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Jeroen_

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Hi Everybody,

 

My name is Jeroen, I'm from the Netherlands and "new" to this forum. Actually, I have been reading and looking for solutions here for several months now, but I posted my first topic with a question a few days ago. I have been in contact already with some of you over here or in the NL forum and I really appreciate the knowledge that everybody shares and the help they offer. I hope I can do the same for others in the future. I have a background in automotive engineering and have been interested in home automation for several years.

 

I started with a HC2 and a few Fibaro light switches in our new home about 1,5 year ago. I don't have any programming experience and in the beginning, I just made block scene's. I quickly got infected with the smart home virus and now I have about 70 hardware devices connected to my HC2. All me scene's (100+ now) are now in LUA. Besides the HC2 I use Node-red for some other (mainly older) equipment and several Google Home Mini's + 1 Sonos Play One to control everything in my house. I use Node-red to start scene’s with voicecontrol through Google Assistant and presence detection via Unifi on the HC2. My goal is to make almost everything automatic or voice controlled. I still have many wishes to improve the current setup and make even more automatic.

 

Besides some basics stuff, I’m very happy with the mechanical ventilation I automated based on CO2, humidity and presence. Also, the shutters which are triggered by temperature, sunlight, rain and presence. Unfortunately, my girlfriend is not a big fan of home automation, so I have to be very careful about what I automate and how the triggers work. Also, it should work without any issues, which is of course always the goal.

 

Below is a list of the hardware currently in use.

 

Z-wave:

- 1x Fibaro HC2

- 14x Fibaro dimmer module

- 7x Fibaro single switch

- 6x Fibaro Bypass 2

- 2x Fibaro Wall Plug

- 2x Fibaro Motion Sensor

- 8x Neo Coolcam Motion Sensor

- 2x Aeotec Multisensor 6

- 4x Aeotec Door Window Sensor 6

- 7x Sensative Strips Window Sensor

- 1x Neo Coolcam Door Window Sensor Plus

- 1x Rademacher Door Window Sensor

- 7x Fibaro Follor Shutter 3

- 1x Qubino Flush 1D

- 1x Qubino Flush Dimmer 0-10V

- 4x Radiator Controller Spirit Eurotronic

- 1x Fibaro Smart Implant

- 1x Heatit Z-wave Thermostat

 

Other:

- Netatmo weather station with additional indoor module (wind and rain gauges are high on my wish list)

- Sonos in 5 rooms

- 3x Google Home Mini

- Axis Cam

- Raspberry Pi4 with Node-red running

- My complete network and other cameras are all Unifi

 

If you have any question for me, feel free to ask :)

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Hi Jeroen,

 

Welcome to the forum!

That's a sweet setup you have already.

 

Since i am using Unifi too i am interested how you setup presence detection?

Can you tell a bit more about it?

 

greets,

Remi

 

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Welcome @Jeroen_ ! Impressive setup ?

 

1 hour ago, Remi said:

Since i am using Unifi too i am interested how you setup presence detection?

Can you tell a bit more about it?

I'm guessing he is using NodeRed for that. I have a setup using Home Assistant (using the NodeRed, MQTT, Unify and Fibaro-Hub integration) which exactly do the same, which is easier to setup and maintain (mostly can be done by GUI).

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  • Topic Author
  • Hi @Remi and @Lambik

     

    Thanks for your reply's. Lambik is totally right. I'm using NodeRed for the presence detection. At first, I started with a Virtual Device which I found on the French Forum, but I wasn't completely happy with this setup. After searching some more I came across a solution using NodeRed and installed it on my Windows Home Server. Basic Node-red stuff is not very difficult (for a non IT guy with a technical background). It works great, except it crashes sometimes om my Server. That is the reason I switched to a Raspberry PI. I copied the setup from the following website. Thanks for this @Joep I got it working with a lot of reading on forums, watching tutorials on YouTube, copying code and after that really al lot of trial and error :)

     

    Please login or register to see this link.

