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[HA Dave]

At this point.... I have to call the ha-bridge install a failure. It just didn't work.

I understand the idea of "fixing" the problem. But the "problem" is in the "fixing". As long as these installs require tweaking and such.... they exist only as a code writers hobby. I am not a code writer... or a "beginner code writer". I am a computer-competent Home Automation guy... just like almost all of the countless thousands of X10 users. And.... like a decent chunk of the 50 million Alexa users.

The easy setup instructions that Tuicemen created for getting Homegenie up and running... are awesome. But... when it came to the ha-bridge... it was like an after thought. And it just didn't work. Very few average people are going to forego time with family, friends, pets, ETC. and invest precious time into a new "programming hobby".... so they later... can enjoy their Home Automation hobby. I can't honestly say.... how many minutes, hours, or days...  in forums on a helpdesk phone calls the average person is willing to invest in this stuff. But after my 6,496 post (on this forum alone) and 115 days, 21 hours and 1 minutes spent here.... I'd say I am more persistent than most.

And without an AI connection... for the consumption of the general public... X10 doesn't cut it. I really believe this effort is worth it.

[HA Dave]

I am (more than) willing to start over. Reload from the beginning... fresh install start to end. If we can include a workable simple ha-bridge that Alexa can see.... we'll be good to go. And so will lots of X10 users.

[petera]

I am getting nothing. Service not found.
got this when trying the creating the service

I thought Tuicemen’s install instructions included creating a service to launch the ha bridge.

Again as I mentioned before, when you have a working version of HomeGenie on your SD card take an image backup of it so you don’t need to keep installing from scratch again and again which can be very frustrating.

Maybe Tuicemen can explain this backup procedure a bit more to you as you are clearly comfortable with his instruction. The main thing to remember is to install the software and create a service so it runs and runs on each boot.

Whatever you do don’t give up. You’re nearly there.

[HA Dave]

I thought Tuicemen’s install instructions included creating a service to launch the ha bridge.

Something went wrong... I don't know what. It could have very well been operator error.

Again as I mentioned before, when you have a working version of HomeGenie on your SD card take an image backup of it so you don’t need to keep installing from scratch again and again which can be very frustrating.

Of course as you know.... one of the great things about these little Pi's are how quick and easy they are to reformat. And Tuicemen's Home Genie Set-up... is fast and easy. I am waiting till I get a complete working [mini] setup then I will image the entire thing.

Whatever you do don’t give up. You’re nearly there.

I may run out of free time.... I had hoped to do this during the cold winter "Home Automation Season"…. but I haven't given up on the idea of this yet. Remember... Just a few feet from where I am working on this I have a fully (and flawlessly) functioning RBPi running the Homeseer software. Everything works... and it works well with BOTH my X10 and my Alexa devices. If Homeseer was to promise continued support for X10... I'd merely recommend every X10 users go with Homeseer. But these are very competitive times in Home Automation. And Homeseer wishes to sell Zwave….. and only allows X10's interface to continue through volunteer support. X10 deserves and NEEDS it's own AI integration. 

[HA Dave]

BTW. I am reconfigured setup and waiting for another stab at a ha-bridge.

[petera]

BTW. I am reconfigured setup and waiting for another stab at a ha-bridge.

Re X10 support in Homeseer. Mark Fisher does this on a voluntary adhoc basis. Official support was dropped a good while back. He's not in a position to respond to queries too quickly and that is totally understandable.

Yes I can't imagine Tuicemen leaving out instructions for creating and starting a service so it may well have been an omission somewhere at some stage.

I really do advise taking that imagine of a basic HomeGenie setup. You can then experiment to your hearts content, screw it up and then pop off have a coffee or whatever while you reimage your working copy. Saves on the eye strain and the headaches.

There's always going to be a little bit of heavy lifting involved in the open source world but believe me it's worth it.

[petera]

By the way if you think you're having problems with your home automation projects have a read of this post. Quite lengthy but it does make you wonder what you can achieve outside of the commercial world. http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,102141.0.html

I picked up an old Vera Lite controller on eBay for a couple of bucks, wiped it clean and repurposed it as a ZWave controller. It was worth the purchase purely for the built in ZWave radio chip

[Tuicemen]

no protocol is without issues.  I've seen so many users give up on X10and move to something else only to find out the grass wasn't any greener.
I hate having to type or cut and paste a dozen lines or more into a command prompt to install something. There are just to many things to go wrong and my fat fingers don't help
I'm all for making installs as simple as possible it attracts more users. For this reason I'm going to attempt to create a ha-bridge installer script. Initial tests thus far look promising for this.

[HA Dave]

X10 support in Homeseer. Mark Fisher does this on a voluntary adhoc basis. Official support was dropped a good while back.

