Sorry for my absence... ESP8266, Ultra Narrow Band and other things...

[Alan Majer]

Hi All,

Sorry for my lack of participation here lately. A lot of my work with Insteon has been put aside lately as I've investigated some new avenues for automation.

I really like how Insteon is easy to use, and talks well through a number of devices throughout the home. But on the other hand, I was also getting quite frustrated about the range problems with wireless Insteon. Quite frankly, this has caused me a lot of grief over the years... sometime not connecting when in the same room as another device, and really rolling the dice when you are wanting to connect wirelessly beyond a room or two. The newer remotes (nice and tiny) also lacked the range of their bulky predecessor too. 

So for that reason, I've been spending a lot of my time looking at other wireless options ...thinking of either replacing, or complementing the Insteon stuff I've been doing.

The first is the wonderful ESP8266. At a cost of just a couple bucks, this is a micro controller that also has built in wifi. They come in many versions, and even the most expensive ones are still under the $10 mark (search esp8266 on eBay), and they also can act as programmable arduino too, which is awesome. Down side is that they can consume more current than the data sheet suggests (particularly tricky when you try to run off batteries), but they do have sleep modes which work pretty well. There are also a lot of undocumented quirks that I've run into (many when you are doing sleep and low power operation), but overall it's a pretty sweet chip for the money.   Overall, I'm not sure if there is interest in a next-gen arduino instead board. But if there is, putting the ESP8266 on it might be a really intriguing option. That way you could control your home automation via wifi... and get the longer distances for wireless too.

The other tech I've been working with is Ultra Narrow Band. There's not too many chipsets out here that are available off the shelf just yet (and not as cheap as ESP8266), but one of them I've tried has proved to be simply AMAZING. Ultra narrow band wireless uses hardly any power for communications, but has incredible range. In the testing we've done, it goes a city block no problem from a house. And in open air it can go far further.  For wireless Internet of Things applications, this shows a ton of promise. I've got a automated signal strength and Geo-coordinants receiver on order, and so in the next few weeks I'll have a lot better real-world data on the range of these things.

Anyway, I'd be curious on getting feedback from you folks about any potential interest in this still. Some of you may have moved on from instead, others might be charging ahead with it. So I'd be curious whether anyone else has followed ESP8266 or Ultra Narrowband wireless and if you think it's a fit with Insteon (or perhaps a replacement/alternative).

Alan

[joeychiarelli]

Personally I have gone the Zwave route. I started looking into Openzave but didn't get far.

Joe

[Bill Holbrook]

I’m still hanging in there with Insteon, but I’m always looking for ways to improve my setup. Unfortunately I don’t have anything to add to this discussion other than encorougement.

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[Bob Durk]

Hi Alan,

I was wondering what you have been up to. I will definitely follow along and try to support the ultra narrow band device.

I had thought of investing some time in learning to use the ESP8266 , but have not thus far. I still have some specific areas where insteon works well ...even though it is not fully integrated yet.

Bob D

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[Charles Forman]

Hi Alan,

YESSSS. 

I was extremely happy when I saw this email. Personally, I have been super excited about the ESP8266. In fact, I am thinking about rolling entirely my own system based on the ESP8266 communicating through MQTT to a raspberry pi (OR maybe even another ESP8266).

I have 10 ESP8266-12Es coming from China for $2 a piece. $2!!!! You can basically put a micro in anything. 

As you mentioned, the power consumption at sleep isn't great. Arduino definitely has this beat. However, there is a new espressif board coming out called ESP32. It claims a low power sleep similar to the arduino for battery applications. I'm really curious how it actually is, and if the price point will be close to $2-3.

It's the thing I search most and watch youtube videos of recently.

Would love to chat more about it!

-c

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Charles Forman

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[mike]

Alan,

I've spent a fair amount of time analyzing Insteon interference and failure modes and agree with you as far in terms of it being less robust than desired.  However, I'm not wild about using WiFi for home automation.  The reliance on a central access point and the congested nature of 2.4Ghz WiFi detract from the high reliability desired.  For low bandwidth applications, WiFi is a poor choice and even with an improved sleep power drain version of the esp8266, there is high drain when signaling occurs.  

I'm very interested in Zwave, but prefer a non-proprietary radio for my own projects.  Can you elaborate on Ultra Narrow Band?  Specifically, which UNB scheme you are referring to and what silicon is available?

