About to Break Ground...

I was playing around with my Bond Bridge and decided to try to pair the remote from my garage doors. Wouldn't you know, one of them worked. The other has an older model motor that apparently doesn't use a supported frequency that the Bond Bridge supports.

After that I tried my gate controller remote, and the Bond Bridge was able to mimic the frequency code on that too.

So now the Bond Bridge can open and close a garage door and the gate. That's pretty cool.

I (honestly) just ran a POTS line in our house.

We dropped our AT&T landline in favor of VOIP and I tied that into our existing telephone wiring so our wired phones could use it. The only downside I've seen so far is that the cable modem isn't able to drive the few mechanical ringers (yes, we have phones that are that old).

I have POTS here, but that was run way back in the 90s when it was expected. Good ole CAT-3.

If I may ask, why VoIP? And what service?

I have POTS here, but that was run way back in the 90s when it was expected. Good ole CAT-3.

Our current house was built in '93.

If I may ask, why VoIP? And what service?

A few reasons, really.

1. We have a cable package that includes VOIP. We looked into dropping that bit to save some dough, but were told our bill would go *UP*--so we kept it.
2. It was a way to carry on our landline phone number (we're saving almost $100 a month since dropping our BASIC landline a few months back). The landline was crucial for my wife, who has worked from home for ages. She retired at the beginning of 2022.
3. We live in a rural area where the cell service is still a bit sketchy and the VOIP line gives us a back up. We do have cell over WiFi, but sometimes when our Internet is out, the VOIP is still working.

I won't run POTS in our new build--if we stick with VOIP, cordless phones will be plenty.

Suggestion for VOIP/POTS and Cell phones: There are various companies offering an answering machine that will work on VOIP/POTS and also connect your cell phones via bluetooth. With that you just scatter a few of the extensions around your home and when any line rings you can answer it on the extensions. I've got a Panasonic that's a few years old. I know there are other brands with similar features as well.

We toyed with those (combined POTS / cell) a while back, but didn't have a great experience with them. The tech may have improved since.

Yes, I had the same experience. But the Panasonic I have now is rock solid.

I've been doing more research on switches, and found these Meross switches to be interesting. There's also a Python 3 library that supports them, so an Indigo plugin would be trivial.

What I like about the Meross switches are the price and that they are natively HomeKit compatible. They aren't supporting Thread yet, however.

My perfect switch has the following features:

1. Can provide power to smart lights when put in the off position.
2. Supports Thread ideally (Z-Wave a close second).
3. Is HomeKit compatible.
4. Can interface into Indigo.

A tall order, perhaps.

I confirmed with my builder that I have two months before I have to pull the trigger on purchasing switches. so if a Thread-based switch hits the market by the end of July that has the features I want, then I can go with that.

If that doesn't happen, then I may just buy plain dumb switches and wait for the right switch to come along, then replace them later.

So today I spent some time getting an ESP32 interfacing with a relay board. I worked through a few frustrating hours of trying to determine why the ESP32 would work fine when plugged up to my MacBook Pro via USB, but when I used a power supply or stand-alone USB power brick, the thing wouldn't boot.

After searching for an answer, I ran across this post which worked for me.

Using HomeSpan and the MQTTPubSubClient libraries, I now have a garage door controller that can open and close the door, as well as sense whether it's opened or closed. This works just like the Insteon I/O Linc controllers I was using, except I have 4 relays on on board, and am currently using two for two garage doors.

The HomeSpan library gives me a built-in HomeKit bridge, so I don't need to use an Indigo-based plugin like HomeKitLink. With FlyingDiver's MQTT Shim and related plugins, I have an Indigo device that tracks the state of the door, and an action that publishes an MQTT message to toggle the door so it will close when open, or open when closed.

Here's a photo of my home-brew:

Time to look at thermostats for the HVAC system. The installer recommended Emerson Sensi-Touch. HomeKit compatible, which is nice, but I don't see a plugin in the Indigo store. Anyone know anything about them?

There looks to be mixed feelings about integrating them; they do have an API and given they work with HomeKit, Google, etc, it should be doable, but I can’t find any positive users of a Python or other HA platform showing signs of success.

There’s a couple of old references to a Python version that no longer exists, so I suspect Sensi have reworked/broken the api and broken that Python integration.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

I called Sensi and they told me their API is closed and they don't allow homeowner access to it.

Now I"m looking at Ecobee. I see there's a plugin in the Indigo Plugin Store.

Joe, I see you wrote this plug-in. Is it using an officially sanctioned API? And is a cloud-based connection required?

Yes and yes.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Totally sub’d here, and happy to see somebody else playing around with ESP 32 solutions. I really love using them; it’s an expensive, I learn while putting them together, and I always know exactly how they work (ish).

Any pictures or links you can share of your inventions!

I think you meant "inexpensive".