Select Page
Motion activated LED stairs lights with voice control

Motion activated LED stairs lights with voice control

Walking up or down the stairs at night can be made to an experience by using LED lights. Being able to have different animations or LED patterns makes this even more exciting. How do you achieve such a thing?

By using motion activated LED stairs lighting integrated into Alexa and Home Assistant based on Dig-Quad LED Controller using ESP32 with HC-SR04 ultrasonic distance sensors and UHP-350-12 Mean Well power supply. 

This project can be completed in many ways from just buying the components or going the extra mile and buying LED channels, diffusers and 3D printing the casings for the distance sensors. 

Let’s start with the core, which is the Dig-Quad LED controller from Dr ZZs https://www.drzzs.com/shop/ 

This controller comes with an ESP32 board already, fuses for extra protection and pre-flashed with WLED. 

You could build this yourself with an ESP32 Dev board but the ease of install and the additional protection including Youtube videos on how to install, makes this a no-brainer.

 

Which power supply to use will depend on the LEDs you chose e.g. 5V vs 12V vs 24V and how long and how many LED strips you want to install. There are plenty of websites and calculators out there to enable you to make the math how much WATT you need for what length and voltage. 

In my case, I went with 12V LEDs and given my length, I went with the 350W power supply. Another important aspect is the cooling method of the power supply. Having deployed various solutions like this, I can only recommend to avoid any fan based solution.

Those can be very loud and mechanical fans will fail. So the question is not if but when they will fail. This model here with the Mean Well UHP-350-12 is fanless and zero noise.

The fanless models might be a little bit more expensive but having a higher MTBF (meantime before failure) and no noise is certainly worth this price.

 

The type of motion sensor is important from a distance, false positive, price and reliability perspective. 

You could go overboard with mmwave doppler motion sensor like the LD2410 in which case you have to ensure the proper voltage, etc or simply go with the HC-SR04 ultrasonic sensor.

This sensor is extremely affordable and you can actually specify the distance parameters in the WLED UI to fine tune your detection radius. 

I did try the HC-SR501 motion sensor as well, but the detection reliability was not even close compared to the ultrasonic sensor, so I opted for the HC-SR04 module for the top and the bottom of the stairs.

The home assistant integration is extremely easy by installing the WLED integration. Once you enable this integration it will auto-discover all your WLED instances in your home.

As you can see in this screenshot, you can conduct firmware updates, control the intensity of the lights, you can define the segments, etc. 

You could go as far as having an ESPhome Bluetooth tracker mapped to your Samsung or Apple watch and create conditions to show different patterns depending on who is going up or down the stairs. 

I opted for the stairs integration natively within WLED as this integration, while being outside of home assistant, allows you to fine tune your motion sensor parameters and set the pins for the upstairs and downstairs motion sensors via the UI. 

I should point out though, that this stairs integration is NOT natively in WLED. There are some binaries out there which include that integration or you can compile your own WLED binary with Visual Studio, which is what I did. 

Again, you don’t have to go down that route. You can simply use home assistant to do the animations for you and you could use your own motion sensors based on Zigbee or Z-wave to trigger the lights. The possibilities are endless.

Within the WLED settings in the UI, you can specify if you want that device to be discoverable by Alexa or you can use home assistant and go into the device settings and click on voice assistant and you can decide there, if you want to expose this device to Alexa and/or Google. 

A very interesting question to ask is what wins if you turn on those lights via voice and then walk up or down the stairs with the motion sensors. Will they turn off based on your timer of the motion sensors or will they stay on?

I will give you a hint… if you just use home assistant you control and decide the behavior, while using the stairs integration of WLED will do its own thing. 

 

Alexa now supports Multi-room audio

Alexa now supports Multi-room audio

Amazon announced and released today multi-room audio functionality for the Amazon Alexa family devices. This functionality allows you to synchronize music across devices and across rooms by grouping them. Such functionality has been available from other vendors for some time e.g. Sonos.

Amazon also announced the release of their SDK developer tools later this year for speaker companies like Sonos, Bose, Sound United and Samsung. Especially the last vendor will be interesting to watch as they just announced their own smart speaker to come out under the Samsung brand and they announced that it will be unique to differentiate the Samsung smart speaker against Amazon Alexa/Echo and Google Home or even the upcoming Apple Home Pod speaker later to be released this year.

