Many Home Automation systems are being affected by this new firmware which has been pushed out to Harmony hubs without any notice that the feature would be removed and no option for end users to decline the update. Systems such as Vera, Domoticz, HomeSeer, HA-Bridge, Home Assistant and many more.

The news first broke on this Reddit thread here, some Harmony domain names are listed in the Reddit thread, which you can block on your router to block the firmware updates.

A thread was then created on Logitech’s own user forums here, titled “Firmware update blocked API access” and later a Logitech employee created a new thread about the situation here, titled “Harmony Hub FW 4.15.206” simply stating:

“Hi folks. We are aware of the feedback from some Harmony Hub customers about firmware version 4.15.206.   

We recently released a firmware update for Harmony hub-based remotes. A few consumers have told us they are experiencing issues with certain configurations of the these remotes. We will follow up soon with more details.

Thank you for your patience.”

As yet no statements have been made by Logitech to clarify the situation as to if the block was intentional or a bug ?

And this situation is certainly not only affecting “a few consumers” judging by the amount of replies and responses on those threads and else where on Internet forums and groups. Also some of the Harmony plugin developers have stated the numbers of users that are using their plugins, this is affecting thousands of people!

These Home Automation systems were using the XMPP protocol / port on the Harmony hub for local communications over the LAN for controlling Harmony activities and device commands, firmware 4.15.206 now closes down this access.

There are some rollback instructions here if you need to downgrade the firmware. This will downgrade the firmware to version 4.15.193. It looks like the Home Assistant developers maybe ahead of the game, they are currently working on new access to the Harmony hub using a local websockets API instead, which is also used by the Logitech Harmony iOS app.

Firmware 4.15.201 was the last working firmware version before the controversial 4.15.206 update. Anyone affected should raise a support ticket with Harmony support.

It remains to be seen what is the root cause of this issue, however if it does turn out to be intentional by Logitech, it seems incredibly short sighted on their part, to shutdown and lockout a whole community of Harmony users, who are Home Automation enthusiasts and power users, its these people who usually recommend products to their families and friends and to others on the Internet forums and social media groups, so this can only be impacting currently on Logitech’s reputation.

Lets hope Logitech have simply made a mistake and are working to correct the problem before Christmas.

UPDATE: Harmony have just released a statement and its not good news !

Harmony Hub Firmware Update Fixes Vulnerabilities

Logitech recently released a firmware update for Harmony hub-based remotes that addressed some security vulnerabilities brought to our attention by a third-party cyber security firm. Logitech takes our customers’ security seriously, and we work diligently to fix these kinds of issues as they’re discovered.

Last week we began rolling out this update. We are aware that some customers using undocumented Harmony APIs for local home control were affected as a side-effect of our closing these vulnerabilities. These private local control APIs were never supported Harmony features. While it is unfortunate that customers using these unsupported features are affected by this fix, the overall security of our products and all of our customers is our priority.

We urge customers to update to this latest firmware, version 4.15.206. Please see this article for complete directions on checking and updating your current firmware version: https://support.myharmony.com/how-to-update-your-firmware

*Hub-based products include: Harmony Elite, Harmony Pro, Harmony Home Hub, Harmony Ultimate Hub, Harmony Hub, Harmony Home Control, Harmony Smart Control, Harmony Companion, Harmony Smart Keyboard, Harmony Ultimate, and Ultimate Home.

UPDATE: 21/12/2018

Any Vera Control Ltd users affected by Logitech blocking the local XMPP API port, the plugin developer has released a patch to use the Websockets API instead.

UHPPOTE 125KHz Single Door Proximity RFID Card Access Control Keypad Include EM4100 ID Keyfobs

Sensative Strips – Z-Wave Door and Window Sensors

The Sensative Strips claim they have a 10 year battery life time and they are super slim when compared to more traditional Z-Wave door and window sensors.

The round magnet is not used in the final installation but is used to wakeup the device during setup. The other oblong shaped magnet you can see is the one that is installed on the door or window frame along with the strip. When the contacts are broken the sensor is tripped etc.

Here you can see the rear of the strip.

Here is the purchased RFID keypad, hooked up to a 12V power supply for testing. The first thing I did was follow the instructions that came with the keypad to reset the default passcodes and I then assigned / setup four of the supplied keyfobs, it comes with ten fobs in total.

The instructions that come with this RFID keypad and straight forward and fairly easy to follow. There is a constantly flashing red LED light on the front of the keypad when it is powered up, when an assigned keyfob is held up to the keypad or the correct passcode is entered, the light goes green, “Access Granted”. When an unassigned keyfob or incorrect passcode is entered the light goes solid red and the keypad bleeps three times, “Access Denied”.

I bought a power supply off eBay to power the RFID keypad and also to power the Fibaro Universal Binary Sensor which is needed to make the RFID keypad visable and work with the Z-Wave network, more about that later.

Universal 12V 2A Switch Power Supply Source Driver Adapter For Led Strip Light

Specifications:
Input Voltage: 100~240V AC
Output Voltage: 12V
Output Current: 2A

So as I mentioned you also need a Fibaro Universal Binary Sensor, this is used to connect the RFID keypad to the Z-Wave network / controller.

The RFID keypad has two wiring connectors. JP1 and JP2.

Here are the wires on the Fibaro Universal Binary Sensor.

The following is the correct wiring.

Wiring up the power for the keypad and the binary sensor:

Wiring for the keypad / binary sensor functions:

I connected the grey and the blue wires off the keypad to the blue wire on the binary sensor (The second GND wire) which is the blue wire below the ANT one in the diagram above.

Here you just connect the white wire and the yellow wire together.

Here you just connect the brown and green wires together.

I just taped the correct wires up together as you can see in the below picture, you might be able to use a small connector block, but remember you need to squeeze the binary sensor and all this wiring in to the back of the RFID keypad when mounted on the wall.

I then included the Fibaro binary sensor in to the Vera controller and changed a parameter for the device and tested it was working but more on that later.

My RFID keypad was to be wall mounted in my little porch area, there is a stud parition wall and the other side of this is my living room. You can see in the next picture, I already had a switched fused spur socket at the bottom of this wall for my outside porch light. So to feed power to the 12V power supply, I took the Live, Neutral and Earth from the back of the fused spur and connected them up to the 12V power supplies AC inputs. Then the power supplies DC outputs (V+ and V-) then connect up to the keypad / binary sensor etc.

I hid the 12V power supply in the stud wall. I couldn’t be bothered to chase out the wall to hide the alarm cable I used to connect the DC from the power supply to the keypad / binary sensor, so I just surfaced mounted the alarm cable along the bottom of the wall and up.

Here you can see the area where the keypad was to be mounted, next to a Z-Wave light switch.

Here is the keypad fitted with the Fibaro binary sensor hidden inside the keypad. I used a bit of double sided sticky pad on the back of the small Fibaro binary sensor and stuck it to the circuit board of the keypad so the two would not be touching each other.

The bell button is pressed when leaving the house to arm the system and when returning home the RFID keyfobs are used or you can use your passcode. I had to cut out a bit of the keypads plastic casing to allow the cable to come in from the side.

Now the actual physical installation is finished I will show you some of the basic setup in the Vera Z-Wave controller. You need to incude your door / window sensors in Vera if they are not already. For the Sensative Strips I used the Vesternet guide here. One thing they don’t mention in the guide is that the Sensative strips by default will not appear in the Vera UI7 Dashboard –> My Modes –> Choose Sensors to arm area, so you can arm or disarm the door sensors with Vera UI7’s default house modes. To do this see this thread here.

You also need to include the Fibaro Universal Binary Sensor in to Vera if you haven’t already. I didn’t take a screen shot of how the universal sensor looks in Vera by default, but you end up with three new devices and I have renamed mine.

“Alarm Keypad” is the master device. “Alarm Keypad Away” and “Alarm Keypad Entry” are the IN1 and IN2 of the binary sensor, these are child devices.

We must make a parameter change for the IN1 device, to make it normally open rather than normally closed.

From the user manual:

Parameter No. 3 – Type of input no. 1:

• Default value: 1 – INPUT_NC (Normal Close) Possible parameter settings:
• 0 – INPUT_NO (Normal Open)
• 1 – INPUT_NC (Normal Close)
• 2 – INPUT_MONOSTABLE
• 3 – INPUT_BISTABLE

So on the master device in my case its called “Alarm Keypad” go to the Device Options area and select the “Add Configuration Settings” button

Then enter Variable = 3. Data Size = 1 byte dec. Current Value = 0. Save the changes and let Vera reload.

When you press the bell button on the RFID keypad the “Alarm Keypad Away” device should go red and be tripped. When you swipe your keyfob or enter the correct passcode the “Alarm Keypad Entry” device should go red and be tripped. We can then use these new devices as triggers in our Vera scenes or PLEG logic to create whatever actions we want to happen for your alarm system.

The main thing you will need to setup is an entry timer delay, says 60 seconds to give you enough time to open the ARMED door and then to be able to swipe your keyfob to cancel the alarm siren from sounding. I wanted to do this in PLEG using the alarm example in the PLEG basics users guide, this uses state variables, however in the latest version of PLEG it seems state variables are broken and not working. So the only work around I could figure out for creating an alarm entry timer was to install the CountDown Timer plug-in for Vera and use the example found here.

In addition I have two native scenes in Vera called “Home” and “Away” I added triggers to these scenes using the new “Alarm Keypad Entry” and “Alarm Keypad Away” devices. I also added some lua code in to these scenes to also change Vera UI7’s default house modes.

Code to change Vera to Home mode:

luup.call_action(“urn:micasaverde-com:serviceId:HomeAutomationGateway1″,”SetHouseMode”, {Mode = 1}, 0)

Code to change Vera to Away mode:

luup.call_action(“urn:micasaverde-com:serviceId:HomeAutomationGateway1″,”SetHouseMode”, {Mode = 2}, 0)

I also have two futher native scenes in Vera, one called “Burglar Alarm” which is triggered when an armed door sensor is tripped, this is is the scene that starts the 60 second CountDown Timer, for your entry delay. The second scene is called “Burglar Alarm Delayed” its trigger is that the count down timer has completed (i.e. you have NOT deactivated your alarm) and this is the scene that would then sound the siren etc. But if you do within the 60 seconds swipe your keyfob this runs the “Home” Scene and this scene should cancel the count down timer etc therefore stopping the “Burglar Alarm Delayed” scene / siren from being triggered.

So now you can get creative, my alarm scenes also do the following for example. If the alarm is tripped and its night time, all the lights inside and outside of the house are turned on. The lounge curtains are opened and the LAPD flashing police lights are started on the LED strips lights behind my wall mounted TV, I am using a Fibaro RGBW module to control the LED lights in Vera. Also a TTS notification is sent to my mobile phone using Vera Alerts that the alarm has been activated.

When we are coming home and we swipe a keyfob to turn off the alarm, if its night time lights downstairs are automatically turned on for our entrance so we are not walking in to the house in the dark etc.

Conclusion

This is not a dedicated security alarm system, but if you don’t have such an alarm system installed and you want some basic protection on your door or windows and you already have a Z-Wave based home automation controller this could be a good fun project! Its also easy to use for the wife and kids leaving and entering the house, if they are the last ones leaving or the first entering the house.

If you wish to purchase any Z-Wave Euro devices at discounted prices then contact us via our website. www.asmarterhome.co.uk

The Fibaro Dimmer 2 is a small wireless Z-Wave module that is installed behind light switches to make them “smart”. We can then control the lights wirelessly in the home automation system.

This will enable us to control the lights via our smart phones and tablet devices using the ImperiHome mobile app. We can then also setup scenes and schedules to have the lights automatically come on and off at certain times if we wish, or to simulate house occupancy when we are away.

Another function with scenes for example, could be if a Z-Wave smoke or C02 sensor was triggered in the night we could have the scene automatically turn on the lights to aid our escape or another example might be if our burglar alarm scene was tripped in the night we could also automatically turn on the lights inside and outside of the house when this happens.

The Fibaro Dimmer 2 user manual can be found here

Supported Loads

As a dimmer it operates under the following loads:
• 230V operated conventional incandescent and halogen light
sources
• 12V operated ELV halogen lamps and dimmable LED bulbs (with
electronic transformers)
• 12V operated MLV halogen lamps (with ferromagnetic
transformers)
• dimmable LED bulbs
• dimmable compact fluorescent CFL tube lamps
• supported dimmable light sources (power factor > 0.5) with
minimal power of 5VA using FIBARO Bypass 2 (depending on the
type of load)

Without dimming function it may work with:
• compact fluorescent CFL tube lamps with electronic ballast
• fluorescent tube lamps with electronic ballast
• LED bulbs (power factor > 0.7)
• supported light sources (power factor > 0.5) with minimal power
of 5VA using FIBARO Bypass 2 (depending on the type of load)

I am using a light fitting that has a 240v –> 12v transformer built in to it and I am using 4x new MR16 ECO low energy 14W halogen bulbs.

The Fibaro Dimmer 2 has a minimum load of 50W. So my 4x 14W halogen bulbs are 56W total, which is OK as I am over the 50W minimum. However if the total of your bulbs wattage is less than 50W, perhaps you are using low wattage LED bulbs, then you will also need to also install a Dimmer Bypass 2 as well. I’d say its probably best to install the Bypass 2 device as a matter of course anyway.

“The Fibaro Dimmer Bypass 2 acts as an intelligent load in the lighting circuit and will help prevent the LEDs flickering at startup, low dim settings or when they should be Off. The dimmer bypass should be installed in one of the light fittings or in the wiring going to the light fitting, it must be connected between the light’s Live and Neutral wires. You only need one Dimmer Bypass 2 for each circuit (not for each light bulb).”

