5 ms·

There's an interesting open source project OpenHAB (http://www.openhab.org/ http://www.openhab.org/) that aims to connect all these devices. There are quite a f

by rdeboo 11y ago

There's an interesting open source project OpenHAB (http://www.openhab.org/ http://www.openhab.org/) that aims to connect all these devices. There are quite a few plugings available (e.g. Philips Hue, Tesla, Sonos etc).

simoncion 11y ago
This was mentioned by a commenter on the OP. The author had this to say in reply: "[OpenHAB] provides a consistent interface, but unfortunately it doesn't provide the right consistent interface - the Echo only speaks Wemo or Hue, so I'd still need something to bridge from there to OpenHAB"
- kefka 11y ago
  OpenHAB is great, if it's a house. When you start to move in the area of building automation tech, we have to deal with Luteon. And that means MSSQL database, and "pain and suffering". And there's no way to dynamically extract that data, so it's a little island of all its own. We've been working with Citrix for quite some time. And they purchased IoT automation company Skynet, and rebranded it OctBlu. Seems good, really good. Well, until I decided to build my own sensor net using cheap tech. All I should really need for a sensor is a 8 bit micro, a sensor, and a nRF24L01+ board. Turns out, from China, those little boards are a whopping $.67/each. Add that to the $1.87 arduino clone, and a sensor (starting with PIR, $.82) along with a dinky project box comes to $5-$6 per node. MySensors library for arduino/nRF24L01+ works superb. Simple API, mesh healing just works. Well, after building a few nodes, I wanted to connect them together in a sort of a dashboard that makes programming them easy. We're already working with Citrix/Octoblu so what about that? Well, there is a MQTT-gateway for MySensors, using an arduino-ethernet module. No. I didn't want these sensors directly hanging off the internet, as our IP's are fully routable. Same with ESP8266-gateway. I wanted something more secure than "put it on the internet". So, I made a mySensors-serial gateway. Plugs in via USB, and provides a serial port of all the data on the network. Simple and effective. From there, I have it going in to a linux machine running Node-Red. Turns out, this is what Octoblu uses. They just provided some pretty dockerizable instances and whatnot. But I have data coming in via serial port, through a mySensors decoder block, and then rest of the logic laid out nicely. It's easy to see how the data flows through the system. I can control how it's logged, as well as where data is terminated. With potential fears of data leakage, I can provably show that the flowchart doesn't leak data. (well, aside mathematically proving said code: we're not doing that).
- roel_v 11y ago
  It's true that OpenHAB doesn't have plugins for all possible hardware, but it does have both Wemo and Hue bindings. Because the Wemo/Hue 'interface' to the Echo it might be a bit combersome to set up or use, but the idea behind OpenHAB is the way forward: one central vendor-agnostic hub that drives all connected devices. This way, the only thing that needs to be done to add support for a protocol/device is to write a driver for the 'hub'. Otherwise each device needs to interface with every protocol out there, obviously impossible. I've written my own 'hub' software for just this purpose. I know that ZWave doesn't get much love from the OS crowd because 'proprietary' and 'Zigbee is an open standard', but ZWave works quite well wrt interoperability - because the ZWave consortium does some active interop checking and because everybody needs to use the same (debugged) chips and software, you don't have the situation of everybody writing their own slightly different implementation which is usually the source of 'interop in theory but not in practice' problems. Which is what is happening to Zigbee now, for that hand full of Zigbee devices you can actually buy.
  - simoncion 11y ago
    Does the OpenHAB Hue plugin also pretend to be a Hue bridge, or does it only talk to Hue bridges? If you've used it, and know that it can pretend to be a bridge, you might want to reply to The Author's request for more info. :) > ...the idea behind OpenHAB is the way forward... Tragically, the folks who make the hardware disagree. :(
    - roel_v 11y ago
      Yeah sorry my post reads like 'I know it's possible', it was more meant as a 'it's theoretically possible, if it's not possible right now it's because nobody has done it yet'. The OP sounds like its a fundamental problem, my point was that it's just an implementation problem. "Tragically, the folks who make the hardware disagree. :(" Not all of them do, actually most don't; but even for those who do, the good thing is that we don't need them (mostly). Most of these protocols aren't rocket science, so even those where manufacturers tried to lock it down, people have reverse engineered it (e.g. Somfy). And the good thing is that because it's hardware, vendors can't just roll out a 'patch' or break the interface in the next cycle because that'd leave their existing customers in the cold. Look, I understand the point, and it would be great if everybody went kumbayaa around The One Perfect Standard, but the situation is not as fundamentally flawed as the OP laments.