 

You can now create groups to play music synchronized across multiple echo devices. When you create groups it will shortly stop playing music to synchronize those devices. Any connected Bluetooth speakers should synchronize as well so in theory you could have many speakers playing in total harmony. I will certainly test this functionality.

I am also waiting for the Sonos support for Alexa which now has a date. October 4th 2017 is when the support will be released assuming you accept the new Terms and Conditions from Sonos. That is a story by itself as outraged users express their frustration about privacy violations and Sonos expressing their view of providing clear rules and guidance of what data will get shared and no sensitive data will get shared with any 3rd party partner or vendor.

Anyhow… the good news is that multi-room audio is coming on multiple devices, support for Alexa/Echo is being added to more and more speakers giving the end users the benefit of better audio experiences in their homes.

Alexa enabled Retro-gaming

Alexa enabled Retro-gaming

Many adults remember the times playing Arcade, Nintendo, Gameboy, Atari or Sega games at either at a Arcade game place, on their own console or at their friends house. Some of those games have been ported to Platforms like Xbox or Playstation but only a few games can be found and most certainly not Nintendo games. If you think that the adults are the only ones playing retro-games you should think twice as today’s kids will not miss an opportunity to play any console games – retro or not.

You could go to places like Dave & Busters or Chucke E Cheese for Arcade games but those places have mostly embraced racing simulators and shooting arcades and you won’t find Super Mario Brothers or Legend of Zelda in those places. So unless you visit Japan where Arcade halls are still trendy, you won’t find real retro games.

 

You can create your own console to play all those game brands listed above. What you need is a Raspberry PI, SD card, HDMI cable, Power adapter, a case and how many controller pads you want. There are 2 popular solutions out there. One is called RetroPie and the other one is called RecalBox. In this blog I am going to post how to create your own console using RecalBox but the same concept applies to RetroPie.

 

 

Hardware to purchase

  1. Raspberry PI 3 $30
  2. Raspberry PI Heat sink set $5
  3. SD Card (at least 16GB, recommended 32GB or more) $20
  4. Power Adapter for Raspberry PI 3 $10
  5. Raspberry PI 3 case or custom case (more about this later) $7
  6. HDMI cable $7
  7. Bluetooth/Wired game controller pad(s) $13 for wired $40 for wired and bluetooth combined
  8. Bluetooth keyboard and touchpad (optional) $25

Total cost: $79 + cost of game controllers

You can buy the Raspberry Canakit for $69 on Amazon which includes USB card adapter micro SD card.

I bought the kit and I bought two game controllers with bluetooth and wired, so in case the batteries run out, I can plug them in and continue playing. My total cost was: $160 running 758 NES Games and numerous other games from other consoles

You can buy  the NES Classis bundle for $350 on Amazon which includes 2 controllers or go to Ebay and bid for home made look a likes. In November NES will release again a $59 or $69 version of the NES Classis, which will be sold out immediately and then offered on Amazon and Ebay for hundreds of dollars like last year before Christmas.

So instead of copying the step by step instructions on how to install Recalbox, I will simply put the link here on where to obtain the software and how to install the operating system.

Visit https://www.recalbox.com/diyrecalbox and follow the instructions to get your Raspberry PI running the Recalbox OS. Download the SD Card formatter software and the Recal OS. Extract the ZIP file and then copy the complete contents of that folder onto the SD card. Once that process completes you can power on your retro-gaming console.

Configure your WiFi settings and run the auto updater. Please be patient during the WiFi setup as it will look like the system is hanging. I do recommend to reserve an IP address in our router settings for your Recalbox.

I used my Bluetooth keyboard and the game controller to setup the WiFi settings as typing in password with a game controller is non-trivial. Once you apply the updates the system will tell that it will reboot. You might have to restart the Recalbox yourself if the screen doesn’t come back online and then the system update will start.

Adding Games to your console

The good news is that once your Recalbox joined your WiFi network it will be visible under your Windows Explorer network. It will show up as Recalbox or any other hostname you have given your Recalbox in your settings.

Once you double click that network device it will ask for a login. The username is “root’ and the password is “recalboxroot”. Now you have access to all the folders. You will find a folder called ROMS and within that folder each emulator will have its own folder. Go to the NES folder.

