Xzener 729 Posted February 21, 2015 Posted February 21, 2015 (edited) Edited February 25, 2015 by Xzener 6
Florux 32 Posted February 23, 2015 Posted February 23, 2015 Hi, I've been hoping for a similar thing for KNX which is what I use for exactly the same thing; draw the curtains, dim the lights and mute the door bell. Would it perhaps be enough to have a simple fork of one of the notifier plugins that simply starts a command with certain parameters, and then use whichever shell scripts, Zwave tools or other we want just to be called from the plugin? Or even better - specify the command line directly in the plugin, making it super universal? 1
Xzener 729 Posted February 24, 2015 Author Posted February 24, 2015 Sounds like you have a better grasp about the ins and outs than I do. Do you have any experience in this sort of development/programming??
Xzener 729 Posted February 24, 2015 Author Posted February 24, 2015 (edited) @@snazy2000 Is that possible?? Seems as though one of your Push apps could accomplish Z Wave integration rather easily. Edited February 24, 2015 by Xzener
snazy2000 344 Posted February 24, 2015 Posted February 24, 2015 It would make more sense to have a mbt plugin i would guess then each room is on different zwave. ? 1
snazy2000 344 Posted February 24, 2015 Posted February 24, 2015 Looks like this could work. Havent really looked at it. http://www.digiwave.dk/en/programming/the-z-wave-protocol-in-csharp/
Florux 32 Posted February 24, 2015 Posted February 24, 2015 From a Media Browser perspective, all that is needed would be a "Run External Command" plugin, and then that plugin could be called for any event similar to all the events already used. That would be more than plenty. Then the users would be free to call any Z-wave program such as the one snazy2000 refers to, or in my case, call up a small script to send KNX messages, or any other thing only limited by our imagination. The sky's the limit. I haven't written a program in about 20 years, but having had a look at the source code of one of the plugins in github, I would assume that the author of any of the current Notification plugins would be able to write this relatively straight forward. Having said that, I'm a subscriber to the statement that assumption is the mother of all screw-ups, so I'm not really qualified to have any opinions on how "easy" it could be. -Florux
snazy2000 344 Posted February 24, 2015 Posted February 24, 2015 If there was an example of what it would need to be sent to like a program that already controls zwave (i dont have any devices so i havent got a clue lol) i may be able to create a plugin to send the command to it. 1
Florux 32 Posted February 24, 2015 Posted February 24, 2015 If there was an example of what it would need to be sent to like a program that already controls zwave (i dont have any devices so i havent got a clue lol) i may be able to create a plugin to send the command to it. I have only looked briefly at zWave prior to going with KNX, so I'm not intimately familiar with it. However, there are control servers available for zWave just like there are for KNX and others. Instead of doing too much from your MB3 server, I'd recommend keeping it somewhat centralised. What I have done is control the entire house with a Gira HomeServer (KNX) so that sensors, switches, phones and computers all report into the HomeServer and then, based on the complete, bigger picture, makes an informed decision and acts accordingly. I'd recommend some of the same approach in zWave, if possible in your setup. Then all you need to do is to create a simple command that informs zWave that the TV is now showing a movie on the right display, and it dims the lights accordingly. Obviously you do not want it to dim the lights for any and all devices playing a movie, as that would also include the iPads and others. This can fortunately easily be controlled in Media Browsers existing Notification system without modifications. Thus all we really need is a Plugin that calls an external command on an event. Then you create either a script or a zWave control program to communicate with the server (or the system) to dim the lights, and call it on the right events. Super flexible, and does not require an update of the plugin every time you make changes to your zWave plugin. I've actually got exactly that setup with my Plex installation, and it works rather well. Only exception is that Plex does not have a stable and functioning notification system, so I had to hack it on a separate Linux server, which means it is up to 80 seconds off. No big deal though, but in Media Browser it could be made just perfect, on the seconds if needs be. -Florux 1
techywarrior 689 Posted February 24, 2015 Posted February 24, 2015 I think it depends on the controller hub. I have a Vera and it's all simple web commands. I am sure some of the other controllers are similar. I'm not sure that looking at this as a "z-wave plugin" is the right way. It's probably going to have to be specific to the controller hub. Or if someone gets ambitious and writes a plugin that lets you select from a set of hubs. But each one is going to have it's own command, security, port, etc. 1
Florux 32 Posted February 24, 2015 Posted February 24, 2015 I think it depends on the controller hub. I have a Vera and it's all simple web commands. I am sure some of the other controllers are similar. I'm not sure that looking at this as a "z-wave plugin" is the right way. It's probably going to have to be specific to the controller hub. Or if someone gets ambitious and writes a plugin that lets you select from a set of hubs. But each one is going to have it's own command, security, port, etc. My point exactly. Isn't that just more proof it would be more flexible to have a very generic "Run external command" plugin, and then have the plugin simply call an external program that talks to whichever controller or hub one happens to have? If not we might end up with a very cluttered Plugin library with multiple plugins for zwave, KNX and others, which will also be a mess to maintain. What do you think? -Florux 2
techywarrior 689 Posted February 24, 2015 Posted February 24, 2015 Having something that generic would be too hard for people to use. Also, if the controller requires authentication it may be too complex. I suspect that the plugin would need to be specific to the controller in order for it to be usable by the general user.
