Until now I was using HomeEasy HE830s Remote Controlled Sockets, but they appear to have developed a fault where they will turn themselves on randomly and get locked so become somewhat useless.

While I try and I claim warranty on them, I also need a few more sockets to help with Holiday lighting when I’m away as well as Christmas lighting automation.

So I purchased a set of LightwaveRF JSJSLW381 Remote On/Off Socket Kit to help with this:

LightwaveRF JSJSLW381 Remote On/Off Socket Kit

Plus it gives me another remote to control my events in DomotiGa 🙂

They are easy enough to pair/connect to: simply plug them and they enter into pairing mode. Then send an ON command from the remote or DomotiGa and you’re set.

Note: I’m not planning on actually controlling the sockets with the remote but from my DomotiGa server, though I could do both if I wanted: the LightwaveRF JSJSLW381 Remote On/Off Sockets can be paired with up to 3 devices/remotes (vs 6 for other LightWaveRF devices..). Instead I will use the remote to trigger events in DomotiGa so I don’t need to access my PC or my Phone (although the latest integration with Siri is proving quite useful)

With all this automation taking place, I’m getting lazier by the day. Even having to unlock my phone and open the bookmark for SmartVISU to activate a mood scene it taking too long / requiring too many actions.

Since Apple added HomeKit with its iOS 8, there’s now a way to integrate this with DomotiGa so I can control my devices with Siri! Yes voice control is finally here 😎

This is how it’s done. Note: this assumes you have DomotiGa already set up and running and know your way around Linux.

Installation

Installing on a Raspberry Pi? do this first:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install libkrb5-dev

You’ll also need the Avahi package:

sudo apt-get install libavahi-compat-libdnssd-dev

Homebridge is published through NPM, if npm isn’t yet installed on your system, do this first:

sudo apt-get install curl
curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_0.12 | sudo bash -
sudo apt-get install -y nodejs

Then install HomeBridge “globally” by typing:

sudo npm install -g homebridge

Then install the DomotiGa plugin (Thanks Samfox2):

sudo npm install -g homebridge-domotiga

Now that HomeBridge and DomotiGa plugins are installed you need to add your own config file. Create a file called config.
NOTE: Your config.json file MUST live in your home directory inside .homebridge.
You can start by copying / pasting the below sample and update to reflect your setup:

{
"bridge": {
"name": "DomotiGa",
"username": "CC:22:3D:E3:CE:32",
"port": 51826,
"pin": "031-45-154" 
},

"description": "This is an example configuration file with one fake accessory and one fake platform. You can use this as a template for creating your own configuration file containing devices you actually own.",

"accessories": [
{
"accessory": "Domotiga",
"name": "Sensor garden",
"host": "localhost",
"port": "9090",
"service": "TempHygroMeter",
"device": "81",
"valueTemperature": "1",
"valueHumidity": "2",
"valueBattery": "4",
"lowbattery": "3000" 
},
{
"accessory": "Domotiga",
"name": "PC",
"host": "192.168.0.xxx",
"port": "9090",
"service": "Contact",
"device": "77",
"valueContact": "1",
"valueBattery": "2",
"lowbattery": "3000" 
},
{
"accessory": "Domotiga",
"name": "Printer",
"host": "192.168.0.xxx",
"port": "9090",
"service": "Switch",
"device": "79",
"valueSwitch": "1" 
} 
]
}

To run HomeBridge, type:

`homebridge`

You may get warning messages as per below. These can be ignored. You should however not get any error message:

Homebridge Warnings

iOS App

Now you need an app on your iOS device. You can use Eve By Elgato Systems
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/elgato-eve/id917695792

In Eve, simply add an accessory:

Eve – Add Accessory

(You’ll probably be asked to create a home the first time, call it anything you want, like “Home”.)

Tap on “Identify Accessory”:

Eve – Identify Accessory

Enter the code as per your config.json file, in this example: 031-45-154

You’re set up !

Hold your home button and ask Siri all kinds of stuff. On of my favourites is “Set Mood Scene Movies on” which sets my lighting accordingly 🙂

Troubleshooting

If you cannot see your accessories (DomotiGa device), try the following steps:

1. Stop HomeBridge
2. Delete the “Persist” folder in your home directory inside .homebridge.
3. Try and change the username in your config.json file (anything else)
4. On your iOS device, go to Settings > HomeKit and delete your Home
5. Close Eve (double press the home button and swipe Eve up)
6. Restart HomeBridge
7. Restart Eve

Here are a few screenshots from Elgato’s website on what Eve can do:

As my HP N54L server has 4 hard drive bays, I’ve been waiting for a good deal to add hard drives and expand my storage. Following a special offer at Argos (£99 instead of £249 😎 ), I purchased a WD 4TB My Book Duo Desktop USB Hard Disk Drive:

WD 4TB My Book Duo

The idea was to take the hard drives out of the box and fit them in the server:

HP N54L Bays

I originally wanted to set them in RAID1 (mirrored) for additional data protection, it turns out that the RAID1 feature on the Bios is not compatible with Ubuntu.

I therefore decided to use ZFS which although a bit slower, would actually be more powerful than RAID1 due to its self healing functionality.

This is what I did to set it up:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:zfs-native/stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-zfs

It is better to set it up by using the hard drive ID rather than name. the below command will give you what you need

ls -l /dev/disk/by-id

Once I have the names of the drives, I uses the  below command to create the zfs pool. (Don’t start copying files into it yet until ZFS file systems are created:

sudo zpool create -o autoexpand=on myzfs mirror /dev/disk/by-id/disk1 /dev/disk/by-id/disk2

I then created a separate file system for each of my top-level folders:

sudo zfs create -o compression=on myzfs/folder1

I created “Backup”, “Movies”, “Music”, “TV_Shows”, “Pictures”. They show up in Ubuntu’s file system as /myzfs/Backup, /myzfs/Movies, /myzfs/Music, /myzfs/TV_Shows, etc.

I’ve chosen the latter folder names as I’ll be using them for Plex

Thanks to whirlpool.net.au for the instructions on how to set up ZFS.

So it’s been nearly a month since I replaced the breadboard with a Humble Pi (see this post), and everything seems better with it.

The LCD would scramble up every so often, requiring a power down cycle of the LCD and restart of the driver routine, whenever a “sharp” noise would happen close to the breadboard, the LCD would dim down for a sec, some sensors would not always update on time.

All of these are now a thing of the past. The LCD is actually brighter (even thought still powered by +3.3V when designed for +5V), hasn’t bugged a single time, is completely unaffected by noise or otherwise. Really happy with it all. Would recommend this to anyone who’s past the breadboard design test stage and ready to make things a bit more definitive (although it’s still fairly easy to de-solder a component).

Anyway, a year ends on a high note, let’s see what 2015 will bring us. Happy new year to all my readers 🙂