Now it is time to download some games. There are various places to download the ROMs and I will provide one for now. http://www.mediafire.com/file/5pe60avkiglc94r/758NS.rar This package will contain 758 NES games. Extract the folder and copy the content from the NES folder on your PC into the network share from your Recalbox. Once uploaded go into your Recalbox settings under Game settings and refresh the game list or simply reboot your Recalbox. Congrats! Now you have 758 Games to play!

 

Integration of Recalbox into Alexa

In this scenario I am going to demonstrate how to power on/off the Recalbox via your smart home hub, integrate this into your Logitech Harmony hub and then control the whole setup via Alexa with one simple command.

The first task is to attach the Recalbox power supply to a Z-wave enabled outlet or any outlet which can be controlled by Alexa. The reason why you want this is because you don’t want your Recalbox to run non-stop even if the TV is powered off.

Next task is to go into your Harmony hub (if you don’t have one yet you should buy one for $99 on Amazon) software (Desktop or Cell phone) and create a new scene. Give the scene a name you will recognize easily e.g. “Retrogame scene”. In this scene you define which device should be powered on in which order and to what channels those devices should be configured to.

Example:

  1. Turn on Yahama Surround Sound Receiver
  2. Set Yahama Surround Sound Receiver to HDMI3 (Recalbox is attached to HDMI3)
  3. Turn on Samsung TV
  4. Set Samsung TV to HDMI1 (Yamaha is connected to HDMI1)

Next task is to go into the Amazon Alexa app and discover devices. 2 new things should show up. A) is the new scene from the Harmony Hub and B) is the switch to power on/off the Recalbox. Now create a new group in the Alexa app and call this group “Nintendo”. Add both items to that group (the scene and the device). Et Voila! Congrats. You have now a voice controlled Retro-gaming console with 758 Games!!!

Retro-case for retro-gaming console

To make this experience really “retro” I decided to print a case and replace the Raspberry PI standard case with a Nintendo style casing. I found this https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1887826 casing online, which is a modified version of the original casing https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:307832. The difference between the original and the one I chose is that you can choose how to install your Raspberry into the case.

I tried the sideways one and I have to say that this was a complete failure as the USB ports are within the case with no access to it. I recommend to use the upside down version of the 3D STL file, which will expose the HDMI, Power, 3.5mm sound jack, all USB and the Ethernet port. You can print it in the original Nintendo colors or chose a different color scheme like I did. To finalize the design I printed the Nintendo logo and glued it on.

Existing blinds voice automated for any smart home hub

Existing blinds voice automated for any smart home hub

Today’s challenges wanting to automate existing blinds

Automated blinds are in high demand while their price is also very high. In addition it is very hard to find blinds which work with an existing home automation system and several companies have tried to tackle that problem.

The first problem is that not all blinds have the same size. Across the US almost all the blinds are cut to size as home builders are not making each window match each other resulting in additional costs for the home owner.

The second issue is the brand of the blinds and there are only a couple of major brands pre-installed in certain homes and those are all manual controlled for tilt and for raise/lower. There are no upgrade kits from those major brands allowing you to add a simple motor.

The third issue is your goal. Do you want to tilt or lower/raise your blinds. There are only a handful of companies who offer Venetian blinds which can do both. I have made several calls and inquiries to those companies and they all want to sell you new blinds ranging from $500 up to $3.500 per window!!!

The fourth issue is power availability. None of the homes from home builders have any power outlets at every window unless the home was designed from the beginning for wired power blinds and such blinds installed. The good news is that you can buy solar add-ons for new automated blinds, but this is not an option for any existing non-automated blinds. Again, you would have to buy a complete new blind for every window assuming you have power.

Lessons learned from buying new automated blinds

In my case I had large east facing windows in a two story living room and in the summer the raising sun increased the temperature in that living room too much so the air condition was running non-stop.

I did my research to find blinds which work with Z-wave and my specific smart home hub which was Vera at that time. I found Somfy but again they couldn’t tilt and raise/lower as it was either or. I worked with a custom blind company in Colorado to develop a solution which could do both and I had an electrician run power to all the upper blinds and lower blinds (in case I want to add lower blinds later).

The result of this exercise was Somfy controlled blinds using RF between the blinds and the Somfy Z-wave module and this Z-wave module did create 5 blinds in Vera (max is 16 blinds in Somfy Z-wave module) at a cost of over $10.000. This cost included the custom blinds, Z-wave module and install. It did not include the Z-wave integration into Vera as those vendors are only obligated to pair the Somfy blinds to the Somfy Z-wave module and anything after that is not their responsibility.