     

    Actually, while searching I have read some post from you Lambik, but I can't remember anymore what is was, but thanks anyway!!

     

    PS: it seems like there are many Dutch guys here on the forum (at least in this topic)

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    Just a suggestion, if you have a RasPi, you could try

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    . You can add MQTT/NodeRed

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    to it and the Fibaro-hub/Unify integration. I know this looks like a huge

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    , but in the long term it is a very easy way to maintain and backup all kinds of integrations/communication with the Fibaro HC2 and other IoT services/devices.

     

    Home Assistant evolves very rapidly and most of the things can be done by GUI (Graphical User Interface).  It is, IMHO, the easiest way to get several IoT communication/integrations to interact with each other.

     

    For me, personally, I removed all integrations/services from the HC2 and use the HC2 as a Z-Wave controller ONLY. All other communications/interactions is done by central MQTT, NodeRed servers and Home Assistant. I started in 2012 with Domotica and I found this to be the most effective setup to maintain/backup and 'klooi'  ? (Dutch: experiment) with.

     

    Just my 2 cents...?

    Edited by Lambik
    • Thanks 1
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  • Topic Author
  • Thanks for the suggestion @Lambik. I think I will give it a try in the near future. At the moment I'm happy with my setup, but my HC2 isn't running as smooth as it was in the beginning. I was thinking about adding another HC2 of HC3 to divide the load and have Z-wave coverage in the garden. I have LAN in my mini barn. With your suggestion a HC lite would probably also be sufficient for this. Also cost wise it could be a good idea. For example, I'm planning to automate the watering system in the garden. I have 5 zones (not a big garden, but limited water pressure) and need 5 electric valves for this. Although 5 Z-wave modules would be the easiest way to integrate it in my system, doing this on the RasPi with add-on relay switches would probably be cheaper, but requires some learning.

     

    PS: 'klooien' is also what I like to do and perhaps even a mandatory skill setting up a smart home :)  Unfortunately the WAF is incredibly low over here, so I have to be very careful with what I do. Many scenes only run when my girlfriend isn’t present and therefore reliable present detection is very important. We already had several discussions about her not logging into the guest wifi network, because then everything goes automatic ?

     

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    Oh dear, I recognize the stubbles you're going through!  ?

     

    In the past years I complete rewrote my systems a couple of times. My experience is to keep it simple as much as you can, don't try your household members to install apps or try to learn them to use the Domotica you developed. In my experience that will not work.....

     

    Bottom line, Presence Detection is vital, IMHO. Unifi can be very good for that, but should not be the only mechanism. hereby an example how I do it, just as an example:

    1 - Detect movement by your (dedicated) motion sensors/doors/windows. If no movement is detected for a dedicated time, go to step 2.

    (Info: I use (several) Presence Detection VD's I wrote, check my signature for link)

    2 - Check if dedicated devices are turn on which you know your family members turn on when home (like TV or Multimedia devices).

    3 - Check if phones are connected to your Unify AP's (I use the Home Assistant Unifi Integration for that).

    4 - When activating a home/away-state add a pre-away state. It can solve annoying your household members when switching all lights off in the away-state.

     

    Try to figure something out and test it as much as you can. Try to eliminate false positives because that will upset family members ?

     

    Link to comment
    25 minutes ago, Lambik said:

    Don't try your household members to install apps or try to learn them to use the Domotica you developed. In my experience that will not work.....

     

     

    100% agree! I am not there yet. I need apps and instructions for my household members still.

     

    39 minutes ago, Lambik said:

    Bottom line, Presence Detection is vital, IMHO. Unifi can be very good for that, but should not be the only mechanism. hereby an example how I do it, just as an example:

    1 - Detect movement by your (dedicated) motion sensors/doors/windows. If no movement is detected for a dedicated time, go to step 2.

