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[petera]

After a power outage a router may need a manual reset. A $5 RTC provides a bit of insurance.

Or if your unlucky and your ISP is slow at repairing internet connections you could be days with incorrect time.
4 day 13 hours and counting (no internet) at my off grid place.
Originaly I had also thought this RTC was not needed.

I'm assuming your power outage would be covered by some form of UPS

Hard to believe in this day and age you'd be without Internet for 4 plus days. I assume wherever off grid is you have some form of choice of providers.

When you say "off grid" what exactly do you mean.

[dhouston]

I'm assuming your power outage would be covered by some form of UPS

My UPS provides enough time to do a controlled shutdown of my PCs, Mac, Router, modem, etc. but my Pi is not supported by the UPS.

[Tuicemen]

I'm assuming your power outage would be covered by some form of UPS

Hard to believe in this day and age you'd be without Internet for 4 plus days. I assume wherever off grid is you have some form of choice of providers.

When you say "off grid" what exactly do you mean.

Power is via solar and a power outage is very rare usually only for a second when the back up gen kicks in.
No power lines coming to the place.
Yes there are other internet options but the ISP we're with has been solid till now.

[dhouston]

As mentioned in previous posts, maybe the makers of the WM100 should try and replicate that usability and twin their unit with something like the Pi to give their users far greater versatility with X10 technology.

I have brought up the idea with Authinx who then passed the idea on to the factory.
Authinx is interested in doing something like this, creating a wm100 pro as to speak.

I'd worry that a WM100 Pro might be as slow in developing as was the WM100. A better move might be to release an API and add a pass-through function wherein the WM100 would transceive commands from trusted devices to PLC.[/quote]

[Tuicemen]

I'd worry that a WM100 Pro might be as slow in developing as was the WM100. A better move might be to release an API and add a pass-through function wherein the WM100 would transceive commands from trusted devices to PLC.

I suspect a WM100 pro might be something like this:

This isn't for everybody but were I to play I'd use a Pi Zero W + RTC + RF RX & TX + XTB-232 + FreeBasic
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01M105UFC/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/SMAKN%C2%AE-315Mhz-Transmitter-Receiver-Arduino/dp/B00UWBJ7GK/ref=pd_sbs_21_1?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B00UWBJ7GK&pd_rd_r=YD97Q73ME77FWAAMRM7N&pd_rd_w=NyWON&pd_rd_wg=m5N98&psc=1&refRID=YD97Q73ME77FWAAMRM7N
http://www.cdadapter.com/srtune.htm
https://www.freebasic.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=21433

In the mean time I have my own WM100 Pro with a Pi + cm15 mesh.
I've just about got my initial wish list accomplished using HG and HA-Bridge.
I started a Home Genie for dummies thread on my forum and will add some info to it once I have the important things of my initial wish completed.

[dhouston]

I suspect a WM100 pro might be something like this:

This isn't for everybody but were I to play I'd use a Pi Zero W + RTC + RF RX & TX + XTB-232 + FreeBasic
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01M105UFC/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/SMAKN%C2%AE-315Mhz-Transmitter-Receiver-Arduino/dp/B00UWBJ7GK/ref=pd_sbs_21_1?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B00UWBJ7GK&pd_rd_r=YD97Q73ME77FWAAMRM7N&pd_rd_w=NyWON&pd_rd_wg=m5N98&psc=1&refRID=YD97Q73ME77FWAAMRM7N
http://www.cdadapter.com/srtune.htm
https://www.freebasic.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=21433

That reminds me of something from a few years ago.
https://www.laser.com/dhouston/ultimate-X10.html

[bkenobi]

Obviously if NTP isnt available for whatever reason, a RTC would be a cheap option.  I have a couple sitting in my project box because they are so cheap.

[Tuicemen]

I have both the Wundeground and Open weather programs loaded in HG. Open weather has more trigger options but I'm at a loss as how to set this up.
I assume many use one of these to trigger things from temperature but I'd like to trigger from wind speed.
Can anyone supply a sample of triggering from any condition?
This would help point me in the right direction.

[bkenobi]

I was planning on using WU for its overall information and my local weather station(s) for triggering.  Since I failed to get my stations talking with anything (Arduino issues, not HG or X10) I never got to triggering or even collecting data.

