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Tis the season... Home Automation Season. New ideas?
HA Dave:
The holiday rush is pretty much over. There are parking spaces at the mall and store shelves have been restocked. In many areas the weather is keeping people close to home. The only time I've spent outside would be to walk the dog.... and I don't have a dog.
This is the unofficial Home Automation season!
I recently heard from a fellow forum member who is using geofencing with his HA setup. Maybe because I am retired and I don't get out much (except to walk the pretend dog) I haven't figured out how to exploit this great new technology for my setup. Any ideas on how to exploit this newer HA tool.... would be greatly welcome.
Any OTHER new ideas or technology exploits would be also be welcome. New users macros for the CM15A would be nice. I myself... expect to be using the CM15A in some manner for a long time coming.
But third party use is VERY welcome as well. More and more... we are learning how best to integrate our X10 setup with the other latest-greatest devices. Often at very little cost. lazydiyer recently taught us how it integrate a Google Home device into X10. Even if you don't use Google... it's well worth the short read.
Like many of us... I've added Amazon Echo's to my setup. And Tuicemen has added MANY new third party sub-forums to make finding info fast and easy. This is a great time.... both of year and in HA history... to review and share HA ideas.
Today... I did a "little wire management"... with a (wifi bulb) lamp, a wireless phone charger, cell phone charger, Echo, A (module controlled) Theater Chair (with elec footrest), and a legacy (BVC) powered speaker.... I had a clutter of wires. Too scarey with little grandkids running around. This 12 plug (and 3 USB's) unit seems to help declutter my setup.
petera:
The big one for me is x10 on the Raspberry Pi. Both Mochad and Heyu on the Raspberry Pi has really given my Raspberry Pi's plenty of work to do. Homeseer and Domoticz are the main software I'm using at the moment. Homeseer is not cheap to buy but is very versatile. On the other hand Domoticz is open source and I had the the CM11 up and running on the Raspberry Pi in under two hours from scratch.
The Amazon Echo bridge from BWS Systems takes care of x10 to Amazon Echo communications so all in all a busy winter building x10 related goodies.
I've tried Tuiceman's Alex10 and it's very impressive but I'm not really a big Windows user. Linux is my chosen tech poison :)%
dave w:
Dave HA
Where did you find that outlet strip?
I have a mess behind my couch with two outlet strips and a half dozen cube taps. Ugly.
Tuicemen:
Alex10 started as merely a simple way for x10 users to get Alexa control without having to understand how to do complicated scripts that the HA-Brigde was requesting at the time.
Since developing Alex10 BWS Systems has been adding support for other software like Domoticz, this has caused HA-Bridge to become bloated software (my opinion).
You do not need Domoticz to use HA-Bridge on Linux nor do you need Alex10 on Windows.
I see Alexa, Google Home and to a lesser extent Cortana to be the 2018 must haves for HA.
I still use my PC voice (PcCompanion) and had been working to enhance it however Amazons Alexa and Google Home are making it look more and more like it is obsolete.
I've been playing with Samsungs SmartThings cloud developers console and this allows for many different protocols to use Alexa or Google Home.
The issue with this is there is no user friendly interface for those intimidated by scripts or simple programing (yet).
I looked at creating an Alexa skill for X10 but that requires learning a new language which isn't going to happen. :(
Creating Google Home skills don't look much easier B:(
Hopefully Authinx will come out with an Alexa Skill or at least release the protocol for the WM100 so some one else can create a skill for Alexa and/or Google ::) :'
HA Dave:
--- Quote from: dave w on January 09, 2018, 03:49:34 PM ---Dave HA
Where did you find that outlet strip?
--- End quote ---
Amazon. I ordered a couple other things at the same time.... so now even my Amazon shopping cart is empty. I am not saying Amazon gets a lot of my business. But I am afraid at this point if I don't at least put something in my cart... Amazon might ask local authorizes to check-up on me.
--- Quote from: Tuicemen on January 09, 2018, 04:16:03 PM ---...................... Hopefully Authinx will come out with an Alexa Skill or at least release the protocol for the WM100 so some one else can create a skill for Alexa and/or Google ::) :'
--- End quote ---
They should budget that into the product development. The value of being Amazon and Google compliant is almost unmeasurable.
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