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An Intro to INSTEON, ISY and MobiLinc with Tasker

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Hello all!

The following 7 posts will explain how to successfully integrate INSTEON control with ISY and, MobiLinc with Tasker.

INSTEON, is a Dual-Mesh network that communicates through Powerline and Radio Frequency. The alternatives are Z-Wave, which is Radio Frequency, and X10 (a dying protocol), which is PowerLine.

I will also be mentioning the ISY, which is available from Universal Devices, and the accompanying program that allows Tasker to take control of the ISY called MobiLinc.

Tasker is an automation application for Android phones, best described as the “Swiss Army Knife” of mobile phones. It is a great accompaniment to any degree of home automation – allowing full customization and control of the eco-system.

Utilizing these products, I have created a system that allows me to take charge of my home’s environment to be energy efficient and security wise.

In the next 7 parts, I will demonstrate how you will be able to control your lighting system by voice, home screen widgets, notification area toggles, location, as well as a customized window (Tasker Scene)

I expended countless hours developing these products and perfecting them to allow complete personalization and total command while at home or away. A large contributing factor in the success of these programs was the valuable and timely assistance of the technical support teams at Universal Devices and MobiLinc. If you are unable to invest as heavily in the trial and error learning process, I offer my services on a case-by-case basis. Since the base framework for home automation is already developed, I am able to offer my services at a reasonable price. Please leave a comment below if you would like more information on getting your home automated, with details on customization desired and I will contact you with a quote for your specific needs.

Let’s Begin!

The best way to navigate through the pages is in the menu system under “Home Automation” but you can click here to go to the next page.

INSTEON and MobiLinc with Tasker. Part 5.

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There are many ways to toggle lights in my home: light switches, phone toggles in scenes, home screen toggles, and a Harmony remote control.

Despite this, I still felt it lacking in terms of ease of use. To remedy this, I added control for all my lights in the notification area.

Screenshot_2013-10-15-18-16-11

This was made possible with PowerToggles. Usually, the program allows you to toggle things like GPS, WiFi and NFC on your phone, but with the added Tasker plugin, I was able to add these controls for lights.

It was a fairly simple task to create with the directions provided on the PowerToggles site. If the light was toggled by any method other than PowerToggles, I needed to ensure the icon corresponded accurately on my phone. To do this, I created PowerToggle actions in the device status task that would update the icon for the specific device.

Since this is a more advanced Tasker subject, I am happy to answer questions about it to help you accomplish this on your own. It is impossible for me to explain all the details in a blog post. Again, if you are unwilling or unable to configure this yourself, I am able to do it for you. Please leave a comment below and I will contact you for the details of your request. Pricing will be based on your needs.

In my next post, I will discuss how I made home screen widgets to toggle my lights..

INSTEON and MobiLinc with Tasker. Part 4.

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With AutoLocation, Tasker, MobiLinc and the ISY‘s programs, I was able to do some pretty cool stuff when my phone senses that I have arrived or left home.

MobiLinc “Connect” is a service that allows your phone to be in constant contact with the ISY. This is important because once you leave the house, you cannot address the ISY with an address such as 192.168.1.120 since it is an internal address. Addressing the ISY outside the network has some security risks that I was not too keen on without a secure connection and MobiLinc Connect provides just that.

Within the the ISY, I have programs written to change the way my home behaves when I am away. There are motion sensors and cameras everywhere and if someone trips a motion sensor when the house is “Armed” there is a specific list of commands to be followed.

AutoLocation is a utility and plugin for Tasker that allows Geofencing. It creates an invisible GPS fence around a circumference of the home (or any landmark).

When I exit my “At Home” Geofence, MobiLinc will run the program on the ISY through the MobiLinc Tasker Plugin.

Screenshot_2013-10-22-11-59-12

The MobiLinc Tasker Plugin allows me to choose what type of event I would like to send to the ISY, the name of the event, and what stage of the program to run.

If there were a second property being monitored as well, there is an option to choose a secondary ISY in the “Profile” field.

In this instance, I have it set to run the “Leave home” program which will tell the ISY that I have left home. When the program is ran, the lights, fans and anything electronic will turn off. It also puts the cameras in a “ready” position for surveillance and the house is ready to defend itself from intrusions.

Within a second of an intrusion, the ISY sends my phone an alert to download the most recent picture from the tripped surveillance camera that was tripped. This is usually completed in about 3 seconds. If there is a valid reason, I can press the picture to call 911 or open the camera application to watch what is going on.

