I’ve been iterating on a custom component and supporting python module for the Vantage Infusion whole-house lighting controller system. The python module that integrates with Vantage is up at github at:
There are still aspects of the code that reflect conventions I use and that aren’t documented well (or at all), but I mentioned this a while back and a couple people have asked about it, so I didn’t want to delay further in putting the still-rough system out there for others to try (and hopefully improve together).
I am an infusion owner and have been looking for a better (read: less expensive) and more up to date UI for whole home automation. Which brought me to Home Assistant.
While I am a tinkerer, have basic to moderate IT experience, I am by no means a programmer. I do however wish to learn a language and see this a good opportunity to do so. With proper direction and support I feel I could learn what is needed to make Home assistant work well in my environment.
I would love learn how to make this add on work with my system and perhaps work to help with development of it as well.
Just give it a try and report back… It sets up the same as any custom component (put the hass-vantage files in a vantage/ subdirectory of custom_components/ and add the vantage: section to your configuration.yaml). The component will auto-install the PyPi pyvantage module. Be sure to watch the Hass log for warning and messages as you restart and update the configuration.
Apparently a full-house Vantage setup makes lovelace go nuts. It gave me a nice UI with over 200 badges, and screen upon screen of lights. Also, lovelace putting all the lighting loads in a random order seems suboptimal (I hacked the server code to sort them, but I don’t think that “fix” would be accepted upstream).
I had to send one pull request your way to get it working (your code doesn’t handle the “no password set” case). Honestly, I should just set a password on my controller…
What kind of contributions would you like? I have some ideas on trying to better classify loads as lights/fans/outlets/etc. I’ve been studying the Vantage XML, and there doesn’t seem to be a bulletproof (a.k.a. non-heuristic) way of getting this classification of devices right, which disappoints me. Ah well…
Awesome, thanks Chris. I just merged – sorry for the delay… I must’ve silenced notifications from github long ago so I hadn’t seen the PR yet. And yes, you should add a password.
For device classification, Vantage itself changes the icons based on naming conventions (that AFAICT are not documented). E.g., if you call something a “Can light” the word “Can” triggers a different icon.
Unfortunately, I think the right way to do this is config-specified rules for triggering different classifications based on load_type, name, etc., maybe by writing an xpath expression that has to be true for the load to be put in that category. Right now, I use a separate script that generates the lovelace UI configuration automatically.
The big thing on my list is making the code follow the async programming model and then ideally getting it accepted into the HA core.
Loving this thread, have also followed this to hook my vantage system into home assistant. I inherited the Vantage system from the previous owner. One issue I’ve hit is that I’d need to change some configurations on the infusion controller but Vantage seem to limit their design centre software to dealers, who in turn charge utterly eyewatering amounts of money for the privilege of modifying a system I already own. Does anyone know where to get a copy of the design centre software? Thanks!
Greg and I purchased our Vantage systems from dealers who were willing to share the software with system owners so they can make their own tweaks to the system. Perhaps you can reach out to other dealers and find one who might be willing to share (perhaps in exchange for you hiring them to train you on the software or the like?).
I think Vantage adopts this model for two reasons: (a) to allow dealers to make more money, if they choose to do so; and (b) because the Design Center software doesn’t have bulletproof guardrails. It is quite possible to upload a config that fries things attached to your Vantage system, or damage the Vantage system itself (I once mistakenly blew an internal fuse…). The probably don’t want the liability of having it shared with folks they don’t “trust”.
I have worked with both Infusion and the previous generation of Vantage. They are extremely territorial when it comes to their software, tech support, and even repairs. Ever since they were bought by Legrand, they have gone downhill considerably IMO and they brought in their new sales people and purged a lot of decent dealers out of the blue who weren’t selling enough (there were never any stated quotas mind you). We were one such group and even though I was factory certified with not one but two systems (Most only know Infusion) and had a lot of customers who needed service (reprogramming, replacing damaged parts, servicing the master controller’s power supply), etc. I was immediately without notice cut off from their support site and lost access to their newer software.To say I am displeased and hurt by their treatment and in the position they left me with my current customers who depend on me is an understatement. If that’s how they treat certified programmers who are no longer a dealer, imagine how they treat the average joe.
As Colohan mentioned, the Vantage Infusion software is not for the faint of heart. It gives the programmer far more control over scenes, conditional logic, integration, etc. than any other lighting system on the planet. This is good, but it’s also super easy to mess something up. Back when I would take over an existing house, I had to be very careful not to make a change that could affect something else especially if things are integrated with other things. They are a small company (well at least that division) so they barely have enough support people to help their dealers who were trained in the thing so if the software was out there, you can imagine how much support they’d need. You could possibly damage the modules too if you pick the wrong load type and you could also get shocked if you get in the panels.
Also, there is a danger of using one version of the software and then a dealer coming and using a more up to date version of the software, and then you’re locked out. The newest version (Which I don’t even have) also password protects the database.
