I added my living room fireplace to Vera last week using a Remotec ZFM-80. Yesterday I added PLEG logic to shut off the fireplace if we forget and leave it on when we go to bed or leave the house…
Added some GE outlets from Lowes. Needed some modules anyways so this gave a cleaner look and permanently makes the network better. Install was a breeze, inclusion a little hiccopy.
Added all the Christmas Lights and light up decorations to PLEG. I hate walking around and turning off everything before bed, doing this alone is justification for a HA system in my book.
I found a cheap NIB Sonos Play:1 on Craigslist and brought it home just to try it out. The setup with Vera was a little painful, but I had it talking probably within an hour and I now have some TTS scenes set up with PLEG and a few Vera scenes. After playing around with the music features alone, I’m likely to get some more components. This little thing is awesome. Very pleased.
My wife LOVES the Sonos. Play:1’s are fine (we’re not really into music). We have 2 in a semi open first floor and hear it well enough all over.
The Playbar was a little underwhelming. Not worth it in my opinion unless you’re really into movies and want to do a surround sound with the Sonos.
That’s helpful, thanks!
I hid the Play:1 on top of a kitchen cabinet, because WAF. It’s pretty impressive for such a small device. Sound is adequate, if not loud, throughout the kitchen & living room. Next I need a Connect to run sound through the intercom throughout the house (where Vera integration will shine), and a Connect Amp to run some existing in-ceiling speakers.
Finally got around to configure a GE 45631 wall controller and installing it on the wall just outside the master. Added the kitchen, dinette and living room lights to it so if I forget to switch those off, I can do it right there. Unfortunately I’ve not found a PIR sensor that is immune to several GSD’s (70 to 80lbs) roaming around at night so no automating that.
Also working on my Sonos Play 1 integration. The en-CA voice is a very pleasant female voice. Perfect for the weather in the morning. Next up is adding sonos output to my smoke detector scenes. Still looking for the perfect MP3 for that event. Also having Sonos let me know if a package has arrived (if I am home).
en-CA? I’m just using “en” and “es” with Microsoft TTS. How do I add the en-CA voice?
EDIT: found it… simple change to en-CA in the plugin. I’ll give it a try!
EDIT AGAIN: I just found a great use for this. I have a PLEG Condition that is satisfied by some outdoor stuff that happens when I’m not at home. I’m going to use en and en-CA to simulate a conversation between a male and a female. I suppose a better idea would be just to create a Sonos playlist with conversation on it for when I’m not there, but this is good in the interim.
I just ordered a chromecast audio puck from best buy. They’re on sale for $30 (plus you get $20 google play credit when you activate it) and you can control them with Tasker (on android tablets and phones). How does this relate to Vera? I use tasker to control my vera and display information (status, cameras, power consumption, etc…). With the chromecast plugged into some speakers (whole house amp in our case), adding speech is as simple as adding another line to my tasker commands. So if vera detects that the garage door is open, tasker receives the update does this: If voiceannounce = 1 then say “the main garage door is opening”, or whatever I want it to say.
There’s an icon on the tablets that toggles the voicecommand variable from 0 to 1 to 0. Basically that lets us easily turn on/off voice commands. The tasker “say” command will use the google TTS engine to say whatever text that you feed to it.
I had a panic today. All of my scenes stopped working and my Christmas lights failed to come on.
I tried logging in via my android but failed.
I looked at my vera and all lights were off.
Good news though. Someone had knocked the plug in its socket and I had lost power.
Just goes to show, check for the simple things first.
[quote=“BOFH, post:946, topic:172785”]Finally got around to configure a GE 45631 wall controller and installing it on the wall just outside the master. Added the kitchen, dinette and living room lights to it so if I forget to switch those off, I can do it right there. Unfortunately I’ve not found a PIR sensor that is immune to several GSD’s (70 to 80lbs) roaming around at night so no automating that.
Also working on my Sonos Play 1 integration. The en-CA voice is a very pleasant female voice. Perfect for the weather in the morning. Next up is adding sonos output to my smoke detector scenes. Still looking for the perfect MP3 for that event. Also having Sonos let me know if a package has arrived (if I am home).[/quote]
@BOFH Did you manage to make the GE 45631 launch scenes instantly? If yes, how? I have VeraLite and my scenes with that have a 4 or 5 secs delay.
I don’t have it run scenes. I used the group function to have it control devices directly. I’m not sure if it will do scenes.
I added another Fibaro FGMS-001 motion sensor to my system. I mounted it on the back of my mailbox and use the tamper/vibration sensor to alert me when the mail is in or if someone is messing with the mailbox. It also gives me more coverage for motion detection in the front yard. It also triggers a camera that is pointed at the mailbox to start recording. I really like these sensors!
Today I paired the Leviton VRCS4-MOZ with the Vera Edge, but I can’t get the dimmer (button 5) to work.
Be careful, the $20 play credit is only on the Chromecast v2, not on the Chromecast audio version. If you actually got the $20 credit on a Chromecast Audio you are very lucky.
Not from what I read.
There appears a lot of confusion about the promos even in the media. I was directed by Google to the below link which according to them is the authoritative source for the validity of the promo’s
[url=https://support.google.com/chromecast/answer/6008760?hl=en]https://support.google.com/chromecast/answer/6008760?hl=en[/url]
I’m hoping they change their mind as $20 credit would get me ImperiHome Pro, Tasker et al included in the price of the dongle.
Added some flic buttons Into my setup to trigger scenes and lights where discrete buttons were needed. Control into vera is via tasker which runs on the wall mounted tablets. So far very good and nice to have a tiny button that will do anything.
I realized a PLEG self retrigger timer wasn’t triggering because I was missing a 0 in the timerName field (“s3_timername” instead of “s03_timername”).
Mystery solved.
What I didn’t do was add some new switches.
Took off the switch plates, stared at the wires for 15 minutes trying to figure out how the electrician (new construction) wired the ceiling fan light/fan, 3 way, and 4 way switches and then put the plate back on.
Time to call an electrician after the holidays. I’ve replaced some switches and outlets no problem but you have to know your limits. :o
Last week a completed a reconfiguration of my Veras. I moved the Blue Iris Plug In to a spare VeraLite to remove the load from Vera 2. I prefer the way ImperiHome selects and displays cameras using the BI Plug In rather than as direct HTTP displays so this allowed me to keep that while offloading the primary operating systems.
I also completed the build of a new ZBox Intel i7-4770 system for the Blue Iris to allow full 720p/10fps displays on all the cameras as well as some 20 frames of pre-trigger recording on motion detection. In the process I implemented Blue Iris Geofencing and tied it in to Vera 2 for location service. I now take location from both Vera Proximity and Blue Iris and tie them together to determine if any of the family phones are home or away. So far the results seem to be much more reliable than either of them alone.