Home Assistant Thread

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11 posts

Geek

#2626783 26-Dec-2020 09:02

prob:
Thanks for that. Was thinking of monitoring household use rather than via extension lead.

Yup I understand you wanted that. The extension lead is only to read the voltage and phase angle.
Then you clip the current clamp on whatever you want to monitor. This was how I had mine to monitor the whole house. It can still calculate power factor, apparent and reactive kWh etc like this.

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kiwijunglist

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#2626796 26-Dec-2020 10:30

HA running on server in docker
Shelly switches for lights
Zigbee2mqtt
- Xiaomi door sensor
- Xiaomi temp sensor
- Xiaomi motion sensor
Broadlink RM mini (IR for TV and audio)
Broadlink pro (IR for heat pump and RF for kitchen extractor fan)
D1Mini for garage (esphome)
Yale smart lock
Amcrest baby camera
Dahua Poe cameras (not setup yet)
Zoneminder for cameras
Dahua mqtt docker container
Cyberpower UPS with docker to talk to HA
Google home hubs for voice control

Wish list
Setup object and face detection etc via docker
Setup my DIY alarm again and have like a dog barking and some lights go on and off to stimulate someone being home when someone walks up driveway.

HTPC / Home automation (home assistant) enthusiast.

hairy1

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#2626799 26-Dec-2020 10:49

Nice setup @kiwijunglist

I set up Deepstack in Portainer within Home Assistant as I am not running Docker on my NUC. Rob Mark Coles Deepstack Home Assistant integration works great. Let me know if you want some links or info on my setup.

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kiwijunglist

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#2626816 26-Dec-2020 11:17

I think I might of tried that once and it didn't work for me.

Id quite like deepstack to use the GPU as well I have a p1000 GPU. I have Plex in docker using the GPU using the Nvidia docker container.

I have to try again.. but we have a toddler so very little time now.

HTPC / Home automation (home assistant) enthusiast.

kiwijunglist

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#2626821 26-Dec-2020 11:25

Best integration is

Google hub -> HA -> SmartIR -> Broadlink IR -> Heat pump

For Voice control of heatpump

And

Google hub - > Chromecast -> TV
Chromecast -> HA -> Broadlink IR -> TV/Stereo

For Voice control to play videos on TV and turn on/off the TV/Audio when playback starts/stops.

HTPC / Home automation (home assistant) enthusiast.

hairy1

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#2626873 26-Dec-2020 12:04

I think Deepstack has come along a bit lately. I remember trying a while ago and quickly ran out of ideas. Deepstack in docker seems to be pretty easy lately.

Toddlers definitely come before Home Assistant... It sure does suck up the time particularly if trying to do something that it is not "home assistant mainstream"

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hairy1

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#2626880 26-Dec-2020 12:05

Broadlink -> Heat pump is great along with cameras and Deep Stack for me.

Washing machine notifications with a lid sensor are also great.

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neb

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#3274286 21-Aug-2024 22:44

Someone pointed me to this thread:

So you decided to install Home Assistant, huh? Congratulations on your new full-time job as a "smart home systems integrator," where your main responsibility is praying your Wi-Fi doesn't decide to take a nap.
Welcome to the world where your light switches will now have more complicated relationships than your friends on Facebook. It’s like your house got a PhD in neediness, and now every single device has its own personality disorder.
You wanted a smart home, and instead, you got a *high-maintenance* home. Your lights flicker like they’re at a rave because the latest update decided your firmware wasn’t moody enough. Speaking of updates, every time there's a new one, it's like rolling the dice—will your home be smarter or will you spend the next 48 hours trying to figure out why your fridge thinks it's a speaker?
Oh, and that dashboard you spent hours customizing? Hope you enjoy re-doing it from scratch every time Home Assistant decides to "improve" its interface. But hey, at least you'll always know what your neighbor’s Wi-Fi signal is, because your automations will probably connect to that by mistake, just for fun.
But sure, it's totally worth it, right? I mean, who wouldn't want to control their lights from their phone in three extra steps instead of just flipping a switch like a normal person? Welcome to the future, where your house is smarter than you—and knows it.
So you’ve committed to Home Assistant, the one platform that turns your home into a glorified science project. You know, because life wasn’t already complicated enough. Now you get to explain to guests why your "smart" house has a nervous breakdown every time someone tries to turn on a light manually.
Home Assistant is like that friend who knows everything but never shuts up about it—constantly needing your attention for updates, bug fixes, or just because it decided to forget how to connect to your TV. Want to dim the lights? Better hope you remembered the exact YAML syntax, or you'll be sitting in the dark, googling "why won't my smart lights work?"
And speaking of YAML, who doesn’t love a configuration language where a single misplaced space can ruin your entire weekend? It's like you're coding for NASA, but the mission is just getting your thermostat to not go haywire at 3 AM. You’ve basically become a full-stack developer just to turn off your porch light.
Let’s not forget about the *joy* of adding new devices. Every time you introduce a new gadget, it’s like bringing home a new pet, except this one speaks a different language and might randomly decide to stop working out of sheer spite. But sure, it’s super convenient when it’s all working perfectly—which is approximately never.
So go ahead, pour another cup of coffee, because you're going to need it to stay awake through another night of debugging automations that worked perfectly fine until you dared to breathe in the same room as your router. Your home may be smart, but you? You’re just tired.