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When I return home, the Geofence entry task runs. This sends a MobiLinc task/ISY program to allow the system to ‘disarm.’ I have set my disarm command to turn the lights on, set my home entertainment system to my favorite Pandora station, and set the cameras back to privacy mode.

On the next post, I will describe how I added toggles to my notification area to quickly control lights without needing to pull up a scene or program.

INSTEON and MobiLinc with Tasker. Part 3.

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The ISY’s REST (REpresentational State Transfer) API is more than sufficient to dim lights with a “HTTP Get” command within Tasker, such as:

http://isy/rest/nodes/%MYNODE/cmd/DON/148

In Tasker, that is separated into the host field: “http://isy”, and the path: “/rest/nodes/%MYNODE/cmd/DON/148.” This tells the ISY to address the REST and node API, then tells the API which node you would like to address.

Each node address is specified in Tasker to easily identify variables without having to type the node address (e.g. 1B DC EE 1) into every task. Then “cmd” is the signal to the ISY’s REST API that a command will be given. DON specifies that the command has been given to turn the Device ON. The last portion, “/148 then specifies the precise brightness desired, which is about 40%.

Screenshot_2013-10-23-13-50-43

Implementing the ability to control dimming in a Tasker scene was pretty easy. Overlaying a slider as a second scene, I was able to get the value of the slider and put that in the “HTTP Get” statement. After pressing and hold an icon, the slider pops up and starts varying the brightness of the light, depending on the direction and distance the slider is dragged.

After it dims or brightens the light, the slider disappears and the the text goes back to white.

In the next post, I will talk about how to use MobiLinc with AutoLocation to form a “Geofence” around the home. This executes several tasks that help with security and energy.

INSTEON and MobiLinc with Tasker. Part 2.

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As I was previously using Eventghost for a majority of the macros, it became necessary to rewrite these as programs in the ISY interface. This allowed the phone to always be aware of the light status without having to open the MobiLinc application. Despite this feature not being currently offered by MobiLinc, I was able to write “programs” on the ISY that kept my phone aware of each light’s status.

When a light is turned on, the status message is communicated by the dual mesh network to the ISY that it was turned on . When that interaction is received, the ISY will send an AutoRemote (Google Cloud Message) message through the ISY’s network module to my phone.

When Tasker processes the message, it goes through a 50 step task/macro.

First and foremost, Tasker will set a named variable, such as “%BATH” (for bathroom) to “ON” or “OFF” depending on the current state, and verify the device’s display status on the phone. If an icon is displayed for this specific device, Tasker will change the icon to the other png graphic to match the device’s on or off status.

Here is a picture with all of the lights off:

Screenshot_2013-10-23-13-49-10

And here is a picture with most of them on:

Screenshot_2013-10-23-13-51-48

Notice that the “Powered by MobiLinc” is lit up as well. This happens when any light is turned on, and it will not turn off until the last light turns off – one of the more advanced features in Tasker where you can use multiple variables in the same IF statement.

Although MobiLinc has not developed a way to dim lights in the Tasker plugin yet, it is likely to be available  in the next release.
For now, I was able to use the ISY’s REST API to dim lights. I will discuss that in the next post!

INSTEON and MobiLinc with Tasker. Part 1.

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At the time of my previous post, I had just made the decision to switch from X10 to INSTEON.

It was an intense experience because of the extensive capabilities.

To begin with, INSTEON will work on its own by linking to other INSTEON units, but it is is best to own a gateway such as the SmartLinc or even better, the ISY.

I started with an INSTEON SmartLinc, a discontinued device I revived with Eventghost. After a partial rewrite of the Eventghost plugin, I was able to get control and status of my home lighting system.

Within a week, I found another great product, “MobiLinc.” This interfaced well with the SmartLinc and has a Tasker plugin that allowed me to create  visually pleasing “scenes” (as Tasker calls them). Each icon you see here is courtesy of the support department at MobiLinc. The Tasker scene below illustrates the ability to control my lights by touching each icon on the screen.

Screenshot_2013-10-23-13-49-10

The consistent status updates help manage energy efficiency and INSTEON is extremely accurate with this, by allowing me to see at a glance which devices are powered on.

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Initially with INSTEON, tapping the icon would trigger an AutoRemote message to Eventghost to toggle the light. When that feedback from the switch was received by the SmartLinc plugin, Eventghost would send an AutoRemote message back to the phone to set the variable and turn the icon to its proper state. The response time for the status update on the phone was lengthy, and the delay time was somewhat inconvenient.

