Z-Wave Home Automation

I recently decided to renew my shutters in the living room and the dining room. The old plastic ones were getting yellowish from the sun and some elements had dents and cracks. I decided to get new Aluminium shutters with can be operated with a motor.

As motors I chose simple "dumb" Oximo WT by Somfy. They have 4 wires running down from the motor, PE, N, P1 and P2. P1 and P2 are used for either up or down and are the same as L.

They were installed with a simple switch to control them locally. But I wanted them to be more "smart". They should open in the morning and close in the evening. I chose the Z-Wave system as it seems promising for future additions.

To control the shutters I chose the Düwi 05436, which have L N Com P1 P2. Connecting those to the Oximo WT was quite easy, just keep in mind that you need to connect Com from the 05436 to L of your installation. A simple small "bridge" to connect them is all you need. If the shutters run up when pressing the down button, just change P1 and P2.

Now I have shutters in my house which can be operated locally with a switch (same as before) but can also be controlled via Z-Wave technology. The Z-Wave hub (like the "central") is a MiCasaVerde Lite, a small controller hub. It's connected to your local network via LAN cable and provides a user interface via its local IP address. Adding the shutter controllers to it wasn't a big deal, pretty standard procedure straight from the manual.

But then problems started. I couldn't access the UI of the Vera Lite any more. Long story short, using Chrome's "private tab" solved the problem. Now I can control my shutters with the UI from any computer or smartphone. I also invested in a dimmable wall plug  to control a light remotely. Works fine too. Moving the bar to a specific % works perfectly for the dimmable wall plug.

Sadly, it does not work the same way for the shutters. As I found out, the % indicated there is a time-% of the total operating time of either state "up" or "down" by default its is set to 120s. So 50% would be 60s of operating. But for example my small window (just 30cm wide) is closed completly by the Oximo WT within 20s. So If I would like to close the small window shutter only down to 50% I need to set the shutter to 8,3%.

You can modify the "total time need to operate to 100%" in the advanced Z-Wave settings somehow... But haven't read into that yet. For now I am happy to operate them to full close/ full open.

I have read in the Düwi 054368 that there is a "calibration" mode of the switch to do this process directly on the device. I ll try that on my Düwi 05436 next weekend. If this works, I think the Düwis will set their "total time needed to operate to 100%" by themselves.

What else did I got for my Z-Wave system?

I fetched myself a Düwi 05431 wall switch to control the balcony light. But i couldn't install it as the provided wall mount plate and all the exterior of the switch ( Everlux series ) is not compatible with my already installed switches. Will go to the hardware-store and look for a double housing which is compatible with the Everlux. Or maybe just get an Everlux wall socket. Whatever is cheaper.

And I got me an PHI_PAN06 from Philio. It is a relay which can control two separate loads of max 1500 Watts. Before I tried to mount it in my garage to control the garden illumination and the garden power sockets ( some Christmas decoration lights are connected to the garden sockets), i quickly connected it to a spare wire in my hobby room to test it. And I am glad I did. Because the Vera Lite didn't really discovered it, merely added four devices which were not functional. After some digging I found out that you need to update the "device library" of the Vera Lite so that the Vera know what device it is and how to handle it. Compare it to installing some new drivers on the Vera. Otherwise the Vera does not know what a PHI_PAN06 is.

So you do this by adding an MiOS app on the Vera Called Updater. Search the App Store of the Vera for the device list updater and run an update. After that the Vera discovers the relay and it works fine. Although it added 4 devices again with different functions, I don't care. Now they work.

The next part is installing the relay in the garage. Should be not a big deal, will do next weekend before Christmas. Will need some more stuff from the hardware store to do this properly. Like a small fuse box to put all the cabling in. And some external regular wall switches to operate the relay locally as well. Always handy to have a local option if the Z-wave shouldn't work for any reason.

Good solution TL-WR710N

Usually the instructions given by the VPN providers are tailored to some special firmwares called DD-WRT, Tomato, Open-WRT and so on which have to be installed onto your router. I have done that with many routers, works fine, is okay.

But the much easier way is to just use a router, fresh from the shelf, cheap, easy to set up and no fuzzing around with your existing model. Maybe it's just a rental and you void warranty if you start installing diffrent firmwares on the router. Maybe there is no DDWRT or Tomato or whatever for the model which is sitting in your home.

So my advice, don't fuzz around with your existing setup/router. Get a seperate "VPN-router". Why? Well, you can still use your normal internet without VPN by just switching the the wifi network back to your "normal" one or plugging the LAN cable back to the old router which has been there all the time. Maybe VPN servers are down, your subscription is over or you just want that little extra of speed again back (using VPN connection often introduces a bottleneck which reduces your internet speeds). And if you mess up the configuration of the VPN router, you can always fall back to the good old normal router with just perfectly fine working internet.

