My favorite fruit company no more.

Speaking of old Macs. Last night my 2006 Mini (with upgraded proc, ram, hdd, bios) finally died. It has ran pretty much 24/7 for the 6 years I've had it. I moved Indigo over to a 2012 Mini that I use as a desktop, and have another 2012 on standby that has been my test rig. Luckily there was minimal downtime as I had proper backups of Indigo and such. It did get me thinking about redundancy though, so I may be taking these two 2012 minis and devising some sort of hot/warm setup for Indigo in case this happens when I'm out of town. The sucky thing will be the single point of failure with the Insteon PLM, unless I can get really hacky(creative) there. At least I'll have a new home for I7 when it's ready!


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I have worried about what happens when my Mac Mini dies and Indigo isn't available. For my new media cabinet, one of the items I'm installing is a watchdog timer circuit on the Mac Mini to reboot the computer if it hangs... I hope this will be used rarely if ever.

roussell wrote:

It did get me thinking about redundancy though, so I may be taking these two 2012 minis and devising some sort of hot/warm setup for Indigo in case this happens when I'm out of town. The sucky thing will be the single point of failure with the Insteon PLM, unless I can get really hacky(creative) there.

More to your input about having a 'single point of failure' regarding the PLM I've been thinking along those exact same lines. I've decided that a good way to see what happens is to turn off the Mac Mini and then live 2 or 3 days without the mini booted up.... Put the home into "Survival Mode." I want to see how handicapped my house becomes with only insteon and z-wave devices installed with nothing but a few links between them to keep things going.

I believe the home should be able to run without a Mac Mini if worst comes to worse... I just want to see what, if any of Indigo's oversight functions, I simply can't live without... because for some of it, maybe there's an easy fix. Taking the Mac Mini Indigo Automation Server off line for a few days might reveal a few other surprises that need attention.

I lost another Mini last night, spontaneously and without warning. This one just won't power up at all... Very odd, and at this rate, I won't have anything left to run I7 by the time it is released!!

More to your input about having a 'single point of failure' regarding the PLM I've been thinking along those exact same lines. I've decided that a good way to see what happens is to turn off the Mac Mini and then live 2 or 3 days without the mini booted up.... Put the home into "Survival Mode." I want to see how handicapped my house becomes with only insteon and z-wave devices installed with nothing but a few links between them to keep things going.

I believe the home should be able to run without a Mac Mini if worst comes to worse... I just want to see what, if any of Indigo's oversight functions, I simply can't live without... because for some of it, maybe there's an easy fix. Taking the Mac Mini Indigo Automation Server off line for a few days might reveal a few other surprises that need attention.

We run a lot of schedules and triggers (good thing considering my abysmal graphics and control page skills) so our home is quite crippled without automation. The Indigo server is (was) also the main repository for roughly 35,000 audio tracks for Sonos and Plex-delivered movies & other recordings. It is (was) also the local repository for about 30 years of family photos, although those are backed up in multiple locations.

My current thinking is along the line of dual automation servers, in a hot/cold configuration such that the cold one is offline until some watchdog mechanism determines that the primary server is unavailable an not recoverable by reboot. At that point, the watchdog would start Indigo on the secondary server. for syncing between the two, I'm thinking of some type of shared storage over the network, either AFP/CIFS or block storage through iSCSI. I may even replicate the storage server using gluster or something similar, or I might just have a central repository that hold the latest copy of the indigo DB and external scripts/plugins and such that is copied to/from the central storage system on Indigo startup/shutdown with some scripts.

I'm also thinking more about the architecture of the system as a whole, perhaps moving command/control away from Indigo and to the "hub" devices responsible for each part of the automation. As and example, since I use Insteon for lighting that would mean something like an ISY for Insteon control, Home sensor information would be handled by the DSC alarm system, perhaps move HVAC to Nests, etc. That ensures that the failure of a single component or system does not impact automation as a whole. Along those same lines, I would most likely move the touchscreen functionality to another external system as well, whether it be standalone HTML, or an app such as Imperihome, Command Fusion, Roomie, SimpleHome, etc. The main reason we don't use Indigo Control Pages now is that I need more controls for A/V, a separate interface system would more readily allow for that.