    (Info: I use (several) Presence Detection VD's I wrote, check my signature for link)

    2 - Check if dedicated devices are turn on which you know your family members turn on when home (like TV or Multimedia devices).

    3 - Check if phones are connected to your Unify AP's (I use the Home Assistant Unifi Integration for that).

    4 - When activating a home/away-state add a pre-away state. It can solve annoying your household members when switching all lights off in the away-state.

     

     

    Thank you for sharing your vision on presence detection, it really made myself think and have a look at it from a different angle.

     

    @Jeroen_ @Lambik So i should look at node-red? (and MQTT or is it the same?) sounds like a fun project to start learning.

    At the moment i am in the process of moving to a new house so it will be something for the cold winter evenings to discover ?

    I like a little "prutsen" ?

     

    I had a look at Home Assistant and saw it have support for Unifi controller for presence detection, and Fibaro hub.

    Do i need node-red still in that scenario?

     

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  • Topic Author
  • @RemiMQTT is a service running on NodeRed, but I'm far from an expert on this. For me it took a few days before I had NodeRed setup and running basics services. The reason I started with NodeRed is because I wanted to start Scene's on the HC2 through Google assistant and this wasn't possible with the fibaro integration. The site I mentioned is pretty well documented, but if you have any questions I can try to help you. Your last answer should be answered by Lambik, because I have no idea.

     

     

    Below is everything I have running on NodeRed now. I use voice control to control my old receiver. It has HC2 support and I made many manual scenes for this. For example; "Volume omhoog" triggers a manual scene which read out the current volume level and add 5 to that and "beneden alles uit" triggers a scene which shuts down the receiver, TV, Sonos, all the light accept the one above the dining table. That one is turned on and off after a delay of 10 seconds and the light in the hall does the same with a 30 second delay (enough time make sure the front door is locked). I could use the motion sensors for this, but the WAF does not allow it when my girlfriend is home.

     

     

    @Lambikthanks for your insights on presence detection. At the moment my presence detection works perfect. On leaving I have added a small delay for when we take out the garbage or collect a package at the neighbors. The only time when problems occurs is when wifi is down or her phone is empty or not connected. In that case I can manually override the system with a click of a button, which is luckily accepted  But I think I will update this later with your insights.

     

     

    I'm the only one with the app, I agree this is the best solution. Also I have a list with voice commands available in the living room. To be honest I almost never use the app, only for readout of values. The rest is automated, by switches or voice controlled.

     

    PS: I also started with smart home when we moved to a new house 1,5 year ago ;)

     

     

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    Edited by Jeroen_
    Typos
    • Like 2
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    Okay @Jeroen_ I think you are definitely on the right track. The holy grail of automation is when you don't need users input/interfering......?

     

    1 hour ago, Remi said:

    So i should look at node-red? (and MQTT or is it the same?) sounds like a fun project to start learning.

    At the moment i am in the process of moving to a new house so it will be something for the cold winter evenings to discover ?

    I like a little "prutsen" ?

    Looks to me Home Assistant is perfect for you 'om te prutsen'. When using a RasPi you can install NodeRed and MQTT as integration, which is easy to install the initial setup. Also you can backup easily by using the Home Assistant 'snapshots'.

     

    MQTT is a, in short, kind of message server where you can send data to or read data from. This is easy for central triggering and storing states. The best client software to get to know/monitor/play with MQTT, is

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    .

    Node-Red is a platform where you can link several protocols/services to achieve your goals. see @Jeroen_ example above.

     

    If you want to learn all about programming and experiment, it is for sure that Node-Red is a very nice playground.

    Home Assistant is an easy way to setup things as MQTT and Node-Red (and a lot of other things), because the integration handles installation and setup just by a click, and is well documented.

     

    It is all about choice and preferences. Just take whatever you think is the best and suits your needs. There are a lot of different roads that lead to Rome.

