The Ultimate Partner For Vera ?

Community Playground General Discussions
#41

I am interested in a NeTV like device but in researching it I found that there were a lot of issues. I seem to recall some folks on the HomeSeer forums were messing around with it at one time and ran into problems. In order to superimpose text onto an encrypted HDMI signal NeTV had to circumvent the encryption scheme. It’s probably not a great business to be in from a legal perspective unless Vera created a licensed product.

#42

I’m adding a link to the thread I kicked off 12 months ago when I first started to explore having an overlay on the TV for Vera noticfications.

http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,12734.0.html

Id very much welcome any further more detailed discussions/contributions there.

#43

Windows Media Center, with mControl will give you the TV overlay.

Allows me to have a front end for Vera on my TV to:
1 Start the Goodnight scene from the TV

2 Switch to Camera’s, display a popup message, or play audio files (WAV) when motion is detected outside.

3 Display Pop-up message when and play audio alert when armed window or door (like Garage) have been opened.

4 Weekday alarm is:
** 5 minutes soft music with TV off (my audio is whole home audio) in my bedroom
** Gradually turning the lights on using the Wakeup Alarm Plugin
** Turning TV On
** Start Live TV and tune to the Today Show
** TV stops at 8:25 and plays a 4 minute music video to get me out the door by 8:30. (current video selected by the Fiance, “Work Bitch” by Britney Spears).
** Master Bedroom TV/Lights switch to normal motion activated

I’l be honest, since my camera’s automatically display on the TV when motion is detected (times out after 16 seconds and then returns to full screen tv)…I only use the TV Vera interface passively (through auto macros for notifications and alarms)…except for maybe running the Goodnight Scene at bedtime.

#44

The #1 automation feature my Fiance likes, it auto turns the TV off at 1am and again at 3am automatically every night :slight_smile:

Don’t need mControl for that though. Just an IR blaster.

#45

[quote=“parkerc, post:29, topic:175184”]… I looked at creating other entries by watching variables and sending them to server too (http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,16713.0.html).But I had trouble getting the dates working, so it’s only partially implemented.
…[/quote]
Hi parkerc,
If you’re still looking for a solution, I got the Lua code to for sending data to the alternate event server to work and posted my solution in the thread you started for this ([url=http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,16713.msg153469.html#msg153469]http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,16713.msg153469.html#msg153469[/url]).

#46

This is a post I’ve had running for a while, and to be honest I’ve never stopped looking for the ultimate partner to my Vera unit, but I think I may have finally found it.

I’ve just picked up a QNAP TS-x53 Pro, NAS, (TS-253 Pro - Features | QNAP (UK)) which provides me with the following functionality…

Virtualisation - to run a virtual Windows, Linux, Android OS as a remote console
VPN - to avoid the need of Vera’s remote servers, when outside the home network.
OpenHAB - capable of running OpenHAB
XBMC - For media playback via the HDMI port and receive Vera alerts/notifications.
Syslog Server - ability to capture all Vera events (using Event Watcher)

I will not been able to explore much of the above until I upgrade the RAM of the NAS and get a couple of WD Red drives, but I’d be curious to hear what others think etc…

#47

The QNAPs are great small NAS boxes. With all the bundled services, they’re really Linux servers with lots of services under a nice GUI.

I’ll be keen to see how you get on integrating all of this with Vera.

I’m not sure what Android virtualization does for you, unless you’re developing Android apps.

#48

A small Windows PC will allow you to do all that with better performance than Q-NAP. Visualization is built in to Windows 8 (called Hyper-V) if you need to run some Linux guest OS too.

I’m using it for all the items you mention, except I use MediaBrowser instead of XBMC for media access to my 7 TV’s. Also, I use VoxCommando as a TTS and speech recognition engine.

I just added another 24TB (18TB usable after RAID 5) using a external 4 bay disk chassis:

Getting about 190MB/s write performance on the RAID 5 array using a above SATA PCIe RAID card. It has two miniSAS port so I can add one more 4 bay expansion unit in the future if needed.

Just another option if you need Windows.

#49

Thanks for the feedback.

@zwaver - one thing I’m particulatly interested in is the OpenHAB work that is being discussed within another thread, where a bridge is being created to utilise Vera.

@AgileHumor - wow ! that looks like a mammoth set up, I totally agree a Windows PC was always an option, but with a NAS upgrade needed at home anyway, I liked the all in one and bundled software/services that the QNAP brings - being a quad core, with 4 nics and remote access capabilities, it gets me closer to where I want to go, rather than a full DIY PC build. (But that’s a personal preference of course)

#50

Make no mistake, most of these prebuilt NAS servers nowadays are full blown Linux servers with some form of Intel/AMD cpu (which means one could run Windows if they wanted) with customized web interfaces for the NAS stuff. The most appealing part (at least for me) is the compact footprint of the custom chassis and low power draw, but many places are beginning to offer these chassis on the open market for DIYers.

I snagged for free a used Netgear ReadyNAS Pro that can run all the auxiliary Linux services and add on apps. Just waiting for some free time to start experimenting with that.

#51

As I stumbled across this old post, I’m just wondering how things may have changed ?

Today for me - it’s

2 x VeraPlus,
2 x Raspberry Pi 3 B+ (Lua 5.3.4, z-way, Node-Red, USB/Serial Bridges for RFXTRX433, DSC Alarm, CurrentCost Energy)
2 x QNAP NAS (Running 1 x Homebridge (Docker) , 1 x Openluup ** (Docker) and is the SMB/CIFS target for any/all storage needs

** - more for interest/fun as the UI is terrible on my iPad (which is my primary device)

But… no matter what I do, my Vera and it’s UI continues to remain my focal point (primary controller) …

What are other people using today as a companion ‘ partner for their Vera ?

#52

veraplus.
Android device running, openLuup, Node-red and MQTT broker. Using Termux and debian virtual machine. And Automate android app
OpenLuup is running reactor and other plugins.