HomeGenie on Raspbian Stretch

Is anyone using HomeGenie on Raspbian Stretch. I’ve been away from HG for a while and just installed HG 526 from the homegenie.it link on Stretch. It’s up and running now.

I’m not sure exactly who is using what at the moment. What version of HG is recommended now.

I’m not sure if I’m even going to pursue this after all that happened with the original author but thought I might just give it one more try. I’d like to help others with HG but not sure if it’s a viable product anymore.

I think that the way forward is to use Bounz branch of HG.

https://github.com/Bounz/HomeGenie-BE/releases/download/V1.1.14/homegenie_1.1.14_all.deb

I would consider the the original HG as dead, even if Gene maybe once a year merge some pull request. But we should nevertheless appreciate what Gene have done.

Ok. Maybe step by step installation instructions should now be written up to incorporate this link and any other dependencies that may be required to get HG up and running.

We need to make it as simple as possible for potential users to start using HG.

Also maybe a new post to poll current forum members as to wheather they were members of the old HomeGenie Forum. That will give us all an idea exactly what experience we have on board.

@David_Wallis have already started on that Installing Homegenie-BE

Ok. Does this method automatically create a startup script. I was thinking of a “sticky” that takes the new user step by step from a blank SD card right to the point that the HG service will start on boot of a raspberry pi.

Please, wait for the release of V1.1.15, because you will not be able to use Update Manager in V1.1.14.
I hope it will be ready till this Sunday :slightly_smiling_face:.

Ok Bounz. Can the user migrate from Homegenie r526 to your version by backing up and restoring. What version naming convention are you using.

Maybe bettet to create a image that new users can use to create a sd card? Doesn’t always have to be the latest version of HG if update manager works.

That’s exactly where I’m coming from raptor. We need a “plug and go” solution here. While some are comfortable in the Linux environment others are not. We need to give potential users that OS agnostic feeling and not having struggle with the system setup.

Shouldn’t be too difficult to spin up a basic Homegenie Pi image and have it easily downloadable for all

I finally got HG r526 running on Raspbian Stretch. Had been running it on Raspbian Jessie. Everything seems ok. Still can’t seem to get the on board Raspberry Pi csi camera module working. Hasn’t worked since Raspbian Wheezy. Obviously some change to the v4l camera drivers were made between releases which Gene never bothered to address. I’ll post back if that changes. Looking forward to trying your version Bounz. Just let us know the update procedure.

Raise the camera v4l as an issue in bounz’s repo and someone can then pick it up… I have a camera somewhere so if you can tell me what I need to do to recreate I might get chance to have a play…

I think one of alex (bounz’s) ideas is to get a docker image done too which should make it very easy to run… I dont mind creating a .img file with a rpi build too that you can just flash… would just need to do a bit of work and probably use travisCI rather than appveyor but should be do-able…

I would recommend not ditching hg and rather help us fix the issues, now it is possible to actually get changes into the code in a timely fasion :slight_smile:

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Just connect your CSI Camera Module to the the Raspberry Pi board, enable it in sudo raspi-config and install the Camera Package in the Maintenance section. In the Settings section select the Camera option and enable it there too. You’ll see that the camera widget in the top right side of your screen appears but remains greyed out.

I’m willing to stay with my efforts in HG for the moment but I think the format of the old forum is more inviting for people to use. You can see everything at a quick glance.

You will agree there’s no point in just two or three people making all the contributions. From what I read on other forums there are still plenty of HG users out there. We need to get them back on board, particularly the experienced ones. That’s why I suggested setting up a poll to find out who they are.

I actually like this type of forum. You see all the topics on the first page and all the latest postings. But maybe it is possible to change settings for your profile? Or Bounz maybe can change for the whole forum if you if you have good suggestions. I don’t understand why the old forum was better.

I wasnt convinced on the forum layout at first but got used to it and it’s better than Google groups :slight_smile:

Personally I’ve no issue with the current format but I’m surprised a lot more of the old contributors do not seem to have returned. Maybe some have under a different name. Maybe others have an answer to this question. All I care about now is getting things back on track.

As far as HG on Raspbian is concerned as far as I can see you need Mono 5 or greater to guarantee email notifications and preferably Raspbian Stretch which I have installed and running now.

Yes I don’t know why not more people have come back. Maybe they really have abandoned HG and found something else?

I tried to make a post on G+ to invite everybody to this forum, and Gene said he should make it a sticky to always show first. But that didn’t happend. I is 406 members on G+, don’t know how many was at the old forum?

I think this need a little time. Bounz branch of HG is pretty new. Maybe when people see that things is starting to move again they will come back.

Yes, you should be able to restore your settings’ backup normally.
Version naming: right now this would be V1.1.xx.

Yes, I think it’s possible. But at the first, we should create a stable release. Also, I am going to create docker images as well. The main question with distribution through docker is an Update Manager that would be able to pull the latest image and recreate container with this image.

It’s quite hard to achieve because different OSes advertise different system APIs. Take a look at .Net Core, for example, there are a lot of problems with porting some Windows APIs to macOS and Linux.
Using Docker should (theoretically) make this easier.

Right now I changed nothing related to the camera, so V1.1.15 will not help you, sorry. I advise you to start a new topic with this problem in #dev:bug-reporting.

About layout of this forum: I think it’s simple enough and its structure is quite similar to the structure of the old forum. Technically it’s possible to adjust it more, but I don’t think it’s a first priority thing to do.