I still like Vantage and to be honest would love to be back as a dealer so I can help out my customers because there are not many dealers in our area and the existing ones are always trying to sell new stuff so they don’t end up like me, but I remember for years I was asking them when they were going to have a cloud solution or at least an app that wasn’t sluggish and outdated . I really don’t know which direction they’re going now but I’m worried about their future.
I moved into a house last year with a Vantage system. It wasn’t functioning correctly, and several lighting zones had no wall switches, but were just controlled by a 7 inch LCD screen. That screen began to fail, and for months I had lights in areas of my home I could not turn on, and others I could not turn off. I hired a local company who had only worked on 3 Vantage systems ever, and after they were done updating things, I was worse off than ever. I called Vantage directly, and they recommended a company 4 hours away from me. After paying them close to $30k to try and update my system, it is worse off than ever. I called Vantage back and their top management basically said, sorry, not our fault, we don’t control what our dealers do. At this point I’m basically wanting to have the entire system of 6 dimming modules, 50 switches and the main controller taken out of my house and replaced with conventional wiring and switches. Is this typical of this brand, to not be able to make a system work, and then offering no support after the fact?
Huge combination of issues. LCD screen was defective upon install. Main Infusion panel keeps locking up. App on phone and iPad doesn’t work remotely. Switches never got programmed correctly, so the light on the engraved switch I paid $250 for that says patio light works the kitchen cans, I have lights that are only controlled by the LCD screen and have no physical switches. These lights stay on 24/7 and I cannot turn them off. Lights that didn’t flicker with the old system flicker with the “updated system.” I could go on and on. They just finished the install four days ago. IInstaller is 4 hrs away and they want to troubleshoot with me over the phone and have me try to get it working. I know zero about this system, other than it has caused me a lot of headaches, and I’m worse off now than before. Vantage corporate wants me to hire yet a third installer to fix what the first two messed up.
Oh, and the guy who installed the original system is willing to work on it, and says he can get it all fixed, but Vantage removed him as a dealer without warning.
I installed HA in a mac using oracle virtual box(temporarily to check if vantage integration works).
Then using samba and opening config i created custom_components and added vantage folder into it.
And downloaded hass-vantage github file as a zip file and extracted and moved hass-vantage-master into vantage.
So… I didn’t write this integration, @gjbadros did.
But, first off, fair warning: this integration works great for Greg and myself. We’re both professional software developers. I’m not sure if there is a third user yet, you may be it. So getting it fully working with whatever your Vantage setup is may require some software debugging skills.
To start: have you learned how to look at the Home Assistant logs? They typically have a detailed log of everything the system is doing, and may give you much more information on what is going wrong. It looks like in your setup this log is contained in config/home-assistant.log . Presumably if you read that file you can find some more details about what is going wrong (amongst a bunch of irrelevant crud).
In my setup you need to move the contents of hass-vantage-master into vantage, not the folder itself. So I have a file called ~/.homeassistant/custom_components/vantage/README.md , which contains the documentation from GitHub for this component. ( Not~/.homeassistant/custom_components/vantage/hass-vantage-master/README.md )
Another thing to try out – open up a command line in your VirtualBox VM and see if you can connect to your Vantage using telnet [vantage IP] 3001 and see if the connection works. On mine I see this:
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> telnet 192.168.1.50 3001
Trying 192.168.1.50...
Connected to 192.168.1.50.
Escape character is '^]'.
help
R:ERROR:21 "Requires Login"
That way you know the network setup is working (independent of Home Assistant).
Hopefully that gets you started – once you are reading the log, hopefully any error messages you see might be able to guide you further. Have fun!
Hi guys, I inherited a Vantage system with our house which is providing multi room audio via a Vantage 850D-DA AMP.
Having read the thread and had a look through GitHub it doesn’t look like the custom component has support for Vantage Audio, is that correct or did I miss something?
I’m contemplating taking the system out as I’ve settled on home assistant with zwave to develop my smart home but I don’t currently have a plan for multi room audio to replace vantage. I’ve not got access to the designer so reconfiguring the Vantage system is not an option without bringing an installer in (who wanted to tell me how it was going to be rather than work with me on the solution I’m paying for!).
Before I throw the system out is there any hope of controlling the audio element of the vantage system from home assistant?
I’ve got a number of Sonos devices too but installing an amp for each room seems overkill/pointless given I rarely want more than a single audio source which the vantage does well enough using a single Sonos connect.
I don’t know anything about Vantage audio components… I suspect they’re just IR and RS-232 controller and could be supported with an unrelated separate component. I am confident I won’t be building support for vantage audio, but I’m not opposed to incorporating contributions to add that support to the custom component if they’re tightly integrated to the lighting controllers.
It only works on loads as mentioned in the README (but is an easy patch to make work elsewhere, though testing that it doesn’t break anything is harder).
Hey Guys, i have a problem.
I Cannot install the addon, i use HassOS, and so the commands that i need to run to install the addon are not working in HassOS… How we can continue? Pls Help