I have additional 19 windows in my home I would like to automate and the cost for pulling power to those windows would be enormous not to mention the cost for each blind. We are talking north of $30.000 dollars hence this new project of mine trying to tackle affordable voice automated blinds for existing blinds and the ability to integrate those with any smart home hub supporting Alexa and/or Google Home.

Raspberry PI + RC motor + smart home integration + voice control

There are many solutions out there on how to automate existing blinds using either RC motors or step motors as the engine to tilt the blinds. Some of them also include blinds motors for raise/lower but now we are talking about hundreds of dollars again and most of those motors are proprietary so you would be better of buying the complete solution from those vendors.

The second aspect of the solution is the brains within each blind. Again many solutions are out there using Arduino or Raspberry PIs. Some of the published solutions are really neat while others are a complete mess with wires everywhere or bulky attachments on the wall controlling the existing blind cords. None of those were an option for me as my goal was to not see any hardware while the blinds should be automated.

The choice I made was Raspberry PI Zero W + RC Motor Futaba. The reason for Raspberry PI Zero W was simple. $10 for a Raspberry PI including WiFi and Bluetooth having Linux at my fingertips and the reason for an RC motor was the simplicity of connecting this straight to the Raspberry PI without any additional regulator hardware or special power considerations. The only consideration was the torque of the RC motor to be able to tilt even large blinds and that’s why I chose the Futaba S3003.

Customization for any blinds brand make or model

The next challenge was to be able to attach the RC motor to the existing rod of my blinds. This was a bigger undertaking than expected as my blinds are using a 1/4 x 1/4 inch square rod while most blinds have either a D-shaped or hexagon shaped rod. After several weeks of emailing, calling companies and researching to find an adapter for square rods (also known as coupler) I gave up. I decided to design and 3D print the adapter myself.

My first attempt was to design the SLT print file fitting my specific blind channel and fit the square rod and then take this design to a 3D print shop (even UPS now offers 3D prints for affordable prices). I used this opportunity to actually buy a 3D printer and print them myself. I like having new toys 🙂

The next challenge was to attach the RC motor to the channel providing a stable base to actually tilt the blinds. Again, depending on your blind and your rod your channel might be 2 or 2 1/2 inches. I found a 3D design online for a futaba base which I modified to fit my channel and have the rod fit.

By choosing this approach I am flexible enough to create any adapter and any base for any blind and print it myself or go to any 3D print shop and let them print those for me.

3D Software to create models

Having had no experience with 3D printing there are a variety of software options out there ranging from beginner level to very advanced and from free to very expensive. Some come with a 3D printer and others don’t. Some only come if you buy their printer and only works with their printer.

I am not going to judge which software is the best as this is very subjective and I will simply share that I used for my first steps the “Happy 3D” software from Flashforge and the FlashPrint from Flashforge after having tried additional 5 different 3D modelling software solutions.

Raspberry PI operating system configuration

Every Raspberry requires an SD card to host the operating system. You can go as low as 8GB but I do recommend at least 16GB. Once you have the SD card you have to upload the operating system.

First download the latest Raspberry OS from https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/ You can choose between a graphical user interface Desktop which also support VNC remote desktop or the lite OS which is command line online. For my first one I chose the Desktop version to start developing my solution in an easier way.

To do this I also purchased the power supply combo which includes an HDMI adapter and USB connector cable and a Bluetooth keyboard and touch pad to configure the Raspberry. You can chose to have an external powered USB hub and attach a USB mouse and keyboard but I chose that model as it combines mouse and keyboard in one device.

To get the OS onto the SD card I used Win32 Disk Imager where you select the OS image and your USB port of the SD card to load the OS. Once loaded you put the SD card into your Raspberry and boot it up.

The final OS deployed on all my Raspberry PI Zero Ws is the lite version reducing power consumption and I even went as far as disabling the HDMI output circuits to save some power because if you’re running a headless Raspberry Pi, there’s no need to power the display circuitry by running /usr/bin/tvservice -o (-p to re-enable). Add the line to /etc/rc.local to disable HDMI on boot.