There are several excellent application notes from the guys at Vesternet about the Dimmer 2:

• Installing a Fibaro Dimmer 2 Module into a Wall Light Switch
• Using Fibaro Dimmer 2 with LED Lights
• 2-Way Lighting Using Fibaro Dimmer 2 
• Using Different Switches with the Fibaro Dimmer 2 
• Using a 3-Position Switch with a Fibaro Dimmer 2

Here is my ceiling lights in the living room.

I took it apart to take a closer look at the inbuilt 240v –> 12v transformer

I didn’t install a Bypass 2 as my bulb wattage total was over 50W and I don’t plan to use LED bulbs anytime soon.

For the Fibaro Dimmer 2 module to fit behind the light switches I recommend using 35mm back boxes. I also recommend replacing your existing light switches with 3-position momentary, or retractive, switches, these have 3 positions and are also known as an ON/OFF/ON switch.

Why use a 3-position Switch

This type of switch provides another way of controlling the Fibaro Dimmer 2 (and the light it is connected to):

• Top ON
  • Press once and release – turns light onto full brightness or previously set dim level
  • Press and hold – increases brightness, releasing it keeps the lamp at that brightness
• Bottom ON
  • Press once and release – turns light off
  • Press and hold – decreases brightness, releasing it keeps the lamp at that brightness

Installation and Configuration

The switch and Dimmer 2 module can be connected to the lighting system as follows.

I wired up my Fibaro Dimmer 2 as per the wiring diagram above. I am using the Scolmore Minigrid 3 position momentary switches.

Here you can see the Fibaro Dimmer 2 module

Here is my orginal bog standard dimmer switch minus the screws which I had already took out.

Most UK light switch back boxes are likely to be only 16mm deep, so this means you will need to replace the back box with a deeper 35mm one.

Or you can buy light switch spacers to bring out the light switch away from the wall and then give you more space behind, but I am not keen on that look.

Here is the existing dimmer switch wiring, the wiring in my house is quite old done when the house was built in the 70s. Most UK light switches are a 2 wire system with no neutral.

The Fibaro Dimmer 2 module however supports both 2 wire and 3 wire systems.

I turned off the electric at the consumer unit for the lighting ring and disconnected the original dimmer switch.

I then proceeded to remove the 16mm back box, unfortunately I rushed this a little and some of the surrounding plaster work came away. I am sure if you take your time and are more careful than I was you can remove the back box with less damage.

I then proceeded with the hammer and chisel to knock out the block work deeper to fit the new 35mm metal back box.

Next I started connecting the Fibaro Dimmer 2 module and the new Minigrid switch.

Once wired in I applied my first lot of wall filler to fix the holes I had made.

I will later sand this down and apply a second lot of filler to make the job nice and neat and then use a little more white paint to finish.

You then need to pair the new Fibaro Dimmer 2 to the Vera home automation controller, I won’t cover how to do that here as its pretty standard stuff.

Once paired I then had 3 new devices in the Vera web GUI, two are child devices which I will hide from the GUI later as they are not needed. I renamed the main parent device to “Lounge Lights”.

When the Fibaro Dimmer 2 module is first powered on it runs an auto calibration routine to work out what type of lighting system / bulbs are in use and to automatically configure the minimum and maximum brightness levels.

In the device options I had to to set parameter 20 to 1 byte Dec with a value of 2. This tells the Dimmer 2 I am using the 3 position momentary type of light switch and sets it up in that mode etc.

Also you can add paramaters 1 and 2 to see the minimum and maximum brightness levels detected by the calibration routine. Mine were 1 and 82.

If you wish you could for example set parameter 2 to 70, so that when the light is on 100% in the GUI it is actually only using 70% brightness, this is another way to save yet more energy consumption.

In the end after playing around with these parameters for a while I finally set parameter 2 to 80.

Here are the device controls in the Vera UI7 web GUI.

I then added the device in to the ImperiHome mobile application on all of our smart phones and tablet devices.

Summary

The Fibaro Dimmer 2 is a retro fit wireless Z-Wave lighting controller and is an essential part of any Z-Wave home automation installation. They make your home lighting “smart” and gives you the home owner added benefits of energy saving, security and control.

Contact us today for a consultancy to see how we can make your digital smart home become a reality.

www.yorkshireautomation.co.uk

www.asmarterhome.co.uk

“The Fibaro Z-Wave RGBW Controller enables you to bring multi-colour LEDs to life, allowing you to have just the right light effect for your mood.

The Fibaro RGBW Controller is a unique, advanced wireless 4-colour LED strips controller. As well as supporting the traditional RGB channels, it also supports the additional white light channel – allowing an infinite variety of pastel colours. The controller also provides dimming control of four LED channels and can take input from up to four analog sensors.”

Wiring was simple, the user manual can be found here.

I just used a small LED driver power supply behind the TV and connected a plug wire on to it, this then plugged in to the double mains socket behind the TV and the 12 volt +/- output from the power supply connects to the 12v / GND on the Fibaro RGBW module.

The 12v wire from the LED strip tape then also goes to the 12v on the Fibaro module and the colour channels go:

• Red –> Red
• Green –> Green
• Blue –> Blue
• White –> White

I am not actually using LED tape with a white channel so this remained unused. I am using bog standard RGB SMD 5050 300 LEDs Waterproof Strip, easily found on eBay, Amazon and Aliexpress etc.

Read my previous article about how I made up the LED loom for behind my wall mounted TV here.

Once the wiring was completed it was time to pair the new Fibaro RGBW module in to the Vera home automation controller. I am using a Vera Edge UI7 unit and below are the step by step instructions from Vera support on how you should pair the module.

In order to include your device on Vera , please try to follow the standard steps below:

– Bring your device within 3 feet from your Vera Controller.

– Afterwards access your Vera Web Interface ( Dashboard ), click on Devices > Add Device > Other Device > Other ZWave device, click on the step 3 ( in the right side of the page ) then click on Retry button.

-Your unit will be into exclusion mode, in the status bar you should see the this message: “Add/Remove : Remove devices now…”, after then follow the steps on your device for exclusion process according the owner guide.

-Then automatically the status bar should be: “Add/Remove : Add new devices now…” if not so, click on “Try adding it again” to put your unit into inclusion mode, the status bar should be changed into: “Add/Remove : Add new devices now…” and then follow the steps on your device for inclusion process according the owner guide.

Then give a name to your device and click on the Finish button.

Where they say “follow the steps on your device for inclusion process according the owner guide” you just press the B button on the Fibaro RGBW module quickly 3 times.

The new device(s) are then added in to the Vera controller web GUI and you end up with 6 new devices. Unfortunately I forgot to take some screen shots of the devices before I renamed them and moved them in to the lounge room, but basically you get the main parent device a child device which is used as a dim all channels function and then a device for each of the colour channels RGBW.

You now need to rename these devices so they make more sense, to do this I moved all the dimmer sliders down from 100% to 0% then one by one on the child devices that are for the colour channels, move the slider up to 100% and watched the LED lights to see what colour they went? If Red for example rename that device “RGBW – Red Channel” or if the lights went Green, name it “RGBW – Green Channel” etc.

This is how the renamed devices look like in Vera UI7 on my system. RGBW Dimmer is the child device of the parent device and is the dim all functionality.

I named the parent device RGB Controlller.

Tip:-

Decide if you want to actually hide the individual colour channel child devices from the Vera web GUI? I haven’t done this yet, but I will probably hide all of the individual colour channel child devices and just keep the main parent device for the Fibaro RGBW Controller, the child device for the Dim all functionality and the device for the RGB Controller Plug-in, more on that later.
 
Startup Lua example:
 
luup.attr_set(“invisible”,”1″,134) 134 is the device ID you want to hide etc.

End of Tip

Now by default its seems that you won’t see that colour picker box in the screen shot above and it will be missing. This is a newish native feature of Vera UI7 and it needs to be enabled by making a few changes to the main parent device.

Click on the arrow of the parent device and go to Advanced.

In the device_file field and in the device_json field which can be found further down the page you need to replace the following text:

In the device_flle field change –

D_DimmableLight1.xml to D_DimmableRGBLight2.xml

In the device_json field change –

D_DimmableLight1.json to D_DimmableRGBLight2.json

So those fields should now look like this:

Then go to the Commands tab and press the Configure node right now button.

After this you should now have the native Vera RGB support and be able to see the colour picker box on the parent device. Pick a colour and then click the Choose button and the LEDs should change to that colour you just selected.

You can also use this colour picker box in scenes, so you could have a scene run and select a particular colour to then be displayed.

Congratulations you have now setup the native Vera RGB support for your Fibaro RGBW module, however there is more, as always 3rd party developers seem to do things better and there is a plug-in for Vera called “RGB Controller” by installing this plug-in we can gain even more functionality such as a colour wheel picker and support for the Fibaro RGBW modules inbuilt aimations / programs more on that later.

In the Vera UI7 web GUI go to APPS –> INSTALL APPS and search for “RGB Controller”

Now I already have the plug-in installed but you would select to install the plug-in from this area etc.

Once the plug-in has been installed you should see a new device called “RGB Controller” I believe it was called. I renamed this plug-in device to “RGBW – Colour Wheel”

Now you need to link the new RGB Controller plug-in device to the actual Fibaro RGBW Controller parent device. So you need to know what is the device ID number of the Fibaro RGBW Controller parent device? In my case its #128

Keep this number in mind and now open up the new RGB Controller plug-in device and go to the Settings tab. Under Device type select the “Fibaro RGBW Controller” and press Save.

Now for some reson the second drop down box called “Controlled Device” didn’t seem to work for me and was empty. so instead go to the Control tab –> Advanced –> Variables and scroll down to the field called Deviceid and enter the device ID number of the parent Fibaro RGBW Controller device, in my case #128

This should then have setup and configured the RGB Controller plug-in deivce to be able to control the Fibaro RGBW Controller parent device etc.

Now this is where the fun stuff starts !

You can now go to the Colour Wheel tab and you select a colour first on the wheel / circle, then in the square box in the middle, you select a shade of that colour and the LED lights will then change to that colour.

If you are using the ImperiHome mobile app for Vera you will be pleased to know that this colour wheel functionality is then also avaiable in the app.

The Fibaro RGBW module has 5 predefined animations or programs they are called:

• Fireplace
• Storm
• Rainbow
• Aurora
• LAPD

These are animations for example the Aurora animation slowly fades through the colours and the LAPD animation looks like police lights flashing which I have now used in my burglar alarm scene.

In order to utilise these inbuilt animations, I created 5 new scenes in Vera with a single line of LUA code in each to start each of the ainmations. The deviceid you can see in the code below of 139 should be the device ID of your “RGB Controller” plug-in device what ever device ID number has been assigned to it.

RGBW – Fireplace
 
luup.call_action(“urn:upnp-org:serviceId:RGBController1″,”StartAnimationProgram”,{ programId=”6″ },139)
 
RGBW – Storm
 
luup.call_action(“urn:upnp-org:serviceId:RGBController1″,”StartAnimationProgram”,{ programId=”7″ },139)
 
RGBW – Rainbow
 
luup.call_action(“urn:upnp-org:serviceId:RGBController1″,”StartAnimationProgram”,{ programId=”8″ },139)
 
RGBW – Aurora
 
luup.call_action(“urn:upnp-org:serviceId:RGBController1″,”StartAnimationProgram”,{ programId=”9″ },139)
 
RGBW – LAPD
 
luup.call_action(“urn:upnp-org:serviceId:RGBController1″,”StartAnimationProgram”,{ programId=”10″ },139)
 
I then created a sixth scene to stop the animations.
 
RGBW – Animation Off

luup.call_action(“urn:upnp-org:serviceId:RGBController1″,”StartAnimationProgram”,{ programId=”0″ },139)

Here you can see my new scenes in the Vera UI7 web GUI

Here are some older photos of the LED mood lighting behind my wall mounted TV

Final notes:

In the Fibaro RGBW modules user manual there are many configuration parameters that can be set and configured. However for my working setup here I did NOT add or configure any device parameters. It seems I just didn’t need to do any of that.

The Fibaro RGBW module essensitally replaces the existing LED driver and IR remote that probably came with your LED tape. However if you are interested in also keeping the IR functionality it may be possible as demonstrated on this German blog here.

Summary

I am very pleased with the Fibaro RGBW module and it has made a welcome addition to my home automation setup. Being able to control the LED mood lighting via your home automation system is much more convenient as I can now control the LED lights with our smart phones and tablets, also we can now incorporate LED lighting controls in to our home automation scenes and schedules.

Contact us today for a consultancy to see how we can make your digital smart home become a reality.

www.yorkshireautomation.co.uk

www.asmarterhome.co.uk

If you wish to do this in Kodi / OpenElec (Linux) then read this article here instead.

Here is a brief overview of the steps required:

Step 1: Create or Edit the Kodi keyboard.xml file to create your desired keyboard shortcuts.

Step 2: Create a pyhton .py script file that Kodi calls when you press your keyboard shortcut in Kodi. In turn the python script calls a Windows .vbs script.

Step 3. Ceate the .vbs script which sends the HTTP command to the Vera controller to run the scene.

The main reason why we use a .vbs script is so we don’t have pop up command windows appearing over the top of the Kodi user interface and the HTTP request will be sent to Vera invisibly in the background.

Step 1: Create or Edit the Kodi keyboard.xml file to create your desired keyboard shortcuts.

