PG&E plans to default residential customers to Time-of-Use (TOU) rates starting April 2021. The objective of this Demand Response Emerging Technology (DRET) demonstration project is to leverage residential Voice Assistants technology (such as Amazon Alexa, Google Home) to educate residential customers on energy usage and bill forecast, rates and Time-Of-Use automation/optimization, available IoT and connectivity, configuration, and notification on utility information.
“Trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit.” ~ Moliere
We have been working on 5x firmware for about 5 years now while, along the way, we developed Polyglot, Polyglot Cloud, Polisy and – thanks to our fabulous developer community – about 90 node servers. We are extremely happy to announce that 5.3 firmware is now official and it’s Z-Wave Plus certified!
Important Notes:
Firmware releases 5.2+ do not work with older versions of the Z-Wave Module (300 series). Please take a look at the back of your ISY. If you see a blue LED next to the Port A jack, then you have an older version of the Z-Wave dongle. Please check upgrade eligibility, discount, and ordering, and assembly instructions. Alternatively, you can upgrade your ISY to ISY994i ZW+ Series.
Upgrade from 4.x firmware to 5.x firmware is not automatic and requires manual intervention. If you wish to upgrade to 5.3, please carefully review these instructions
Discount:
As a token of our appreciation for your patience during our journey to 5.3, for a very limited time, we are offering 20% discount on ISY994i ZW+ Series, and Polisy. Please use the following coupon code at checkout:
“The sky of the color of ashes in the east and embers in the west.” ~ Stephen King
For Californians, wildfires are becoming more frequent and the smoke and particulate matter generated by them are a serious health hazard. Wouldn’t it be nice to know if it is safe to be outside or even just open a window?
Now you can.
Combine your ISY994 with a PurpleAir air quality monitor and you’ll have instant data to make those types of decisions.
Your ISY will have access to the air quality sensor data and the EPA Air Quality Index for your exact location.
Prerequisites:
ISY firmware version 5.0.15 or higher
A PurpleAir air quality monitor
An ISY Portal account or local Polyglot installation
Configuration:
With either the Polyglot cloud service or your local Polyglot, select the PurpleAir node server from the store and click the “Install” button. Assign the node server to an unused slot.
From the Polyglot Dashboard, select the newly installed PurpleAir node server Details from the dashboard and then go to the Configuration screen. Add custom configuration parameters for the PurpleAir devices you want to monitor.
Key
Value
Name
PurpleAir sensor ID
Name
Second PurpleAir sensor ID
The Nameis of your choosing. It simply provides a way to identify a specific PurpleAir device.
The Sensor ID is specific to a PurpleAir device.
The PurpleAir node server accesses the publicly available data from the PurpleAir servers. To monitor a device, the device must be registered with PurpleAir and must not be hidden from public view.
When the configuration is finished, the node server will start polling purpleair.com for the sensor data. You can control how often the data is polled and update using the ‘shortPoll’ advanced configuration options. ShortPoll defines how often the devices are polled and is in seconds.
Don’t just guess when the air is clean enough for you and your family to go outside or let the breeze flow through and open window during a smoke or air pollution episode. Once configured, the ISY and PurpleAir real-time air quality monitoring can help you decide when it’s safe to exercise, play or simply enjoy the outdoors. Now that’s a breath of fresh air!
If you have addition ideas for how this node server could be used, comment below.
Thanks to our very active, enthusiastic, and ingenious developer community, and as we are now at 84 full featured Polys (Node Servers) including more climate services. In this episode of What’s Up Poly, though, we are going to take a look at Home Theater Light Automation using the newly developed Plex Poly.
Without further ado, let’s let @ch491 and @ralbright, the brains behind this Poly, describe it all:
One of the ambitions I have had for my smart home is automation of room lighting while watching TV Shows and MOVIES at home, especially during the pandemic. There are very few ways to have the ISY know if you are actively watching a TV Show or MOVIE. In the past, you had to (gasp) manually turn lights on/off in the room when you start the movie. (Oh, the humanity!)
If you have a Plex Media Server, then adding the new Plex-Webhook to the ISY994 through your Polisy or PloyglotV2 node server, means your ISY now knows if something is playing in that room.
Examples:
You can create programs that can control the lighting based on when you start playing something like a movie.
What about monitoring the Content Rating of what the kids are watching? You can write a program to alert you via the ISY’s various methods of doing so.
It also has a special feature called Rapid Trigger. It can alert you if a user is causing too many events in a given time. i.e. If you have kids that think it is fun to play/pause repeatedly! You can write a program to alert you via the ISY’s various methods of doing so.
