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Total Members Voted: 3

Voting closed: January 24, 2019, 05:59:41 PM

[petera]

Just curious to know how many users are now controlling their X10 devices with the above setup on their Raspberry Pi or Raspberry Pi Zero W.

This solution is a non cloud based one and control remains within your own LAN. I'm well aware of all the various combinations of Alexa solutions, the majority of which are cloud based so I'm only asking about members who are using the above combination or are interested in implementing it.

Please feel free to share your experiences here or if indeed you are interested in implementing the above setup. So far, as I'm aware this setup will work with the CM11, CM15 and the CM19 US and European versions.

[Geewiz]

I'm excited at the prospect of moving Alexa-enabled X10 control onto a Raspberry Pi.  I've always felt that running a PC server 24/7 to control lights was overkill.

When I saw that Tuicemen was working on this I was really hopeful that, at last, I'd be able to power down the PC.   I started out with running the image on a Pi Zero W.  I found that the lag time was bad and frequently required sending control commands 2 or 3 times.  The Pi Zero is within 10 feet of the wireless router, and my X10 service panel has a XTB-IIR installed.  The reliability of the PC controls is pretty darn near 100%.

Anyway, I found the Zero based system was, perhaps, under-powered so tried to install the individual componenets onto a Pi 3 B+, hardwired into the network.  HomeGenie worked great with signal processing very close to the PC based system.

I could never get the Alexa voice integration working with HA-Bridge, however.  This is absolutely necessary to maintain an acceptable WAF rating!

I'm back onto the PC based system, but am not giving up on a Raspberry Pi solution.  I'm not at all versed in Linux, so that is hampering my effort.

I hope others who are more knowledgeable in working with these systems won't give up either!

Thank you!

[Tuicemen]

 The HomeGenie EchoBridge addon for HomeGenie I found to be much more reliable and maybe even faster at executing Alexa commands then HA-Bridge.
I still use HA-Bridge but not for Alexa control as it provides control of things I've not yet been able to setup inside HG.

The Echo Bridge is very easy to install but you have to wait a while for it to download and auto unzip in HG before it will install.
I believe this causes many to think HG locked up and the install failed.

[Geewiz]

HA-Bridge also provides integration into my Smartthings environment.  Thanks to your brilliant Alex10/HAB, X10/Smartthings/Alexa all work together seemlessly.

From what I could make out, the EB for HG would not integrate with ST the way HAB works.  That's too many acronyms! 

I'm still VERY intrigued with the potential for the Pi.  I wish I knew enough to be of value in helping to develop it but, as it is, I know just enough to be dangerous!

[petera]

The idea behind choosing HomeGenie was the fact that it is fully open source (anyone can modify or add to the project for their own needs) and it is fully modular in as much that you could do away with all those different hubs and create an emulation for each of them in HomeGenie.

Obviously anyone who has successfully installed EchoBridge on HG will see that it emulates the Philips Hue hub system which is possibly the most popular hub on the market. Potentially any hub available on the market could have an emulator written for it in HG.

Outside of hubs, most commercial security system panels could be integrated into HG. At present the Ademco panel is fully supported in HG which allows the user to expose all of the panels security sensors to HG which opens up a whole new world of home automation.

Next up is the serial port interface which allows the user to connect any item with serial capability. Once again that hardware can be exposed to the HG web Api and used for home automation purposes too.

Of course the Arduino range of boards can be connected directly to the Raspberry Pi and again with in built HG support all your Arduino projects can directly interface with HG.

The GPIO pins open up a world of sensors which again can be directly interfaced with HG.

The Pi X10 hub has only scratched the surface of the capabilities of HG on the Raspberry Pi but of course all your X10 devices can be integrated into a much bigger home automation project.

The list is endless here but I was just trying to give you a flavour of what is possible so it's worth your while taking your time getting to know HG.

[Tuicemen]

HA-Bridge also provides integration into my Smartthings environment.  Thanks to your brilliant Alex10/HAB, X10/Smartthings/Alexa all work together seemlessly.

From what I could make out, the EB for HG would not integrate with ST the way HAB works.  That's too many acronyms! 

I'm still VERY intrigued with the potential for the Pi.  I wish I knew enough to be of value in helping to develop it but, as it is, I know just enough to be dangerous!

HA-Bridge doesn't integrate directly with SmartThings though I did suggest the author look at it to be able to talk to Google devices. I believe it is possible to integrate SmartThings into HG for X10 control similar to how I did it for Alex10.
In fact control should be even faster as a middle man would be eliminated as neither Echo Bridge or HA-Bridge would be required. Of coarse this wouldn't be as easy to setup as HG Echo Bridge and would require your HG to be accessible from the internet.