digitaltrader Posted September 12, 2017 Share Posted September 12, 2017 I'd love an update on the Amazon Dash Button integration as well Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joshua Pressnell Posted September 12, 2017 Author Share Posted September 12, 2017 2 hours ago, zaphod said: @Joshua Pressnell - What is the current status of this? Any progress on the docker image? I have quickly realized that a docker image is going to be problematic for the more "generic case". It's one thing to handle persistent configuration files in a mapped directory, but in order to function properly within Apple's limitations for HomeKit bridges, in many cases I need to dynamically spin up additional linux system services. I haven't figured out a good way to do that yet within the "docker" approach. Any time I add new services, they disappear as soon as the docker image is reset. It's not too hard to run my setup in docker as a base case, though. I just hesitate to release it as a product (which I'd have to support), knowing that it will cause all sorts of complications for more involved setups. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zaphod Posted September 12, 2017 Share Posted September 12, 2017 Ok, good to know. What's the link to buy one of your pre-configured RPis? VINCELdUB 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VINCELdUB Posted September 13, 2017 Share Posted September 13, 2017 I need a license as well. Happy Automating!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ekohn00 Posted September 13, 2017 Share Posted September 13, 2017 14 hours ago, Joshua Pressnell said: I have quickly realized that a docker image is going to be problematic for the more "generic case". Just a good word on the Raspberry PI solution. I built one for $50 in a nice little case, used Joshua's drivers and have never looked back! Docker would have been nice since I already had a NAS, but now I don't worry about the NAS' overhead and my HomeKit PI has been super stable and easy to maintain. VINCELdUB 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joshua Pressnell Posted September 13, 2017 Author Share Posted September 13, 2017 15 hours ago, zaphod said: Ok, good to know. What's the link to buy one of your pre-configured RPis? http://www.varietassoftware.com/control4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joshua Pressnell Posted September 13, 2017 Author Share Posted September 13, 2017 8 hours ago, VINCELdUB said: I need a license as well. Happy Automating!! If you want a license for the OS image, you can also order those at the link above. If you need something else, you know how to reach me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digitaltrader Posted September 13, 2017 Share Posted September 13, 2017 Any updates on the Amazon dash button integration? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zaphod Posted September 13, 2017 Share Posted September 13, 2017 Just to clarify - the $225 price for the appliance includes the $175 C4 driver or not? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joshua Pressnell Posted September 13, 2017 Author Share Posted September 13, 2017 3 hours ago, digitaltrader said: Any updates on the Amazon dash button integration? It got temporarily put on hold while my day job kicks my butt. I have the actual integration 100% working on my unit at home. I need to finish the "upgrade and installation" process so that it works seamlessly in the current web configuration portal. It's up high on my todo list when I get to have my own time to work on my stuff again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joshua Pressnell Posted September 13, 2017 Author Share Posted September 13, 2017 1 hour ago, zaphod said: Just to clarify - the $225 price for the appliance includes the $175 C4 driver or not? The $225 price does *not* include the C4 driver price. I separated them out specifically so that you can choose to buy my appliance or not. The DIY types only need the driver. Many dealers license my OS image and provide their own hardware to install on. Several dealers and end users choose to just buy the ready-made unit from me. Depending on your comfort level you can get a fully working HomeKit solution for $175 (just the driver), $225 (driver + OS license), or $400 (driver + ready-to-install unit w/ my support). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digitaltrader Posted September 13, 2017 Share Posted September 13, 2017 12 minutes ago, Joshua Pressnell said: It got temporarily put on hold while my day job kicks my butt. I have the actual integration 100% working on my unit at home. I need to finish the "upgrade and installation" process so that it works seamlessly in the current web configuration portal. It's up high on my todo list when I get to have my own time to work on my stuff again. Thanks for the update....I'm excited Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SY3 Posted September 13, 2017 Share Posted September 13, 2017 8 minutes ago, Joshua Pressnell said: The $225 price does *not* include the C4 driver price. I separated them out specifically so that you can choose to buy my appliance or not. The DIY types only need the driver. Many dealers license my OS image and provide their own hardware to install on. Several dealers and end users choose to just buy the ready-made unit from me. Depending on your comfort level you can get a fully working HomeKit solution for $175 (just the driver), $225 (driver + OS license), or $400 (driver + ready-to-install unit w/ my support). Thanks for the clarification. What does the Homebridge Network Appliance OS License ($50) give you? If someone already has a PI, do they need this ($50) and the driver ($175) = $225? