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Vera Home Automation Plugin (Emby Vera)


chef

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BrettM

Thanks Vidman for your reply! we actually do have a bit of stuff in Zwave products in Australia,especially over the last 6 months, my question is though can we use any brand of Zwave or does it have to be strictly Vera Home Automation? 

 

I own a Jukebox manufacturing company in Australia and we are currently designing a full home entertainment system and the inclusion of Home Automation is very exciting, I have been using your product for the last 18 months to test the software we would like to include in our project and so far Emby is by far the best on offer, I would like to talk to someone with authority to discuss our interests moving forward.

 

If anyone is interested in discussing our interest further please reply or private message me and I will get in contact.

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Vidman

Currently it must be a Vera controller to control zwave or IP devices (or whatever else you set up your Vera up to control)

BTW when I wrote us I meant the USA , I'm in australia and have a Vera3 controller and I know first hand that we have much less options than USA

Edited by Vidman
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chef

Hi Brett,

Nice to hear from you again.

Vidman is correct that you must have a Vera controller to use this plugin, but the Vera controller will control any Zwave product.

I have had requests to add functionality for Insteon products. Unfortunately I bought a Vera lite specifically for writing this plugin, and probably will not buy any other HA controllers now.

I would, however, be glad to make the solution open source for any coder who maybe interested in adding functionality for dofferent HA controllers.

However, if Vera is the way you would like to go for your bussiness, I would be happy to help you in anyway I can, adding extra functionality to the exsisting plugin.

 

EDIT: I spoke to soon: Vera does control Insteon:

 

 


Z-Wave and Insteon are two different wireless systems that each have their own particularities in terms of how they communicate between devices and controllers like your VeraLite.  You may add either type of device to your VeraLite system in the Add Devices process.  In most cases, for most users, that's all you'll ever have to do with the specifics of either technology.

 

Our plugin should work for both. that is cool.

Edited by chef
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BrettM

Hi Chef,

 

Thank you great to talk to you also.

 

I have been following the development of this software for some 18 months now and have really enjoyed the way it has headed, I'm very excited at the thought of this now going down the track of Home Automation, I have done some research since I placed this post up and have I can purchase the Vera lite controller so I will be purchasing this in the coming week. I am also in the middle of designing our own website to promote the product we are looking to launch end of May early June this year, and to hear that it should also control Insteon is great news.

I have access to the Insteon Product here in Australia as we are distributors for the company that has imported Insteon into Australia so I will test both.

 

Thanks Vidman for your input I do understand we have far less products than the USA, but we are getting better.

 

I will keep in contact chef and let you know how we progress.

 

Regards

 

Brett

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BrettM

Hi Guys,

 

I just a quick follow up question, I'm about to purchase the Vera Lite AU when I power it on will it be automatically detected by the Vera Plugin? or is there some configuration required?

 

I have emailed a company here in Australia to get more information before making any rash purchases and see what products they carry to match up with Vera Lite. 

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chef

Vera lite will automatically set up itself on your net work when you plug it in. It is quite intuitive that way...

 

Once it has activated, you will have to attach zwave (and apparently Insteon) devices to your Vera lite (using the methods described on their web site, it is super easy). Then you can create scenes with your devices.

 

After you have some scenes created, you can download the plugin from the emby catalog, and configure emby devices to react to Vera lite.

 

Yea the plugin will attempt to locate your Vera lite on your network. You can then begin Attaching scenes you have created to playback events.

 

I should mention (and techywarrior has mentioned it earlier in this thread) that you may want to stay away from Ui6 and use either Ui5, or Ui7 with your Vera lite. This will all make sense to you, once you have everything set up.

Edited by chef
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BrettM

Hi Guys,

 

just a quick message I have a rep from an Australia company coming out with some product samples including the vera lite, . But I have come across a problem, when I install in the  vera automation plugin on the server and reboot the server a warning comes up saying an "unhandled exception has occurred" and If I click ok the chocolate plugin will not start and the server also shuts down,. But if I don't click OK everything works fine.

 

Is there an update version of the plugin I can download or install ?

 

Its late here now I have uninstalled the vera plugin and everything is working ok again, it's only when I install the vera plugin I get the message.. I will try again in the morning and take a screen shot as well

 

regards

 

Brett..

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chef

Oh.. That is not good.

When you get up tomorrow, we'll trouble shoot what is happening.

 

I have two theories,

 

1. this might be caused by Vera being absent on your network

2. it could be something to do with our configuration XML info being created Asynchronously, and the plugin is trying to read soemthing that hasn't been created yet. 

 

we'll have to make sure you have the most recent version installed (which was 1.0.1114) from the catalog.