So what model should you get as VPN router? Well you could buy expensive enterprise equipment. They often advert with features like "VPN ready" etc... But that's a bit of an overkill. maybe with an normal soho router like the one you already have, maybe just another model which has DD-WRT OpenWRT Tomato Support? Yeah, that would be a solution. I have done that a lot. But there are tons of "how-to"s for that everywhere else but here. The even simpler solution:

TL-WR710N by TP-Link

Before anybody says anything. You can use any other router, it just needs to support L2TP or PPTP on the WAN-side. That's all. I am sure there are many other devices as well which can do this. I know many D-Link can as well.

The WR710N is very versatile and thus the ideal router for this purpose. It support many VPN-providers out-of-the box, no special firmware needed, small, light and nice. Next Post settings.

This post for settings: http://notsoeverydaytechproblems.blogspot.de/2014/02/tl-wr710n-vpn-settings.html

How to tunnel all your internet traffic at home through a VPN connection

If you are reading this, you probably found your way through google here. The past years I ahve been looking for an easy way to tunnel all the internet traffic from my home device through a VPN connection to protect my privacy.

First of all, who is my provider? I am very happy with my VPN provider privateinternetaccess.com (PIA), it is very similar to those many others like:

• StrongVPN
• Hidemyass (HMA) 
• PureVPN
• ipVanish
• VPN4all

What are my "devices"? Apart from the regular desktop PCs, Laptops, Ultrabooks, etc there are smartphones (Android/Apple) but also gaming consoles (Xbox360, PS3) and mediaplayers like appleTV.

So what's the big deal than with VPN? Most VPN providers offer a special software to gain access to the VPN server. The software is often based on openVPN and is easy to install and use. After installing just enter username and password and you can surf anonymously (more or less). But here the problem starts.

1) The software is usually only availible for Windows, maybe Mac and Linux. Sometimes for iOS and Android as well. This actually covers most OS and you should be happy. Should. If there wasn't problem #2.

2) All providers only allow a limited amount of simultaneous connections to the VPN server with your username and password. Most providers allow one connection, others up to five (that's why PIA is great). So you may install the VPN software on many devices but are limited to just one to five connections. If this is not a restriction for you, well... 

3) The biggest problem is, that some devices aren't just capable of connecting to the VPn server as there is no software for them to do so. Take the Xbox360 for example. There is no way you can setup a VPN connection. Or appleTV. Or your favorite internetradio device. Or an older smartphone. Maybe your settop box. Whatever.

But why would you want those devices to use the VPN connection anyway? For me, as I live in Germany, I want to enjoy US-youtube or Netflix on my TV. I want to be able to access the Swiss XBox Live marketplace and use BBCs iPlayer on my Settop Box. All those services are restricted to special countries only and require you to have an IP address from UK Swiss or US. With a VPN-connection this is very easy, but there is no way you can set up one on your TV Xbox etc.

So ... To sum up the problems:

1. Usually only one VPN connection is allowed per account.
2. Some of the devices aren't capable of using VPN because it was never intended.

Solution for #1 would be buying more than one account (which doubles or triples the costs) or get a provider which offers more than one connection a time. But this gets expensive. And wouldn't solve problem #2.

To solve problem #2, just let's take a look at those "dumb" devices which can't handle a VPN on there own. Well, they CAN handle internet connection via wired LAN cable / with wifi to your homerouter. But wait ....

So what's your homerouter doing? Sitting there and serving internet to all your devices. It shares the internet connection to your house and all it devices. Usually it's connected to your cable modem/ DSL Modem / fiber modem whatever. Sometimes the modem is a part of the router. 

So what is the router makes the connection to the VPN server? It would just be one device connected to the server (problem #1 solved) and it shares the internet to all other devices, even the "dumb" ones (prob #2 solved). The great thing about this is, you don't even need to change ANY settings on all your devices if you want to use VPN. There is just one device you make the changes to: the router. And then every connected device is VPN connected through the router.

Great idea! Is it possible to set it up like this? Short answer, yes. How? Next post.

 

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Eigentlich sollte der erste Beitrag zu etwas ganz anderem sein, aber bis ich überhaupt meinen ersten Beitrag schreiben kann, hat es schon ein wenig gedauert.

Denn sobald ich einen neuen Post im Blog erstellen will, kommt die Meldung:

"Sie haben sich an einem anderen Standort abgemeldet. Möchten Sie sich wieder anmelden?"

Anscheinend stellt Google gerade einiges an Blogger um. Die Lösung: Man muss darauf achten, dass die ganzen Adressen mit https:// anfangen, da Blogger sonst die Session beendet.  Wird wohl nur ein temporäres Problem sein.