Due to this lag time with INSTEON, I was quite excited to receive my ISY 994i. With INSTEON, there was a lot of room for improvement, but the pairing of Eventghost and SmartLinc did not allow for it. The ISY allowed for more extensive  integration with MobiLinc.  I did a complete rewrite of my entire automation system and the way my phone interfaced with it.

Continued in Part 2.

INSTEON, things you should know.

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Recently, I had to upgrade my lighting system after the bankruptcy of the X10 corporation. Least to say, I was not particularly happy about that, selling my old X10 items on eBay has significantly reduced the financial blow to upgrading to this system.

After comparing Z-Wave to Insteon for several weeks, I decided to go with Insteon.

Insteon has Dual-Band devices that communicate over the powerline as well as radio frequency (RF). This is to make sure the command gets there no matter what. Even though I have a smaller home, the house was built in the 50’s and the electricity wiring in the house is not up to a code that would be standard today. Hence the need for Dual-band.

While I was researching, I found “Mobilinc Pro”, this product has a plugin that allows Tasker to communicate with my central controller (SmartLinc 2412N). The support department there has been phenomenal with answering my questions, even providing me with some assistance with the Tasker scene development.

Mobilinc’s Tasker plugin is still in it’s infancy but it has the proper functionality to turn lights on or off, they are working on status, but for the meantime, I used AutoRemote and EventGhost to send information to the phone when the light turns on. I’ll post a video of the whole thing in action after I’ve done my final edits to the Tasker scene.

Mobilinc can be downloaded from the Play Store or the iTunes store, here is the address for the Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mobileintegratedsolutions.mobilinc.pro .

iTunes doesn’t have Tasker, or anything remotely close to what it can do. Sorry iFolks.

As for Z-Wave, they will probably have a place in my home if I wanted to get deadbolts but I’ll have to wait until there is an update to the ZWave protocol for security reasons.

A Very Special Android Widget for the Nest Thermostat

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In the spirit of keeping things as uniform as possible with the Android system, I designed a Widget using Zooper Widgets that updates each time I change the temperature, or the temperature gets changed. Pressing on this widget opens the “scene widget” I discussed in the previous post.

Zooper has the ability to use Tasker Variables, so each time AutoRemote gets a message for a change in thermostat vitals it will also update this widget automatically within seconds.

As you see here:

image

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The Nest is in an away mode, the current temperature in the home (ambient) is shown on the bottom of the screen window.

I was also able to get the leaf to toggle on and off by writing a new python script for leaf status, this script controls a variable. I inserted this variable into the both the Android Zooper widget and the Tasker scene widget to show the leaf when I’m “earning” one.

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The last step was the cooling phase, which turns the screen to blue when the HVAC system is on. Again set by another Tasker variable that Eventghost gets from the Nest thermostat and sends by AutoRemote to the phone.

If you have any questions about the product names I mentioned here, there is a glossary in the menu system on this blog in the home automation drop-down.

Hope you enjoyed this post! More to come in the next week as well as a video showing these widgets in action tomorrow!

Part 3.

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In this video, I showcase my home automated light system controlled by X10, Tasker, AutoVoice, AutoRemote, X10 Commander Server and EventGhost.

With each toggle (on/off) command, the phone sends an AutoRemote message to EventGhost to turn the light on if it’s off or off if it’s on. The plugin for EventGhost that receives all the commands sent and received by the X10 unit to keep track of each light’s status.

With Dimming, I use the X10 Commander server, Tasker and AutoVoice to send dim or bright commands to the unit I want to control. Although learning regular expressions was not an easy feat, I accomplished some futuristic control of my house with words that don’t have to sound so abrupt or robotic. I command the phone to dim the lights to a percentage, it will compile the command and send an HTTP Get statement to the X10 Commander server.

The commands; “It’s too bright in the living room” or “It’s too dark in the living room”, I use Tasker to set “Living Room” to the unit code and the “Bright” function if it’s too dark, or vice versa for bright.

If I say “It’s too bright in here” Tasker will control the last unit it turned on/off/dimmed/brightened.

In upcoming videos, I’ll explain more about how the thermostat, lighting and home theater all come together to create customized scenes in my home any time of the day.

I’ll try to get these videos out as fast as I can but I want to make sure everything is covered in each video so you’ll be able to see how it all comes together.

Next up, The “Away” (security) system.