polisy and have no desire to build an Rpi. 

There are options other than an Rpi.  I run mine on a VirtualBox Debian VM on a spare Win10 PC.  Since I already had the PC, it cost me nothing to set up.

[kck]

I run mine on my Synology NAS that I use to store all our stuff.  Side benefit of that is that the NAS, my router, and my cable modem are on a small UPS so they ride out the occasional power blip without noticing.

[jwagner010]

Interesting I have a synology nas also.  Did you install yourself or from a community package?  If the later is it kept up to date?  

[kck]

I run HA in Docker on the Synology.  That means I update myself, but I prefer that in any case.  I actually have 2 such installations because we have a seasonal home that is Zwave based mostly and runs entirely on HA vs our main house which is largely Insteon/ISY with HA picking up an increasing amount of the automation scripts because of the (I find) easier/stronger capabilities of the HA scripting and automation support.

[Screw Loose Dan]

I run my HA in a VM (VirtualBox) running on a Ubuntu server I have for other things.  I also have a Synology NAS and have considered running the VM on it instead, but decided the Ubuntu server had more horsepower (not that HA takes much at all).  Running in a VM, you get the complete HA OS, which works better for me.  My first play with HA was a Docker on the Synology.

[asbril]

4 hours ago, Screw Loose Dan said:

I run my HA in a VM (VirtualBox) running on a Ubuntu server I have for other things.  I also have a Synology NAS and have considered running the VM on it instead, but decided the Ubuntu server had more horsepower (not that HA takes much at all).  Running in a VM, you get the complete HA OS, which works better for me.  My first play with HA was a Docker on the Synology.

Please allow me to side-track on your posts.......  After reading your posts, I looked up on the Synology NAs. Right now I use Google Drive (with extra capacity) and my concern on Synology NAS would be on what would happen if any incident destroys the device and then losing everything. With Google Drive I have a bigger cyber security risk (though I use 2-step security), but the risk of the device failing or being destroyed (fire etc) is also a concern. what is your take ?

[kck]

When it comes to my data I am a belt and suspenders (and maybe that's not enough) kind of guy.  I run a pair of Synology NAS units at houses that are 1000 miles apart.  They mirror each other.  Beyond that I run a cloud backup service (in my case iDrive but while I'm happy enough with them they have their annoyances also).  So  that gives me 3 copies of everything.  Well - actually come to think of it, each NAS is running a RAID 1 configuration so that gives me 5 copies I guess.    Seriously, though, you should think about what you are protecting against.  Disk failure?  Have at least 2 copies.  House burns down?  Make sure those copies reside in different places.  Ransomware?  Make sure there is a history of previous copies (in my case iDrive provides that as does the mirrored NAS).  Mainly, though understand what failures a given setup will and, most importantly, won't protect you against - then plan/implement accordingly.  For me, every bit of my life is online so losing stuff could be absolutely disastrous as I pitched my file cabinets and the paper in them over a decade ago.  So I figure the cost of my multiple copies is worth it.

 

P.S. to Dan - I agree on having enough horsepower for running HA without impact.  In my case, the NAS units are recent with 4 core processors in them so I have power to burn - never see any load of note on them.  But it something one needs to consider in deciding where to run stuff.  The nice thing about Docker (or a VM) is that if you do need to move where an app runs it is easy to do.  I used to run HA on one of my Pis and moving it (in one case including Zwave) was literally a half hour of work.