by rdeboo 11y ago

simoncion 11y ago

This was mentioned by a commenter on the OP. The author had this to say in reply: "[OpenHAB] provides a consistent interface, but unfortunately it doesn't provide the right consistent interface - the Echo only speaks Wemo or Hue, so I'd still need something to bridge from there to OpenHAB"

kefka 11y ago
OpenHAB is great, if it's a house. When you start to move in the area of building automation tech, we have to deal with Luteon. And that means MSSQL database, and "pain and suffering". And there's no way to dynamically extract that data, so it's a little island of all its own. We've been working with Citrix for quite some time. And they purchased IoT automation company Skynet, and rebranded it OctBlu. Seems good, really good. Well, until I decided to build my own sensor net using cheap tech. All I should really need for a sensor is a 8 bit micro, a sensor, and a nRF24L01+ board. Turns out, from China, those little boards are a whopping $.67/each. Add that to the $1.87 arduino clone, and a sensor (starting with PIR, $.82) along with a dinky project box comes to $5-$6 per node. MySensors library for arduino/nRF24L01+ works superb. Simple API, mesh healing just works. Well, after building a few nodes, I wanted to connect them together in a sort of a dashboard that makes programming them easy. We're already working with Citrix/Octoblu so what about that? Well, there is a MQTT-gateway for MySensors, using an arduino-ethernet module. No. I didn't want these sensors directly hanging off the internet, as our IP's are fully routable. Same with ESP8266-gateway. I wanted something more secure than "put it on the internet". So, I made a mySensors-serial gateway. Plugs in via USB, and provides a serial port of all the data on the network. Simple and effective. From there, I have it going in to a linux machine running Node-Red. Turns out, this is what Octoblu uses. They just provided some pretty dockerizable instances and whatnot. But I have data coming in via serial port, through a mySensors decoder block, and then rest of the logic laid out nicely. It's easy to see how the data flows through the system. I can control how it's logged, as well as where data is terminated. With potential fears of data leakage, I can provably show that the flowchart doesn't leak data. (well, aside mathematically proving said code: we're not doing that).
roel_v 11y ago
It's true that OpenHAB doesn't have plugins for all possible hardware, but it does have both Wemo and Hue bindings. Because the Wemo/Hue 'interface' to the Echo it might be a bit combersome to set up or use, but the idea behind OpenHAB is the way forward: one central vendor-agnostic hub that drives all connected devices. This way, the only thing that needs to be done to add support for a protocol/device is to write a driver for the 'hub'. Otherwise each device needs to interface with every protocol out there, obviously impossible. I've written my own 'hub' software for just this purpose. I know that ZWave doesn't get much love from the OS crowd because 'proprietary' and 'Zigbee is an open standard', but ZWave works quite well wrt interoperability - because the ZWave consortium does some active interop checking and because everybody needs to use the same (debugged) chips and software, you don't have the situation of everybody writing their own slightly different implementation which is usually the source of 'interop in theory but not in practice' problems. Which is what is happening to Zigbee now, for that hand full of Zigbee devices you can actually buy.
- simoncion 11y ago
  Does the OpenHAB Hue plugin also pretend to be a Hue bridge, or does it only talk to Hue bridges? If you've used it, and know that it can pretend to be a bridge, you might want to reply to The Author's request for more info. :) > ...the idea behind OpenHAB is the way forward... Tragically, the folks who make the hardware disagree. :(
  - roel_v 11y ago
    Yeah sorry my post reads like 'I know it's possible', it was more meant as a 'it's theoretically possible, if it's not possible right now it's because nobody has done it yet'. The OP sounds like its a fundamental problem, my point was that it's just an implementation problem. "Tragically, the folks who make the hardware disagree. :(" Not all of them do, actually most don't; but even for those who do, the good thing is that we don't need them (mostly). Most of these protocols aren't rocket science, so even those where manufacturers tried to lock it down, people have reverse engineered it (e.g. Somfy). And the good thing is that because it's hardware, vendors can't just roll out a 'patch' or break the interface in the next cycle because that'd leave their existing customers in the cold. Look, I understand the point, and it would be great if everybody went kumbayaa around The One Perfect Standard, but the situation is not as fundamentally flawed as the OP laments.