What did you do with Vera today?

Community Playground General Discussions
921

I also play with asterisk,
I created a call-center-style voice menu, to control things like arm/disarm lock/unlock and some essential lights.

It asks for password if i call from outside
Pretty neat :slight_smile:
But hardly used

922

… so now I’m using Microsoft Translate … at least until I install OSX TTS on an unused Mac mini…[/quote]

May I ask if you know of an OSX TTS server that is compatible with Mac OS 10.11 ? I have not been able to get Wolf Paulus' Journal, thoughts and ideas on technology to work reliably with high quality voices since Mac OS 10.10

Thanks !

923

Unfortunately, I don’t know of any. I also had trouble getting TTS server to run on MacOS > 10.8. Thankfully, my mac mini is still running 10.7 so I’m hopeful that it will work.

924

To follow up on this, the mac mini (ebay $114) works great for TTS. I installed infovox and purchased a high quality voice from Acapela (the 22k Tracy voice was about $15). Runs very smooth on Wolf’s TTS Server and the voice quality is much better than Google or MS on the whole house speakers.

Not bad for about $120 in parts and some time.

925

Actually, that’s exactly the reason I use BeagleBone Black instead of RPi… has all the image installed and it’s just a couple of one-liners to add Lua and a couple of necessary modules.

Still a work in progress, but it seems that GCal3 and IosPush and Sonos are working OK. Perhaps come back to it when it’s a bit more mature, if you’re anxious about the effort involved at the moment.[/quote]

This is why I am excited about Docker coming to the Synology NAS. It makes it so that applications can be pre-packaged and folks like me with limited linux knowledge can just download and install an application. A few days ago I loaded airedale’s Docker container of the Amazon Echo Hub, and have Alexa controlling my lights. No new server and limited linux knowledge needed (just enough to know how to get to command line and issue run command)…

926

I installed the latest beta firmware (isnt’ all the UI7 firmware a beta? ;D) and it seems to have solved some issues I’ve been having with the monoprice door/window sensors. So now I’ve been able to install them on my garage doors and provide their status to my wall tablets and scenes. In particular, my night-scene has been updated to make sure the garage doors are closed.

Also, not really related to the veralite, I was able blow out my sprinklers somewhat automatically with Opensprinkler. I have a program that runs each zone for one minute, then waits 3 minutes (allowing the air compressor to build up pressure again), then it runs the next zone, etc… and it goes through everything twice. So all i had to do was shut off the water, connect my air compressor, and run the program and now everything’s ready for winter.

927

Mean while in Southern California I packed up my Speedo’s and got out my winter SHORTS… ;D Hitting low 80’s this week.

928

And here in Florida the top is down on my convertible while I cruised to work. Low to mid 80’s here as well. :smiley:

929

I’m REALLY hoping we get below 80 this week. I’m counting on having Thanksgiving dinner outside, and the weather hasn’t been cooperating. It’s tough to load up on turkey & stuffing when it’s 90 outside.

I added some switches to the last room in the house with no Z-wave. Feels good. I have a couple of outdoor lights to take care of, and then every switch in the house will be automated.

One of the switches I added was the first Vizia RF+ I’ve used that doesn’t support instant status. I saved a couple (literally, a couple) bucks and I really don’t need instant status there.

930

I setup my fake Hue Bridge to bridge my Harmony Hub to Vera. I then used the same bridge to link my Echo. I am having too much fun with Alexa right now controlling my entertainment center and turning lights/fans on and off by voice. The Echo is excellent at voice recognition and fast. I just ordered a second Echo for upstairs yesterday.

931

I just did this today! Have you figured out a way to set the sleep timer on your TV via the Echo/Harmony hub?

932

Details? How? Configuring?

933

Details? How? Configuring?[/quote]

Look at the thread about echo bridge. Had my bridge running for months and initially had the echo switch the Harmony through the Vera pluggin. The new bridge is pretty nifty…

934

Details? How? Configuring?[/quote]

http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,31920.0

It’s pretty simple, actually. Run the Java app on a Windows machine (or Rpi if you wish) and it emulates a Hue bridge. Use the web interface to configure what devices you wish to control. The Echo and the Harmony app will see the Hue bridge automatically. It’s pretty friggin awesome. “Alexa, turn on the living room fan.” “Okay.”

;D

935

Thanks, I’ll dig into it :smile:

936

Well I didn’t do it today, but I did reflect on it today so maybe that will count. My reflection had to do with the dependability increase of my vera lite since I added code to reboot the vera lite every night. It must clean up a lot of junk that builds up.

937

I increased the reliability of my UI5 system … occasionally it would hang and I would have to reboot it.
It turned out something would go wrong and the Virtual Memory for the LuaUPnP program would just about double.
At the same time, probably because of lack of memory access to the USB drive would stop. It still showed mounted … but no files could be seen.
I happened to be logged into one time when it failed … thats how I found out.

I added a monitor daemon that watch the Virtual memory of the LuaUPnP program … and would reboot if it was more than 25% higher than the nominal value.
I determined the nominal value by looking at the virtual memory after running for 1 hour.

The following was my /etc/Daemon

#!/bin/ash
while [ 1 ]
do 
  ps aux > /tmp/ps.log
  sz=$(grep /usr/bin/LuaUPnP /tmp/ps.log | awk '{print $3}' | sed 's/m//')
  if [ "$sz" -gt "130" ]; then
    date=$(date)
    echo $date Size is $sz >> /tmp/log/cmh/Daemon.logdata
    reboot
  fi
  sleep 5m
done

The following is my
/etc/init.d/daemon :

#!/bin/sh /etc/rc.common
# Copyright (C) 2006 OpenWrt.org 

START=101
start() {  
 /etc/Daemon &
}

I forget the command to install this as at boot time … you can goggle it (init.d and openWrt will probably get you close)

938

Thanks Richard,

My Edge UI7 box has a similar memory problem causing it to go weird. It will start showing these “cannot write user data” alerts. (just upgraded a Lite to UI7 so still seeing how that one goes).

Combined with sysmon I set a scene to reboot if the availble memory gets below 50K but it is not 100% reliable. I’ll see if your method would be.

Cheers Rene

939

Completed my doorbell sensor setup.

Ringing the door bell now causes Vera to a) send SMS/Pushover/SysLog alert; b) command the ImperiHome tablets to switch to the screen displaying the cameras that include the front entry area; c) command Blue Iris to begin a manual 30 second recording of the cameras that include the front entry area.

940

Running a network heal today while at work. Have a few non-responders, hoping this helps :slight_smile: