IKEA Increases security

In the latest firmware update of their gateway, IKEA has increased security by introducing DTLS Identities which means that each client (such as OpenNetHome) has to use its own client identity and has to request its own pre shared security key from the gateway.

Unfortunately this change is not backwards compatible, so as soon as you do a firmware upgrade of your gateway, the old IkeaGateway-Item in OpenNetHome stops working.

I have now implemented the needed changes in the IkeaGateway-Item, and it is available in the nightly build. When you upgrade, the IkeaGateway-Item will automatically request the client security key from the gateway. According to IKEA's recommendations the IkeaGateway-Item no longer stores the original security code once the client code is generated.

The new ClientName attribute does not normally have to be changed from the default value when you create a new IkeaGateway-Item, but if you have multiple Items connecting to the same gateway, each Item must have a different ClientName.

I think it is good that IKEA takes IoT-security seriously and works actively to increase it in their solutions.

NetHomeServer 3.0

I am happy to announce a new official release of NetHomeServer! Originally the plan was to call the next release 2.1, but now so many new things has been added since the last release, so it made more sense to call it 3.0. All new features are listed in the release notes here, and the major additions are the Raspberry Pi installation, the REST interface and the support for IKEA Trådfri. As usual, the features have already been available in the nightly build for a while.

A new part of the WEB-Site is the Feature Index. This is a way to try to visualize all the features that are available in OpenNetHome, and to guide you to the proper HomeItems to use that feature. Welcome in to browse around the features!

Customizing Plan View

I have for long time had requests to be able to change the Icons for Items in the Plan view. A typical example is that a remote switch may for example control a coffee maker, but the Item used is actually a NexaLamp (which in reality is a remote switch) which has a lamp bulb as Icon.

I have been a bit reluctant to add this, because it is a bit of work and other features has always felt more important. Now I got requests to customize other aspects of the plan view as well, and then I realized that the easiest way to be able to customize anything is to allow a custom css file to be added. This is now added in the nightly build.

So, to change the Icon for a specific Item to a coffee maker, you first upload the image file (coffee32.png) to the media library (in settings). Then you find out the ID of the Item by looking at the Item details page (Id is 44 in this example) and make a small css-file that looks like this:

#ID44 li.icon.lamp_off {
    background: url(coffee32.png) no-repeat center;
}

#ID44 li.icon.lamp_on {
    background: url(coffee32.png) no-repeat center;
}

You upload the .css file in the media library, go to the plan page, click "edit this page" and select the css-file.

This is just one example a what can be changed this way.

Custom Lamp

I have got some vacation hacking time, so I have also added an other HomeItem on a user request. A number of users use OpenNetHome partly as a GUI front end for their own implemented hardware, which is exactly what one of the goals with the project is. In this case the user had connected a number of relays which are controlled via shell scripts, and wanted them to be presented as Lamps in the GUI.

I added the CustomLamp-Item, which behaves like a lamp, but you can configure the on- and off-actions in the Item. Those actions can be to call actions in other Items or as in this case to call external shell scripts.

The CustomLamp-Item is in the nightly build

Prologue Thermometer

Since Clas Ohlson in Sweden has a sale on Prologe wireless thermometers (http://www.clasohlson.com), I added support for their wireless sensors in OpenNetHome. It is in the nightly build and the Item is called PrologueThermometer. It supports auto create, so as soon as a sensor is detected it pops up on the Detected Devices Window ready to use.

Unfortunately, Telldus has not (yet) added support for it in the TellstickDuo firmware, so it can not be used if you are using TellstickDuo as RF receiver.

Warm Dim

In the IkeaColorTemperatureLamp, the Item for controlling IKEA Trådfri's white spectrum lamps the new feature WarmDim is now added. When WarmDim is activated, the color temperature is automatically turned warmer the more dimmed the light is, to emulate the way normal incandescent bulbs turns orange when dimmed low. This makes the dimming look more natural.

You can still set a color temperature for the lamp, which will be used when the lamp is at full power, but the more it is dimmed the warmer the light will get, starting from the set value.

The feature is in the nightly build.

Instruction film for IKEA

I have now made a short instruction film for how to configure and control IKEA Trådfri lamps in OpenNetHome. It is available on YouTube on the OpenNetHome.org-channel.


I tried to get approval from IKEA to use the sound track from their instruction films, as it felt more "genuine", but IKEA did not allow it :-(. Maybe just as well, this track is a lot less annoying then theirs...

Support for IKEA Trådfri

IKEA has made a slightly unexpected entry in the Home Automation space with the new product line Trådfri. Currently it includes a variety of different remote controlled LED-bulbs and some interesting LED-surfaces. They can be controlled via a set of different remote controls or via an app (requires a gateway). All of them are very aggressively priced and best of all, the LED-bulbs are very powerful, with a max of 1000lm which is like a 75W incandescent bulb!

I have now added support for controlling the IKEA lamps with OpenNetHome. It requires the Trådfri Gateway to work (as the app do), but no other hardware.

The IkeaGateway-Item supports auto create, so when the gateway is connected in your local network, it shows up in the create-page as a detected device. When you create the IkeaGateway-Item, you have to enter the security code that is printed on the bottom of the Gateway.

Once the Gateway Item is created, all connected lamps will be auto detected and also show up as detected devices.

There are two lamp types supported, IkeaLamp and IkeaColorTemperatureLamp. The IkeaLamp represents the standard dimmable lamp with fixed color temperature where the brightness can be set between 0 and 100%. The IkeaColorTemperatureLamp represents the lamps with variable color temperature and for them the color temperature can be set between 0 and 100%, where 0 represents the coldest light. They both support the standard features with four configurable preset dim levels,

All Items are available in the Nightly build.