 

If the error is produced by the second reason, then all that would need to happen is a restart of the server, and it would go away. HOwever it is hardly a professional fix.

 

I will continue to try and recreate this error today.

Edited by chef
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chef

No it is because there is no Vera account to parse from their servers.

 

It has to be :). Unless you have set one up...

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BrettM

Good morning chef, I don't have the vera unit yet I have made contact with a home Automation company Friday just gone, they are sending out a Rep tomorrow (Aussie time) who is brining some products for me to test. 

 

I think you may be right as I don't have the unit on the network may be this is the reason for the exception?

 

I will contact them later this morning and organise to buy one to connect to our network can we connect it wirelessly or dose it need to be via Ethernet cable?

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chef

 

 

can we connect it wirelessly or dose it need to be via Ethernet cable?

 

I am not sure about that, I know that if you connect it with a Ethernet cable to your modem, it will act only as a HA switch, but it also has the ability to be a modem itself.

 

That would be interesting to find out.

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Xzener

Chef,

 

Just had a scheduled task fail... Log cleanup failed due to your log file being used for another process. Can you have a look at that sheduled task?

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chef

Chef,

 

Just had a scheduled task fail... Log cleanup failed due to your log file being used for another process. Can you have a look at that sheduled task?

Yep! I had the same thing happen late last night.

 

Seems as though emby will clear the log folder, but it can't remove our log file because it is being accessed by the plugin.

Edited by chef
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chef

I put a release out yesterday which should stop those errors. But we may need to wait until the next log clean up to see if it actually works.

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chef

Yikes, new issues. If the user downloads our plugin and there is no account with Vera, and no Vera Device on their network, then the Server will not start.

 

I'm not sure why someone would want to install our plugin without a vera Device on the network, but apprently it has happened.  I'll try and fix what I can, I guess.

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BrettM

Hi Chef,

 

I'm one of the guilty ones who installed plugin in readiness for the Vera Lite, I had already ordered the unit and thought I would install the plugin so it was already installed and ready,not expecting it to crash the server.

 

but since adding the Vera lite to the network I have no issues with the server, I'm now just waiting for new switches to arrive to test it all.

 

Also I have a question as stupid as it may sound and I apologise if it is a dumb question, I use the chocolate theme  will the home automation work if I play a movie from the chocolate theme or will it only work from the web client?

Edited by BrettM
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Xzener

I wonder if this is related to a recent issue where my Emby Server wont restart when commanded within the dashboard? Its happened a couple times now.

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chef

I wonder if this is related to a recent issue where my Emby Server wont restart when commanded within the dashboard? Its happened a couple times now.

Could you elaborate? Do you mean a restart of the server, when there is an update available?

 

This could be traced back to our logging problem.

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Xzener

Yes. It was a new build of Emby Server. I clicked restart, and it did not. I was at work so, did not have access to see why. I simply just started the server when I got home. Did not pursue for the reason.

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chef

We've got a problem.

 

We have to fix the server crash that vera causes before we can get back into the catalog.

 

But, that isn't easy.

 

There is not easy way to find out if there is a Vera unit on the network without requesting information from Vera Servers, which is causing the crash.

 

 

 

This how how I think it is fixed

            If jSon Is Nothing Then
                Exit Sub
            End If

But, I can't test it because I have a vera, and everyone here has a vera.

 

But I don;t want to put it back into the catalog just to have it removed again.

 

 

We need to find someone to test this that doesn't have a vera.

Edited by chef
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Try to avoid doing anything at startup to keep your plugin silent and stateless. (if possible). Then the rule of thumb is, try to do what you need to do, catch the failure, and react in whatever way is appropriate for your plugin.

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chef

I fished around the chat for a user to help, but it would seem that people are busy, or running Linux.. lol. 

 

I think it is fixed, but we really need a user to test it.

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chef

Yeah so the first information request now looks like this:

 ' Here we create our own Async Function to return information from the Vera Device
            Dim jSon As String
            Logging.Info("attempting to collect Vera information...")
            Try
                jSon = Await Task.Factory.StartNew(Function() HttpClientInteraction.HttpClientInteraction.GetStream("https://vera-us-oem-authd.mios.com/locator/locator/locator"))
            Catch ex As Exception
                Logging.Info(ex.ToString)
                Exit Sub
            End Try


            If jSon Is Nothing Then
                ' Exit the plugin routines, and stop loading.
                Exit Sub
            End If

That should stop the plugin from loading further, if the information returned from MicasaVerde is empty.

 

What is kinda funny, is that some users grab all the plugins and install them without really reading what they are. lol.

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