Question about the HomeGenie Topics

[lviper]

I'm not sure if this is the correct place for this post as I've seen several discussions on HomeGenie in a few different locations. I didn't want to hijack anyone's thread so I figured I would ask my question here. Feel free to relocate if needed.

Anyway, I've been following recent topics about running HomeGenine on a raspberry pi. I also noticed that there seems to be some changes happening in the HomeGenie world.

In the recent posts I understand I would download HG from homegenie.it. But I also see that the forums are now running at homegenie.club and they seem to have a new release. I know HG is open source and anyone can fork it, but being new to HG and not knowing the contributors from Adam, I was wondering where the development of HG was going. Should I install from homegenie.it or homegenie.club?

I assume homegenie from Gene is the original and the version from homegenie.club is a fork. Just wondering if Gene is giving up or what.

[HA Dave]

I've been trying to accomplish this very thing myself. I think.. all the "versions" are located on the GitHub servers. I am by no means knowledgeable on this subject. I've been at this a couple weeks (off and on) and haven't got it to load yet. I even tried again this morning.

I bought a new faster, smaller (16gb) memory card... thinking the one with my Raspberry Pi 3 [kit] might be too big and slow. I downloaded NOOBS myself, moved it to the card..... Apparently that wasn't it at all. I did all the updates first, and when that didn't work I downloaded the required "mono runtime" (version 3.2 or later). Raspbian works great.... but I can't get homegenie to run. It's frustrating... but I haven't given up.

As a work around.... I re-created a couple simple macros on the CM15A that Homeseer uses. And my new WM100 is running timers. 

Meanwhile...... (lots going on here... and every bit is foolishness)... I can't seem to get "events" written in Homeseer. My Homeseer is a Pi device.. with the HS3 Homeseer proprietary software. An awesome unit. I am my home automation setup in a transitional period right now. I took my Home Automation computer/laptop off line and shut it down. I'd like to reduce the HA footprint to just HUBS (Pi units included as a hub).

The bad thing is... windows is where the best computer voices are... and my system was heavily dependent on nice voice announcements. But I have a plan to record the needed announcements Via Alexa's "simon says" feature... and place the Mp3 or WAV files in HS events... AND also Homegenie. If I can ever get EITHER to work.

Fortunitly X10 hasn't let me down. The new WM100 works easy and flawlessly and even my old CM15A with the old AHP software still came through for me during my switch-over.

[lviper]

Have you seen the following in the homegenie.club site?

https://homegenie.club/t/version-1-1-15-released/199/21

[petera]

Have you seen the following in the homegenie.club site?

https://homegenie.club/t/version-1-1-15-released/199/21

The v1.1.15 and the v .526 are basically the same. Not a whole lot of development on HomeGenie recently. The original author completed his development of HomeGenie and a number of original forum users continue to make minor changes. You can use either.

Do you need to know anything in particular.

[lviper]

Do you need to know anything in particular.

I was just wondering if the versions were going in different directions or is .526 was ending.

[HA Dave]

Have you seen the following in the homegenie.club site?
https://homegenie.club/t/version-1-1-15-released/199/21

Holy crap!

[petera]

Do you need to know anything in particular.

I was just wondering if the versions were going in different directions or is .526 was ending.

As I said you can run either. I've both loaded. Probably best to run v1.1.15 as you can request changes to be made should you need any. No harm trying it anyway.

[bkenobi]

I'm running r525 on my stable RPi1 but will be installing the newest version on the club site's fork when I install things (hopefully today).  Gene has done a fantastic job of getting things up to the point it's at, but he couldn't continue to devote time to the project.  He says he's been unemployed for a long time and this didn't pan out as an income source.  I'm sure the knowledge he gained through the project will help him land his dream job though!

[HA Dave]

...... Gene has done a fantastic job of getting things up to the point it's at..........  He says he's been unemployed for a long time and this didn't pan out as an income source.  I'm sure the knowledge he gained through the project will help him land his dream job though!

He should have tried selling memory cards with raspbian, iftttt, and Homegenie preloaded.

Thousands of X10 users could have bought a Pi, plugged in a CM19 or their CM15A.... and been Alexa ready in minutes.

[bkenobi]

He actually had a RPi image ready to install for download early on.  It was too much work apparently to build the image, so he provided an installation guide for how to install on a working RPi system.  That would have been a good idea but I suspect it's too late for him to sell cards at this point.

HG is fully operational and doesn't really need anything updated to work.  The only thing left on the list of to-do tasks was adding new automation standards.  However, HG was designed so that end users could incorporate these so the dev really didn't need to do that either.  And, since everything is open source, he's set things up to be taken over by enthusiasts anyway!

[petera]

He actually had a RPi image ready to install for download early on.  It was too much work apparently to build the image, so he provided an installation guide for how to install on a working RPi system.  That would have been a good idea but I suspect it's too late for him to sell cards at this point.

HG is fully operational and doesn't really need anything updated to work.  The only thing left on the list of to-do tasks was adding new automation standards.  However, HG was designed so that end users could incorporate these so the dev really didn't need to do that either.  And, since everything is open source, he's set things up to be taken over by enthusiasts anyway!

The sudden halt to development of Homegenie was bizarre to say the least. Yes it appears on the face of it to be a finished product but as we all know in the software world, outside influences can put paid to that notion. For the author to halt further development to concentrate on the App seems somewhat strange bearing in mind he doesn't even have an iOS version of that App available.

I doubt if it would take much imagination to come up with a downloadable image file of Homegenie for the Raspberry Pi with the emphasis on x10 for users on this forum.

I reckon if an image was created with preconfigured x10 widgets and basic instructions on how to modify these widgets and how to use Homegenie and create further x10 widgets and scripting a fair few of this forum's contributors would take advantage of this.

[bkenobi]

Like I said, that's exactly what was available in the first few versions.  I'd say it wouldn't take much more than having a basic installation configured as desired and then use the RPi backup utility to create a compressed image.  This file could be shared on the HG club forum as well to expose a new X10 audience.

[bkenobi]

For anyone interested in trying HG that owns an RPi, I posted a script that will automate the setup of a HG SD card image.  The instructions basically are to download Stretch, write it to an SD card, run the script, use HG.   

[HA Dave]

For anyone interested in trying HG that owns an RPi, I posted a script that will automate the setup of a HG SD card image.

Where is this post? Could you share a link. I looked at the homegenie club and at gethub... with no luck

The instructions basically are to download Stretch, write it to an SD card, run the script, use HG.  

Great I've had Stretch as a selectable operation/program with my full NOOBS download. Are you stating I could run using ONLY Stretch (with no Raspbian needed). Unpackaged (unzipped in a former life) to the SD card. Then do a terminal:


https://github.com/genielabs/HomeGenie/releases/download/v1.1-beta.526/homegenie-beta_1.1.r526_all.deb
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gdebi-core
sudo gdebi homegenie-beta_1.1.r526_all.deb

And download/unpack to where exactly.... downloads? A file somewhere?

[bkenobi]

https://homegenie.club/t/version-1-1-15-released/199/88

The script has a header with the first steps.  As I said, basically download Stretch Lite (full might work, but it's not necessary), write card, run acript.  The script installs prerequisites as well as HG.  It isn't final so it may change slightly to improve things, but it worked fine for me 2x.  If you want Gene's version of HG, adjust comments for r526 instead of 1.1.15.