Tag: zigbee

  • goodbye X10, hello TRÅDFRI …

    scruss/ihsctrl: a package of bash scripts to control selected IKEA Home smart (aka “TRÅDFRI”) devices via their network gateway

    The old X10 devices were getting really unreliable: seldom firing at all, getting far too hot, bringing a whole lot of not working to my life. So while it was kind of cool to have my lights controlled by an original 256 MB Raspberry Pi Model B from 2012, it was maybe working one schedule out of ten.

    So it had to go: replaced by a Raspberry Pi Zero W and a whole lot of IKEA TRÅDFRI kit. I was deeply unimpressed with the IKEA Home smart app, though: you couldn’t use even basic schedules with more than one light cycle per day. So while I know there are lots of clever home automation systems, I wanted to replace my old cron scripts and set about writing some simple command tools. The result is ihsctrl: very limited, but good enough for me. It’s been working exactly as expected for the last week, so I’ll finally get to wade through 8 years of cobwebs and dismantle the old X10 setup. I already miss the 06:30 clonk of the X10 controller turning the front light on — that was my alarm clock (or alarm clonk) every morning.

    (old local copy: ihsctrl.zip)

    more up-to-date local copy:

    2025 update: this still works, if extremely slowly. It takes maybe 15–20 seconds for a command to get through. Sometimes it doesn’t. Retrying is good.