Xzener 729 Posted February 25, 2015 Author Posted February 25, 2015 @@chef @@tobias-tobin Thought maybe you guys would be interested in this topic. Sure would be nice to have a HA app in MB3. As both of you know, HA is becoming more and more popular.
Xzener 729 Posted February 25, 2015 Author Posted February 25, 2015 I've renamed the topic to "Home Automation (HA) Plugin". I agree with Florux, one app could have configuration options to be compatible with a multitude of HA hubs.
chef 3808 Posted February 25, 2015 Posted February 25, 2015 how are you controlling your zwave hardware? Is it infrared? And are you still using Eventghost?
chef 3808 Posted February 25, 2015 Posted February 25, 2015 how are you controlling your zwave hardware? Is it infrared? And are you still using Eventghost? 1
Xzener 729 Posted February 25, 2015 Author Posted February 25, 2015 (edited) Funny you mention Event Ghost Chef... I was about to bring that up. It is one of the few apps I'm using to automate my theater. The Event Ghost Z Wave plugin is written in Python I believe. Maybe (if someone were interested) we could reverse engineer their app to figure out how they are communicating with my Z Wave hub. From what I remember, it was as easy as adding my hub IP address and port and the device ID to control. Can't be too complicated. And yes, Event Ghost is sensing an event (or button press) to send an on/off command to a Z Wave switch to control my black lights. Edited February 25, 2015 by Xzener
Xzener 729 Posted February 25, 2015 Author Posted February 25, 2015 It would make more sense to have a mbt plugin i would guess then each room is on different zwave. ? But, if it were a MBS plugin, like in my initial post, when client X presses button X, MBS HA plugin sends command X to control device X. I have multiple devices in various rooms throughout the house, each room has a MB3 client. Controlling scenes to dim or brighten lights... Even turning off an outlet in my teenagers room, cutting power to all electronic devices at a certain time.
chef 3808 Posted February 25, 2015 Posted February 25, 2015 Xzener is right, a server plugin could monitor for any client remote control actions (ie. Playback started/stopped/resumed etc.) If zwave is co trolled by ip and port commands, all that has to happen is an event listener server plugin which sends out customizable commands to zwave. Unfortunately, I never got really good at attaching event arguments from the server to an application. It was alite harder then declaring delegate subroutines. If someone could give an example in server events, it is possible. 1
CashMoney 94 Posted February 25, 2015 Posted February 25, 2015 Might be below what you are talking about but I use Milight/Easy bulb/limitlessled WiFi bulbs. Currently use tasker and autovoice, with eventghost. If I understand you all correctly, this hyperthetical plugin could send a signal/command to eventghost to dim the lights when a movie is played. That would be awesome.
techywarrior 689 Posted February 25, 2015 Posted February 25, 2015 What you guys are talking about (for instance making a plugin that sends a command to eventghost) is useful but not really a HA plugin. It would be much better if a plugin was written to directly interface with each HA controller. That way it could get the list of events or devices and you could tell it what you want to do directly. That is much easier from a user perspective then configuring a plugin to talk to another program to talk to the HA controller.
chef 3808 Posted February 25, 2015 Posted February 25, 2015 Might be below what you are talking about but I use Milight/Easy bulb/limitlessled WiFi bulbs. Currently use tasker and autovoice, with eventghost. If I understand you all correctly, this hyperthetical plugin could send a signal/command to eventghost to dim the lights when a movie is played. That would be awesome. I wrote one last year actually, but then the server code changed and I cohld t get events from the server working... We could use Eventghost, sure, but also I think that with zwave hardware, Eventghost could be left out of the equation all together.
techywarrior 689 Posted February 25, 2015 Posted February 25, 2015 I don't think you should say "zwave" that generically since there are a lot of different controllers that have different interfaces. I'd be happy to help someone create a Vera plugin (and if we design/built it right we could then expand it to other controllers). I can test and possibly help code. Probably more along the lines of logic and getting the Vera specific commands then the plugin itself since I don't really know .NET. 1
chef 3808 Posted February 25, 2015 Posted February 25, 2015 (edited) How does Vera work? Is it infrared or does it use ip commandlines? Edited February 25, 2015 by chef
techywarrior 689 Posted February 25, 2015 Posted February 25, 2015 Vera uses IP command lines and I believe it's just simple REST calls.
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