The keyboard.xml file should be located in this folder:

C:\Users\Stuart\AppData\Roaming\Kodi\userdata\keymaps

Obviously browse to your own “username” folder what ever that is called, mine is called “Stuart”

If you have an existing keyboard.xml file in this folder then great we can just edit this in a text editor program. I use EditPad Lite7 as my text editor.

If you do not have a keyboard.xml file in this folder, you can download the master keyboard.xml file, to do this right click on this link here and select “Save Link As” (Chrome browser) and save the file Keyboard.xml in to the correct folder.

C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\Kodi\userdata\keymaps

Now open the Keyboard.xml file in with your preferred text editor application.

The file looks like this:

Scroll down to the <keyboard> section

Hit enter to make a new line

Now this is where we enter our new keyboard shortcut and specify the python script file it should run. In my example here I want my keyboard shortcut to be Ctrl+Alt+A and I want this to run a python script called lounge-on.py

<A mod=”ctrl,alt”>RunScript(C:\Users\Stuart\AppData\Roaming\Kodi\userdata\Scripts\lounge-on.py)</A>

So now the Keyboard.xml file looks like this, save and close the file.

Note: Anytime you edit the keyboard.xml file you need to close and reopen Kodi for the changes to take affect.

Step 2: Create a pyhton .py script file that Kodi calls when you press your keyboard shortcut

Before you start this step ensure you can see file extensions in Windows Explorer.

Now the path I specified in the keyboard.xml file for my python script was:

C:\Users\Stuart\AppData\Roaming\Kodi\userdata\Scripts\lounge-on.py

So in Windows Explorer I need to navigate to the Kodi\Userdata folder and I need to create a new sub-folder called “Scripts”

In here I now need to create a new python .py script file. To do this right click in Windows Explorer and on the menu select New –> Text Document.

Then rename the text file in this example I am calling my python script file lounge-on.py

Ensure you have removed the .txt extension and that it now has a .py extension instead.

Now right click the new .py file and select to edit it in your text editor.

Paste in this code and change the path as required:

import subprocess
child = subprocess.Popen(“wscript C:\Users\Stuart\AppData\Roaming\Kodi\userdata\Scripts\lounge-on.vbs”)

So my lounge-on.py file now looks like this:

Save and close the python .py script file.

In the python .py script file, we call another .vbs file. I am going to call mine lounge-on.vbs.

Step 3. Ceate the .vbs script which sends the HTTP command to the Vera controller to run the scene.

In Windows Explorer in the same folder

C:\Users\Stuart\AppData\Roaming\Kodi\userdata\Scripts\

Right click and from the menu select New –> Text Document

Rename the file including the .txt extension to lounge-on.vbs in this example.

Now right click the lounge-on.vbs file and edit it in your text editor.

Enter this code:

Dim oXmlHttp
Dim sWebPage

set oXmlHttp = CreateObject(“MSXML2.XMLHTTP”)

oXmlHttp.open “GET”, “http://192.168.1.10:3480/data_request?id=lu_action&serviceId=urn:micasaverde-com:serviceId:HomeAutomationGateway1&action=RunScene&SceneNum=14“, false
oXmlHttp.send “”
sWebPage = oXmlHttp.responseText

You need to change the IP address to the IP address of your Vera controller and the SceneNum needs to be changed to the scene number you want to run.

Save and close the .vbs file.

Testing

That’s it the setup is completed, now open Kodi and enter your keyboard shortcut, in this example it was Ctrl+Alt+A and your Vera scene should then be run and you should see no command windows popping up over the top of the Kodi user interface.

Running  more scenes

Repeat the process to be able to run more scenes. So for example add a new line in to the keyboard.xml file like:

<B mod=”ctrl,alt”>RunScript(C:\Users\Stuart\AppData\Roaming\Kodi\userdata\Scripts\lounge-off.py)</B>

In this example pressing Ctrl+Alt+B would run a python script file called lounge-off.py

So you would then create the lounge-off.py file and the lounge-off.vbs file etc.

Controlling Vera Devices

You can also use HTTP commands to turn on or off Vera devices, rather than running scenes. For exmaple this HTTP command turns ON my FAN device.

http://192.168.1.10:3480/data_request?id=lu_action&output_format=xml&DeviceNum=50&serviceId=urn:upnp-org:serviceId:SwitchPower1&action=SetTarget&newTargetValue=1

You need to specifiy the correct IP address of your Vera controller and specify the correct device number in DeviceNum=

ON is – SetTarget&newTargetValue=1

OFF is – SetTarget&newTargetValue=0

Summary

This is a fairly easy way to be able to use Kodi keyboard shortcuts to run scenes in Vera and also to be able to control devices in Vera.

In addition you could then go on to program your universal remote control to send these keyboard shortcuts to your Kodi HTPC and you could then run scenes or control devices from your remote control handset via the Kodi HTPC etc.

What is it? Emby is an Open Source Media Server and Client applications solution which was previously named Media Browser, which initially started life as a 3rd party Movie / TV Shows views add-on for the now dead Windows Media Center platform.

In a nut-shell Emby can be used to centralise all your media content, manage its metadata and artwork, access your content on a multitude of different devices, share content with family and friends and more!

The Emby Server can be installed on Windows, Linux, NAS, MAC, FreeBSD. I have it installed on my WHS 2011 server and I removed MyMovies.dk which was still on there for legacy MCE metadata. One of the great things about the server side of things is the ease at which metadata and artwork files are automatically downloaded and can be managed using the metadata manager for example. Its pretty much 100% seamless, you add new content that is correctly named and structured and the Emby server does the rest for you.

No more messing about with 3rd party metadata managers or with several different metadata add-ons in Kodi such as the Artwork Downloader or CDArt Manager, those add-ons are made redundant. As is MYSQL as a centralised database for Kodi, with the Emby add-on for Kodi and the Emby Server back-end these replace and also make MYSQL redundant.

Emby client apps include: Kodi, Windows Media Center / XBOX 360 (MCE Extender), Android TV, Roku  / Now TV boxes, Amazon Fire TV, some Samsung Smart TVs and Emby Theatre which is their stand alone Windows client application. Also you can use the Emby’s web browser GUI to cast content to your Chrome Cast device, Emby also supports DLNA.

So plenty of apps to play with and then there are the mobile apps which include: Emby Web Client (HTML5), Android, iOS (Under development and coming soon), Windows 8.1 / 10 and Windows Phone.

As you can see its a very impressive list of client app options! I am personally using the Emby add-on for Kodi, this is still in beta and I have it installed on two test PCs only at the moment and not installed on my main OpenElec HTPCs which are connected to the TVs in the house. I am also using the Android mobile app on several tablets and the Windows 8.1 / 10 app on my new Windows 10 touch screen laptop. I have also setup the Roku app on a Now TV box for a relative so they can access content remotely over the Internet.

And that is another killer feature of Emby the remote access side of things, in native Kodi media center there is no easy way out of the box to open up your content for remote access when you are away from the home. This is where Emby really shines and the Emby Server will ensure that the vast majority of your content can be played on remote devices either by transcoding on the fly to suit devices such as tablets and phones or by allowing Direct Streaming where possible. For example another family member of mine now has a remote Kodi installation on their PC and they can direct stream Movies, TV Shows and Music from my server here with no transcoding required for most video formats that Kodi can play natively.

Other Emby features include cloud sync (this is a paid for option which there aren’t too many) where you can choose to sync some of your content titles up to the cloud to services like Dropbox. Mobile sync is another feature, I’ve not tried this but presumably you could choose to sync down a movie for example to your mobile devices local storage for offline playback. Parental Controls and user management to easily share content with family members and friends. There is also an inbuilt Live TV side to Emby, which I believe only currently works for HDHomeRun network tuners.

However I am still using DVBLogic’s DVBLink Server as the back-end for my Live TV and Kodi using the DVBLinks PVR add-on links in to this. However there is also a plug-in for DVBLink on the Emby server, this then enables Live TV to then be streamed to the various Emby client apps, some features fall under the Emby Supporter / Donator category like being able to see all your TV channels in the electronic program guide, however you can still see and access all the channels in a simple channel list view. But most of the core features of Emby are free and do not require supporter access. Other Live TV Emby plug-ins for back-end TV services include ServerWMC, Media Portal, Next PVR, TVHeadEnd, VU+.

Some screen shots:

Emby HTML5 Web Browser GUI

Home

Movies

Movie Info Page

TV Shows

TV Show Info Page

TV Show Seasons

Season 1 / Episodes

Episode Info Page

Music Albums

Album Details / Tracks

Album Artists

Artist Info Page

Summary

To wrap this up then, Emby is well simply excellent, the forums are active and helpful to new users. There are parts of the system which are still under heavy development such as the Kodi / Emby integration and the iOS app, however there are stable versions available for Kodi if you don’t want to be on the cutting edge with the beta releases.

I would say Emby is a replacement for Windows MCE / MyMovies.dk, Plex and probably a whole other bunch of media center related software. Try it out and it won’t be long until you think how did I live without it?

Well that chime and button were really old to begin with and have recently packed in and stopped working. After reading some wired doorbell chime kit reviews on Amazon I decided to purchase a Byron 1217 kit normally around £15 currently only £7.99 at Screwfix here. The user manual for the Byron 1217 unit can be seen here.

Critically this new doorbell chime only takes 2x D type batteries which are 1.5 volts each totalling 3 volts, whereas my old chime unit took 4x D type batteries totalling 6 volts. This meant I had to also purchase a new 3VDC miniature relay as my old relay was rated at 6VDC on the coil.

OMRON ELECTRONIC COMPONENTS  G5V-1 3DC  RELAY, SPDT, 1A, 3VDC

Miniature coil relay pin out diagram

Here’s how I wired up the new Byron doorbell chime unit to the Z-wave.me iTemp device.

Pins 2 & 9 on the coil relay (no polarity) connected to terminal 2 on the back of the doorbell chime and to the negative terminal of the right hand side battery, at the front of the doorbell chime.

Pins 1 & 5 on the coil relay (no polarity) were then connected to the dry input connector on the Z-Wave iTemp device which you can see in the picture below.

Note: I wouldn’t actually recommend the Z-wave.me iTemp device as it uses batteries far too quickly, instead if you are doing a new Z-wave doorbell project I would recommend using a Fibaro Door and Window sensor and the dry input connector on that device instead.

This time as the Byron 1217 chime unit is much smaller in size than my old one, I mounted the coil relay in a surface mount 1 gang box.

Here you can see the Byron 1217 chime unit. The wire on the right of the chime unit is going off outside to the push button, the wire in the corner of the walls going up, is heading towards the Z-Wave.me iTemp device which is mounted in my living room as it also acts as a temperature sensor.

This time I used a lot smaller and thinner cable running under the ceiling coving heading in to the living room and to the Z-wave.me iTemp device. Last time I used some CAT5 cable which was much thicker.

Here’s the other side of the internal wall in the living room, where the Z-wave.me iTemp device is mounted.

Blanking faceplate installed on the 1 gang surface mount box which contains the coil relay.

Finished installation.

New push button installed outside, the button came with the Byron 1217 doorbell chime kit. The chime doesn’t go ding dong as I thought it might have, it sounds like a bicycle bell and can only be heard for the duration that the button is being held down. However its perfectly fine for the money spent.

OK so now everything was wired up it was time to test it again, looking in the Vera UI my binary contact device was GREEN i.e. not tripped.

Upon pressing the doorbell it changes to RED i.e. now tripped

After a short while the binary contact device should return back to green.

So now what? Well you can now trigger Vera scenes based upon when this binary contact device is tripped. So for example I have added LUUP code in to a doorbell scene to send a popup notification to all the Kodi HTPC’s / TVs in the house, that there is someone at the door, video / audio playback is also paused, also if its night time and the lights are dimmed the lights will automatically brighten up to 100%.

I also have a Logitech Squeezebox (SqueezeLite instance) in the kitchen announce through the kitchen speakers, using Google Text-to-Speech “There is someone at the door”.

Summary

Once you have Z-Wave enabled your existing wired doorbell the possibilities are endless, have a Vera scene send an email notification or send out a SMS text message notification to your phone for example, this could also be integrated in to any front door IP CAM and even send you a picture of who is stood at your door!

Tip – go for a Fibaro door / window sensor rather than a Z-wave.me iTemp and you should be good to go.

If you are interested in purchasing Z-wave Europe home automation products, please contact us directly here for bespoke prices and discounts.

Here you can see my new Immersion Heater device in Vera UI5.

My initial plan was just to wire in the Fibaro 3KW relay insert module in behind the immersion heater switch in the kitchen.

However my concern was that the immersion heater uses around 3KW and that the Fibaro relay module would be operating at its upper limits, so a safer and smarter solution was needed. I then thought about also using an additional more heavy duty relay and to have that one handle the heavy load and just have the Fibaro relay switch on and off the additional rely.

So I spoke to my new electrician friend Ahmer Mohammad, who is also a home automation enthusiast (his website “A Smarter Home“), and he also sells and installs Solar Thermal (hot water heating) systems via his renewables company “Solar Sparks“, which is based in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England.

With his advice and installation instructions I was able to purchase a suitable relay and install everything and get it all up and running. I’d also like to thank user “RexBeckett” on the Micasaverde Vera user forums, who is one of the well known experts on there, for his input and advice on the project also!

