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Comfort UPNP <-> SmartThings <-> Amazon Echo
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 Posted: Monday Dec 12th, 2016 02:05 pm
   
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mattbrain
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Hi Eamon.

Yes, I can't see any reason why this shouldn't work  although I haven't tested the Google Home device and its integration with SmartThings. As long as it can control SmartThing Switch type devices you should be all set.

Thanks,

Matt




 Posted: Monday Dec 12th, 2016 03:03 pm
   
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DavidJ
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Here's my thinking:
A & B - Whilst I was initially daunted by the install I slowly worked through it and got there. If you supplied the Pi or SD card the user still has to create a password, unique Ip and edit the configuration. They may well gain that experience by going through the install.
C - This would be nice.
D- I understood WeMo was Belkins proprietary software, Personally I dont use any Wemo products and believe for those integrating to ST the benefits that this brings with it are pretty limitless, so I'm unclear of what D really achieves. I do plan to get Google Home as soon as I can as I expect it to link in well with ST (as its one of the few things supported)and thereby acting as my voice gateway to Comfort. Had considered importing one but read it may not be totally compliant.
E. Yes definitely. I personally would like a doorbell connector.

Thanks

David



 Posted: Monday Dec 12th, 2016 03:43 pm
   
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wexfordman
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mattbrain wrote: Hi Guys
Sorry, not been on the forum for a couple of days and see a bunch of questions have arisen.

1. Which RPi [Raspberry Pi]?
Any RPi with Ethernet will work (avoid model A), I believe David is running on the first version of a Model B which has been superseded several times - the new Model B v3 has twice the memory and >4x the processing power.
If you are new to Raspberry Pi's i suggest this is a good starter kit: https://thepihut.com/products/raspberry-pi-3-starter-kit but there are many out there equally good.

2. Do i need SmartThings?

Current, the UPNP interface requires SmartThings as this is the only automation hub I have written handlers for. If I can get hold of a Vera hub, and there is sufficient demand, I can do the same for that. However, ST is where I have personally invested and although it isn't perfect, it does a lot for me.
To add native support for Google Home, Amazon Alexa and others I am working on WeMo emulation. This will undoubtably make it easier to get going but the limitations of using emulation will mean that it will be less functionally complete.
By using SmartThings, it can be linked to a huge variety of third party devices and services including Alexa - I get a kick out of being able to use Alexa to control comfort, it's a really neat interface.

3. Can I make it easier to install?
This is a priority item for me. At the moment it takes 30 mins and a bit of experience with the command line to install. I would like to get to a position where you simply plug it in and it works out of the box. An intermediate position might be I offer disk images or SD cards which can be used to prime a RPi.
I guess to judge the demand [and therefore whether I should pursue this over WeMo emulation or additional features] it would be useful to get some feedback. 
What do people want as a priority?


A. Raspberry Pi Bundle with SD Card so it is plug and play
B. SD Card to buy which is pre-configured
C. SD Card image to download and install myself (will cut out much of the initial command line install)
D. WeMo Emulation for native Alexa / Google Home support
E. Additional comfort functions to be exposed [please indicate]

A & B will have to be priced to account for my time dedicated to your individual build. There is no charge (from me at least) for C -> E.


If Cytech or a third party distributor are in a position to make this more accessible, I would be more than happy to have a conversation with them :)


Thanks again,

Matt


Hi Matt,
I think option c would suit a lot of people on this forum, who are either installers, or DIY ers whow would be able to take the else with a bit of support and documentation? 
Wit regards additional comfort functionality?  The ability to enable alarm, run or execute macros, and report status, counter and flags would be cool :-) 
I think of your interface can handlenthose, because of these way comfort works, the result is complete access to every device comfort can control



 Posted: Monday Dec 12th, 2016 04:45 pm
   
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DavidJ
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Hi Matt,
An observation . In the things on the ST app Comfort Alarm appears when set with a Green Icon which says "No Alarm", I assume this relates to there being no triggered alarm state?
Clicking into the device The first Icon on top row again shows the same "No Alarm" while the one next to it shows (in my case) another similar Green Icon stating "Day Mode Active" which is correct.
I would have thought though that this could be maybe Amber or Red to show the state as set (day mode active). And possibly this swapping with the other icon to the left so you can easily see the current status.
I appreciate that this is no meant to replace the Comfort App however see no reason why it couldn't.

