Hey all, I am also new to the HA world. I was a brief user of HS with a little success but it became a pain and unstable. Looking to make the move to HA, but I am curious if I can re-purpose the Hometroller as a host for HA? If not, I am not as “techy” as y’all, as I am not versed in coding, but willing to learn. Based on my research to date it seems like the resources are incredible and so I am confident that I will be able to learn as I go. My biggest question is what hardware to host HA on? I have loaded HA on my Mac Mini but am concerned that once I go down that road I may run in to issues. I also have a QNAP NAS that I think I could use, but again want to simplify the process but ensure stability. Lastly, I am concerned about using a Raspberry Pi based on what I have read.
Curious, I have only a few HS z-wave switches and motion sensors. I am curious if they can be used with HA as they are all z-wave plus.
Lastly, I am looking for a repository for recommended or preferred hardware. Switches, sensors, etc.
I realize these may be NOOB questions, and I am sorry, but any and all thoughts are very much appreciated.
Curious what part was unstable? Or just in general? Next question/answer pair will likely answer this question…
What HomeTroller model? Do you have the USB stick or a Z-Net? Shorter answer yeah absolutely you can use the HomeTroller as it’s just a PC. You will lose your HomeSeer install though if you want to do it clean.
Yes they can be used. Any z-wave device will work. I suggest as you’re new you be picky and ONLY use Z-Wave Plus devices to have the best performing network.
What do you mean by repository? Software or hardware?
Z-wave using Aeotec Z-Stick Gen5, ZigBee using a ConBee 2. I’ve moved a large part of my automtions to NodeRed, only the simpler ones (with 1-2 actions and triggers) are still in YAML.
When I asked HST when NodeRed support was coming in HS4, the reply was that they never heard of it …
I’m really not surprised. Even though there’s a Node-RED plugin. It did not integrate but was made to be a “easy install” wrapper for those that weren’t technical enough to install it themselves. Even with that it was beyond most so I never maintained the plugin as it was a waste of time.
Events not working is very strange but not unheard of on a SEL. The Windows box or better yet a self installed Windows actually runs much better than their systems they sell.
LIFX… yeah… I used that and on Windows it used to work great and then it had problems on Linux and UltraJones disappeared and never fixed the Linux version of the plugin and then after an update the Windows version totally broke as well and was never fixed and I ended up swapping out my LiFX bulbs for Philips Hue and stopped using that plugin. Ultimately I stopped using HS completely too. You’ll find that HST has no problems with leaving dead/non-functional plugins in their store for sale and then you buy something that is KNOWN not to function/work and well too bad for you.
It’s just a PC. Re-install it with your choice of Linux and run HASS on it. Reset the USB stick and use it. There’s nothing special about the USB stick or the SEL controller.
Supported devices for HASS would be this forum looking to see what people have had good luck with. I know the Z-Wave stack with HASS is hit or miss as it’s OpenZWave and not everything is supported very well. As for websites to purchase devices that depends on your region. What country are you in?
Just a personal anecdote but when I was considering HomeSeer in 2008, I was leery of the ‘paid plug-in’ model.
The upside is people get paid for their work so it attracts developers and leverages the labor of non-employees.
The downside is HomeSeer’s management is not accountable for supporting and maintaining 3rd party plug-ins so, for the customer, it’s a YMMV situation.
Ultimately, I passed on HomeSeer and chose something else (Premise).
Now I’ve learned that it’s even more of a ‘buyer beware’ situation than I ever imagined. It’s a bit deceiving to market a vast library of supported devices only to later learn that the 3rd party plug-ins don’t actually work with those devices.
On paper and in theory the plugin model sounds great and should make for a more stable and reliable environment. The model is that plugins are submitted, reviewed/verified and then made available. If too many problems occur the developer is on the hook to fix things and if they do not then the plugins are to be removed from the store. Well on paper that all sounds great…
Here’s another ‘refugee’, I even made a couple of HS plugin’s in the past.
I tried Domoticz for about a year, but especially zwave was very unstable, I think this is because of OpenZwave.
HA does use OpenZwave too, so I decided to use HS(4) as a zwave hub via MQTT. I must say zwave is very stable in HomeSeer.
But for al my other stuff I now use HA. The whole setup has not been easy and my learning curve was huge, but after a month I’m pretty happy with my setup. I’m still hoping I can abandon HS completely, but for now it’s okay.
Let’s keep in touch and help use HS veterans in getting things done
Mark’s homeseer component doesn’t communicate directly with HS. It does in fact use the pyhs3 library to do that. What happened behind the scenes the first time you ran the homeseer custom component was HA found this line:
REQUIREMENTS = ['pyhs3==0.9']
in the init.py file for the component and installed pyhs3 from pypi for you. It isn’t really a script the user runs. It’s a library the component uses to listen to and talk to HS.
As I stated above, I’ve added support for some Z-Wave sensor types in both pyhs3 and also made the corresponding changes in the homeseer component. Both pull requests are pending Mark’s review.
Finally, just as a tip for someone who’s moved a lot of events over to automations. Don’t remove the HS events, simply disable them. Disabled events do not consume system resources so they don’t hurt anything on the HS side but do provide a good reference when my memory needs a refresher.
For all other comments, I’d prefer we keep this positive and constructive so others making the HS to HA transition can benefit. We could spend all day hashing over HST, but I suspect a lot of beer would be needed.