Once booted up you need to perform some initial settings:

Configure WiFi and join your home network:

pi@raspberry: ~$ sudo nano /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

Go to the bottom of the file and add:

network={
    ssid="Your WiFi Network Name "
    psk="Your WiFi Password"
}
Note: I do recommend to configure a reserved IP address for each of your raspberry devices on your router once they join the network. It will make your life much easier going forward.
Configure timezone, services, hostname and password:

pi@raspberry: ~$ sudo raspi-config

Let’s walk through the most important changes:

  1. change the default password from “raspberry” to something else to have at least some increased security
  2. change your hostname which will make it easier dealing with multiple blinds
  3. Change the boot options to Desktop or CLI (as mentioned before I recommend the final deployment on the lite OS)
  4. Localization to adjust to country US, keyboard, timezone, etc
  5. Interfacing options to enable SSH (remote shell) and/or VNC (remote Desktop) at your liking

 

 

Controlling the RC motor with the Raspberry Hardware

To control the RC motor you will need to attach the 3 wires from the Futaba S3003 to 3 pins on the raspberry PI.

  1. Power to PIN 2 (5V)
  2. Ground to PIN 6
  3. Data to PIN 11 (GPIO 17)

Controlling the RC motor with the Raspberry Software

To control the RC motor you will need to create two scripts. One to open and one to close the blinds. Future versions will include more granular control of the blinds but for now open/close is sufficient.

Make sure you are in your home folder with the “pwd” command. Then run the following command to install the Domoticz Home Automation software. This software will be used to receive JSON commands to open and close the blinds from any smart home hub. This was the main reason why I chose this implementation method. The software is for free and it is fairly easy to configure.

pi@raspberry: ~$ sudo curl -L install.domoticz.com | bash

This will install the software and run auto update and auto upgrade on your raspberry PI as well.

Then go into the subfolder domotics/script to create the two python scripts mentioned above.

pi@raspberry: ~$ cd ./domoticz/scripts

Cut and paste the following into your editor to create the two scripts. One for opening the blinds and one for closing the blinds.

pi@raspberry: ~$ sudo nano servo_tilt_on.py

#!/usr/bin/python

import RPi.GPIO as GPIO
import time
GPIO.setmode(GPIO.BOARD)
servoPin=11
GPIO.setup(servoPin, GPIO.OUT)
pwm=GPIO.PWM(servoPin,50)
pwm.start(7)
for i in range(0,180):
 DC=2./45.*(i)+2
 pwm.ChangeDutyCycle(DC)
 time.sleep( .01)
pwm.stop()
GPIO.cleanup()

Press Control + O to save and then Control + X to exit.

pi@raspberry: ~$ sudo nano servo_tilt_off.py

#!/usr/bin/python

import RPi.GPIO as GPIO
import time
GPIO.setmode(GPIO.BOARD)
servoPin=11
GPIO.setup(servoPin, GPIO.OUT)
pwm=GPIO.PWM(servoPin,50)
pwm.start(7)
for i in range(180,0,-1):
 DC=2./45.*(i)+2
 pwm.ChangeDutyCycle(DC)
 time.sleep( .01)
pwm.stop()
GPIO.cleanup()

Press Control + O to save and then Control + X to exit.

Now you have to make both scripts executable:

pi@raspberry: ~$ sudo chmod +x servo_tilt_on.py

pi@raspberry: ~$ sudo chmod +x servo_tilt_off.py

Controlling the RC motor with the Domoticz Software

To control the RC motor you will need to control the two scripts created above with one virtual device. You can access the control panel of the domoticz software via the IP address of your raspberry PI. http://YOUR_IP:8080/ and this will bring you to the dashboard. Click on hardware to create a new virtual dummy device and then create a switch controlling the blinds.

 

Select Enabled and define the name of your device e.g. Blind1. Select Type “Dummy” and Data Timeout “Disabled”.

Then go to switches and add a manual switch. The hardware option should show you e.g. Blind1 already. Now you have to name your actual switch e.g. Blind1 switch. Switch type “Blinds” and Type pick e.g. “Lightwave RF” as this doesn’t matter given that we will call the two scripts created earlier.

 

Selecting the new switch you just created allows you to configure the details.

Enter into the “On Action” field the following line:

script://servo_tilt_on.py

Enter into the “Off Action” field the following line:

script://servo_tilt_off.py

Click on Save.

Last but not least click on the STAR icon which will make the blind switch appear on your dashboard every time you login.