-Mike

On Tuesday, February 2, 2016 at 9:22:01 AM UTC-5, Alan Majer wrote:

[Alan Majer]

Hi Mike, 

The version of UNB I'm using is from a company called Link-Labs. Here's their products and modules:

http://www.link-labs.com/product/iot-modules/

The only downside is probably not quite as open as you might like. In their effort to make things easier to get started, they have a router that can handle communications with all the nodes. It's great for getting stuff working quickly, but it's not quite the module-to-module communications that I would have liked to have. Now module-to module might be perfectly possible, but it didn't seem what the system was designed for to get things running quickly.  

...however, that said, their staff have been pretty cool so far, so if direct module to module communications is what you want to do, they may be helpful there. I get the sense that they're trying to attract as many people as they can at this stage.

About ESP8266. With the 07 version I was able to get it into a sleep mode which was pretty economical on power, but like you say, the transmit power is a killer. The (translated) data sheet says it's something like 250mA transmit, but with the module I was using I saw tiny spikes of over 400mA on occasion (which caused me no end of grief as it exceeded my power supply and caused the chip to brown out). If you can stand sleeping and only transmit one way, the ESP8266, but if you have to be awake and listening for signals coming back it doesn't seem practical (unless you poll once an hour or something to see if there's any messages waiting). Still, I can see the ESP8266 being pretty useful for IoT in cases where you only need intermittent connections and can sleep most of the time. Especially when you need something cost effective. In this area of town, my congested wifi often seems to perform better than insteon wireless.... though neither is particularly great over more than a few rooms or floors.

Alan

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Date: Fri, 5 Feb 2016 13:32:55 -0800
From: mi...@matyas.com
To: arduino...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Sorry for my absence... ESP8266, Ultra Narrow Band and other things...

Anyway, I'd be curious on getting feedback from you folks about any potential interest in this still. Some of you may have moved on from instead, others might be charging ahead with it. So I'd be curious whether anyone else has followed ESP8266 or Ultra Narrowband wireless and if you think it's a fit with Insteon (or pe rhaps a replacement/alternative).

Alan

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[Russ Tooley]

Hey Alan, good hearing from you. I still like Insteon. In my small house along with your nifty (1st generation) Arduino Shield has been working without fail, doing the things I want. But, I'd be happy to support anything you think is better.

Russ

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[Kevin Mark]

Hi Alan,

Good to hear from you! UNB looks pretty interesting. My concern with this recently, and home automation in general (especially wireless), is security. Does Insteon even provide this? From my understanding I could walk into an Insteon-enabled home, plug in my Arduino, and gain control over all the Insteon devices in the house. Sections of the house I might not have access to. I imagine one of the outside outlets on the house could be used instead for less obvious intrusion. If UNB does not provide any security guarantees, or we cannot add those guarantees on top of UNB,  I think that should limit its use to very non-critical systems.

-Kevin

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[Alan Majer]

Hi Kevin,

You raise a really great question. I believe that you can't control an insteon device without linking to it first, so in the normal course of business your arduino should not be able to go into a strangers house and start messing with their system (or worse, like you suggest, to use powerline communication to interfere with a neighbor, or go through an external electrical jack).   BUT, from what I know insteon does not securely encrypt either. So while it might take some technical sophistication to assert control on the network by impersonating a linked device. While I haven't heard of someone doing it, I'm betting it's technically feasible. So for someone uber concerned about security, Insteon may not be the way to go.  If I had a home dialysis machine hooked up to my insteon-switched outlet for example I might be far more cautious than I am presently. On the other hand, some home automation system do encrypt, but then also use that as a strategy to keep you locked in their system by preventing interoperability for others. I like that Insteon is possible to integrate with at least.

Regarding UNB, if someone has sensitive communications, probably best to encrypt their own data and then it wouldn't matter running it over an insecure channel (though you need a better processor, and perhaps affects power consumption a little). That said, if your UNB device is a motion sensor and it is transmitting something every so often, odds are that even if it's encrypted we'll know it is transmitting a "motion detected" signal just the same :) 

Nowadays, with gigabytes of flash costing next to nothing, I've also started to wonder whether storing a one-time-pad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-time_pad in edge devices would be an easy answer to near-perfect security if you're only transmitting a few bytes here and there.

Alan

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From: kmar...@gmail.com
Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2016 21:33:48 +0000
Subject: Re: [BULK] Sorry for my absence... ESP8266, Ultra Narrow Band and other things...
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