[Tuicemen]

I would have thought if anyone had weather triggered events you woud have something.
I had 2 different weather stations setup and reporting to  WU.
I also had events triggering in my Windows created programs.
Unfortunately the weather APIs limit your pulls to be real affective.
Having two different APIs  I'll try setting them to pull at different times this way I can get more frequent updates to trigger things.
I managed to create a simple Temperature condition trigger which seems to work with WU at least.
I posted a how to here: https://homegenie.club/t/triggering-from-weather-conditions/329

[bkenobi]

I had 2 goals with the weather station information that would trigger things in the home.  1) Predict temperatures so I could augment my home temperature to maximize heat pump efficiency. 2) Control window shades depending on indoor temp and outdoor conditions.  I also wanted to have an alert sent if the dog kennel got too hot/cold.

The problem was, the thermostat I wanted to use was off the market and the replacement qould not work with my HP.  I wasn't going to replace the new HP/furnace because of HA.  I also decided thw WAF was not there for the drapes and she didn't like my proposed window treatment style anyway.  Also, the weather station communication project failed to be reliable (worked for a few days before needing a reset...

[Tuicemen]

Sadly PWS don't seem to last long unless they're a professional model.
These are the most accurate for a HA setup and can be very customized.

Weather pulls are usually limited to x number of pulls per hour. This limits them to being very accurate for wind speeds which I'm looking at for my off grid place.
They also don't allow for temperature reading from specific things (dog house)
However if you had an irrigation system you could use it to see if the sprinklers needed to be turned on for a given day.
Watching the air pressure could also help detection of a possible sever weather event approaching allowing some automation for that.
 
Since I've discovered I can use both weather programs set to different pull  times as macro triggers I can get a weather macro to be more actuate then I originally had though.
Also Open Weather alows you to create a number of free API keys so it may be possible to fool Open Weather to supply more frequent information updates.

[Knightrider]

.... Control window shades depending on indoor temp and outdoor conditions. 

X10 used to have a protocol for window shades. Don't think it ever got off the ground in North America.

Most of the window coverings I install are zwave. They're a real pain to program,  but work very well once set up.

[bkenobi]

Long version:
The rain gauge was another thing I wanted to use to trigger sprinklers.  I have a Rain Bird sprinkler setup and had considered a project using a RPi as the controller.  Actually, someone wrote something for HG that was pretty slick and might work well for a sprinkler controller.  It was on the old forum so it may have been lost.

I actually have several metering devices that communicate over 433MHz but I never got the radio reliable enough.  I had the goal of reading my power usage and temperature from a Blueline meter reader.  I was going to track the power usage to detect trends and possibly trigger things off of it at some point.  I wanted to use the Acurite 5-in-1 weather station (temperature, humidity, rain, wind speed, wind direction) to modify sprinkler schedule as well as thermostat trigger times.  That meant I needed to change my Honeywell thermostat to the WiFi version, but they changed the model to the 8000 series which is not compatible with my heat pump for some reason (was missing one pin that was mandatory as I recall).  I also wanted to use the Acurite wireless thermometer to trigger an email in HA that would alert me when the temp inside the kennel was above or below some limits (say 100°F and 20°F).  I was thinking I could even add a relay (maybe Sonoff) to turn on a light or other heat source if it was really cold and maybe a fan or sprinkler/mister if it was too hot (both of these are really overkill in Seattle though).

Anyway, all of that hinged on the ability to utilize 433MHz wireless.  I had all the protocols decoded, but the stupid Arduino couldn't stay working reliably.  I was going to switch over to an ESP solution, but they are 3.3v and the libraries for the RFM69 were complicated enough I never figured them out.



TL;DR:  I spent months getting 95% of the way to a wireless 433MHz solution and it all failed when deployed so now I don't use weather to trigger anything.   

[Tuicemen]

X10 used to have a protocol for window shades. Don't think it ever got off the ground in North America.

Most of the window coverings I install are zwave. They're a real pain to program,  but work very well once set up.

HomeGenie has Zwave code built in which I've yet to play with. There are a few Zwave devices I'd love to add to my city setup so I may dig into that this fall.

I've started to test the latest HomeGenieBe installers. One line of code to paste into the terminal window so it is simple easy for newbies.
There are some issues that need to be worked out but HG looks like it is starting to move forward again.