Open Source Home Automation (Raspberry)

bjornhallberg

Perhaps this discussion should be taken to a more rudimentary level, trying to figure out which automation software we actually want to bet on. And what software will actually run WELL on the resource limited RPi. It would take some convincing before I ever installed java-based solutions for instance, like openHab.

Has anyone actually tried Ago Control? Is it any good? Does it work well with the Pi? The installation is 130MB no less. A ton of dependencies. Makes you wonder about RAM and CPU usage.

It feels like this entire market is a bit premature at the moment.

Anticimex

@bjornhallberg
I am running Domoticz on my rPi and I think it runs well. I have only added my 1-wire temp and light sensors currently (light sensors not working very well, but that is not Domotcz fault). I have also plugged a Tellstick to the rPi and managed to get it working as well, so I am going to stick with Domoticz for now on the rPi.
I have a Vera as well, which I plan to use to make sure my sensor nodes work as intended (since Vera is "officially" supported). But for "the future", the rPi is to me more interesting, and can be extended with zWave support as well. So I would love to see MySensors support on Domoticz eventually.

I have a pathological hatred for anything Java related, and especially on resource-limited devices so any HA solution based on that is ruled out by me. I tried openHab but could not get it to work properly, and it was s.l.o.w.

axillent

@Anticimex I will prefer to not limit smart home by RPI
RPI is good to be a bridge between mysensors network and smart home controller
and also a bridge from mysensors devices to mysensors cloud

but smart home controller is something else
I have vera running for 4 years
vera3 is much more powerful comparing to RPI but still there is lack of performance and resources

may be RPI can handle 5-10 devices but if you intend to automate more the RPI will became a bottleneck

I will be looking for nettop PC based computers running UNIX or windows

Anticimex

@axillent A PC based solution is probably the best from a performance point of view.
However, I currently has absolutely no sensors interfaced to my VeraLite and 7 temp and 7 light sensors connected by 1-Wire (and the tellstick) on my rPi, and my rPi totally wips the ass of Vera when it comes to performance and responsiveness. It all depends on the back-end and how fancy the frontend needs to be.
But when in doubt, use PC. That is by far the most flexible option.

But to not hijack the topic too much, the question here is limited to SW that works well on rPi :)

bjornhallberg

@axillent Sure, a more powerful solution wouldn't go amiss, but it comes down to cost and power consumption. The RPi SHOULD be enough to power home automation if it was was done right. A lot of the resource consumption for Domoticz (which is still a lot faster than openhab but is nevertheless accused of being slow sometimes) seems to be Apache handling the web interface. Lighttpd might be something I should look into if at all possible. Personally I'd like a really light-weight front-end and then some Android app to control and check the automation server.

But I'm always open to suggestions. The RPi is only great because of its software support / developers, its peripherals and its gpu. There should be a lot faster chips these days, ARM or preferably x86, that could manage the same power consumption as the Pi but with a lot better performance. If you're only looking for CPU cycles. Personally I was hell bent on cramming as much stuff as possible into the Pi, including the camera module. That is basically £6 of electricity, running it 24/7 for a year. Yes, I'm the ultimate cheapskate ;-)

Anticimex

@bjornhallberg I installed Domoticz on my Pi using an image, and it seem to run nginx, and not Apache. So far, I have not experienced any particular lag. Fingers crossed...

BSoft

I think the intent of rPI as a mysensor controller is an easy open customizable/semi-universal database service delivery to cloud, and in that department there is no reason to consider it as a bottleneck. And as a mysensor network controller should not be a problem also, i mean, controlling nodes does not require an horsepower machine.

jendrush

@Anticimex said:

I have a pathological hatred for anything Java related, and especially on resource-limited devices so any HA solution based on that is ruled out by me. I tried openHab but could not get it to work properly, and it was s.l.o.w.

I can confirm that. I've tried OpenHub Demo, and it was very slow on RPi. Idea for OpenHUB is nice, but Java kills this idea on slower machines.

Yveaux

Anyone familiar with MQTT (Mqtt.org)? This is not a home automation system but functions as middleware that stores data. Clients can subscribe to topics or publish topics.
Topics are ordered in a directory-like structure, e.g /mysensors/node123/sensor6/temperature.

I built a simple software gateway that routes sensor readings from a mysensors network to an MQTT broker, and routes actuator values from a MQTT broker back to the mysensors nodes.

Powerful rules can be created easily, like subscribe to a light sensor and a motion sensor and publish a light-switch-on when it is dark and motion is detected.

It might sound complex, but in reality is quite simple, super lightweight (runs easy peasy on RPI, see mosquito.org) and very scalable (brokers can be publish/subscribe to other brokers).

Only thing I still need is some UI to manually control sensors/actuators and edit rules ;-)

mikeones

I have been using agocontrol on my RPI with pretty good results. The few issues I posted about in the agocontrol form are likely user error on my part. I think ago is written in C and runs well on my PI. I am currently running 4 nodes with about 22 child devices. They have implemented just about all the device types which is a plus. I am running temperature, humidity and distance sensors along with relays and reed switches. Communication and stability have been solid so far.