DISCLAIMER ALWAYS SEEK PROFESSIONAL ADVICE FROM A CERTIFIED ELECTRICIAN FOR YOUR OWN INSTALLATIONS

Here is the wiring diagram I was working from, which was approved by the Electrician:

Here is a photo of the SSR and information about the terminals:

And here are the written instructions from the Electrician:

Use a junction box or heavy duty 20A connectors for the ‘lives’ as only 1 is coming out of the switch but you need to connect to 3 places.
same with neutrals as only 1 from switch but you need to connect to 3 places as well.
Live from switch connects to:
live in Fibaro
IN in Fibaro
on 1 of the output terminal in the relay
Neutral from switch connects to:
neutral of Fibaro
neutral of the relay (INPUT SIDE)
neutral of the immersion
OUtput 1 of the Fibaro connects to the Live of the relay INPUT side
Live of immersion connects to the switched out terminal of the relay
principle
turn switch on this acts as our isolator for this whole system so don’t need to turn mains off if ever need to change or alter Fibaro, relay or immersion
Fibaro becomes live and ready to accept z-wave commands
Fibaro will then turn the relay on or off
the output contacts of the relay will close or open respectively
when relay contacts closed the immersion is on
nice and safe as we previously discussed.

Parts I needed for the job:

1 x Fibaro 1* 3KW relay insert module (Note- these are now discontinued and have been replaced with the newer 1* 2.5KW FIBEFGS-212)

You can purchase Z-wave Euro devices from us directly, contact us to discuss your personal requirements and we can then offer bespoke discounted pricing.

1 x Solid State Relay which I purchased off eBay. You can buy these without the heat sink, I bought one that came with the heat sink.

Single Phase Solid State Relay SSR-40AA 40A 150-350V 24-480VAC w Heat Sink

Here is the specification of the SSR

Product Name
Solid State Relay + Heat Sink

• Model
  SSR-40AA
• Material
  Metal, Aluminum, Plastic
• Rated Load Current
  40A
• Input
  AC 150-350V
• Output
  AC 24-480V
• Total Size (Approx.)
  8 x 5 x 8cm / 3.1″ x 1.9″ x 3.1″ (L * W * H )
• Color
  Black
• Weight
  190g
• Package Content
• 1 x Solid State Relay
• 1 x Heat Sink

1 x Double Pole Switched Fused Spur, to replace the 1970’s looking switch that was in my airing cupboard, where the hot water cylinder tank is located.

This is the old switch in the airing cupboard I replaced and don’t ask me why the walls in the airing cupboard are pink? I didn’t paint them that colour!

1 x Single Dry lining box 35mm bought from Screwfix here.

1x Electrical enclosure box 180 x 110 x 100mm from Screwfix here.

1 x 20A Junction Box also from Screwfix here.

I also needed some twin and earth socket wire.

Installation:

First step was to ensure that the switch for the immersion heater in the kitchen was turned off, to isolate the circuit upstairs in the airing cupboard. Then I started to remove the existing ON/OFF switch in the airing cupboard, that connects to the immersion heater at the top of the water tank via a flex cable.

I then knocked out a new hole in the wall for the new dry lining box. The cable you can see is the existing cable that comes from the immersion heater wall switch downstairs in the kitchen.

Here is the back of the switched fuse spur, I connected the existing cable in the wall to the Live and Neutral IN and the earth cable to one of the earth connectors.

I then added a short piece of new twin and earth cable to the Switched Fused Spur – To the Live and Neutral OUT and earth to the other earth connector. This cable will be fed back through the dry lining box and connected to the new 20A junction box that will be placed and hidden inside the stud wall.

Feeding the new cable back through the dry lining box.

Attaching the new cable to the Junction Box. Live, Neutral and Earth, the various connections needed as shown in the wiring diagram, will all come from this new junction box.

I then starting checking out the enclosure box, to see where it would be mounted on the wall and where I needed new holes in the wall for the cables to come through in to the box

My Dad always told me make sure its level!

I made two new holes in the wall behind where the enclosure box will be mounted.

I also cut out all the access holes of the box for air flow, as I was worried about how hot the SSR relay would get? The heat sink does get hot and you can’t leave your finger on it for too long!

In this picture you can see I have added two new pieces of twin and earth cable and looped them round in the two new holes and out through the larger hole for the dry lining box.

Next step was to connect the ends to the Junction Box.

As per the wiring diagram, I also needed one extra Live cable, so I also added a single Live cable from the junction box and  looped it round to one of the holes in the wall, to go in to the enclosure box. I also at this point, wired in the neutral and earth cables from the immersion heaters flex cable in to the junction box, I don’t have photos of this step.

In this photo I have put the top on the junction box.

Next I mounted the SSR relay in to the box, I had to drill two small holes in to the base of the box and using some nuts and bolts secured the SSR in to the box.

I then cut the excess off the bolts with a hack saw.

I then pushed the junction box in to the larger hole to hide it in the stud wall and started to connect up some of the cables to the SSR relay.

At this point you really need to start following the wiring diagram, to work out which cables are connecting to where on the SSR and to the Fibaro relay unit.

I mounted the SSR upside down, which just seemed easier as far as the wiring was concerned.

Once I had completed all the wiring and triple checked everything, I turned back on the power and tested I was getting power to the various live cables with my little screw driver that lights up.

It was then time to add the new Fibaro 3KW relay to Vera. So I put the VeraLite in battery mode, pressed the plus button and then pressed the button on the Fibaro module three times.

Here is a picture of the SSR powered up the red light comes on.

Here is the completed installation, minus a bit of pink paint as I had to fill in and tidy up the wall around the fused spur.

In the Vera web UI I could then see two new _Appliance Modules devices has been added. One is a child device and the other is the father or main device.

The reason you get two new devices, even though its only a 1* 3KW relay is because:

“The child device is for the S2 input. It allows you to use it as an extra input which can be useful if you need some way to signal Vera with some state.
The S1 input would switch the output and thus control the SSR directly.”

As the child device isn’t needed in my setup I hid the device using the following method:

You can hide it using the command:

luup.attr_set("invisible","1",123)

Replacing 123 with the device number. In UI5, this needs to be placed in Startup Lua. In UI7, it apparently sticks if run once in Test Luup code (Lua).

Thanks to RexBeckett for this information and solution.

Immersion Heater turned ON

House Power Usage when the immersion is turned ON.

(CurrentCost EnviR Energy Monitor integrated into Vera with the plug-in).

After installing everything and actually sitting down and using Vera to turn on the Immersion Heater and then watching the real time power consumption usage, I noticed something that looked odd.

I thought there might be a problem? After about 8 minutes of turning on the Immersion the wattage dropped from 3000 and something watts to 600 watts. I went upstairs to the box and the SSR was still lit up and powered on. Then several minutes later it had shot back up to 3441 watts. It would keep doing this as if the immersion heater was being turned on and off after so many minutes. I suspected that it must be a thermostat on the hot water tank but wasn’t sure. Both the electrician and our resident forum expert both confirmed it was likely due to the thermostat on the immersion itself inside at the top of the tank.

Here’s what RexBeckett said about it:

“Immersion heaters usually have built-in thermostats. These turn on and off to keep the water temperature fairly constant. Because they are physically close to the heater, they can cycle quite often even though the tank temperature does not change quickly. I would expect your energy monitor to show the change in energy use as the ‘stat cycles.”

After leaving the Immersion turned on for twenty minutes or so I checked the water from the tap and it was nice and hot, so it was indeed all working perfectly fine!

Summary

I am very pleased with how this project turned out and I will now be able to schedule some scenes in Vera to automatically turn on and off the Immersion Heater early in the morning so the water  is nice and hot for when we get up. We can now also turn on and off the Immersion heater using our mobile phones and tablets, even when outside of the house!

Here are a couple of screen shots of the new Immersion Heater device in the Vera mobile app Authomation HD.

Next and probably a more expensive job, find a plumber to sort out the central heating boiler properly.

In part two I will look at creating some scenes in Vera and using the playback status updates sent from Kodi to Vera to automate some lighting and curtain control. In Vera I created three new scenes.

• Kodi – Close Curtains
• Kodi – Lounge Dim 25%
• Kodi – Lounge On

Scene – “Kodi – Lounge Dim 25%”

On the Triggers tab of this scene I created four new triggers. I named them as follows:

• Kodi – Video Resumed
• Kodi – Video Starting
• Kodi – Music Starting
• Kodi – Music Resuming

So if any of these triggers are detected the lights will be dimmed down to 25%.

If we look at one of the triggers we can see in more detail how it works. Under the “Device” field you select the KodiRemote device instance you would like to configure. As these scenes are for the Kodi HTPC in my Living Room I selected the #113 “Kodi01 – KodiRemote” device from the device list.

In the “What type of event is the trigger?” Select “Player State Changes”.

In the “Name for this trigger” field give the trigger a suitable name, in this example I called it “Kodi – Video Resumed”.

In the “Player State” field you select the playback state of Kodi, in this example I selected “Video is resumed”.

This means that when Video is resumed on the Kodi Media Center PC, this Vera scene with this trigger will then perform some action.

Here is another screen shot of the “Kodi – Music Starting” trigger.

So once you have created all your triggers we then need to complete the scene creation by adding our actions that Vera will carry out.

In my case I have some LUUP code that should be run when either one of the four triggers are detected.

I have also created a Virtual Switch in Vera using the Virtual Switch plug-in from the MiOS Marketplace here.

I named the Virtual Switch “Link Kodi to Devices?”

If the Virtual Switch is turned ON then Kodi Media Center is linked to the three scenes.

• Kodi – Close Curtains
• Kodi – Lounge Dim 25%
• Kodi – Lounge On

If the Virtual Switch is turned OFF then Kodi Media Center is not linked to the three scenes and the automation of dimming or brightening the living room lights or automatically closing the curtains, will not happen.

E.G. By using a Virtual Switch such as this one, you can turn on and off the integration between Kodi and Vera which is very useful, as you might not want it to happen all the time.

In the name field enter a suitable name for the Virtual Switch.

In the Text1 field I entered the text “Linked = ON”.

You also need to make a note of the Virtual Switches device ID number in Vera? As we will use this in our scenes LUUP code.

Here is the Luup code from my “Kodi – Lounge Dim 25%” scene.

1: Link_XBMC_to_devices = luup.variable_get(“urn:upnp-org:serviceId:VSwitch1″,”Status”,92)

2: if(Link_XBMC_to_devices=="1")then

3: luup.call_action("urn:micasaverde-com:serviceId:HomeAutomationGateway1","RunScene",{SceneNum="5"},0)

4: end

Basically it does the following:

1. Checks first to get the current status of the Virtual Switch with the device ID number 92. Is it on or off? 1 is ON 0 is OFF.

2. If that Virtual Switch device is currently turned ON then..

3. Run another scene to dim the lights 25%, in this case it runs my scene number 5 which is just a regular scene that dims the lights to 25%.

4. If the Virtual Switch was turned OFF then it would just end and not do anything.

Here is the “Kodi – Lounge On” scene triggers.

• Kodi – Video Paused
• Kodi – Music Stopped
• Kodi – Music Paused
• Kodi – Video Ended
• Kodi – Video Stopped

So if any of these triggers are detected then the LUUP code in the “Kodi Lounge On” scene will be run.

1: Link_XBMC_to_devices = luup.variable_get("urn:upnp-org:serviceId:VSwitch1","Status",92)

2: if(Link_XBMC_to_devices=="1")then

3: luup.call_action("urn:micasaverde-com:serviceId:HomeAutomationGateway1","RunScene",{SceneNum="1"},0)

4: end

1. Checks first to get the current status of the Virtual Switch with the device ID number 92. Is it on or off? 1 is ON 0 is OFF.

2. If that Virtual Switch device is currently turned ON then..

3. Run another scene to turn on the Lounge lights, in this case it runs my scene number 1 which is just a regular scene that turns on the lounge lights to 100%.

4. If the Virtual Switch was turned OFF then it would just end and not do anything.

So with these two scenes and the triggers that have been added to each and if the Virtual Switch is turned ON, then for example if I start playback of a movie in Kodi Media Center, the lounge lights will automatically dim down to 25%. And if I then pause or stop video playback the lounge lights will automatically brighten up to 100%.

Obviously we only want this to take place when its actually night time, this is where the Day or Night plug-in for Vera we installed in Part one comes in to play.

In the KodiRemote (Micasaverde Kodi Event) add-on for Kodi in the settings there, we need to specify that the various playback states are set to “Night”.

And finally I have a third scene in Vera for my Z-wave curtain rail.

I only have one trigger in this scene and that is “Kodi – Video Starting”.

Basically this scene closes the curtains if it is currently night? and if the curtains are still open? and if I start to play video in Kodi Media Center, then the curtains will be automatically closed.

Here is the LUUP code for the “Kodi – Close Curtains” scene.

1: Link_XBMC_to_devices = luup.variable_get("urn:upnp-org:serviceId:VSwitch1","Status",92)

2: if(Link_XBMC_to_devices=="0")then return false end

3: are_curtains_open = luup.variable_get("urn:upnp-org:serviceId:Dimming1","LoadLevelStatus",107)

4: if(are_curtains_open=="100")then

5:      luup.call_action("urn:micasaverde-com:serviceId:HomeAutomationGateway1","RunScene",{SceneNum="138"},0)

6: end

1. Checks first to get the current status of the Virtual Switch with the device ID number 92. Is it on or off? 1 is ON 0 is OFF.

2. If that Virtual Switch device is currently turned OFF then just end and do nothing.

3. Checks to see if the curtains are currently opened or not? Device ID #107 is the device ID number in Vera for my Fibaro Blind Controller module.

4. If the curtains are open (which is 100) then..

5. Run another scene to close the curtains, in this case it runs my scene number 138, which is just a regular scene that closes the curtains.

