Lowe's Iris Version 1 or 2 Hub in Home Assistant

Feature Requests
12

Sadly, I was unable to get Iris Gen-1 devices to communicate with the HUSBZB.
Folks are reporting success with the Gen-2 devices, but that defeats the purpose for my purchase, as it goes …

Of note, I did find this project.

The author is interested in finding people who would be interested in helping merge the work into hass. It is based on the XBee controller, which is already supported in hass. Ideally, if we could round up some smart folks to get the project forked to work with the HUSBZB then we would have a solution.

I’ll mention @russell here in hopes he will see this and join the cause! :slight_smile:

13

If they’re not ZHA compliant, they’re not in my immediate plans to support. That said, I do plan on having some way of supporting “quirks” – something along the lines of how the smartthings device handlers work.

Any idea how I can get my hands on some of the Iris gen 1 devices (for a reasonable price)?

14

Hello All,
Thank you @automateit for the mention and the invitation to this forum.

I am the author of the PyAlertMe library (https://github.com/jamesleesaunders/PyAlertMe), the aspiration for this project is to create a set of Python classes which can be used to emulate the Iris (AlertMe) hub or devices using a Raspberry Pi connected to an XBee module. The intention for this is to help those who have a collection of Gen 1 Iris sensors, plugs etc collecting dust due to the Gen 1 Iris platform being switched off. Firing up a Pi+XBee+PyAlertMe you have a simple replacement hub up and working in minutes.

Rather than use the HA Zigbee standard, AlertMe opted to develop their own Zigbee profile. Alter much Zigbee sniffing and reverse engineering, with the help of Desert Home (http://www.desert-home.com/2014/02/raspberry-pi-and-lowes-iris-smart-switch.html) I have managed to work out most of the way the AlertMe Zigbee profile works.

I am still tinkering with the PyAlertMe library (it is still not fully polished) and was not really intending to publicise it just yet, but when @automateit contacted me suggesting there may be people interested in using and contributing to this project I jumped at the offer.

I am in the UK and so have developed this using branded AlertMe Hub, Sensors and Plugs but I am led to believe that Iris is pretty much AlertMe devices re-badged so should work exactly the same (I would be interested to hear otherwise). Here in the UK the AlertMe platform is still alive (just!) so the hubs still work (but it is rapidly being superseded by younger cousin ‘Hive’ from British Gas the new owners of AlertMe (which incidentally I believe has just re-launched in the US)). Hive is exactly the same hardware so I am hoping that one day the PyAlertMe library may also work with Hive.

I confess, I am really not a fully fledged Python coder (this is my first Python project) so the quality of the code may not be great and I may have some weird ways of implementing parts but it works! I also have a little way to go with documenting this library (no surprises there!).

So, if there is anyone on here who would be willing to help me on this project I would be extremely happy.

I think (hope) the way I have developed PyAlertMe means it could in the future be integrated with Home Assistant also (again, for this, I would appreciate any guidance on how to create a good interface with the PyAlertMe classes).

As well as simulating a Iris Hub you can also use the PyAlertMe class to simulate a Iris device also, for example you can also emulate a Iris SmartPlug or Sensor which will connect to a hub. The use of this is that you could create your own custom sensors which the Iris hub will believe are ‘real’ sensors.

Thanks again, I hope I can be of use contributing to Home Assistant.

Jim

15

Hi @russell
I have a good collection of various AlertMe (Iris) devices I am willing to send a couple of spares across the pond if any use to you to play with? (Although to be honest it may be easier for you to source them locally on ebay).
Jim

16

Anyone interested?

17

If you’re in the US I can prob send you devices …
I have a smart outlet, one motion and one contact sensor that i’m willing to donate to “the cause” and also have a spare V2 hub and can prob get a V1 hub too…

18

Good to see someone else has run across the work of Desert Home. I might be able to try to help if interested. I have to see what Gen1 devices I still have. I have a few xBee S2B’s, and at least one or two Iris Gen 1, and at least two Iris Gen 2 hubs.

19

Hi @jonathanweinberg Excellent! Thank you, I am very much interested in your help! Once you have dug out the bits and had a snoop around my code give me a shout with any ideas, comments etc. Please feel free to raise any pull requests you see fit I am very much open up to any ideas on how to make this library useful.

Like I say, this is my first python library project so the code may not be brilliant, but I do hope I have evolved the great work of desert home further towards a more reusable library.

I guess I had better polish off the readme with a little more info to help you.

20

I have polished off some more of the PyAlertMe code. Possibly of most interest to some of you may be the pyalertme/zigbee.py file in which I have detailed all the AlertMe (Iris) zigbee profile frames.

@jonathanweinberg If you do get a chance to peek, let me know if you need me to document anything in more detail.