This program sets a state variable that triggers the ISY Portal to have Alexa announce “Please Stop Doing That.”
Thanks to the participation of over 110 volunteers in our RATES pilot, we learned a lot not only about Transactive Energy but also how to best engage customers using Smart Speakers. We are quite pleased with the outcome and hope you will enjoy reading the results in our official and approved RATES Final Report.
We are very excited to announce the launch of Energy Expert, the Alexa Skill and ecosystem of things that will enable you to better understand and optimize your energy usage and costs. Energy Expert uses OpenADR 2.0 standard to manage and process Time of Use prices. Two of the most electrifying features of Energy Expert are Proactive Notifications and Automatic Optimization. Take a listen to this awesome recording.
Automatic Optimization uses your Energy Savings Preferences (low to high), and energy price for that duration, and temporarily automates your things to optimize your energy usage, savings and comfort. For example, Energy Expert may temporarily adjust your thermostat setting to save energy during peak energy times.
Through Alexa as well as SMS/email, Proactive Notifications provide you with helpful energy information and tips. For example, Energy Expert may notify you of the best time to operate your connected appliance(s) to save energy and money based on your current rate. Or, you may be notified of an activity that goes against your Energy Savings preferences.
Energy Expert is trained to help you achieve your energy savings goals. Energy Expert is not there to take over your life nor is it going to force you into doing something you don’t like. As such, you can opt out at any time using Alexa voice commands, manually adjusting the device being optimized, or through the ISY Portal.
If you are already a participant in Southern California Edison Smart Speaker Project, to get started, please follow the instructions here.
If you are a Southern California Edison or PG&E customer and wish to be considered for participation in this program with your existing equipment, please contact sales@universal-devices.com.
“I’m not confused. I’m just well mixed” ~ Robert Frost
As you may already know, and thankfully, the Climate Module is going away. ‘Thankfully’ because, now you have many other options and services to choose from. But, which option and service is the right one for you? Let’s find out!
ISY Portal, Polisy, MobiLinc, … o my!
The first thing you will have to figure out is which platform to choose. For the new weather services to integrate with your ISY, the following requirements must be met:
If you have already signed up for MobiLinc Connect Module/service, then your choices are restricted to the Network Module + Polisy. The reason is that ISY can only support one proxy service: either ISY Portal or MobiLinc Connect.
The advantage of ISY Portal is that it does not require additional hardware. The advantage of Polisy is that you can integrate your ISY with a lot more things out there. In addition – and if you don’t use MobiLinc Connect – Polisy comes with 2 year subscription to ISY Portal free of charge.
Get to Node Your Weather Service Server
Weather service node servers connect to a specific weather service and query for current weather conditions and daily forecasts. The goal is to make the various node servers similar, but there are differences in the specific data returned by each service and the number days of forecast data available. Different services use distinct data sources and various algorithms for determining forecasts. You will need to determine which one works best for your region.
Most of the services offer a free subscription plan, along with paid subscriptions. The node server only takes advantage of the data in the cheapest plan, typically the free plan. In addition to the queried weather data, the node servers attempt to calculate the evapotranspiration–a fancy term for land evaporation combined with plant transpiration–based on the daily forecasts. All of the weather service node servers will work with either ISY Portal Polisy. Node servers are available for the following services:
climacell.co. Climacell offers a free plan and provides up to 15 days of forecast data.
AERIS. AERIS does not offer a free plan, but does offer a no-cost plan to people that contribute weather data via a personal weather station using PWSWeather.com. AERIS provides up to 12 days of forecast data. Note that the UDI climate module gets its data from AERIS.
OpenWeatherMaps.org. OpenWeatherMaps does offer a free plan and provides up to 5 days of forecast data.
DarkSky.net. DarkSky does offer a free plan and provides up to 7 days of forecast data. Note that DarkSky is no longer accepting new registrations and will be shutting down this service in 2021.
Let’s Get Personal
Personal weather station node servers get data directly from a personal weather station. The frequency of the updates is typically set by the station and can be as often as once a minute. These only provide information on the current conditions. Node servers are available for the following weather stations:
WeatherFlow. Works with WeatherFlow (www.weatherflow.com) smart weather stations, including the new Tempest. Data from the station is broadcast over your home network and picked up by the node server. The node server will also query the WeatherFlow servers to initialize some of the data (rain accumulation) and get the user’s preferred units measured (e.g., Celsius vs. Fahrenheit). This only works with Polisy
WeatherFlowPGC is a version of the WeatherFlow server that gets all of its data from the WeatherFlow servers in stead of your local network. The main goal is to provide access to remote stations such as a vacation home. This will work on both ISY Portal and Polisy.