6. End.

These are the three regular scenes in Vera, that the Kodi automation scenes run when all the conditions are met. And these scenes ID numbers are the ones referenced in the various LUUP code above etc.

Summary

Well I hope this all makes sense as its quite hard to explain. But with the KodiRemote add-ons for Kodi Media Center and Vera, you can integrate the two together and have Vera perform actions based on Kodi’s current media playback status. I am sure there are various ways of setting up your scenes in Vera, I’m for example not using PLEG and tend to just add the LUUP code myself. But as long as you know how to create the triggers with the KodiRemote devices, then you can go about creating the actions for your scenes as you normally would.

Here is a short video clip showing “Video Starting” playback in Kodi. I then pause and resume the video a few times. The video quality isn’t great, but you get the idea if you watch it.

Recently I discovered there is a newer project called KodiRemote which is based on XBMCState, but expands its functions in Vera and adds basic playback transport controls and navigational buttons, so you can now control Kodi Media Center from the Vera web UI.

For these buttons to work you must have the “Allow control of Kodi via HTTP” option enabled in the Kodi Settings -> Services -> Webserver. Port number should be 8080.

KodiRemote currently works with UI5 I believe and the developer says he is working on UI7 support for Vera. As I am running a VeraLite on UI5 this guide will be based on that version of the Vera Z-wave Home Automation controller. This article Part One, will cover the installation and setup of KodiRemote both on Vera side and in Kodi Media Center. Part Two will probably cover creating scenes in Vera to work with KodiRemote for auto controlling your lights for example. I may also discuss how to setup a Virtual switch in Vera to specify if Kodi should be linked to Vera or not? Doing this you can turn off the integration between Kodi and Vera when you don’t want it to happen!

The setup for KodiRemote is more difficult than XBMCState as you need to SSH in to your Vera box to upload a file to it but I will demonstrate how I did this, we will also need to discover the root password for the Vera box to be able to do this. You can also see the developers setup instructions on the first page of this thread here. At the time of writing 17/04/2015 all the installation files you will need are also found on this thread and I will be linking to these, please note if you are reading this guide sometime later that these links may have changed which is beyond my control.

OK so lets get started and we will do the hardest part first which is SSH access in to your Vera box. Here are the developers comments about this, which is not allot to go on.

Requirements –

akb-json.lua (in Vera, Place it in /usr/lib/lua/)

1. Discover the root password (The following instructions were taken from this Wiki page here)

So how do we do this? Firstly we need to know the root password of the Vera box, I believe some Vera units have the root password printed on a sticker somewhere on the back, check yours first can you see it? If so write it down and make a note of it and you can skip this section. If not? Then you need to do the following to discover what your password is?

In Vera UI5 go to the Account tab and login to your MiOS account. Now select “Tech Support” it should be disabled, now click the “Enable It” button.

You will then see something like the below screen shot, note I have blacked out my Vera units serial number, you will see your own serial number in these locations.

Look at this section and make a note of the number after your serial number, in this example its 305052

This is a temporary password to give us some SSH access to the Vera box.

Now we need a client program that we can use to SSH in to the Vera box, I use Putty on my Windows 7 workstation.

You can download and install Putty from here.

Open Putty, enter the IP address of your Vera box and ensure you have 22 in the Port field. Also ensure SSH is checked. Then click the Open button.

A black terminal window will then be displayed showing a Login As: prompt.

Enter the username: remote

Now enter the temporary password you discovered previously.

You should then see a screen like this one.

Now type in this command to discover your root password!

nvram show | grep pass

Where you can see the red line, is where your root password will be displayed, write this down and make a note of it.

You can now close the Putty program. Don’t forget to go back in to the Vera web UI and Disable the temporary Tech Support access, by clicking the “Disable It” button.

2. Uploading the akb-json.lua file to your Vera box

Here are the developers further instructions:

You’ll have to SSH into your Vera.
perhaps scp will be a much easier.
go to your terminal window (Mac or Linux) and run something like this:
scp /local/path/to/akb-json.lua root@your.vera.ip.address:/usr/lib/lua/

OK so first you need to download the akb-json.lua file to your workstation PC. Go to the forum page here and download the akb-json.lua  file from the first post, save it to your desktop or somewhere.

Now I am using my Windows 7 laptop as my workstation PC and I wasn’t sure how to upload the akb-json.lua file to Vera directly using Windows. The developer says use the terminal window on your MAC or Linux PC. I do have an Apple MAC here which is our family computer, so I could have used that machine. However I decided to use one of my Linux PCs, actually I used one of the Kodi OpenElec HTPCs to do this.

I used my Windows 7 PC workstation to connect to the SAMBA shares of the OpenElec PC, to do this I just used the Windows RUN dialog and entered \\192.168.X.X the IP address of my OpenElec PC.

I then copied the akb-json.lua file from my Windows 7 PC’s desktop and pasted it into the Downloads folder on my OpenElec PC.

Next I used Putty to connect to my OpenElec PC via SSH. This time entering the IP address of the OpenElec HTPC.

The default username and password for OpenElec are root and openelec

You will then see a terminal window like this one

Now type: cd downloads and press Enter on the keyboard

Now run this command to upload the akb-json.lua file which is located in the downloads folder on your OpenElec PC to the /usr/lib/lua/ folder on your Vera box.

scp akb-json.lua root@your.vera.ip.address/usr/lib/lua/

So it should be something like

scp akb-json.lua root@192.168.1.10/usr/lib/lua/

If 192.168.1.10 was the IP address of your Vera box for example.

You will then be prompted for the Vera units root password, which you wrote down earlier in the previous step.

If it works and the akb-json.lua file is copied up to the Vera unit it will look like the below screen shot and say 100%.

Success! you have now completed the difficult part of this guide, the rest should be much easier going, you can now exit the Putty terminal program.

Note:- I am no Linux guru and there are probably several other easier ways to get the akb-json.lua file uploaded to your Vera box, but this is how I did it.

3. Install the KodiRemote plug-in on to your Vera unit.

The KodiRemote plug-in for Vera can be found on the MiOS Marketplace here. Go to this webpage, ensure you are logged in with your MiOS account and select your Vera unit

Then select Latest Release

And then select the Install button

The KodiRemote plug-in will then be pushed out to your Vera unit and installed.

When it has been installed if you go to the APPS tab in the Vera web UI you should see it listed as being installed etc.

You also need to install the Day or Night plug-in for Vera as this is also a requirement.

Follow the same install procedure for the Day or Night plug-in from the MiOS Marketplace here if you don’t already have it installed?

4. Install the KodiRemote add-on for Kodi Media Center (or XBMC).

At the time of writing 17/04/2015 there are two download links on the Micasaverde forum page. One for Kodi Helix and one for presumably older versions of XBMC. Again these download links may change over time and be updated on the forum post, so it will be up to you to download and install the correct add-on zip files.

Kodi Helix add-on can be currently found on this post here named script.service.micasaverde.zip

And for other versions of XBMC the add-on named micasaverde.addon.zip can be found here. (I’ve not personally tested this one).

As I am using OpenElec 5.0.8 Kodi version 14.2 I downloaded the script.service.micasaverde.zip file to my Windows 7 PC workstation.

Again using the Windows RUN dialog I connected to the SAMBA shares on my OpenElec PC and copied the script.service.micasaverde.zip file in to the Downloads folder there.

Next in Kodi you need to install the add-on.

Note:- If you already have the XBMCState add-on which is named “Micasaverde XBMC Event” installed in Kodi / XBMC, you should first uninstall this add-on. To do this go to Kodi System Settings – Addons – Enabled Addons – Services find the “Micasaverde XBMC Event” add-on and uninstall it.

To install the new KodiRemote add-on which is named “Micasaverde Kodi Event” you need to do the following:

Navigate to System Settings – Addons – Install from ZIP file

Now browse to your Downloads folder on the OpenElec HTPC or to where ever you saved the  .zip file, where your Kodi PC can access that file location.

In my case I need to select the HOME FOLDER

Then I selected the Downloads folder

And finally selected the script.service.micasaverde.zip file that I placed into this downloads folder.

Once the add-on is installed in Kodi you can find it in the following location:

System Settings – Addons – Enabled Addons – Services and its called “Micasaverde Kodi Event”

Now right click the “Micasaverde Kodi Event” add-on entry  and select Configure.

Enter the IP address of your Vera unit and select OK. Now reboot your Kodi PC.

We can ignore the rest of the settings in here for now, as we now need to configure your first KodiRemote device instance in Vera, once we have done this we will come back to the settings in the Kodi add-on and complete the setup.

Note:- if you previously had the “Micasaverde XBMC Event” add-on installed for XBMCState, then you existing settings will still be present, some will need to be changed later.

5. Create and configure the KodiRemote Device instances in Vera

After installing the KodiRemote plug-in for Vera via the MiOS Marketplace, if you look in your Vera web UI, you should see that the first KodiRemote device instance has been automatically created.

In Vera UI5 go to the Devices tab and in the No Room section you should see the KodiRemote device.

This now needs to be configured to connect to the Kodi PC you just installed the “Micasaverde Kodi Event” add-on onto.

Click the Spanner icon on the KodiRemote device, go the advanced tab and in the IP field enter the static LAN IP address of your Kodi PC.

Note:- On my setup I also entered the real MAC address of the network adapter card in my Kodi PC in to the MAC field. I separated with colons : This may be optional.

Now you need to make a note of the Device ID in the above screen shot it is #116, you will need to enter this ID number in the “Micasaverde Kodi Event” add-on settings in Kodi later.

Give the KodiRemote device instance in Vera a suitable name. I have four Kodi HTPCs in my house and I named them KODI01 / KODI02 etc so for my Living Room HTPC I named the KodiRemote device instance “KODI01 – KODIRemote”

Here is my Living Room KodiRemote device instance, note I also assigned it to the actual room in the house where this HTPC is located.

Once you have configured this save and reload Vera.

Next you need to make a note of the Day or Night plug-ins device ID in Vera. Click the spanner icon and go to the advanced tab and write down the device ID number for the Day or Night plug-in.

At the end of this section you should have configured the first KodiRemote device instance with the IP address of your Kodi PC, given it a suitable name and assigned it to the correct room. You should have also noted down the KodiRemote device ID number and the device ID number for the Day or Night plug-in. We can now go back to Kodi and finish the configuration in there.

As I have four Kodi HTPCs I repeated this process and created a KodiRemote Device instance for each of the four Kodi PCs. To create further KodiRemote device instances, go to the APPS tab in Vera and select the KodiRemote plug-in and select the “Create Another” button.

6. Configuring the “Micasaverde Kodi Event” add-on settings in Kodi

System Settings – Addons – Enabled Addons – Services and its called “Micasaverde Kodi Event”

Now right click the “Micasaverde Kodi Event” add-on entry  and select Configure.

Micasaverde Setting:

You should have already entered your Vera units IP address, next in the XBMCState device ID setting, enter the KodiRemote device instance device ID number you wrote down in step 5.

And also enter the Day or Night plug-in device ID as well.

I also recommend you enter 5 in the “Debouncing ended video event” and” Debouncing ended audio event”.

XBMC State:

I’ve never actually used any of the features in this section of the settings, but you can have the “Micasaverde Kodi Event” add-on send status updates to Vera about which areas of the Kodi GUI are being accessed.

For example I just changed the “Menu Picture” option to YES. And if I then navigate in Kodi to the Pictures area of the GUI, then in Vera on the KodiRemote device instance I see the status has changed to “picture”

So presumably you could then use this as a trigger event in Vera to run a scene.

Player State:

OK Player State is the settings area we are really interested in!

I have “Video Title” set to Yes, this will send the title of the currently playing video to the KodiRemote device instance in Vera.

I have changed all the various video playback statuses to Night. This means that my scenes in Vera that control the automatic dimming and brightening of my living room lights will only happen if it is night time. More about these Vera scenes and setup will be covered in Part Two.

And again the same for the Audio (music) section I have the “Music Title” set to Yes and all the various playback states for music are set as Night.

Custom Menu Event:

I’ve never used this section of the settings, my guess would be that you can specify two additional Kodi Window IDs and have the status of those sent to Vera when you access those particular areas of Kodi.

For a list of Kodi Window IDs see the Wiki here.

After configuring all of these settings you may then want to reboot your Kodi PC.

7. Test your setup

That’s it for the configuration and setup in Part One. I recommend you now try playing some media content in Kodi such as a movie and a music album and then look in Vera at the KodiRemote Device instance, that is says UP and that the title of what media content you are playing can also be seen in the KodiRemote device in Vera. You can also try out the new playback transport control buttons for controlling Kodi from the Vera web UI.

Summary

In Part Two I will be looking at how to create Vera scenes and use triggers from the “Micasaverde Kodi Event” add-on and the various playback states of Kodi, for example to automatically dim and brighten Z-wave lamps based on Kodi’s playback status and if it is night time.

I am very happy to see that a new developer has picked up XBMCState and created KodiRemote based off it and hopefully we will see some new features in the future and support for Vera UI7.

As a final note- if you were previously using XBMCState, once you have created all your new KodiRemote device instances in Vera and connected them to each Kodi PC in the house, you can then go ahead and delete the old XBMCState device instances from Vera and then also uninstall the XBMCState plug-in for Vera, which is what I have done. You will then need to update your Vera scenes and triggers that were previously using XBMCState with the KodiRemote device instance(s). As I said I will cover this in Part Two coming soon.

Part Two Here

XBMCState – Allows you to run Vera scenes based on Kodi’s video or audio playback status.

KodiRemote – Update / Replaces XBMCState.

Vera Home Automation – Kodi add-on for a GUI to control Vera from within Kodi (New development starting soon, hopefully!)

