Forgive my ignorance, but what interface would you use without samsung smarthings using Amazon echo directly with comfort (I am presuming it would be through Etho conncetion & the echo programed accordingly, The voice control aspect is very appealing, I do not use either echo or smarthings, But I can see this as an extension and will be come obligatory in the very near future......
Hi Matt,
I was reading back through the posts and I just want to check that I understand correctly, will the interface allow me to run a scene or response setup in Comfort.
E.g If I interface with the Yamaha amp through the universal UCM and run one of the 12 Yamaha scenes to turn on amp set volume etc and also fire an IR TV on command can echo and ST the trigger this scene or response?
Was also thinking of buying the heatmiser UCM would I be able to set temperatures or turn on the hot water using dot ST and comfort?
Is there a plan to include flags as well as counters? my system auto arms unless a flag is set to stop the task. So dot command to that sets auto arm or stops auto arm.
If this is the case the operatunities are endless and limited to the individuals imagination. Once ST and dot can run comfort responses happy days very powerful combination.
This seems to be one of the most exciting additions to what is alread a great system.
Best Wishes
Lee
@Swiss-Toni
I have used SmartThings as a mediation layer between Echo and Comfort - The Echo supports SmartThings natively and therefore makes things easy. I am working on a variant of the UPNP software which exposes Comfort zones and outputs (and possibly flags) to other devices, including Echo, via WeMo emulation - as these seem like popular IOT devices with broad support and they are simple enough to be able to emulate without too much trouble. Whilst this will allow the Echo to talk directly to the Comfort, it is limited in terms of capability. I plan to emulate WeMo sockets to map to outputs and flags (simple on / off) and WeMo motion sensors to emulate zones.
@Lee
Yes, good question, I also plan to support flags (and it is likely I will finish these before counters). They will appear in SmartThings as devices with switch capabilities, similar to outputs but without flash/flashonce.
Responses will also be supported - not sure yet how to do this, I was thinking of a device per response, allowing it to be triggered like a switch.
Counters will be supported and will look like variable devices (such as dimmable bulbs), exposing the value of the counter as a \'brightness\' value and allowing SmartThings to set discrete values and increment/decrement the counter as appropriate.
I\'m in the middle of a critical piece of my day job at the moment, so I won\'t have time to do much this week, but hope to have something back to you all to try before the weekend.
Thanks,
Matt
Hi All
Having given this some more thought (and prototyped some of it) I am proposing the following.
Zones and Outputs will be implemented as they are.
Counters will be implemented like Outputs, but with configurable actions for On/Off (set to a specific value, increment / decrement and a slider to set a specific value similar to that of a dimmable bulb in SmartThings
Flags will be simple on/off switches
Responses will be a switch where the on button triggers the response
As this has the potential to create many hundreds of virtual devices in SmartThings, I am changing the alarm.config format to require the desired zones, outputs, flags, counters and responses be explicitly listed, so for example
maxzones = 16 is now deprecated and replaced with zones = 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16.
This should also increase performance on Pi and allow the user to only expose those things required. It does place an additional burden of effort on the user to list out the things required, but I think the effort / benefit trade-off is worth it.
I anticipate I will have a new release for the end of the week supporting at least Flags and Responses if not the whole lot.
Alarm state / set / unset is in the works and will follow shortly afterwards.
Any thoughts?
Thanks,
Matt
Hi Matt, really excited about this, gotta figure out now the route I need to go. I had been holding off in the echo in favour of Google\'s home, but this might be the trigger to go to echoe
Hi Matt, really excited about this, gotta figure out now the route I need to go. I had been holding off in the echo in favour of Google\'s home, but this might be the trigger to go to echoe
Hi All,
Is there a problem with ST security?
Do we think cytech will make a UCM to connect to amazon echo or google home?
Cheers
Lee
Thats a really good question, and i\'m sure other people have different views on this, but here are mine:
The Cytech solution, when not connected to a network is quite secure. A determined bad actor could potentially guess the usercode (and therefore gain access) by taking advantage of the telephone interface or keypad (either by brute force or educated guessing)
When it is connected to a network, the Cytech serial protocol (presented over IP) is unencrypted and trivial, a bad actor could easily listen to activity to determine the usercode or use brute force to crack it. Common sense security will help prevent this by not allowing internet access to the UCM/Eth module, putting it on a seperate VLAN etc.
If integration of the Comfort system into third party devices is desirable (which it is for me), security risks can be mitigated in the following ways:
* Limit direct access to the UCM to only authorised devices[indent] * I have done this by putting the UCM/Eth and a secondary interface on the Pi on their own subnet, with the primary interface on my Lan without any routing enabled[/indent] * Ensure that devices which expose Comfort functions are locked down[indent] * I have configured the Pi to only exposes Linux services necessary for Comfort [/indent][indent]* The configuration file for the UPNP interface limits the features exposed to those which I think are necessary for the integrations I want to do[/indent]
This means that only the Pi can talk to Comfort, and only things within my home network can talk to the Pi.
If the question is, is ST as a platform secure, the answer has to be \'only as secure as any other cloud based service\'. Amazon Echo and Google Home are also cloud based services and have the same inherent weaknesses. Obviously by combining Echo and ST, the security risk is increased, but if there is no vector to do mischief on Comfort as you have only exposed the functions necessary on the Pi - the risk is minimal.
It has been mentioned before (by David I think) but in my opinion, leave Comfort in charge of critical stuff (security and safety) and then use ST / Echo / Google / Vera to perform all the fancy home automation stuff which are enhanced by third party services or integrations.
I would have thought there are easier ways, if a thief was that determined, to break into a property than trying to hack into the alarm remotely. If they are that techy it would be easier and certainly achieve a better return by hacking into your bank account.
Hi All
I have now added Counter and Flag support as well as made other changes to the configuration.
Please see the updates posted at
https://github.com/mattbrain/Cytech-Comfort
If you are updating an existing configuration, please take note of the updates section at the bottom of the installation notes, you will need to download and modify the alarm.config as significant changes have been introduced which will not function if this file is not updated appropriately.
I am planning another release (likely early next week) which will allow responses to be triggered and the alarm set / unset to be controlled by SmartThings.
Thanks,
Matt