@russell I don’t know if there is anything of use in here to intergrate with Bellows? BTW the offer still stands if you want me to post you a couple of Iris sensors (in exchange for any guidance you can give me about PyAlertMe.

If not directly of use to Bellows or Home Assistant I hope there may be some interesting code should people want to steal it and integrate into other code.

All the best,
Jim

21

So I have some great news about the Iris Hub 2.0. I found out how to get serial output from the hub.

What you need Arduino Uno and some jumpers

1.Jump reset to ground on the Uno
2.Ground pin 1 on the J1 (pin 1 is the box contact)
3.J1 Pin 4 to Uno Pin 0
4.J1 Pin 5 to Uno Pin 1
5.Plug in the Arduino to your computer and I use Putty on speed 115200
6.Plug in the hub and you will get this.

BlockquoteU-Boot SPL 2013.10 (Jul 27 2015 - 13:27:27)
reading args
spl: error reading image args, err - -1
reading u-boot.img
reading u-boot.img
omap-sham 53100000.sham: initialization failed.
omap_voltage_late_init: Voltage driver support not added
INIT: version 2.88 booting
Starting udev
Sun Oct 15 05:43:06 UTC 2017
Setting up needed gpios…
Done with gpio setup
Setup buzzer pwm
Done with pwm setup
mfg: clean, 23/4096 files, 678/16368 blocks
Manufacturing partition is clean
phy[lan8710]: Disabling Auto-MDIX support
libphy: PHY 4a101000.mdio:01 not found
net eth0: phy 4a101000.mdio:01 not found on slave 1
Flash size: 1920991232
data: clean, 153/88176 files, 33672/352252 blocks
Data partition is clean
Current Timestamp: 20171015054306
kernel.panic = 3
kernel.panic_on_oops = 1
Starting ifplugd: eth0
Setting up 4G dongle support…
Setting up Hub Agent…
INIT: Entering runlevel: 5
Configuring network interfaces… done.
Initializing Dropbear SSH server: dropbear.
Starting syslogd/klogd: done
Starting crond: OK
Poky (Yocto Project Reference Distro) 2.1.2 LWL-3848 /dev/ttyO0
LWL-3848 login: irisagentd[566]: No agent debug configuration is present.
irisagentd[566]: Starting hub agent…
Login:

I have not gotta passed the password yet but it is a start.

22

@jamesleesaunders I know there has been a lot of interest in the Hass community to get Iris v1 devices working properly.
The v1 devices use the AlertMe protocol (which you have so graciously created a py wrapper for) and the v2 devices use ZHA protocol.

The v1 devices are much cheaper because they are “obsolete”.

My question to you is, what zigbee radio are you using to speak to the devices?
Will any serial zigbee radio work (e.g. HUSBZB-1)?

Have you put any thought into turning your code into a Hass component to sit alongside the existing Zigbee component (designed to let DIY XBee devices to talk to HA) or the ZHA component (designed to let ZHA/Iris v2 devices talk to HA) ?

23

Ah - this is promising! I’ll see if I can at least get to the same point on my spare one.

24

Just letting everyone know that I bought the Iris V2 from Lowes and tested it with HUSBZB-1 on Hassio v 0.60.0.

Zigbee: Works as expected. I can control the switch using Home Assistant. It shows up as “CentraLite 3210-L” switch.

Z-wave Repeater: It paired without any issues and appears to be repeating as expected.

In my opinion this is the best combo device for Zwave and Zigbee repeating. But it is clunky.

1 Like
25

I’d be willing to work on the V1 hub if anyone has one to send/sell me or point me to where I can get one.

26

If you’re in the USA I can probably get you a V1 hub if you are willing to contribute.

27

I think the Unofficial Iris Web Portal was broken by Iris during an update some time ago. It had shared an authentication cookie that no longer works.

Update: I tried it a little while ago and it seems to be working again. https://proxy.iriswebportal.com/ is the current URL.

28

When you paired as zwave did it show as a normal zwave device?

Mine show as

Unknown: id=0246 Unknown: type=0001, id=0001 (Node:124 Complete)

How can I tell if they are actually repeating zwave

29

I’ve read about 2 years worth of comments and attempts - does anyone actually made Iris Hub v2 working with HA?
Is my best bet to switch to a different Z provider like HUSBZB or Wink ?
thanks

1 Like
30

I dont know about the Iris Hub, but I do know about the HUSBZB being used to control Iris Zigbee devices like open close, motion, and switches. The HUSBZB works well for me with the iris branded products and it also works well for zwave. I would highly recommend it. Two controllers cheaper than many zwave controllers

31

New update. I can now get the SSH key from the hub. DOING THIS WILL WIPE THE HUB!

If you are connected to the hub with a arduino and hold in the reset and wait for 2 beeps you will see it make a SSH key I am trying to get the login to work but I have not had any luck.