A fews days in on home automation - thoughts and questions

Hi All,

As the subject notes, I am only a few days in on home automation in general and with Indigo. I have a couple of Z-wave devices with my ADT Pulse setup, but haven't done anything with it since install so I'm not counting that a HA experience. I wanted to really dive in on home automation over the holiday break. In preparation, I spent countless hours reading forums trying to decide on a platform. It seemed like each system had tradeoffs between cost, reliability, ease of use, Alexa support, etc.. While I'm still not completely sold, I decided to start my journey with, and have Indigo (trial license) deployed with some pretty good success. I also have an unopened SmartThings hub sitting on my desk as a backup plan.

I was able to exclude my existing GE dimmer switches and lamp module from Pulse, and include it on my Indigo network. I also installed a GE fan control switch and the alexa-hue bridge without any issue. I setup a couple schedules, and even added virtual devices for Alexa to trigger commands on my Roku to pause/play movies via Plex (just a simple Python script sending an HTTP POST - far easier than talking to the Plex API). Next I setup homebridge-indigo so I could also have Siri control those same devices. And lastly I setup echo-sonos for Alexa control of my whole house Sonos setup, but this is outside of Indigo (although sending commands to node base sonos-http-api from Indigo is very easy). All in all, things are working pretty well and Indigo was relatively painless to jump into and get immediate results.

Now on to some questions:
My GE Fan Control (12730) shows up in Indigo as Dimmable Power Switch. I am able to control the 3 fan speeds by moving the 'brightness' between 1-33, 34-65, and 66-100, in Indigo as well as Alexa. However this is a bit awkward. Is this intentional, or is the device type mis-detected? If intentional, is there any way use the UI elements for FanLinc with this Z-Wave device? I realize that the emulated Hue bridge only supports lights, and so the brightness setting will be necessary for control via Alexa. However it would be nice to overlay proper fan graphics which translate to static brightness settings to the underlying device. Basically is it possible to wrap SpeedControlDevice UI around around a DimmerDevice?

I see that HeatIt is an officially support Z-Wave device in Indigo 7. Does anyone know where this can be purchased in the US? Does the device support fahrenheit on the display and/or in Indigo? Can Indigo change the set point? I'm assuming I'd be able to link HeatIt to a virtual on/off device for control by Alexa?

I'm also looking to make my garage doors smart. What devices are support by Indigo? Looks like Aeotec ZW062 is partially supported, Linear GD00Z-4 is functional, and Garageio is unsupported. Is this correct? Are there other choices? Do any of them support the open/close sensor such that Indigo is aware of state? I'm looking to solve the classic use case of checking to see if I left my garage door open, and if so close it. Ideally an Indigo supported device would be able to support a 3 garage doors without purchasing 3 separate units (like Garagio).

Are there any current efforts for expanding Alexa support for Indigo so we can get more advanced capabilities? It would be cool idea to embed Flask-Ask into a server plugin and release this a generalized Alexa framework. It certainly wouldn't be turn-key, but would make it very straight forward for anyone to tweak their intents/utterances, and then create a corresponding function in the plugin. The general idea is that you'd send all commands to an external HTTPS resource (like the Reflector endpoint or ngrok) instead of using Lambda.

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

My GE Fan Control (12730) shows up in Indigo as Dimmable Power Switch. I am able to control the 3 fan speeds by moving the 'brightness' between 1-33, 34-65, and 66-100, in Indigo as well as Alexa. However this is a bit awkward. Is this intentional, or is the device type mis-detected? If intentional, is there any way use the UI elements for FanLinc with this Z-Wave device? I realize that the emulated Hue bridge only supports lights, and so the brightness setting will be necessary for control via Alexa. However it would be nice to overlay proper fan graphics which translate to static brightness settings to the underlying device. Basically is it possible to wrap SpeedControlDevice UI around around a DimmerDevice?

There's already been one request for me to add Fan Control as a device type for my Masquerade plugin (viewtopic.php?f=216&t=17402). I'll be looking at that soon.

to trigger commands on my Roku to pause/play movies via Plex (just a simple Python script sending an HTTP POST - far easier than talking to the Plex API).

For what it is worth, there are Roku and Plex plugins that can give you full control over both devices sans scripting if you so desire.

Are there any current efforts for expanding Alexa support for Indigo so we can get more advanced capabilities?

Few plans are every really announced ahead of time, but they have said that better Alexa integration is on the radar for investigation. It isn't all that simple to properly do it, but they know the interest within the community for it.

Adam

I'm also looking to make my garage doors smart. What devices are support by Indigo? Looks like Aeotec ZW062 is partially supported, Linear GD00Z-4 is functional, and Garageio is unsupported. Is this correct?

I can only speak to the GD00Z. Yes, it is functional. It does report garage door state. I have a second check on the state of the door because I have a camera inside the garage which I also check if the door is being shown as open when I think it should be closed. Before closing it I check the camera just to verify it really is open.

No real reason for my caution. Its worked correctly now since I installed it a few weeks ago. But the camera is there for security purposes anyway so I might as well leverage it for this as well.

There's already been one request for me to add Fan Control as a device type for my Masquerade plugin (viewtopic.php?f=216&t=17402). I'll be looking at that soon.

That would be great, thanks! I see that this in fact an issue with the GE device presentation based on this thread:
https://community.home-assistant.io/t/z-wave-fan-control/4143

Masquerading would certainly solve the issue.

The latest version (posted this weekend) has support for Speed Control masquerading.

For what it is worth, there are Roku and Plex plugins that can give you full control over both devices sans scripting if you so desire.

Yeah, I briefly played with those projects. I couldn't get the Roku plugin to discover my streaming sticks. And the Plex plugin didn't allow actions to be taken. My approach was trivial:

Code: Select all

import requests
requests.post('http://192.168.1.157:8060/keypress/play', data = {})

Few plans are every really announced ahead of time, but they have said that better Alexa integration is on the radar for investigation. It isn't all that simple to properly do it, but they know the interest within the community for it.

Looking at Home Assistant, they appear to have taken a similar approach. There is the mainstream solution using hue hub emulation, and then there is the advanced DIY approach using a custom skill. I was suggesting Flask-Ask because it handles most of the heavy lifting. Being new to Indigo, I'm (yet) skilled enough to write the glue code to wire this into a plugin.

Yeah, I briefly played with those projects. I couldn't get the Roku plugin to discover my streaming sticks. And the Plex plugin didn't allow actions to be taken. My approach was trivial:

The Plex plugin does allow actions to be taken on clients - you just have to define a client (Indigo) device... then actions are executed against that client, not the Plex Server Indigo device. It has the added benefit of being able to track status and other properties. I only mention it because I know a bunch of people here like to trigger off various scenarios (e.g. lower lights when playing begins)