    Edited by Lambik
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  • Topic Author
  • @Lambik haha thanks!

     

     

    I did some reading on the topics in your signature. Some of them are remarkably interesting, for example the Telegram service. I like the system sending me messages, but to many push messages isn't very nice. I will try to implement that one this week. Also when using telegram it doubles as a logging service.

     

     

    Am I right when I think that you don't use most of them anymore while you mentioned you migrated almost everything to Home Assistant? If so, I think that I will start playing with home assistant first in a few weeks and try to set up some basic stuff to get familiar with it before I put much more effort in complex LUA scripts ?

    Edited by Jeroen_
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    @Lambik why some many checks for people in the house?

    I use a alarm system, if alarm on, everone is gone. no need for extra checks

     

    @Jeroen_ why not a secondhand hc2 instead of a hcl? secondhand they go in the netherlands for 150-250 euro's

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    good suggestion, but I don't see many on marktplaats. None of them are below €200 and that is a lot of money for a secondhand device. I prefer a new unit if I must pay almost or more than half the price of a new one and in that case, I prefer a HC3. Only thing is that I'm not sure if it will work as master/slave. I thought I saw somewhere that this option is not available (yet).

     

    With you suggestion to Lambik, my family has to be disciplined to turn on the alarm when they leave the house, which can be automated with good presence detection. Also I use presence detection to have more automation when my girlfriend is not at home witch isn’t possible with the alarm option you mentioned. I have an alarm running on my HC2 and a Unifi camera setup separated from my home automation for safety reasons.

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    @Jeroen_

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    The master/slave on hc3 does not work at the moment.

    I asked Socha in another threat but no reaction.........

     

    So buying a hc3 for a master/slave setup is this moment a total waste of money.

     

    Buying a new hc2 for this setup, it is possible that fibaro is ending the support for the hc2 in a couple of years. so buying a secondhand is (my opinion) the best option

     

    • Like 1
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  • @akatar although Tweakers is the website I visit the most I have never looked there for secondhand devices. Thanks for the tip!

     

     

    I will not buy anything soon; I have other wishes first. With the support in mind it does make sense to buy a secondhand device. In the few months I will make the decision to upgrade to a HC3 (or add one if Master/Slave is supported), buy a HC2 (perhaps a second one with the ending support in mind) or transfer part of my setup to Home Assistant (witch I will try anyway just because I can with my current setup)

    Edited by Jeroen_
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    On 7/22/2020 at 5:01 PM, Jeroen_ said:

    @Lambik haha thanks!

     

     

    I did some reading on the topics in your signature. Some of them are remarkably interesting, for example the Telegram service. I like the system sending me messages, but to many push messages isn't very nice. I will try to implement that one this week. Also when using telegram it doubles as a logging service.

     

     

    Am I right when I think that you don't use most of them anymore while you mentioned you migrated almost everything to Home Assistant? If so, I think that I will start playing with home assistant first in a few weeks and try to set up some basic stuff to get familiar with it before I put much more effort in complex LUA scripts ?

    The Telegram is not controlled any more by my HC2, for a long time. I preferred to use (stand-alone) Node-Red (

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    ) because you can easy build interaction (send commands from Telegram to activate things) and can be used for several messaging platforms. Beware chatbot can not be used by Home Assistant Node Red's integration, an alternative for Telegram in Home Assistand/NodeRed is

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    . I use several bots, separate for logging (no sound/popup), Doorbell (with sound and foto-snapshot pop-up), Alarm (A lot of sounds/pop-ups), normal messages/home state-change (with one beep and no pop-up). I don't use mail and push messages at all.

    EDIT:

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    is also possible in Home Assistant without the use of NodeRed/node-red-contrib-telegram-home.