Thanks

David



 Posted: Monday Dec 12th, 2016 04:56 pm
   
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mattbrain
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Hi David

Thanks for the feedback, the alarm control is the newest bit i have added and I do think the UI could be improved. In the summary view, ideally I would like to show the alarm set condition and whether it has been triggered but not sure how best to represent this.

In the detail view, we can easily change how these are represented. Any suggestions on the colour scheme for the set conditions (off, day, night, away, vacation). For alarm state I was going to use Green, Amber, Red along with the associated status message.

Thanks,

Matt



 Posted: Monday Dec 12th, 2016 05:21 pm
   
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DavidJ
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Hi Matt,
I would have thought the colour scheme you suggest is correct with Green representing Unset - Amber as Set - Red as triggered. Not sure the color should be any different for each set type, probably uniform throughout.
Just be great to see a easy to view status from the main page.
Thanks
David



 Posted: Monday Dec 12th, 2016 07:40 pm
   
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wexfordman
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Whoo hoo, my google home arrived today :-)
Cant open it till christmas day though, mught have to sneak in a pi and a smart home hub as well between now and then though!



 Posted: Tuesday Dec 13th, 2016 12:31 pm
   
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mattbrain
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Looking forward to the review.

I got an apple watch the other day (it was heavily subsidised by my critical illness policy) - and as SmartThings supports the apple watch, I can arm and unset the alarm from my wrist :)




 Posted: Wednesday Dec 14th, 2016 01:22 am
   
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waszaa
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Hi - This is all working well now for me on a PI 2

Just wondered what the best way is to sync the comfort alarm status to the smart things hub (away-home-night) Mode ?

Thanks

Mike



 Posted: Thursday Dec 15th, 2016 01:53 am
   
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mattbrain
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Hi Mike

Glad you have got it installed and working. I know my installation notes are out of date on the github site - hopefully you managed to get responses and alarm set / status working.

In terms of mirroring ST and Comfort modes - this is something I am working on, I think I may need to create a couple of virtual devices so that the specific functions for Day / Night / Away / Vacation are exposed in a way which can be accessed by the ST modes.

Please let me know how you get on with what we have so far, any questions - please don't hesitate to contact me via this thread or PM.

Thanks again,

Matt



 Posted: Thursday Dec 15th, 2016 02:05 am
   
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waszaa
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Hi Matt

yes alarm set/status working fine ,for responses i have some devices that just require firing from a button and don't need a off response as in a switch, could this be an option?

sounds like you have a plan re mirroring.

Thanks

Mike



 Posted: Thursday Dec 15th, 2016 06:22 pm
   
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mattbrain
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Hi Mike

In terms of the response device, you could simply set the off response to be a non operational response or would you rather a device which didn't have an off function. I could make the off function optional and have a checkbox to disable it if that would be more appropriate.

Thanks,

Matt



 Posted: Thursday Dec 15th, 2016 09:30 pm
   
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waszaa
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Hi Matt

Thanks for the suggestions

One use for triggering a response is to set my heating set point override using comfort to smartfit heating UCM, so its a one press function and doesn't need the off setting.If it was optional it would be tidier and less confusing i guess for other users at home.
I suppose it would be useful to just have a status device for counters which don't need control i.e. i have a counter which just displays the room temperature or one that displays the heating demand as (1-100)

Mike

Last edited on Thursday Dec 15th, 2016 11:31 pm by waszaa



 Posted: Friday Dec 16th, 2016 08:23 am
   
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slychiu
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A. Raspberry Pi Bundle with SD Card so it is plug and play
B. SD Card to buy which is pre-configured
C. SD Card image to download and install myself (will cut out much of the initial command line install)
D. WeMo Emulation for native Alexa / Google Home support
E. Additional comfort functions to be exposed [please indicate]

A & B will have to be priced to account for my time dedicated to your individual build. There is no charge (from me at least) for C -> E.

If Cytech or a third party distributor are in a position to make this more accessible, I would be more than happy to have a conversation with them :)



I think A and B would be useful for the less technically inclined  eg Installers

We will talk with Matt to further this



 Posted: Friday Dec 16th, 2016 09:22 pm
   
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wexfordman
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Hi Matt, slychui,

Been in a few long drives for work the last few days, so my mind had been wandering :-)

In particular I was wandering about comfort and google home, echoe etc, and interfacing all of these to comfort.