Kodi OpenElec / Logitech Harmony / Vera integration – Turns a bog standard Harmony universal remote control in to a remote that can control Z-wave devices and scenes that are in Vera via your Kodi HTPC.

Kodi IP Security CAM Overlay add-on – Allows for IP camera image to pop-up in Kodi, can also be integrated with Vera.

Send pop-up notifications to Kodi from Vera – Send notifications to Kodi via Vera scenes.

My latest article is about the excellent DLNA Media Controller plug-in for Vera, which you can read more about here. With this DLNA plug-in you can then control Kodi playback / transport controls from the Vera web UI. You can also control any other DLNA compliant media box.

Here you can see my Living Room room in the Vera UI5 web interface.

Here is the DLNA device I have configured to connect to my Kodi01 OpenElec HTPC in my living room. You can see there are some basic transport control buttons for controlling Kodi.

And here is another DLNA device instance in Vera for the Kodi02 PC in my bedroom

Another great feature of the DLNA plug-in for Vera is you can also then sent Text-to-Speech (TTS) announcements to Kodi Media Center. which was the main reason why I installed the DLNA plug-in in the first place.

Now I configured all of this a good while ago and may not remember all the steps for the setup, so I don’t think I will be doing a detailed step-by-step guide, however I will describe the basic setup method and post some screen shots of my settings. Also you can read my thread here on the Micasaverde forum where I was talked through the DLNA plug-ins TTS feature.

Install UPnP Event Proxy plug-in for Vera:

The DLNA plug-in relies on this UPnP Event Proxy plug-in which must be installed.

Firstly install the UPnP Event Proxy plug-in for Vera, the easiest way is to install it from the MiOS marketplace via this link here. Login to your MiOS account and select the Vera unit you want to install on to. The app will then be pushed out to your Vera unit.

I don’t recall having to change any settings to the UPnP Event Proxy device in the Vera web UI as it just runs a simple HTTP server on your Vera which listens for UPnP NOTIFY messages and forwards them on to another MiOS plugin.

Install DLNA plug-in for Vera:

Next install the DLNA plug-in for Vera, again install this from the MiOS marketplace via this link here.

Creating DLNA device in Vera:

When installing the DLNA plug-in via the MiOS marketplace your first DLNA device instance in Vera will be automatically created for you. To create more DLNA devices in Vera refer to the “Create Device” instructions on the MiOS marketplace here.

Kodi UPnP settings:

Next you need to check out the UPnP settings in Kodi Media Center, go to Settings –> Services – UPnP. I just enabled the option “Allow control of Kodi via UPnP”

You can create multiple instances of the DLNA device in the Vera web UI, one for each of your Kodi HTPCs for example. So you would also need to enable this setting on every Kodi PC.

Select your media renderer:

You will also have to then link your new DLNA device in Vera to a physical media renderer device aka your Kodi PC. Follow the instructions entitled “Select your media renderer” as seen on the MiOS marketplace webpage here.

DLNA Device tabs:

Control Tab – On this tab we can see the playback transport control buttons, you can also see I am currently playing a music track on my Kodi HTPC.

Player Tab – On this tab we see more details about the currently playing media, in this case a music album I am playing in Kodi. The transport control buttons can also be seen and used on this tab.

TTS Tab – On this tab you can manually send TTS announcements.

However you can also add them to your Vera scenes, for example on my Doorbell scene, when the doorbell has been pressed it will send a Google TTS announcement to each Kodi PC around the house that “There is someone at the door”.

Again if you are interested in the TTS side of things I’d recommend you read the thread I started about it on the Miscasaverde forum here as there were a few pit-falls from what I recall.

Settings Tab – On this tab you can see that this particular DLNA device instance is linked to my Kodi01 PC. Which is the HTPC in my living room.

In each room where I have a Kodi PC I have also created a DLNA device instance in Vera for that room / Kodi PC.

Help Tab – Not really sure what this tab is for? It appears to be listing some current information about what media content is playing in Kodi.

Advanced Tab – I do remember making some changes to some of the fields on this tab. For example in the name field this is where you name your DLNA device instance. You need to ensure in the IP and MAC fields you have the correct static IP address of your Kodi PC and also the network cards MAC address.

Device Options Tab – There isn’t any.

Also check out the advanced scene functionality here of the DLNA plug-in to see what else you might be able to do with it.

Summary

As I stated the main reason for me installing the DLNA plug-in was for the Text-to-Speech features and then being able to have the Kodi PCs make announcements sent from Vera scenes.

Having the playback / transport control buttons for each Kodi PC in the Vera web UI is handy now and again. However where I can really see this becoming useful is when Vera mobile apps like Authomation HD for Android start supporting the DLNA plug-in! You would then be able to have playback control over your Kodi PC in your Vera mobile app which would be more useful.

I have asked the question about Authomation HD support this? here.

UPDATE:

I have been informed that the latest beta version of the Automation HD app for Android does have basic support included for the DLNA plug-in. I was also told that the Authomation HD app development is currently on hold.

Here are some screen shots of the Authomation HD beta app on an Android tablet and the Kodi / DLNA device.

Music Playback – shows the album cover and I get metadata being displayed, such as track, album and artist name.

Live TV Playback – shows the channel logo image.

Movie Playback – there seems to be an issue with the DLNA plug-in in Vera not showing any metadata for videos that are played in Kodi, I will have to look in to this further. It seems perfectly fine for music playback however. In the screen shots below I was playing the movie title “300” but only a Kodi logo gets displayed and no metadata information about the movie title is shown.

TV Shows main menu

TV Shows library – Banner View

TV Show Information Page

TV Show with only one season, episodes in the Info List view

TV Show with multiple seasons in Thumbnail view

TV Shows Library – List view

The default list view also shows banner images which is quite nice.

TV Shows Library – Info List view

TV Show Library – Panel view

The titles in the panel view scroll left –> right rather than up / down.

TV Show Library – Landscape view

TV Show Library – Poster view

TV Show Library – Thumbnail view

Titles in the thumbnail view scroll up / down.

TV Show Library – Fanart view

TV Shows – Sub-menu (customised).

TV Guide is driven by the TV Show Next Aired Kodi add-on and displays currently airing episodes based on the TV Shows that are in your library. Pretty useful for seeing when new episodes for your favourite shows will be airing.

TV Show Library – Genres

Music main menu

By default the panel widget in the middle shows Featured Albums I believe, I changed mine to display new Albums instead. I also added three custom tiles for Music Videos / Youtube / Vevo.

The default “Music” tile takes you to this area, where you can then select Music Genres / Artists / Albums etc.

Music Videos (Concerts) – Titles

By default there didn’t appear to be an easy way to get to this area of the UI so I added a custom tile on the Music main menu to point to it using a favourite.

There are only two basic views you can use for Music Videos which is disappointing, these are List and Thumbnail as you can see in the screen shot below.

Music Video – Information Page

Music menu sub-menu (Customised)

I customised the sub-menu and added “Recently Played” and “Recently Added” rather than “Songs” and “Years”.

Music Library – Genres

I had to manually download the missing genre icons to cover all the genres in my music library. I used this website here as the icons there match the icons the skin is using. I also had to find some missing TV Show genre icons as well.

Music Library – Artists

I’ve got the Artists in Thumbnail view here.

Artist Information Page (Biography)

Artist Information Page (Discography)

This is very nice to be able to see the music artists full discography.

Music Library – Albums

With a large music library the only sensible choice for the view is the Thumbnail view

Album Information Page

Album Tracks – List view

Music Playback – Fullscreen mode

In the skin settings I am using the Artist SlideShow add-on for the music playback full screen mode. You can’t unfortunately also have the music visualization showing as well, when using the Artist SlideShow add-on option which is a real shame.

Music Playback – OSD Menu

On the menu you can select: Playlist / Shuffle  /Repeat / Transport Controls / Lyrics Options. Not sure what the three icons on the right hand side are for? as they are greyed out.

Weather main menu

The weather is driven by the OpenWeatherMap Extended add-on I had to install this add-on from the Kodi repo and add my location in to its settings.

I also had to download a massive weather image pack from bit-torrent instructions for this and how to enable it can be seen on the first post of this thread here. Once setup if its raining you see images with rain, if its sunny you see images that are sunny etc.

In the middle section you can scroll through the 10 days of weather forecast. The weather area in this skin looks really nice and is well laid out.

Other areas of the skin

Settings

In here you can access the Kodi and Skin settings etc.

Skin Settings

Applications menu – in this area you have six custom tiles, I have populated mine mainly with shortcuts to my IP security cameras as you can see.
We also have the default tiles of Applications / Games / Pictures / Program Add-ons.

Power Menu

Search main menu

Summary

The 1080XF Skin is certainly a very nice modern clean looking skin. After using Aeon MQ5 for so long, I thought I’d really miss all of its functionality and customization options, but so far after using this skin for a week or so on all of our newly updated Kodi HTPC’s around the house, I am really liking 1080XF. Sure I would like to see more in-built customization features in the skin settings like the ability to change the sub-menus more easily without having to edit XML files but the customization options which are present, like adding the custom tiles to the home menus is simple and easy to do.

The choice of library views is nice and there are some beautiful ones, I’ve had some issues with Video add-ons however like ITV Player and Disclose.tv not keeping the global view I’d like them to have and they are defaulting back to List view each time, not sure if this is a Kodi or skin issue? Also I’d like to see some more views available for the Music Videos area. But overall 1080XF does not disappoint in the main Kodi library areas.

The Artwork Downloader add-on integration I felt was weak and as I rely on that add-on heavily to get all my artwork files this was a bit of a let down, however the developer is said to be improving this so hopefully it won’t be an issue in the future. The panel widgets on the home menus are great and I like that they can show trending movies and shows and when you click on them a trailer plays. One request here would be for the music panel widget to show recently played albums rather than most played albums, I can’t seem to change this?

Overall the 1080XF Skin is well made and well laid out and if you are updating XBMC to Kodi and looking for a fresh new skin then I’d highly recommend 1080XF and I think I will be sticking with it for some time now.

Live TV main menu

TV Channels

I like the little progress indicators under each channel, so you can get a rough idea how much longer is left for that show to run.

TV Channel – Information

One thing I’ve noticed and I am not sure if this is a Kodi or skin issue, is when starting to play a TV Channel its not always automatically brought up to full screen, I have to press the full screen button on the Harmony Universal remote control or press back a few times to put it in to full screen mode.

TV Channel Playback / Guide Overlay

TV Channel Playback / Information

TV Channel Playback / OSD Menu

OSD Menu – Channel schedule

If you select the highlighted button on the OSD menu it the brings up programs that are airing on the channel you are currently watching

Also on the OSD menu are settings for Audio / Video the Record button and some transport control buttons.

Radio Channels

EPG (Guide Timeline)

TV Recordings

Home main menu

On the home menu there are default tiles for New Movies and New Shows and two widget panels.

The widgets on the main menus are driven by the ExtendedInfo Script add-on, this is not automatically installed with the skin I don’t think, so you need to ensure its installed.

In the Skin settings under Home –> Manage Custom Home Widgets – you can change what the widgets will display such as:

trending movies / trending shows / playlist / spotlight / upcoming movies / in theatres now / popular movies / top rated movies

When changing the widgets function you may need to exit from Kodi and restart it to get them populating.

New Movies – Landscape View

New Shows – Info List View

Movies main menu

Movies Library – Thumbnail View

Movies Library – List View

Movies Library – Info List View

Movies Library – Panel View

Movies Library – Poster View

Movies Library – Banner View

Movies Library – Fanart View

Movie Information Page

There seems to be a bug with missing Aspect Ratio icons / flags as on some titles it does not get displayed, but I believe its on the list to be fixed.

In this screen shot the video format flag is missing, because this particular title is a Blu-ray ISO? I need to check that out.

Moving left reveals the poster

The Choose Art option was pretty crippled but I’ve convinced the developer to add more Artwork Downloader add-on options to run it in Solo mode and full GUI mode, these as yet have not been implemented.

In this screen shot you can see I have added myself the option to run Artwork Downloader in Solo mode as I changed the skins code.

The final release version will look more like this however, where Manual mode is GUI mode and Background mode is SOLO mode in Artwork Downloader.

Movie Playback – Information

Movie Playback – OSD Menu

On the OSD menu there are buttons for Audio / Video Settings, Subtitles, transport controls, info and bookmarks.

In part three we will be looking at the TV Shows and Music libraries and Weather areas.

The 1080XF skin covered in this series of blog posts has been replaced / superseded by the Xperience1080 skin. Essentially it is the same skin with a slightly different theme, but made by the same developer. So you should install Xperience1080 from the Kodi repository not 1080XF.

END OF UPDATE.. Continue reading…

I’ve recently been testing Kodi version 14 aka Helix (formally XBMC) on my test PC and I’ve been searching for a new skin to replace Aeon MQ5 which I have been using for a few years now. Aeon MQ are great fully featured skins with all the bells and whistles and artwork on show, but I’ve become tired of all this eye candy and plan to tone things down in Kodi Helix with a more modern cleaner looking skin.

My favourite candidate so far as a replacement skin is 1080XF which is developed by a clever chap called Piers and is a metro style skin.

Home menu – here we can select “New Movies” or “New Shows” tiles. The fanart panel in the middle by default shows a Spotlight of both your Movies and TV Shows and the poster panel on the right hand side shows on going TV Shows.

Movies menu – here we have two default tiles on the left hand side (which can be changed and customised). “Movies” will open your movies library proper and “Video Add-ons” will as the name suggests show you all your Kodi video add-ons.

