Initial setup

When you open HomeGenie UI after the installation (or after a factory reset), the Setup Wizard will walk you through a couple of simple steps to set the base configuration of your system.

Here you can enable built-in drivers for Raspberry Pi or other single board computers, and smart home dongles.

If at this time you just want to try HomeGenie without using additional drivers or hardware, you can choose to install the demo package which includes virtual devices such as smart thermostats, switches, color lights, and a device activity simulator.

However, all these settings can also be changed later, after the initial setup, from the system settings page.

GPIO / SPI / I2C

When you enable the GPIO package some sample programs will be installed such as the DHT-11 sensor and GPIO Pin programs. The GPIO Pin program allows you to configure a GPIO pin as a switch to turn on an LED or a relay, or as an input sensor, for instance, to detect when a button is pressed.

The following video demonstrates the initial setup procedure on a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W to enable GPIO and configure a pin as a switch to control an LED. It also shows how to create a program for making the LED blink indefinitely.

Limitless applications

The HomeGenie automation engine utilizes the .NET IoT and RaspberrySharp libraries, through which it is possible to integrate thousands of components (such as sensors, motors, controllers, and displays) and build any kind of projects, even as complex as a drone or a robot.
The integrated program editor alongside C# also supports JavaScript and Python languages, so it's possible to access a wider range of libraries, examples and applications.

Smart Home

The following built-in smart home hardware can be enabled either in the initial setup, or later from the system settings page:

X10

CM11 (Serial), CM15 (USB), CM19 (USB)

ZigBee

CC25XX (Texas Instruments), XBee (Digi), Ember (Silicon Labs), ConBee (Dresden Elektronik)

Z-Wave

Most Z-Wave serial controllers

In the video below an example setup using both ZigBee and Z-Wave hardware.

Additional drivers and features

Additional drivers and features can be integrated later via the package manager or written ad hoc using the integrated program editor. Some examples are already included and can be installed from the package manager, such as Philips Hue Bridge V1, Crestron/KNX, WeMo and others.

Manual setup and backup restore

With manual setup you can install just the base system and then access the system settings page to manually configure and customize every single aspect of your automation project.

You can also quickly restore a fully preconfigured system using a backup file previously exported from the system maintenance page.