Yes and Mark does a fantastic job! I've exchanged a post or two with him at the homeseer forum. I certainly didn't mean to suggest I have a problem with Homeseer products or Mark. And I have nothing against mixing Home Automation flavors in a setup. I use several different types/flavors/brands of products in my setup... and they all work well together.

I really do advise taking that imagine of a basic HomeGenie setup. You can then experiment.... screw it up and then... reimage your working copy. There's always going to be a little bit of heavy lifting involved in the open source world but believe me it's worth it.

Yeah..... all computer systems used to be a bit flakey at one time. But good procedures promote reliable results. The tiny effort invested in the front end... pays a big dividend in overall reliability. I remember and ENJOYED the old wild-west "heavy lifting" days.... back 25-30 years ago. But I think most people have developed a higher standard for quality now-a-days.

[HA Dave]

no protocol is without issues.  I've seen so many users give up on X10and move to something else only to find out the grass wasn't any greener.
I hate having to type or cut and paste a dozen lines or more into a command prompt to install something. There are just to many things to go wrong and my fat fingers don't help
I'm all for making installs as simple as possible it attracts more users. For this reason I'm going to attempt to create a ha-bridge installer script. Initial tests thus far look promising for this.

Yep. And the efforts you put into you HG setup and guide... paid off big time! EXCELLENT WORK. Once you can add a similar ha-bridge, step-by-step that ends with a seamless finish and lets Alexa run discovery and pick up the HG X10 device. X10 will have it all.

[petera]

X10 support in Homeseer. Mark Fisher does this on a voluntary adhoc basis. Official support was dropped a good while back.

Yes and Mark does a fantastic job! I've exchanged a post or two with him at the homeseer forum. I certainly didn't mean to suggest I have a problem with Homeseer products or Mark. And I have nothing against mixing Home Automation flavors in a setup. I use several different types/flavors/brands of products in my setup... and they all work well together.

I really do advise taking that imagine of a basic HomeGenie setup. You can then experiment.... screw it up and then... reimage your working copy. There's always going to be a little bit of heavy lifting involved in the open source world but believe me it's worth it.

Yeah..... all computer systems used to be a bit flakey at one time. But good procedures promote reliable results. The tiny effort invested in the front end... pays a big dividend in overall reliability. I remember and ENJOYED the old wild-west "heavy lifting" days.... back 25-30 years ago. But I think most people have developed a higher standard for quality now-a-days.

Stop using age as an excuse We grow wiser with age and use it to our advantage. Remember X10 users are all of a certain vintage so we know a thing or two.

This new technology is just a reworking of old ideas. This is coming from a DEC VAX operator using BSD UNIX back in the late '70s so Linux holds no barriers.

Believe it or not Microsoft was the elephant in the room. We've moved on and now we are using a subset of Unix, namely Linux or in this case a flavour of Linux, Raspbian and as you are seeing all these years later a very productive OS.

You will get there and wonder why you didn't try it before now.

[HA Dave]

Stop using age as an excuse …..Believe it or not Microsoft was the elephant in the room. We've moved on ….You will get there and wonder why you didn't try it before now.

I am not making any excuses... for age or anything else.... I don't think  I pre-date the rise of Microsoft... which became what it became by bringing together most of the computer makers under the single umbrella of DOS. Only the one company (Apple) held out... and it almost bankrupted them. 

I have almost no resistance to change. It just isn't in my nature. However I do have a direction... and it's OK if its not universally shared.

[HA Dave]

I've found a YouTube Pi-bridge-Alexa setup https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kob2IED4gPI&t=172s… is it really this complex?

[petera]

I've found a YouTube Pi-bridge-Alexa setup https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kob2IED4gPI&t=172s… is it really this complex?

It's not complex at all. Most of what Tuicemen laid out for you was a cut and paste operation. If you've cut and pasted into the correct folders you should succeed.

In most cases I find those YouTube videos more of a hindrance than a help.

The important thing is to get the HA Bridge software installed and working. From there the next process will be configuring it which again I'm sure Tuicemen will provide a point and click solution.

Once you have one device configured the remaining devices will follow a similar configuration pattern with only minor changes which once again will follow the cut and paste routine.

[Tuicemen]

I split this off from my HG beginner step by step setup thread as it was getting off topic and more towards adds for HG & or Alexa and Ha-Bridge.
I'm not sure where my HA-Bridge step by step is giving you a problem Dave but it appears to be at the text editor nano which creates the "ha-bridge.service" file.
 
Linux is very case sensitive for things and not as forgiving as Windows so if you typed in the code instead of cut and paste that could be the issue, or I messed up typing it out.
I'll go over my write up again while I fine tune my setup script in case I omitted something.