Hardware assembly for first test run

After removing the screw on the Futaba S3003 holding the wheel in place, you can start attaching the rod adapter 3D printed earlier to the servo wheel via 2 screws. I do recommend NOT to put the center screw for the wheel back on, until you have put the RC motor into the final position within the blind channel and adjusted. Most likely you will have to come back and adjust the wheel turning it by a couple of teeth to fit your blind setting in terms of closed or open.

Test to control the components

Here are a couple of tests you should perform to verify your installation and configuration before moving onto embedding the solution into your blind channel.

  1. run each script manually in your shell or remote shell to open and close the blind
    1. pi@raspberry: ~$ sudo python /domoticz/script/servo_tilt_on.py
    2. pi@raspberry: ~$ sudo python /domoticz/script/servo_tilt_on.py
  2. run JSON commands to see if the domoticz software properly controls the RC motor from your Web Browser:
    1. http://YOUR_IP_ADDRESS:8080/json.htm?type=command&param=switchlight&idx=1&switchcmd=On
    2. http://YOUR_IP_ADDRESS:8080/json.htm?type=command&param=switchlight&idx=1&switchcmd=Off

In all 4 cases above the RC motor should turn. If it doesn’t turn via command line, then you most likely have your wiring wrong between the raspberry PI and the RC motor or you have an issue with your software e.g. Python not properly installed, etc.

If the Web browser commands to turn the RC motor but the command line, then you need to go back and check your settings in domoticz especially the part where you enter the scripts names to execute. Easy to make a typo there.

Integration into Smart Home Hub

Now that we have a Raspberry PI Zero W, configured with Domoticz software to receive JSON commands to open and close blinds, it is time to integrate this solution into your smart home hub. In my case it is Homeseer right now but I could have taken one of my Veras or my Smartthings hubs.

Device Management:

  1. Log into Homeseer and create a new virtual device e.g. Blind 1
  2. Enable Voice Control for that new virtual device for Alexa to find it.
  3. Under Status graphics replace the on and off graphics with blind open and close graphics (optional task)

Events:

On Event

  1. Create a new event named Blind 1 ON
  2. If condition is when your virtual device you just created above changes state with “If Blind 1 changes and becomes ON
  3. Chose “Run a Script
  4. Check box “Execute immediate script command
  5. Enter the URL to your Raspberry PI JSON command under the Homeseer call URL command &hs.URLAction(“http://YOUR_IP_ADDRESS:8080/json.htm?type=command&param=switchlight&idx=1&switchcmd=On”,”GET”, “”, “”)

Off Event

  1. Create a new event named Blind 1 OFF
  2. If condition is when your virtual device you just created above changes state with “If Blind 1 changes and becomes OFF
  3. Chose “Run a Script
  4. Check box “Execute immediate script command”
  5. Enter the URL to your Raspberry PI JSON command under the Homeseer call URL command &hs.URLAction(“http://YOUR_IP_ADDRESS:8080/json.htm?type=command&param=switchlight&idx=1&switchcmd=Off”,”GET”, “”, “”)

 

Powering the solution

To make it easier to attach I chose a USB charger and USB micro cables to connect the Raspberry PI Zero W to the power outlet in the window. The good news is that it works with the 2.4A USB adapter for smaller blinds. The bad news is that you need a more powerful adapter for larger blinds.

Also please consider how your outlets are windows for all windows as in some homes all outlets are attached to a single 15A breaker. Attaching 7 x 2.4A USB chargers will trip your breaker so you will have to find the right balance of enough power to turn your blinds or replace your breaker and go for 20A. Most outlets can handle 15A and 20A but let your electrician do this job for you.

Total solution assembled and functional

Last steps are to embed the Raspberry PI and the RC motor into the channel of each blind, attach the USB cable from the Raspberry PI into the corresponding Power adapter and then go into your Alexa app and run Device Discovery and then say “Alexa, turn on Blind 1”.

Once you have all blinds installed and discovered by Alexa, you can group them in the Alexa app to e.g. “Living Room blinds” and then say “Alexa, turn on Living Room blinds”. ENJOY!