In this scenario, Indigo is more of an "Orchestration Engine" and "Complex Event Processor", still serving as the "brain", but having a distributed (rather than central) nervous system. This will place more of a reliance on communication such JSON, MQTT, etc. to make systems communicate with each other. Indigo will need plugins (a revival of the defunct ISY plugin, usage of the existing MQTT plugin, etc.), but it will only concern itself with properly sequencing events and actions. The touchscreen system, Alexa, Siri, etc. would speak directly to the sub-system to be controlled. "Alexa, play Christmas music in the kitchen", will speak directly to the kitchen Sonos and not depend on the Orchestration Engine (Indigo) for mediation. Indigo might have a rule to dim the Kitchen lights when Christmas music is played, listening to events that fire and responding to the appropriate subsystem accordingly. Likewise, if we wish to override the dimming rule and have the lights at full bright - a light switch press, or a touchscreen action will interface directly with the lighting system, while updating Indigo appropriately of current state.

This approach isn't set in stone, and there are many variables and what-ifs to consider. It's definitely a big-corporate-IT-shop design tact (but hey, that's my field), and it may not directly translate to home automation, but after two hardware failures in less than a month, I definitely see benefits to a redundant, distributed approach.

Terry

This approach isn't set in stone, and there are many variables and what-ifs to consider. It's definitely a big-corporate-IT-shop design tact (but hey, that's my field), and it may not directly translate to home automation, but after two hardware failures in less than a month, I definitely see benefits to a redundant, distributed approach.

Seems to me that your proposed approach will be a downgrade in two areas -- first of course that you lose a lot of Indigo's power and flexibility in regards to direct control and visibility of devices (of course, that varies to a degree by hub used). But more towards your reliability, you are reducing the single-point-of-failure but also introducing many more points of partial failure, especially where some of these hubs aren't known to have great reliability on their own. Obviously just differing architectures there, but I don't really trust those cheap, made-by-the-lowest-bidder hubs (again, save a few exceptions).

My preferred solution, one which I haven't really implemented due to not having time and money, is going to be to keep the mini with a good time machine backup - preferably not a directly connected solution (NAS or alternate computer) along with a spare mini and/or VM lying around. Should the main computer fail, it is a fairly simple process to restore the last time machine backup (or the whole machine or just Indigo directories) and bring it back up. Mind you in this case it is a manual process but this doesn't happen often, your one case of losing two in a row presumably being a fluke. Plus, rumor has it you have plenty of processing to spare for a backup VM waiting on a failure...

My thoughts about the state of the home without Indigo are simply due to the knowledge that I'm mortal and won't always be around to keep it going. Therefore the house has to operate in "common sense" mode long after I die, the computer dies, and Indigo runs for the last time. Some of the obvious things which need connections include....

1. Switches to switches to loads and making sure all this is linked without Indigo.
2. Scene buttons need to work on KPL's... and not because it gets turned on by Indigo alone.
3. Leak sensors which currently are 100% Indigo monitored should be linked to some light... some alarm... someTHING which will indicate that a leak has occurred. (I currently have 34 leak sensors ... everywhere it could happen).
4. Other things as discovered....

I already know that stuff like my home's "Auto-Lights" won't work properly... these REQUIRE Indigo. Currently, if a motion sensor picks up activity in a room (and if the "AutoLight" variable for that room is "true") then a trigger sets the room light to 98% intensity (some less, but never 100%) and then it fires off an Indigo Timer (30sec to 3 min depending). When the timer times out, IF AND ONLY IF the brightness of that light is still 98%, then Turn off the light. What this allows me to do is to press the switch on the wall to keep the light on until I turn it off (because it will go to 100%) but if I do nothing, the light "Auto"matically turns off. This won't work without indigo.

Also timed schedules etc... without an insteon hub that is, won't work without indigo.

I do have one idea which might cure some of the schedule issues... have an Insteon hub powered down but otherwise connected to the home power.... if Indigo goes away, then a watchdog tries to restart indigo... say 3 times. If that fails up to 3 times, then start the hub. The hub then would operate outdoor lighting schedules etc..

There is so much to think about in this subject.

The whole point is, make the home marketable just in-case Indigo and computer control goes away.... I don't want my legacy to be that my wife had to hire an electrician to sell the home after I'm gone.

(I currently have 34 leak sensors ... everywhere it could happen). .

34?!! wow

34? Pft.. I have 35! Helps protect my house against an invasion from the welsh.


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10 sinks, 6 toilets, washing machines, drains, main water valves, 3 ice-makers in fridges, water heater, main plumbing manifold, RV parked next to home, dish washers.... it adds up.

Do you live in a hotel?

Kinda. Kids keep coming back can't get rid of them

Hehe ah but do they pay? :p


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Good point. Maybe the hotel thing would work better.