I recommend agocontrol to anyone wanting to get some sensor nodes up and talking to a control that don't have a vera. They have x86 packages also so you are not limited to only running on a PI.

bjornhallberg

@mikeones I managed to get agocontrol installed and running after much grief. Can't really make heads or tails of the interface yet, and I get mysensors errors ("mysensorscontroller is not responding. Unable to execute action.") when going to the mysensors configuration. I did apt-get the agocontrol-mysensor package and it seems to start perfectly. Perhaps it has to do with the beta gateway code. Do you need to configure the serial port in the settings? Because I can't seem to save any changes made? /dev/ttyACM0 doesn't normally work when opening a serial monitor for me. I need to use /dev/ttyUSB0.

Overall I'm not sure agocontrol looks like my cup of tea. Seems the scope is just too ambitious and not as streamlined and user friendly as it could be. It is however pretty snappy (at least with no sensors configured). I'd still put my money on Domoticz.

edited the list above to denote applications that have difficult requirements or requirements that may impede performance (Java ...).

Yveaux

@bjornhallberg are you running the 1.4 code on the gateway & sensors? The serial protocol has changed with 1.4 which could cause the issue...

Damme

I tried Agocontrol my self and don't really like it..
maybe its time for a new project "Yet Another Home Automation System" ... =(

Edit;
Any of the one's listed someone like? Me myself will be running the server on a linux-server so RPi is not really necessary.. I've been looking through them all now and didnt really fall for any of them.
Android-client would be good too

mikeones

@bjornhallberg Did you add the mysensors config file?

$ cat /etc/opt/agocontrol/conf.d/mysensors.conf 
[mysensors]
device=/dev/ttyUSB0

bjornhallberg

@mikeones said:

@bjornhallberg Did you add the mysensors config file?
$ cat /etc/opt/agocontrol/conf.d/mysensors.conf 
[mysensors]
device=/dev/ttyUSB0

That seems to have done it, thanks! I wonder why the webui/ago couldn't create that file itself.

Damme

I cant decide which software I want to run. I dont really like any of them :(
I was thinking about openhab and use the ethernet + arduino and make a new gateway software for openhab. (openhab can utilize UDP)

But I think openhab is a bit complex in the configuration. Or me just stupid.. :)

hek

@Damme
I don't think you are stupid. Many of these HA systems is over complex and a bit too hard to get up running for normal people.

bjornhallberg

@Damme Yeah, that is sort of the Achilles' heel of the MySensors project. Basically no software support. And even if all the above software miraculously started to support MySensors, they'd still be years from completion most likely. I can't claim to have tried them all but none of them seem that promising. Most of them are half-baked and those that show some promise are usually developing too slowly or are under the wrong direction focusing on the wrong things or getting ahead of themselves. A lot of them support various wonky commercial hardware that ordinary people will be less likely to have heard of than MySensors even. Some of them sure have the cart before the horse and I'm always a bit suspicious about where their motivations are coming from, i.e. any money trail to said obscure corporate stuff that most people are very unlikely to own.

If I had any use for Z-Wave I might have considered getting a Vera, but for that price you could get pretty much anything, like a NUC or whatever (some of them are quite energy efficient and getting better every generation). Not that an x86 machine would me much use either compared to a RPi. And besides, all I hear about the Vera is complaints about slow software development. I'd expect more UX perfection from a commercial product. Perhaps I will reconsider if there is a Vera4 or something and UI7 is a resounding success. Else, people might do what they did to Synology, rip their software and let everyone use on their own hardware.

Isn't Google coming out with something soon? Or are they busy with the expensive NEST stuff?

Damme

@bjornhallberg Agree, I just looked at 'The thing system' but I cant even get the freakin thing to work (never used nodejs before...) but they do have a well documented tcp protocol ( http://thethingsystem.com/dev/Simple-Thing-Protocol.html ) and there are even some arduino examples too ( http://thethingsystem.com/dev/Thing-Sensor-Reporting-Protocol.html ). But it seams to be a bit much work to get it compatible with mysensors (and I dont even know if I like TTS yet.. :) )

bjornhallberg

@Damme TTS caught my eye the first time around, but I sort of dismissed it because it was node.js, immature, unheard of, and seemed reluctant to show much of its web gui. Seemed more like a concept and a bunch of techno babble. Also, support for a bunch of expensive commercial stuff that I'll never buy (Tesla cars anyone?). And, no smartphone apps (yet). I guess they're the sort of hipsters that like to run things in their smartphone browsers. But I can see the potential here. The web ui seems pretty snappy from their vimeo demo, and like you say, they have basically served up a functioning example of how to interface with an Arduino.

They sort of shut me up about user interfaces also. Their web ui is so different it seems to be from the future ;-)
http://vimeo.com/88873020#t=240

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