I have been using Homeseer for ~20 odd years but today a colleague of mine showed his HA UI on his phone and his web site on a PC. I have to say that they were really sleek when compared to my Homeseer UI. My HS pages look really old fashioned and outdated so I started to think if I could move to HA. My HS setup consists of:
-several programmable controllers (made by Ouman in FInland) with Modbus interface+Moxa Nport tcpip-RS485 converters
-Steca inverter with Modbus interface+Moxa Nport tcpip-RS485 converters
-DSC PC1864+IT100 interface
-ABB electricity meters with Modbus interface+Moxa Nport tcpip-RS485 converters
-Mitsubishi air heat pumps with Modbus interface+Moxa Nport tcpip-RS485 converters
-HS4.2 with few paid plugins
-HSTouch (on my Android phone)
I have done the Modbus communication using my own VBscripts. HS has been relatively stable since HS2 and I have improved the VBScripts over the years.
I have found a Modbus integration with HA so I wonder if this works with my controllers (Modbus - Home Assistant) and if it works do I need to write my own yaml-code. I will get a Raspberry PI 3 from my colleague for a loan so I could do testing with one extra controller. If this is not working then HA is a no-go but if I manage to get the communication working then I may go further with HA.
Another thing which annoys me in HS is that it is based on running events so e.g. polling of devices happens e.g. once a minute. Running of my VBScripts takes typically ~1s so there is no point in running an event/VBscrip once a second so I wonder how devices (e.g. my controllers) are polled in HA.
I have logged my energy data to text files since early HS days so it would be very useful to be able read this old data. I have developed my own asp-pages to plot the energy data using Chartdirector (www.avsofteng.com).
Iām also using MS Access database for logging some other data but not the energy data. I can also read data from this Access file and plot them using Chartdirector.
So, my basic concerns are:
-Modbus
-can you create your own asp/html pages e.g. for reading my old text files for consumption data
-can you import a MS Access data base
Any advice would be very helpful. Thanks in advance.
Remember that although Python-based HA s cross-platform, its primary development is focussed on Linux and UNIX-like systems.
I cannot answer on Modbus.
You should be able to create your own html pages Asp is specific to Microsoft IIS on Windows and likely would not work.
It may be possible to import a MS Access database, but I am not sure. The Energy parts of HA are very new and still adding features. I do expect your experienced input could help the developers improve it though. This question might be best asked on the Discord channel where the developers tend to communicate.
To do what? To integrate it in HA youāll need to follow the docs on how to configure the integration, which in this case is YAML.
Each integration tells you the IoT Class. For instance, modbus is Local Polling:
Offers direct communication with device. Polling the state means that an update might be noticed later.
That means it will periodically reach out to the device and query the state.
Not as such, no. HA isnāt a web server. You can use iframes to āembedā other web pages, or you could import the data to something like InfluxDB.
Itās not supported. Thatās not to say you couldnāt do it, but itād require a bit of work to read the docs covering the database schema and then import the data so that HA is happy to use it.
Welcome to Home Assistant! I used to run HomeSeer for years as well. The pace of development on Home Assistant is much quicker than HomeSeer. I was also using HSTouch (Designer) for my wall panels. At the time with HomeSeer I thought it was fantastic. Now on Home Assistant it is so much better. You donāt know what you are missing until you try I guess.
The only place I thought HomeSeer was superior was in Z-Wave. Their module knew so much more about the devices I have. That said everything is working in Home Assistant and it is reliable.
Is that still true with the newer zwavejs? I agree the older OZW integration was horrible. It drove me away ofer to openHAB for a couple of years. Now zwavejs here is more advanced than openHAB. That pains me a bit because I worked helping the Z-Wave developer at openHAB.
IMHO, The z-wave in HomeSeer is still superior to z-wave js as it hit more features on some devices. I think that Z-wave js is very close. HSM200 motion sensor is an example. You could control the color of the led with HS but not JS.
Back to the OP question. I converted to HA right when HS4 was coming out. Even prepaid for HS4 but when I saw how much you could do with HA it was a no brainer for me. Some things, I lost. I couldnāt build a wine cellar into the UI. I had to write a web page to get the feature back.
Learning YAML takes an investment of time. There is excellent support on the forum when you get stuck. The way I converted was to spin up a VM on my personal machine (had HS on server) and convert piece by piece until I got it to a positive WAF. Then I could move the VM to my server.
That almost sounds like the device definition in the database needs to be updated. I came across one of those issues earlier and got it resolved.
All Z-Wave software uses a database of supported devices because not all needed information is included in the NIF (Node Information Frame) sent by the device. zwavejs uses a community supported database. The library is fairly new but already more advanced than some other options. openHAB, for instance, still does not support S2 Security, Smart Start, or 700 Seri3es controllers.
Thanks guys. I had a quick look at the MB integration and it seems that it will be lot easier than I thought. As Iām using Moxa tcp/ip-rs485 conevrters it is not quite clear yet whether I need to use āserialā or ārtuovertcpā in the configuration.yaml file. Somewhere I need to define the com-port parameters (baud rate etc.). I also noticed that the polling rate is parameter which is a huge bonus when compared with HS. Of course I could run my HS events for polling all the MB registers Iām using e.g. every 2s but then my HS server would freeze. I also found energy management integration which is really awesome.
Once I get MB up and running I need to look into how I can save my energy data into a database.
I think Iām going to install VM and HA onto my desktop PC and start testing with one of my extra controller with MB. I know it will be very long project to setup HA to include all (or most) of the HS things because Iām not a programmer. The scripts I have made are just a result of long-standing testing by trial and error.
Edit: It seems that I donāt know yet how to include a picture into this post.
I have now made some progress. Installed VirtualBox and HA OS on my Win10 PC. So far so good but when I had a look at some of my scripts for changing setpoints of my thermostats I noticed that the Modbus communication is actually a 2-stage process. First I have to write an integer value to register 130 and only after that I can write a new setpoint e.g. to register 131. I have no ideas how this could be implemented in HA.
Another issue is Moxa tcpip-rs485 boxes so will they work in a virtual machine?