AmbientWeather. Works with Ambient Weather Network-based weather stations. The data comes from the Ambient Weather servers instead of directly from a personal weather station . Note that there are two slightly different versions of this by two different authors. This will work on both ISY Portal and Polisy.
Davis. There are two node servers for Davis weather stations. One for the old, obsolete WeatherLinkIP API and one for the current WeatherLinkLive API.
The WeatherLinkLive node server connects directly to the WeatherLinkLive box over your local network. This works only on a Polisy.
The WeatherLinkIP node server connects to the Davis server to get data that’s been uploaded to the server. This node server has not been well tested. This will work on both ISY Portal and Polisy.
MeteoBridge – Works with a MeteoBridge (www.meteobridge.com) weather bridge. Live data is queried from the local MeteoBridge device. This should also work with Ambient’s WeatherBridge. Works only on a Polisy.
Personal Weather Station Software Node Server
The WeatherPoly node server is designed to work with existing weather software that is locally installed. Most weather software can be configured to export data to a URL. By pointing the export URL at the WeatherPoly node server, the data can be parsed and forwarded to an ISY. This currently works with MeteoBridge, Cumulus, and AcuParse. It is also possible to make this work with WEEWX via a modified extension. This allows access to data from personal weather stations that don’t have a network-accessible API. This only works on a Polisy.
The choice is yours
It’s always good to have choices, and with all the different weather related node servers, there’s something for everyone.
You can now use Raise, Lower, Open, and Close with Alexa.
To enable this feature:
— On ISY Portal, go to Select Tools | Connectivity | Amazon Echo
— Edit one of your “spokens”
— In the Alexa Category, choose one of these new options: Device with Open/Close syntax Device with Set/Lower/Raise syntax
— Save your “spoken”
— After changing the Alexa Category, ask “Alexa, discover my devices”
When you use “Device with Open/Close syntax”
In addition to the regular turn on/turn off, you will now be able to say:
Alexa, open <device>
Alexa, close <device>
When you use “Device with Set/Lower/Raise syntax”
In addition to the regular turn on/turn off, you will now be able to say:
Alexa, open <device>
Alexa, close <device>
Alexa, set <device> to <close | low | medium | high | maximum | open>
Alexa, set <device> to <any number from 1 to 100>
Alexa, raise <device>
Alexa, raise <device> by <number>
Alexa, lower <device>
Alexa, lower <device> by <number>
Please note that this Alexa category is available for devices and state variables only. In the case of variables, when setting up your spoken, it is recommended to use a turn off value of 0, and turn on value of 100.
You can now control your locks using Google Home.
To enable this feature:
— On ISY Portal, go to Select Tools | Connectivity | Google Home
Thanks to our very active, enthusiastic, and ingenious developer community, and as we are reaching 75 awesome and full featured Polys (Node Servers), we are going to start sending Poly news on a regular basis. And, of course, we also hope that these communiques can save you from boredom (in case you are home). In this edition: iAquaLink and Ring.
If you have the Ring Poly, then please restart it. We were instructed by Ring to update the integration for added security. Please note that, if you don’t restart this Poly, it will stop working by June 2020.
Do you have iAquaLink? If so, we are looking for testers! If interested,
You need a Polisy (Cloud version is coming soon). If you don’t have one, you can get a $50.00 discount
“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” ~ Semisonic
The first Climate Module was installed on 11/21/2008 on an ISY99! Since then, we brought to life such gems as ISY Portal, Polyglot, Polyglot Cloud, and Polisy. And, more importantly, we’ve been blessed with a community of genius developers, who develop bleeding edge integration of things, including an assortment of Weather Services, with advanced functionality and features.
So, although we are sad to say farewell to our beloved Climate Module on 03/31/2020*, but we are excited to offer you more choices and enhanced features through Polyglot Cloud.
And just to make this transition a little easier for you:
If you purchased your Climate Module in 2019, you can request for a $49.00 store credit, 4 years subscription to ISY Portal, or a prorated refund on a 4 year usage basis
If you purchased your Climate Module in 2018, you can request for a $35.00 store credit or 3 years subscription to ISY Portal
If you purchased your Climate Module in 2017, you can request for a $23.00 store credit or 2 years subscription to ISY Portal
If you purchased your Climate Module in 2016, you can request for $15.00 store credit or 1 year subscription to ISY Portal
new weather services to integrate with your ISY, the following requirements must be met:
So, although we are sad to say farewell to our beloved Climate Module on 03/31/2020*, but we are excited to offer you more choices and enhanced features through 