     

    I used the HC2 as main controller for years (2013-2017), but got frustrated of Fibaro's closed source attitude and lack of integrations. I was putting more and more time in programming a way to get around then a way to get forward. So I searches for alternatives and Home Assistant was one of them, also Node Red, MQTT, Athom Homey, Synology and so on. But Home Assistant evolves very quickly, most of the things you need can be done by Home Assistant nowadays. So basically I use the HC2 only as ZWave gateway and motion/door/window sensor presence detection.

     

    BTW, a RasPi with Home Assistant is far more cheaper and flexible. If you don't want to use Home Assistant any more a RasPi can be used for a dozen of other nice appliances... Also the basics of YAML (Home Assistant), javascript (NodeRed) and can be very good be learned by experimenting from them and contribute to understanding and programming LUA. That's how I learned....

     

    EDIT: Check out

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    Edited by Lambik
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    @

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    ; I have the same setup, but my HC2 is doing some more as only Z-Wave gateway.

    The HC2 does all the Fibaro stuff with sensors and switches (in LUA scenes) and the integrations I do with Node-RED and report to Fibaro if needed.

     

    Why do you have Home Assistant between the systems? I wrote a central HC2 LUA scene that accepts a JSON to update my virtual devices from Node-RED, because I use the Fibaro App to show status of some devices and send me push messages from the app.

     

    Fibaro integrations are a laugh. The Sonos integration is nothing. I now integrated my Sonos system with Node-RED and it is amazing. When I leave the house the lights and Sonos players who are playing music are saved in a Fibaro Global Variable, and when I arrive the previous lights go back on and the Sonos's start playing where they stopped. I love this automation, it feels like magic. I can build it all in Node-RED with flow variables, but the lights are saved in the HC2 so I keep everything in one place.

     

    I'm thinking of buying a Z-Wave stick if my HC2 dies. But I don't know how stable that is. € 599,- is a lot of money for a new controller I only use for 25% of my home automation.

    Edited by Joep
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  • Hi @Joep Any chance you will be adding your Sonos integration with NodeRed on your website? I'm very curious about this. Love your website by the way ? Please keep using a HC2 and keep adding things to your website ?

     

    Edited by Jeroen_
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    1 hour ago, Joep said:

    Why do you have Home Assistant between the systems?

    It's not between, it's additional. I use Home Assistant because it's integrations just works without having to spend a lot of time programming or tweaking. It will communicate, when needed, with the a central MQTT server and a central NodeRed server (Synology Docker).

     

    Just one suggestion, don't bet on one system. In the end it will create a 'point of no return' and makes you dependable of a manufacturer or a system. It happened to  me some years ago, when using the HC2 as my central Home Automation controller. Just my 2 cents, just out of personal experience.

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    On 7/27/2020 at 11:21 AM, Jeroen_ said:

    Hi @Joep Any chance you will be adding your Sonos integration with NodeRed on your website? I'm very curious about this. Love your website by the way ? Please keep using a HC2 and keep adding things to your website ?

     

     

    Hej @Jeroen_, I will do that, but I can't give you any deadline on it. :)
    I'll keep using the HC2 until it dies, the price of the HC3 is currently too high and cannot be justified for me with a well-functioning HC2.

     

    On 7/27/2020 at 12:25 PM, Lambik said:

    It's not between, it's additional. I use Home Assistant because it's integrations just works without having to spend a lot of time programming or tweaking. It will communicate, when needed, with the a central MQTT server and a central NodeRed server (Synology Docker).

     

    Just one suggestion, don't bet on one system. In the end it will create a 'point of no return' and makes you dependable of a manufacturer or a system. It happened to  me some years ago, when using the HC2 as my central Home Automation controller. Just my 2 cents, just out of personal experience.

     

    Thank you for explaining. Betting on 1 system is indeed not that smart after thinking about it. When I bought the HC2 in 2018 I thought, "get the best and most professional system on the market for my new home", but after two years experience I learned that the Z-Wave stack is rock solid, but the software stack is not better than the open source alternatives like Home Assistant or Domotics (I used before in my old home).

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