Upgrading the HomeSeer/HomeTroller hardware

My 1st gen HomeSeer HomeTroller Pi was built on a Raspberry Pi 3 B with 1gb of RAM. While this was fine back when I bought it and was just starting my home security and automation re-design and foray into using HS4, recently I’d been having issues with performance and out-of-memory conditions. In 2021 when …

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Node-Red (with Ring and HomeSeer)

“Even with my tendency to tinker, adding yet another system on top of Homebridge seemed like too much to me.” – me, two months ago Yeah, I said that back in late May (in reference to Scrypted) after getting Homebridge set up and integrated with my HomeSeer home automation system. But here I am, two …

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Homebridge (and HomeSeer)

A few weeks ago while browsing the Homeseer forums (which have been inundated with Insteon users lately, after the sudden shutdown of the service), I came across a thread about integrating Homeseer with Apple’s HomeKit using Homebridge. Everything in my home automation setup has been working fine, but I’m always looking for new ways to …

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Putting it all together – Ring, HomeSeer, and Alexa integration

2021 Home Security/Home Automation Re-Design [ Part 3 of 3 ] A lot of my old Pulse automations were based on my ADT alarm sensors: open the door into the garage, turn on the garage lights; alarm armed in Away mode, randomize the indoor lights to make the house look occupied; burglar alarm goes off, …

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HomeSeer HomeTroller Pi and HS4

2021 Home Security/Home Automation Re-Design [ Part 2 of 3 ] As I posted a few weeks ago, back in January I decided to cancel my ADT Pulse service and replace it with a Ring Alarm security system. It wasn’t a 100% feature-complete replacement though, I still needed something to handle the home automation side …

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Ring Alarm security system

2021 Home Security/Home Automation Re-Design [ Part 1 of 3 ] I’ve been an ADT customer for almost 20 years. When we moved to Florida in 2001, our house already had a hard-wired alarm system put in by the previous owners so subscribing to ADT’s monitoring service was one of the first “utilities” we set …

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Home automation and security re-design

Ok, enough sports posts, let’s get back to some tech! I’ve been distracted from tinkering with my 3D printer lately because for the past two weeks or so I’ve been going through a re-design of my home automation and security setups. After an almost two-week outage of the ADT skill for Alexa (during which I …

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Nest Protect smoke/CO2 detector

When I installed the ADT Pulse system in 2011, it came with monitored smoke/heat and CO2 detectors. Since then I’ve been paying the monthly monitoring fee to ADT and have had to deal with inexplicable false alarms (usually in the middle of the night and ADT’s answer was always “just change the battery”). This was …

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Kwikset SmartCode 916 Touchscreen Electronic Deadbolt

We’re finishing up hurricane-proofing this summer by finally replacing all the exterior entries with impact-rated doors. We had our impact windows installed back in 2008, and replaced the overhead garage door in 2015, but last year’s close call with Hurricane Irma reminded us we still needed to replace the doors. Since we’re getting new doors, we also …

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Rachio sprinkler controller

Earlier this month while visiting my in-laws I helped my father-in-law connect his Rainbird ESP-Me sprinkler controller to his wireless network and then showed him how to use the mobile app on his Android phone. After doing this I realized: I’m the techie/networking/home automation/IoT guy in the family … why haven’t I installed an internet-enabled sprinkler controller …

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