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joshua Pressnell Posted September 13, 2017 Author Share Posted September 13, 2017 Just now, sally said: Thanks for the clarification. What does the Homebridge Network Appliance OS License ($50) give you? If someone already has a PI, do they need this ($50) and the driver ($175) = $225? Exactly. If you're reasonably technically savvy and provide (and support) your own Pi hardware, but don't want to go through the process of installing, configuring, and managing a homebridge server yourself, you can install my ready-made Pi OS image and license my software. The result is a unit in your hands that behaves exactly like what I'd ship you, and you can follow the users guide from there. If you're really technically savvy (and brave), you can build your own homebridge server, install my open source C4 homebridge plugin, do all the unix configuration and config file setup yourself, and end up with a working system for only the cost of the C4 driver. There are folks on this forum that have done that... but my software package makes managing the details of homebridge and HomeKit much much easier. VINCELdUB 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zaphod Posted September 13, 2017 Share Posted September 13, 2017 So for the $225 I just download your image, write that to an uSD card, put the uSD card into a Raspberry Pi 3 and I am good, correct? (Assuming that I have had my dealer install the driver on C4). Can an end user buy the C4 driver or do we have to do that through our dealer? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joshua Pressnell Posted September 13, 2017 Author Share Posted September 13, 2017 19 minutes ago, zaphod said: So for the $225 I just download your image, write that to an uSD card, put the uSD card into a Raspberry Pi 3 and I am good, correct? (Assuming that I have had my dealer install the driver on C4). Can an end user buy the C4 driver or do we have to do that through our dealer? I don't mind selling the driver to end users. It's available through my website as well as through HouseLogix. In terms of getting the OS image setup, there's a little more to it than that. Once you get the OS installed, you point your browser to http://homebridge.local. The default user/pwd are listed in my users guide. From there, you'll see a licensing page, and there's a button to click to run some post-install steps. Click that button, and then *wait until the page reloads*. That may take several minutes. Trust me, it'll reload eventually. Once the page reloads and the setup button is gone, then you send me the MAC address listed on that page, and reboot the Pi. I'll generate your license, and you apply the license in the web portal, which unlocks the full configuration page. From there, you can follow the instructions in the users guide. It sounds scary... but Vince will attest that it's not too bad once you really look at doing it, and the web config portal makes dealing with setup and configuration VERY easy. VINCELdUB 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VINCELdUB Posted September 13, 2017 Share Posted September 13, 2017 Super easy. Basic follow the instructions sort of easy. But you have to read them Happy Automating!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zaphod Posted September 14, 2017 Share Posted September 14, 2017 When I went to add the Accessory on my phone I had two Homebridge devices - presumably this is due to the number of devices that I have - this is kind of hinted at in the doc but it doesn't go into any detail? I had to go through each device and click next - is that normal. All of the devices came in without Room names and wanted to use - is that the expected action? And I have lots of devices with the same name - as in Default Room Door Contact. How do I deal with that? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joshua Pressnell Posted September 14, 2017 Author Share Posted September 14, 2017 10 hours ago, zaphod said: When I went to add the Accessory on my phone I had two Homebridge devices - presumably this is due to the number of devices that I have - this is kind of hinted at in the doc but it doesn't go into any detail? I had to go through each device and click next - is that normal. All of the devices came in without Room names and wanted to use - is that the expected action? And I have lots of devices with the same name - as in Default Room Door Contact. How do I deal with that? 1) Yes, Apple limits the number of devices that can be on a single "bridge", although this is not documented anywhere that I've found. To compensate, if my system detects you have enough devices in your Control4 setup, it will start multiple "bridge" services for you, to allow all devices to be paired. 2) Yes, when you first pair the bridge, you will need to then add each device *in* the bridge to HomeKit. This is the way Apple's stuff works, and you'd need to do that with any bridge, mine or otherwise. 3) Due to Apple's design, there's no way for me to communicate which room a device is in prior to adding it to HomeKit. If you think about it, that's realistic. How many light bulbs know ahead of time which room the socket they're screwed into is in? In Apple's world, *they* are the equivalent to the main Control4 system. The C4 switches you add don't know which room they're in, until you or your dealer assign them into a room in the C4 project. So as devices come online in HomeKit, you need to add them, and assign them to rooms. I realize this is a burden, especially for people with lots of devices to add... unfortunately, it can't be helped. But at least it's just a one-time setup thing. It's also useful to note that Apple does have some issues with HomeKit and iCloud. Sometimes when you assign a device to a room initially, that assignment won't be remembered, and the next time you open Home, the device will return to the default room. That's just Apple having issues syncing iCloud. Re-assign the devices back to their proper room, and it should stick the second time. 4) For device names, you can either change the names *before* you add them to HomeKit (as indicated in the guide), or you can re-name them *IN* the Home app. If you rename them in the Home app, the names will stick that way in HomeKit, but will not be applied to the homebridge appliance. That's perfectly fine. I frequently rename devices in Home to make them more usable by Siri. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zaphod Posted September 14, 2017 Share Posted September 14, 2017 Is there any room the room assignment could be done in the Homebridge Web UI? That would be easier if you could just copy "Kitchen" and then just paste it a dozen times or so into the forms on the web page. I encourage you to continue to try to figure out how to get Homebridge working in docker. That would be the ideal case for me - have it running in a docker that is on my unRAID server. I have an Ubuntu VM running on my unRAID server - I could use that for Homebridge. Is there any reason that would be a bad idea? Could I use one of the other homebridge plugins running on "your" homebridge server? There seem to be hundreds of packages available at npm? In an ideal world I guess you would add something into Control4 first but that isn't always possible. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joshua Pressnell Posted September 14, 2017 Author Share Posted September 14, 2017 4 hours ago, zaphod said: Is there any room the room assignment could be done in the Homebridge Web UI? That would be easier if you could just copy "Kitchen" and then just paste it a dozen times or so into the forms on the web page. I encourage you to continue to try to figure out how to get Homebridge working in docker. That would be the ideal case for me - have it running in a docker that is on my unRAID server. I have an Ubuntu VM running on my unRAID server - I could use that for Homebridge. Is there any reason that would be a bad idea? Could I use one of the other homebridge plugins running on "your" homebridge server? There seem to be hundreds of packages available at npm? In an ideal world I guess you would add something into Control4 first but that isn't always possible. 1) There is no support for room assignment in Apple's HomeKit protocols. While I could (probably) detect the room a device was in via the C4 driver and include that information in the appliance (although I've had some issues doing that, it might be possible eventually), that information would be for visual reference only. There's zero way for a "device" to tell HomeKit which room it lives in. 2) Homebridge works fine in docker. I just can't get my web management setup running in docker, because my system *has* to have access to modify the lower-level operating system setup. You've already run into that because you have enough devices that my appliance provisioned an extra bridge to link devices to. I suppose that theoretically I could just create a docker image that had 10 homebridge services pre-configured, and the appliance could just tell you how many of them actually had devices linked to them. It's probably unlikely that someone would have over 1000 devices in their system. I'll re-investigate this when I have some time to spare to look at it. The other issue is the homebridge and firmware install locations. To work in docker and to allow updates, I'll need to have those in mapped data directories so they can be updated and persisted separate from the docker image. 3) Yes, you can install any plugins you like. I already have the "most popular" ones pre-installed (you can see them if you enable the advanced options). You're welcome to install any others that you like yourself. Once they're installed, they'll show up in the appliance advanced options automatically, and you can update them via the web portal as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zaphod Posted September 14, 2017 Share Posted September 14, 2017 Thanks Joshua. The plugin that I would most like is homebridge-harmony as I use the Logitech Harmony web based remotes/hubs to control all of my AV rather than Control4. It would be nice to have that working on Homebridge and Siri - there is an Alexa skill but it only allows you to control one Harmony hub and I have many. What would be even better is a Logitech Harmony driver in Control4 so that you could use a Harmony hub as an IR endpoint, but I don't think that is likely unless I write it myself. VINCELdUB 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VINCELdUB Posted September 14, 2017 Share Posted September 14, 2017 Neat idea. I would consider collaboration on this. Happy Automating!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zaphod Posted September 14, 2017 Share Posted September 14, 2017 3 minutes ago, VINCELdUB said: Neat idea. I would consider collaboration on this. You mean the Harmony? You can often get the SmartControl hubs with a basic remote for C$100 which is way cheaper than a C4 controller with remote. I actually just bought a couple on eBay from HK - one for $20 and one for $7. Logitech has now somewhat opened their API so it should be doable. The other thing that would be awesome would be if Amazon put an IR blaster in their new FireTV that is supposed to have Alexa capabilities. The only thing missing from that would be a decent remote control. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VINCELdUB Posted September 14, 2017 Share Posted September 14, 2017 Ok, perhaps start a new thread on this. So we don't hijack this one. Call it "HomeBridge / HomeKit ideas" or something. Happy Automating!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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