The large fanart panel in the middle by default is set to display new movies. The two tiles on the right hand side are custom tiles, I have added the Apple Trailers and Youtube add-ons here.

Using this great website here called MetroIcons, you can create your own metro style icons for use on these main menu tiles.

If you push up on the the main movies menu (or any of the main menus) you will then see the sub-menu items.

There are no in-built GUI options for customizing these sub-menus, but you can customise them by editing some XML files of the skin, to change what the sub-menu items do.

For example on the screen shot below, I have added the following to the sub-menu –  “New Movies” and also “PG-13 Movies” and “Kids Movies” these are video playlists I created.

By default these sub-menu items linked to Years / Actors / Directors, but as I rarely use those I changed them to suit my needs better.

TV Shows menu – here we have two default tiles on the left hand side, ”TV Shows” will open the TV Shows library proper and “TV Guide”.

The fanart panel in the middle shows recently added TV Show episodes in your library and on the custom tiles on the right hand side, I again used the MetroIcon website to create two matching icons for the BBC iPlayer and ITV Player Kodi video add-ons.

As with other skins, TV Guide will show you episodes that are currently airing on live TV for TV Show titles you have in your library.

On the TV Shows sub-menu I have again customised this by adding “New Shows” in replace of “Years” and completely removing “Actors” and “Studios” from the sub-menu.

Music menu – here we have on the left hand side the default tiles Music and Music add-ons. The artwork panel in the middle by default is set to “Featured Albums”. In the skin settings you can change what these widgets do.

I’ve just changed mine to show “Most played albums” instead which is more useful.

On the music menu we have four custom tiles on the right hand side, as there is no main Concerts menu in the 1080XF skin for my first tile here I added a favourite to point to the Music Videos (aka Concerts) area.

I also added two icons for Youtube and the Vevo – Kodi video add-ons.

On the music sub-menu I replaced “Songs” with “Recently Played” and replaced “Years” with “Recently Added” which are far more useful.

Applications menu – in this area you have six custom tiles, I have populated mine mainly with shortcuts to my IP security cameras as you can see.

We also have the default tiles of Applications / Games / Pictures / Program Add-ons.

Its worth noting there is no top level menu item for Pictures in 1080XF.

Weather menu – the weather features in 1080XF are excellent and look stunning. The skin uses the OpenWeatherMap Extended add-on and you also need to download a weather image pack.

Live TV menu – here we have the default tiles for TV Channels / Radio Channels / EPG / Recordings / Timer and Search

TV Channels

Radio Channels

EPG Timeline

Settings menu – here we can find all the various Kodi settings and also the Skin settings tiles.

Summary

That’s it for part one, a quick look at the top level menus and in part two I will delve deeper in to the media library views.

1080XF is a gorgeous modern clean looking skin and could be just the thing for moving forward with Kodi version 14!

I am not a programmer and don’t have the required skills, however I have made three changes to the add-on and now its working again somewhat.

1. Fixed the dependencies not met error so the add-on can now be installed in XBMC Gotham V13.X

2. I removed a line of code to fix a bug? Where none active scenes could not be run in the add-on. The original issue was described here.

What I did was I just removed one line of code from a file called scene.py located in \xbmc-vera-master\resources\lib\vera

I removed this line:    if scene[‘active’]:

I am now able to run non active scenes OK.

3. I’ve managed to fix the icons! For some reason when you download this add-on from GitHub on the Internet the icons are corrupted in certain folders. I managed to find working icons in one folder and I then copied these files to another folder where the icons were corrupted. The result is I can now see the icons in XBMC!

You can download my modified XBMC add-on ZIP file from my Dropbox here.

As a result of these changes the add-on is kind of working now, however I have the following issues:

Issue 1: 19 items maximum in the list view.

I have 20 Scenes and 11 Devices in my room called “Living Room” however in the XBMC add-on in this room I can only see 19 scenes.

I also have another room called “Harrison Home” I have 21 scenes and 12 devices, again in the XBMC add-on for this room I can only see 19 scenes listed.

Seems to be some kind of limitation on the number of scenes and devices that get displayed, more details about this issue here with a comment from the original developer.

Issue 2: The status feedback seems a bit hit or miss, for example if I open the add-on and turn on a light with it, the status of that device is not refreshed in the XBMC add-on UI. However if I press the “Force Refresh” button at the top, then the lights status is updated and the light bulb icon then changes to ON etc. Subsequent device changes (for that room only) are then detected OK.

However if I go in to another room and turn on a different light its status is not changed again until I manually press the “Force Refresh” button in the add-on.

Feature Request:

In order for the add-on to actually be useful, we would need a way to be able to hide certain devices and scenes from the list view. For example background scenes that do automation tasks like schedules, I don’t need to ever see these or run them myself, so would want to be able to hide them.

Looking for a new developer

Are there any XBMC developers who also use the Micasaverde Vera home automation system? I would love to see someone with the skills to take on this project and further develop it! Fingers crossed!

Some of my screen shots from Gotham V13.2.

I created a “My Home” menu and added the “Vera Home Automation” add-on to the menu.

I also renamed the add-on to simply “Control Vera”.

In Part five I will  cover the Vera setup and calibration of the Fibaro Blind Control module and remote control options.

Vera Setup

Once I had connected the Fibaro Blind Control insert module into the mains electric adding the device to the Z-wave network with Vera was very easy. I simply put my VeraLite in to battery mode and carried it next to where the Fibaro module had been installed. I then pressed the + button on the VeraLite and then triple clicked the B button on the Fibaro module, the two detected each other and the Fibaro module was added to Vera as a new device, as simple as that!

B Button on the module

I renamed the device and assigned it to my living room

If you click the Spanner icon on the device it the opens up like this

Control Tab

Settings Tab

Device Options Tab

In here I added two parameters.

Parameter 10 = 1

Parameter 14 = 0

Parameter Number 10: Roller Shutter Operating Mode

Parameter Number 14: Switch Type

The user manual for the Fibaro Blind Control module can be seen here.

Calibrating

“It may be necessary to calibrate the module, when it’s not working properly. The Calibration is a process during which a Roller Shutter learns the position of the limit switches and a motor characteristic. The procedure consists of an automatic, full movement between the limit switches (up, down, and up again). There are different procedures of calibrating a Fibaro Roller Shutter.”

According to the user manual there are various ways to calibrate the blind control module, through Z-wave network, through switch keys, through the B button on the module.

I used this method:

Calibration through the Z-Wave network

1. Make sure the module is connected to the power supply.
2. Include the module into the Z-Wave network according to the inclusion procedure.
3. Set the parameter 29 value to 1.
4. Roller Shutter performs the calibration process, completing full cycle – up, down and up again.
5. The parameter 29 value will be automatically set to 0.
6. Using an interface test whether the positioning works correctly.

Until I had done the calibration routine the percentage slider in Vera was not working correctly. After calibration I was able to select say 50% and the curtain rail would move correctly to that position.

You may see a user configuration error in Vera whilst saving after entering the parameter 29, but don’t worry about that, as long as the curtain motor / rail moves and does the calibration routine. See here for more details.

Here you can see when the curtain motor is in operation its using 56 Watts.

100% = Open

0% = Closed

50%

Controlling the curtains from other devices

Logitech Harmony Remote Control

Using this method I previously described here, I have also programmed my Logitech Harmony universal remote control with two new buttons, Open Curtains and Close Curtains.

This functionality is integrated in to Kodi (XBMC) OpenElec, so when I am using my HTPC, I can now also use the remote control that is in my hand to control the curtains, now that is cool!

Android Tablet / Phone – Authomation HD app for Vera

Authomation HD is pretty much the best app for controlling your Vera Home Automation gateway and the Z-wave devices around your home.

Below are a couple of screen shots from our Samsung Galaxy Tablet showing the new curtain device.

If your an Apple fanboy or girl, I’d recommend the VeraMate app for iOS devices.

Aeotec Minimote Z-wave remote control

I have several Minimote’s around the house, and I programmed button 4 on the one in the living room to run a curtain open / close toggle scene in Vera. By using a toggle I could use only one button on the Minimote to either open or close the curtains.

Integration with Kodi Media Center (Formally XBMC)

Using the XBMCState  add-on which I previously wrote about here, I’ve created scenes in Vera so that if it is dark outside? And if the curtains are still open? When I start to play a movie (any video) in Kodi the curtains are automatically closed and my room lamps automatically dim down to 25%.

That’s it for part five. In part six if I get around to it, I will do a video showing the curtains in operation and also showing all of these different remote control options in operation as well.

Please leave your comments and feedback and don’t forget if you place an order with Friend Group for the motors / curtains rails, to mention to them you were referred by ‘’The Media Center Blog” big thanks!

Also you can contact me directly for bespoke quotations for discounted Z-Wave Euro devices.

In Part four I am continuing with the wiring installation, installing the wall switch and hiding the cable that goes to the curtain motor in the wall.

Wall Switch

So I measured the height of the existing light switches in the room, so my new switch would be at the same level, I placed the back box against the wall ensuring it was level with a small spirit level and drew round it with a pencil. I then used a small thin flat screw driver and a hammer to knock out holes in the plasterboard along the pencil line.

New hole knocked out

There was a wooden stud in the wall and I needed to create another small hole lower down in order to be able to get the cable round this piece of wood.

I put my tape measure down in the cut out and worked out roughly where the wood was inside the wall and then marked out this position on the exterior of the wall.

I then used the screw driver and hammer again to start the hole.

Once the hole was big enough and I used my electricians fish tape tool which is basically a wire on a reel, to fish down the wall to the bottom.

This is that original cut out in the wall at the bottom near the skirting board, where I put in the Fibaro module, you can see I was able to grab the end of the fish tape.

I then turned off the electric supply in the house and disconnected the new wall switch from the cable, that I had been testing earlier. I then connected the end of the wire to the fish tape with insulation tape.

I then pulled the fish tape back up through the wall whilst feeding in the cable in from the bottom, until it popped out of the hole in the middle of the wall.

I then disconnected the fish tape from the cable and using my hands just fed the cable back in to the top of hole in the middle of the wall and then up further to the cut out in the wall for the switch.

I then knocked out a hole in the plastic of the dry lining back box at the bottom of it and fed the cable in to the box and then push the box in to the plasterboard wall, clipping it in place.

I then re-connected the switch again to the cable.

And then screwed the switch in to place in the back box.

I then used some bits of mini trucking I had laying around and cut off some pieces of plastic with my hack-saw to cover the cable in the middle of the wall. I did this to give the cable some protection and to also pack out the hole some more, so I wouldn’t have to use loads of filler, plus it gives the filler something to sit up against.

Curtain Motor Cable

Next job was to hide the cable going to the curtain motor. So I made another small hole towards the top of the wall in the corner where the curtain motor is location. I then made a bigger hole in the middle of the wall again in order to get the cable round the wooden stud in  the wall.

Fishing the tape from the top hole to the middle hole was tricky and took a bit of time and patience.

As the cable connected to the motor is only 1.5 metres long, I had to buy some more 4-core electrical flex cable off eBay to extend it.

Using the fish tape I pulled up the cable out of the top hole, I then joined the two cables together and I then continued to push and feed the other end of the cable down in to the wall towards the bottom and to the cut out where the double wall socket is near the skirting board.

Here you can see the cable coming out at the top of the wall for the motor and the other end of the cable I re-connected to the junction box at the bottom of the wall.

Here you can see the motor cable looped around the wooden stud in the middle of the wall. The hole was probably a couple of inches in length.

Again I just used some bits of plastic to cover the cable and fill out the hole a bit ready for the filler to go in.

Here you can see the motor and the cable coming out of the wall and the small hole now filled in.

First application of the filler. I need to leave this to dry and fill over again and then sand down and paint.

But you can see what the finished result is going to look like. No cable trailing down the wall from the motor.

Socket back in place.

Once the curtain is wrapped around the motor again you won’t even see it.

That’s it for part four, in part five I will cover the Home Automation controller setup (Vera) and various remote control options.

I may also do a video of the curtains in action, after my additional curtain rail runners / hoops arrive from the supplier and the curtains are gathered correctly.

Part Five here.

Part one here, Part two here.

In Part three I will discuss and illustrate my installation.

This is the corner of the living room near to the curtains. There are existing electrics in this area, in the form of a double wall plug socket which also connected to a fused spur on the other side of the stud wall in the porch area, which then connects to an outside porch light via another Z-wave switch. The Live Feed cable comes up from underneath the floor in the wall.

In this picture you can see I have already disconnected the Live feed cable from the back of the plug socket.

The first step was to connect the new Junction Box to the Live Feed, first turning off all the electric in the house at the consumer unit obviously.

Next I had to re-connect the fused spur up to the mains / junction box, so my porch light would still continue to work. I’ve put a red X on this cable as its not part of the curtain installation etc.

Next I re-connected the double wall plug socket to the mains / junction box. Again this is not part of the curtain installation so that cable also has a red X on it.

Connecting the Fibaro Blind Control module to the mains

OK so now at this point  I could start adding cabling for the actual curtain installation. Next to the double plug wall socket, I had an existing cut out in the wall for an AV cable (Sub woofer) which I don’t actually use. So I am going to utilise the space behind here to put in the Fibaro module. (Or I could have put the Fibaro module behind the new wall switch for the curtains higher up the wall, but that would have meant feeding more cables up inside the wall than I need too).

I looped around a short piece of socket twin and earth cable as you can see in the photo below, connected the brown wire to the Live connection on the Fibaro module and the blue wire to the Neutral connection on the Fibaro module. The earth cable(s) you can see are not required and were cut off.