 

Total cost and components:

 

 

  1. Raspberry PI Zero W = $10
  2. Raspberry PI Zero case = $5 (optional but highly recommended to avoid contact with blind channel)
  3. USB charger = $8
  4. USB Micro cable = $3
  5. Futaba S3003 RC motor = $12
  6. Various wires and small screws = $3
  7. 3D print (cost of goods doing it yourself $2 for rod adapter and base)

Total cost per blind to voice control and integrate into existing smart home hub: $43

Additional one time charge used across all blinds:
  1. Power supply kit with HDMI and USB adapter $20
  2. Canakit USB keyboard and touchpad $25
  3. 3D Printer $300 – $3,000 (optional) in my case Flashforge Finder for $500
Tools needed:
  1. Soldering Iron
  2. Solder wire wick
  3. 3D printer (your own or from 3rd party shop)
  4. Screw drivers (small and large Philips)
  5. Filament for 3D printer (my printer came with one and I didn’t have to buy any filament for this project)

Total cost for my project automating 5 blinds and owning a new 3D Printer: $760

Additional note on security

I strongly suggest to give security some special thought. Here are some areas to consider and some of them are already mentioned above while others are not. Change the login and the password for your Raspberry PI

  1. Chose passwords at least 8 characters or more with lower and upper case and special characters (note: be careful as the Raspberry comes with UK keyboard enabled in most cases and your special characters might not be where you think they are)
  2. Enable security on Domoticz for the dashboard login for each Raspberry PI
  3. Enable authentication on Domoticz for your JSON commands via setup settings in Domoticz
  4. Use HTTPS wherever possible instead of HTTP to encrypt your JSON commands from your smart home hub
  5. Restrict SSH access on your Raspberry PI to IP addresses only within your home network or install a firewall on your Raspberry PI
  6. etc
Alexa Drop-in

Alexa Drop-in

Amazon released a new software update allowing you to use your Alexa and Dot devices as intercom devices within your household using the green ring from the Alexa calling feature as an indicator. Just in time with the release of the Echo Show, Amazon released an update which allows you to enable a feature called “Drop-in”.

This feature can be configured per Alexa or Dot device to enable or disable drop-ins. The end user can use his or her cell phone via the Alexa app and call any device within the home.

The end user can also use any Alexa or Dot to call any device within the home by simply saying “Alexa, drop-in {device name}” for example “Alexa, call echo living room”.

This feature even works without being at home and connected to your home WiFi. You can use the Alexa app to connect and drop-in to any Alexa or Dot device, while being on the road and speak to your family.

Adding now Echo Show to the mix allows you to have a video chat conversation from your cell phone via the Alexa app and the Echo Show in real time.

For the initial setting the end user has to enable the “drop-in” feature and all devices will get enabled for drop-in. With that said, every device can be configured individually to support the drop-in feature or not.

You can select “On”, “Only my household” or “Off”. The “On” feature will allow any contact within the Alexa app, after having imported your phone contacts and checked which of your contacts has Alexa or Dot devices, to connect to your devices via drop-in.

The good news is that the default setting for every contact is “Off” for drop-ins. This means even if you enable the drop-in feature by simply saying “On” instead of “Only my household” nobody from your Alexa app contact list is able to drop-in unless you specifically allow the drop-in feature for that specific user.

All household members are by default enabled to drop-in without permission but even this can be disabled. You are also able now to block contacts within the Alexa app, which was a big issue at the beginning when the Alexa calling feature was released.

Seems like a lot of thought went into the default settings here with security in mind, while offering flexibility to expand the circle of users as needed. Families can now connect between houses e.g. Grandma/Grandpa can drop-in to the family household and vice versa.

The setup didn’t work immediately on all Alexa or Echo devices. Troubleshooting the issues did require some time and I wanted to share those experiences here as well.

One Alexa devices did not react at all to any drop-in request and the Alexa app on the cell phone or any other Alexa or Dot device wasn’t able to reach that specific Alexa as this Alexa was on the 5G version of my Home Wifi. Once I switched that WiFi setup to the regular WiFi the cell phone and all other devices were able to drop-in into that Alexa.

Another Dot device was not reachable either and this was due to the settings of that Dot device. This was a brand new Dot device, which was just configured for WiFi and no other settings were configured like Zip code and Time Zone. After those settings were entered, this device became reachable via drop-in as well.

Another important thing to mention is the naming of each Alexa or Dot device. If you change the name of any device to make it easier to drop-in or call that device, the Alexa app and the device do not immediately recognize that changed name. I found out, that if you on your conversation screen with the new blue bar stating drop-in, if you pull down like refreshing a browser page, then the new name will be refreshed almost instantaneously.