Hey @RienduPre Good to see another familiar name. For now I’m using the pyhs3/homeseer component combination to connect HA to HS z-wave. I installed the mosquitto broker last night but my preliminary tests have failed.
All I get back from the broker when I try to subscribe to a topic is:
Connection Refused: not authorised.
Same thing when I try to publish. The error in the HA log is:
1587050781: New connection from 172.29.1.250 on port 1883.
1587050781: Socket error on client <unknown>, disconnecting.
Ahh great thanks for the explanation. Disabling events in HS has proved to be a good reference. Like it or not, the way they lay out in plain english makes for a great place to start logic for HA events. I saw you had added some sensor types, that’s great as from my limited experience that was about the only thing holding back some of my integrations. Finally have MQTT working as a substitute, but found it to cause some CPU hogging on occasion and not convinced it’s a good long term solution yet.
I had the same problem at first with the socket errors. Are you running Mosquitto as a HA component or standalone? I don’t remember doing anything specific to fix the socket error, other than I think it was a matter of getting the right chain of credentials between the broker and mcsMQTT. (it was late and I had been going in circles with it for hours, see previous post)
Did a fresh install of Mosquitto as HA component. I set up a HA user for the broker, and installed the MQTT integration with those credentials. Did set anonymous to true but not sure if that matters at this pooint. Installed mcsMQTT on HS3, General->broker operations I set the IP of the HA server and used the same user/password set up previously. Ultimately I think that was it that made it function.
Might start working on my final HS plugin soon, one to easily export HS devices to MQTT with the auto discovery protocol.
Guess some ppl over here could use it
CPU on the HS side? If so there’s a flag/option in mcsMQTT to turn off extended processing or something of that nature. It prevents the plugin from trying to do extra message processing. Speeds up MQTT from HS a lot.
Yes, when I first installed and was trying to get it working I had all the logging enabled. Pegged the CPU. Turned most of it off and seemed to be OK, then it happened again. Went back and checked out his performance info in the PDF and turned everything off I could, been alright since but i’m wary now.
As I am not a programmer or computer science guy, I am hoping someone can share how I would use the Homeseer SEL. How would I “Re-install” Linus on the SEL How would I reset the USB stick? Again, sorry for the NOOB questions.
I threw the baby out with the bathwater when I moved from HS3 to HA. I had been using a Z-NET (primary) and a Z-Stick+ (secondary). When migrated to HA I got a new Zooz ZST10 S2 USB Z-Wave+ controller to use with a new RPi4. Feeling a bit uneasy about having everything dependent upon an sdcard, I moved by config over to an ODROID N2. Just to give those who are hesitant an idea, I have the following on my Z-Wave network, under HA, and it’s all working as expected - except for one motion detector that I think went flaky on me.
One (1) Aeon Labs MultiSensor Gen5
One (1) Aeon Labs Recessed Door Sensor ZW089 ← not recommended
Two (2) Aeon Labs Smart Switch 6 ZW096
One (1) Aeon Labs Water Sensor 6
One (1) Dome Mouse Trap DMMZ1
Two (2) Ecolink DWZWAVE2.5 magnetic window/door sensors
Two (2) Ecolink PIRZWAVE2.5 motion sensors
Two (2) Ecolink TILT-ZWAVE2.5 tilt sensors
Four (4) Enerwave ZW15RM-PLUS metered outlets
One (1) Fibaro FGFS-101 ZW5 temperature/water leak sensor
Ten (10) Homeseer DS100+ magnetic window/door sensors
Eight (8) Homeseer LS100+ temperature/water leak sensors
Four (4) Homeseer MS100+ motion sensors (these all seem flaky, one I took out of service)
One (1) Homeseer WD100+ wall dimmer
One (1) Homeseer WD200+ wall dimmer
Two (2) Homeseer WS100+ wall switches
Five (5) Homeseer HSM200 multisensors (these are z-wave+, but not the current gen product)
One (1) Inovelli NZW97 outdoor dual metered outlet
One (1) Jasco 14287 fan controller
Five (5) Jasco 14288 duplex outlet
Four (4) Jasco 26931 occupancy sensor switches
Nine (9) Nortek LB60z-1 LED light bulbs
Two (2) Zooz Power Switch ZEN15 metered switches
There’s a few oddities here and there. The Jasco occupancy switches seem to make two root nodes, even though there is just a single node ID per device. The Inovelli, in addition to the primary node, make two additional nodes, one for each outlet. The controllable switch in the primary node will turn on/off both outlets together. The all work however. My primary source of pain right now seems to be the Homeseer motion sensors. I can’t tell really if it’s poor quality on the side of the sensor or if the sensor is somehow too advanced for the version of OZW in HA. Either way I really need to find a suitable replacement that can also be powered by micro USB.
If anybody has any questions about my setup, fire away. I’ll do the best I can to give an answer. But it’s still a relatively new setup and I’m far far from being any sort of expert or authority on Z-Wave.
Hey @RienduPre! That is a familiar name. I have had some of your plugins and can recall you are one of the few dutch people who is (where) using Homeseer. I think had some one on one mail contact back in the day or through domoticaforum. Feel free to reach out if you are interested or need a hand. Im relatively new, but have conquered some HA beasts the last few months.