It seems to me that Matt's solution is the way it should go, and appears to be there, but perhaps a focus should be on getting comfort ifttt compliant using Matt's solution, rather than specificity via smart things. If I understand the workings corrxtly, making comfort ifttt compliant ofns up comfort to all of these interfaces, including hue, and snartthingd etc?
It also opens up a world of other possibilities such as geofencing, interfacing to thousands of other devices, push notifications etc etc

Last edited on Friday Dec 16th, 2016 09:25 pm by wexfordman



 Posted: Friday Dec 16th, 2016 09:38 pm
   
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mattbrain
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Hi Wexfordman

Already ahead of you; the code I have published now already supports limited IFTTT via the maker service direct from the RPi. I have some experience of IFTTT and use it to connect non ST devices to my hub. It's a great solution for joining the spaghetti of IoT but offers little in the way of logic. So, for example it would be easy to have it turn on an output if a device breached a geofence (so turn on outside light when you got close to home) but doesn't string events together, allow for conditional logic (at least not well), or allow for more complex routines.

In terms of next steps, Slychui and I have been exchanging emails and whilst it is early days I am hopeful we can collaborate on a more user friendly, robust and comprehensive solution.

Thanks,

Matt



 Posted: Saturday Dec 17th, 2016 06:19 pm
   
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Pgordon
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This is a fascinating and (to me) extremely exciting development.
I'd like to know a bit more about how the whole ecosystem integrates with, and utilises SONOS - I believe Matt mentioned early on having SONOS in the mix too...
Is anyone doing very much to leverage SONOS integration? there's the very obvious possibilities like automatically stopping playback on all zones when away mode is set for example, and voice control of SONOS via Alexa (although I believe that's coming soon directly from SONOS anyway).
But what about things like - pause playback when the doorbell is pressed, make an announcement, then resume playback...
what else?...
Paul G.

Last edited on Saturday Dec 17th, 2016 06:31 pm by Pgordon



 Posted: Saturday Dec 17th, 2016 06:20 pm
   
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Pgordon
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mattbrain wrote: Looking forward to the review.

I got an apple watch the other day (it was heavily subsidised by my critical illness policy) - and as SmartThings supports the apple watch, I can arm and unset the alarm from my wrist :)


That is so cool!I *have* to get me some of this kit and start playing...



 Posted: Saturday Dec 17th, 2016 07:47 pm
   
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mattbrain
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Pgordon wrote: This is a fascinating and (to me) extremely exciting development.
I'd like to know a bit more about how the whole ecosystem integrates with, and utilises SONOS - I believe Matt mentioned early on having SONOS in the mix too...
Is anyone doing very much to leverage SONOS integration? there's the very obvious possibilities like automatically stopping playback on all zones when away mode is set for example, and voice control of SONOS via Alexa (although I believe that's coming soon directly from SONOS anyway).
But what about things like - pause playback when the doorbell is pressed, make an announcement, then resume playback...
what else?...
Paul G.


Hi Paul

Glad to see you're interested; In terms of Sonos, SmartThings can control them - and therefore routines can be built which can do something like you suggest - I'm actually also thinking about how Sonos could be used to play announcements on KeyPads - let me ponder on that some more....

Thanks,

Matt



 Posted: Saturday Dec 17th, 2016 08:03 pm
   
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Pgordon
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mattbrain wrote: Pgordon wrote: This is a fascinating and (to me) extremely exciting development.
I'd like to know a bit more about how the whole ecosystem integrates with, and utilises SONOS - I believe Matt mentioned early on having SONOS in the mix too...
Is anyone doing very much to leverage SONOS integration? there's the very obvious possibilities like automatically stopping playback on all zones when away mode is set for example, and voice control of SONOS via Alexa (although I believe that's coming soon directly from SONOS anyway).
But what about things like - pause playback when the doorbell is pressed, make an announcement, then resume playback...
what else?...
Paul G.


Hi Paul

Glad to see you're interested; In terms of Sonos, SmartThings can control them - and therefore routines can be built which can do something like you suggest - I'm actually also thinking about how Sonos could be used to play announcements on KeyPads - let me ponder on that some more....

Thanks,

Matt

Definitely interested Matt, see my comments that I made about a month ago re SONOS (and Echo) integration here: http://www.comfortforums.com/view_post.php?post_id=21148
Uncannily close to what you're doing...  I only wish I'd discovered this thread back then...
I have added a Smarthings Hub and a R-PI to my Christmas list (Echo was already on there), and come January, when I believe I will have a couple of weeks off work, I will definitely get some testing going on with this...
Cheers..
Paul G



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