Last but not least I tried to connect my Magic Mirror Prototype and use the drop-in feature with that device. Unfortunately there is no option to enable the drop-in on that device using the Alexa Voice service API.

The video API and Echo Show integration was just released so I can only assume that it is a matter of time until this functionality will become available on other devices running Alexa Voice Skills and APIs.

Conceptually speaking having a smart mirror with a webcam and a speaker built-in would be a great addition for any bathroom. I would like to see a gesture to reject a drop-in or a voice command to deny or accept a drop-in given the location of the typical smart mirror, which would be the bathroom.

Overall the drop-in feature is a great addition to the Alexa and Echo Dot family and with the release of the Echo Show and its video integration there will be a lot of communication be happening within the household and between households.

 

Smart Speaker and Home Assistant Homepod from Apple

Smart Speaker and Home Assistant Homepod from Apple

Apple announced their smart speaker and home assistant called “Homepod”. The name sounds ok, but doesn’t do the product justice, while it should not be surprising that iHome has been already trademarked by another company. With that said, Apple announced this new product line with availability by end of the year 2017.

This announcement is coming 2 weeks before the first official shipments of Echo Show from Amazon, which was announced the day after Microsoft released their new smart speaker. The big difference here will be the price and feature set compared to all other previous vendors trying to compete in that market.

Amazon Echo is priced around $150 to $180, Google Home is priced at $120 ti $150, Microsoft announcing their product line leaves Apple with their new product line coming end of this year.

Apple has a very loyal customer base but even for those the cost of $349.– will be very or too high compared to all the other competitors out there and this extrapolates with the potential need to deploy a smart speaker in every room. You can connect two of their speakers for a better sound experience, which would bring the cost per room to $700,–

Apple claims superior sound quality with downwards facing 7 x tweeters and an upwards facing sub-woofer. The A8 chip from Apple allows to spatially analyze the room and adjust the sound waves for superior sound. Sounds pretty interesting and you can only assume,that somebody will actually test this functionality. This will become even more important as soon as you add the second homepod into the same room.

Apple didn’t go into any details about their far-field sensors to capture the human voice but instead Apple went into more details about how important the customer’s privacy is and how secure the homepod is with the commands a customer initiates.So it will be interesting to see how well homepod recognizes voice commands and at what distances.

The other part to be tested should be the ability to have one homepod or one homepod room respond instead of two or three rooms while you are in the hallway or in between rooms. Amazon Alexa had this issue for a long time and finally fixed that last year, where the closest Alexa will respond but until that fix was deployed Amazon provided different wake words to make up for that.

A product lives and dies with its ecosystem. Google has its search engine backing Google Home and Amazon Alexa has thousands of skills and developers constantly improving the end customer experience. Apple’s loyal customer base is big while the question remains what do those customers expect from a smart speaker or smart home assistant.

Offering answers to questions like metrics, stocks and reading out news can be done by any phone today or even wall-attached tablet. Integrating with a variety of music services is also key while Apple has a significant play here with iTunes.

With all that said being able to send messages does sound pretty interesting and as soon as more details become available I will share those especially after Amazon released their communication package update of calling and messaging people via Alexa and Echo Dots. There are still some major privacy and security updates which need to happen to make this main stream, so it will be interesting to see what Apple has done in this area and if this is a one way communication channel via messages only and no phone calls? Time will tell.

Let’s discuss the biggest part of the homepod reasoning for its existance, which is the smart home integration. Apple claims that it can be a smart hub for Homekit integration. It will support Homekit devices and offer commands to control your home.

The same applies here as above because the ecosystem is the key here. Homekit integration has not been high on vendors’ ToDo list so unless Homekit gets a big boost the options for end customers will be limited.

Amazon is addressing this with skills allowing third party smart home companies to integrate with the Alexa ecosystem. Companies like Samsung with Smarthings, Wink, Homeseer, Nexia, etc are all working with Alexa.

The question will remain if Apple is trying to make every vendor to become Homekit certified or if Apple will recognize the smart home device companies work with other vendors and support third party smart hub/controller integration with Homepod. Given Apple’s history on such subjects, it would be a suprirse to see Apple supporting 3rd party smart home solutions but you never know.

 

 

x  Powerful Protection for WordPress, from Shield Security
This Site Is Protected By
Shield Security
Verified by ExactMetrics