Next step was to connect the other end of the short loop cable from the Fibaro module into the mains / junction box (Live and Neutral).

Connecting the Wall Switch to the Fibaro module

Next step was to add some cable from the Fibaro module to the wall switch, using the S1 and S2 connections on the module.

The wiring diagram below shows the Live mains cable going from the junction box in to the Fibaro module (as in the picture above) but then also a second live cable coming from the module and going to the COM connection on the wall switch.

Due to the thickness of this socket wire I was unable to physically fit two live cables in to the one live connection hole on the module.

So in the picture below I had to use a little connection block. You can see two Live cables going in to the small connection block and then one little cable connecting to the Live (L) connection on the module.

You can also see as well the Neutral from the mains connecting to the Neutral (N) connection on the module.

Also we have two cables S1 and S2 which will connect to the wall switch.

Here is the back of the wall switch.

The brown Live cable is coming from the Fibaro module. As are the other two cables coming from the S1 and S2 connections on the module.

Note:- I used a triple+earth cable for the connection from the module up to the wall switch, which has a brown, black, grey and earth cable.

From the user manual:

Using momentary switches:

“Clicking UP button connected to S1 terminal, initiates up movement. Clicking button connected to S2 terminal, initiates down movement.

If the blind is moving, each click, of any button, will stop the movement. In addition a button click sends a command frame to I-st association group devices. In case of venetian blinds, it’s possible to manage the lamellas angle. Operating Mode – Venetian Blind, or Parameter 10 value set to 2.

Holding connected to S1 terminal initiates lamellas rotation up. Holding connected to S2 terminal initiates lamellas rotation down. In addition a button hold sends a Fibar Command Class control frame to II-nd association group devices.”

Connecting  the Fibaro module to the curtain motor via the Junction box

In this picture you can see I’ve added another cable to the O1 and O2 connections on the Fibaro module. The O1 and O2 connections are the switched live to open or close the motor / curtains.

This cable then loops round in the wall and connects to two empty connections in the junction box, the curtain motor will then connect to these wires to open and close the curtains.

Connecting the curtain motor

The curtain motor has four cables coming from it, the blue Neutral and the yellow Earth will connect to the Neutral and Earth connections in the junction box.

The other two cables (brown and black) are for switched live for opening and closing the curtains. These will connect to the O1 and O2 connections on the Fibaro module via the junction box.

In this picture you can see how the curtain motors four cables would connect to the junction box.

In this picture you can see the white curtain motor cable. These are the four cables from the curtain motor now connected in the junction box.

In this configuration when I press up on the wall switch (L1) the curtains open, when I press down on the wall switch (L2) the curtains close.

Lid back on the junction box ready to be put in the wall. 

Mounting the curtain rail

This is the regular curtain pole that I had to take down.

I marked out where I wanted the new wall mount brackets to go and screwed them in to the existing wooden batten on the wall.

You then have to clip the rail in place in to the brackets and position and tighten up the square metal washers that hold the rail up. A little tricky!

In this photo its not attached to the wall but you get the idea!

New curtain rail now mounted on the wall

I only got nine of these sliding hoops on each side. Which isn’t enough, I need at least 12 on each side for the curtains to gather properly at the top and look OK. I’ve had to contact the seller to see if I can get some more? Which is a pain, so double check when you purchase how many hoops your getting and if its enough?

As you can see I need more hoops, the wife wasn’t impressed with this LOL. I don’t know if these can be bought from any regular curtain store or if I’ll have to wait for some more to come from China? I will take one of the hoops out of the rail if possible and take it round the local stores I may get lucky.

You can also see on the far left hand side that the motor isn’t attached yet.

Update from Seller: “We normally arrange 6 runners per metre and for buyers from the EU, we always arrange 8 runners per metre.“

Motor now attached – Initially I had it looking like this and the motor was showing.

I quickly realised I had to wrap the curtain right around the motor and hook it on from the back instead.

So now it looks like this which is better as the motor is concealed.

That’s it for part three. In part four I’ll probably show the wall switch installation and how I’m planning on hiding the cable from the motor inside the adjacent stud wall. I haven’t actually done this yet, I may start that work tomorrow.

Part five will be the Vera Z-wave setup and some other cool stuff!

Part Four here.

In Part two I will be un-boxing the equipment.

Fibaro Blind Control Insert Module unboxing.

The box contains the module and instructions in English and Polish.

Its small in size AAA Battery for scale.

Screw down connectors, version 2.2 EU frequency.

Electrical components unboxing

Scolmore Minigrid switch

MD075WH – Click White 10A 3 Position Retractive Switch Minigrid Module

Here is the back of the switch showing COM, L1 and L2.

CMA401 -Mode White Grid Switch Front Plate 1 Gang Single Aperture

Switch and face plate assembled. The switch and face plate are different shades of white to each other, so obviously something not quite right when I ordered these, I have asked the supplier to confirm.

I purchased all these electrical components from: http://www.electricalcounter.co.uk/ as they seemed to be the cheapest online.

Just a single screw to connect the switch in to the face plate.

I bought a 35mm deep dry lining back box to be on the safe side and to give me more room for the wiring behind the switch. Probably could have used a standard 25MM deep back box however.

I also bought a Junction Box to connect in to the mains electric supply. This one has six terminals, but only five of them will be used. Three for Live / Neutral / Earth and two to connect the curtain motor to the O1 an O2 connections on the Fibaro module.

Dooya DT52S Motor and curtain rail unboxing

The motor doesn’t actually say Dooya on it, not sure if I should be concerned about that or not? But it does say DT52S-45/20 which is the correct standard motor.

Update from the seller: The motor have three kinds of outlook, one with vertical DOOYA on it, one with horizontal DOOYA, one without DOOYA. When we buy them different lot at different time, their stocks are different, so some with DOOYA, some without. Buy they are all genuine DOOYA motors.

The cable coming out of the motor is about 1.5 metres long, which is just a bit too short for me, I had to order some extra 4-core electrical flex cable off eBay. Shame the cable wasn’t 2.5M.

Here is the top of the motor which has a date on it. You can also see the motor drive that turns to operate the rubber belt in the rail.

The rail came in two pieces and was doubled over for delivery.

Here’s the other end, you can see the green rubber belt inside the rail.

Here are some other bits of the kit, the wall mount brackets and some plastic bits and one end cap. One of the brackets appears to have a small square piece of metal (a washer) missing, I hope this isn’t going to be a problem later?

There are some instructions included which of course I haven’t read yet.

Here is the middle section which needs to be joined together. At first I thought the rail was too long.

Here you can see the metal part that joins the two sections of the rail together somehow.

I soon realised that for transportation one end of the rubber belt was not connected to the mechanism inside. So I started taking out the screws.

Here you can see that the rubber belt is not connected to the cog wheel.

Now I’ve put the rubber belt in to its correct position and I then screwed the end capping back in place.

Now that the rubber belt is correctly positioned the middle section meets up properly.

Full length of the rail shown here and it is the correct length that I ordered exactly 225CM.

A quick look at the instructions and it appears to join together the middle section you just screw in the four supplied screws, as you can see in this photo.

The screws do remain stuck out a bit as you can see but it seems to have made it sturdy enough in the middle, this must be the back of the rail and will be hidden from view.

Here you can see the other side which has no screw holes and is the front.

Plastic end cap in place on the side that the motor is not connecting too. It just pops in place.

I just attached one of the wall mount brackets to see how they attach to the rail.

You can see the screw and the square metal washer that goes in to a groove on the top of the rail and then you tighten it up.

I have one of these square washers missing from my kit which is going to be a slight issue.

On these photos you can see the motor now attached to the rail, you just have to line up the two spinney bits and turn and twist the motor in to position.

There is a Youtube video here which shows you how to do it.

AA battery for some scale. The motor is about 22CM in length.

Part three here – covers the wiring and installation.

Recently I revisited the thread I had started again to find lots of new input from other users and it seems the general consensus for curtain rail tracks was to use the standard Dooya motors, which was one of the companies I originally discovered during my initial research. As it turns out Dooya is a high quality China brand and I believe Somfy have bought in to them as well!

The motor I am going to be using is the Dooya DT52S which is an AC motor, S being the important part of the model number as there is also a DT52E model. The S is a standard motor with no inbuilt RF controller.

There are 3 different versions of the DT52S motor 45W, 60W and 75W which can handle different weights of curtain material. You can also get Dooya DC motors but they tend to be more noisy in my experience of seeing the difference between the Somfy AC and DC motors.

DT52S Motor Versions:

Dooya Curtain Motors AC and DC:

More details about the Dooya tracks and motors can be seen here on their website. Also here is a Dooya promotional video.

The tracks are driven by a rubber belt rather than metal wires like in some of the other lower quality kits you can find online, which makes for quieter operation.  You can get straight or bent / curved tracks.

Update from Seller: Regarding curved tracks – We can only make 135 degree and 90 degree curved track. The other degrees of curved track is very difficult to deliver. So we only send 135 and 90 degree curved ones to buyers abroad.  

I ordered a 2.3 metre straight track and motor for my living room window, from a Chinese supplier on AliExpress which was recommended to me off that Micasaverde forum thread. The company is called Friend Group and I spoke to a guy called Scott. I was told on the forum that I wouldn’t see a product page for exactly what I wanted to order, but you have to contact them and request what you want and then they sent me a link to a product page to make a purchase. I still needed to enter in to the “message to seller” box at checkout, confirmation of my requirements which were:

• Dooya DT52S 45W Motor
• 225 CM Track end-to-end width
• Wall Mount Fixings
• Two-way Draw (Centre Opening)

I also sent them photos of my living room window area just to be on the safe side, so they could see what I was talking about.

UPDATE: Friend Group have created a whole new product page for the Dooya DT52S motor and curtains rails as a result of this series of blog posts, which should make ordering for you simpler.

NOTE: If you do place an order with Friend Group, please tell them you were referred to them by “The Media Center Blog”.

For this 2.3 Metre track and motor the cost was only £50.95 GBP. However postage was £33.27. I also had to pay some UK customs import VAT tax on top of that, which was £22.50 (think they over charged me) and an additional £13.50 for the Parcel Force International (UK) handling fee which I wasn’t expecting, so the grand total was £120.22 landed. However I still think it was fairly cheap considering when you look at other prices for other curtain track systems and I am confident these Dooya motors will be of good quality.

The Dooya motor can be fitted to either end of the track left or right is OK, I plan to have mine on the left hand side.

Friend Group will even customize the track to the exact length you require, so I bought a 2.3 Metre track but my actual width requirement is 225 CM. This saved me the hassle of having to take apart the track and get out my hack-saw, nice one!

You can also get ceiling fixings instead of wall mount fixings and you can have a One-Way Draw (Side opening) for say a single curtain rather than the traditional two curtain centre opening as I required.

This is the living room window area showing the width dimension.

This is the small window to be covered.

So now you need a Z-wave blind control relay module. There are many on the market and I expect most would work with this type of curtain motor. I am going to be using a Fibaro Blind Control Insert 2.

I am actually an authorised Z-wave Euro dealer, so if you want any Euro Z-wave kit at bespoke prices then just contact me with your requirements for a quotation.

Product number FIB_FGRM-222. Fibaro has traditionally been for EU Z-wave frequency but I believe you can now also get these inserts in US frequency as well.

I found a really nice blog post by a chap called Chris in Singapore here who has pictures and videos about this same setup, using the FGRM-222 insert and the Dooya DT52S Motor. His blog post was the final inspiration for me to push the button and go ahead and finally order some kit for myself! Hopefully my series of blog posts will do the same for you!

I plan to also use a wall mounted switch nearby the curtains for opening and closing them, the switch connects to the Fibaro blind control insert, something like these Scolmore Minigrid switches. I couldn’t really find any cheap switches specifically for curtain / blind control with the Up / Down arrow icons or with curtain icons on them.

CMA401 -Mode White Grid Switch Front Plate 1 Gang Single Aperture

MD075WH – Click White 10A 3 Position Retractive Switch Minigrid Module

I choose this particular 3 position retractive or momentary switch because I thought this type of switch would be good for use with Curtains and blinds, up for open and down for closed. The default position of the switch is in the middle (off). When you push the button up or down and release, the button automatically then returns to the middle position hence the name retractive.

With these Dooya motors the curtains can not be manually pulled to start an open or close operation, unlike some of the Somfy curtain track motors which allow you to do this. I would say this is the only feature I would like that I won’t have with this budget project, making a nearby wall switch even more important.

Obviously we will be able to use this wall switch along with the Vera mobile apps on the phones and tablets to open and close the curtains and maybe also use an Aeon Minimote handset as well, if I program one of those. We will also be able to automate the curtains to open and close at certain times of the day and night with scheduled scenes in Vera.

This is what a curtain / blind control device looks like in the Vera web UI

This is the planned wiring diagram, which I borrowed from Vesternet, which I interpret as:

• Earth / Ground from the 240V mains connects direct to the motor.
• Neutral from the 240V mains connects to both the N on the Fibaro module and to the motor.
• Live from the 240V mains connects to the L on Fibaro module and then to the wall switch (COM).
• S1 and S2 on the Fibaro module connects to the wall switch for manual up / down operation.
• O1 and O2 on the Fibaro module connects to the motor for Up / down operation.

These are the wires coming from the Dooya DT52S motor. Yellow is Earth / Ground, Blue is Neutral and the Black and Brown are for Up / Down, not sure which is which yet.

Disclaimer: You should always seek professional advice from a certified electrician regarding installation, as mains voltage can be very dangerous!

Part two here – unboxing everything.