This is depressingly true.

Tinkerisk

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#3274317 22-Aug-2024 07:56

neb:

Someone pointed me to this thread:

This is depressingly true.

Only if you make the serious mistake of using WiFi for this and you miss to apply the Cmd/Mon concept from aviation in the design. 😄

- NET: FTTH, OPNsense, 10G backbone, GWN APs, ipPBX
- SRV: 12 RU HA server cluster, 0.1 PB storage on premise
- IoT: thread, zigbee, tasmota, BidCoS, LoRa, WX suite, IR
- 3D: two 3D printers, 3D scanner, CNC router, laser cutter

timmmay

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#3274404 22-Aug-2024 09:56

It's relatively stable now. I do tend to avoid updating until later in the month as occasionally something changes and it needs a bit of work. Home Assistant using Docker is the way to go IMHO.

richms

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#3274424 22-Aug-2024 10:37

I just don't update the one that does things I need to happen. I have a second one that I play around with. The good thing with zero cost software is that there is no reason to only run it in a single place.

The tuya integration is fundamentally broken and just gets blame from each side about it when you try to look into it.

As my HA is connected to my Alexa, when it does decide to actually work and all my devices appear, suddenly the alexa app pops up to tell me that it has discovered 352 new devices and 72 new scenes or something like that, which are mostly just dupes of ones that alexa sees on tuya by itself so are of no value to me.

Richard rich.ms

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#3274432 22-Aug-2024 10:57

I have two toddlers now so yup definitely not using HA anymore...

Someone mentioned docker was best way to run HA.

A lot of people feel virtual machine is better because home assistant has addon features that run in separate dockers and HA manages all the complimentary docker addons for you if you run it as a virtual machine.

HTPC / Home automation (home assistant) enthusiast.

SQLGeek

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Master Geek

#3274434 22-Aug-2024 11:26

6 months ago, I brought the Home Assistant Green.

The best thing is not the automations but having one app to control all my devices.

Some the apps for my devices are so terrible but now it’s so easy.

Highlights

Escea Gas fire (app is terrible, now works remotely)

Daikin Ducted Heat pump – no scheduling via app.

B-hive irrigation (via HACS, native app is terrible)

Close louvers when raining, open in the morning when sunny via Bond Bridge

Notify my wife when Washing Machine is done if she is home (via energy monitor plug)

Future plans:

Notify when it starts to rain and there is washing on the line

Gas bottle usage

SpaNet spa pool control – think my version to old. Want water temperature logging over time

tieke

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#3274445 22-Aug-2024 12:20

It's noticeable that at least four of the complaints in that rant are about lights, which probably reflects that the author/other users/guests interact with them on a daily basis. I've found the light integrations are one of the most solid in HA, so it's not the software or updates that is the issue here, it is the physical interface.

People are used to switching on lights with a physical button when they enter a darkened room - it's basically reflexive behaviour at this point. To expect people to suddenly go against this ingrained habit is going to feel strange, and using either voice or phone to turn on lights are demonstrably slower and more inefficient.

Home automation is most easily adopted when it's intuitive, or at least unobtrusive. People quite sensibly prefer something that reduces mental load rather than increasing it, so having lights come on automatically/curtains be drawn/heating changes due to sensors or timers are all excellent uses of automation, while having to intentionally counter a reflex habit for just one house (or sometimes just a few rooms in that house) is something that will meet resistance.

The simplest method is to adopt the existing interface - for instance I use Xiaomi Yeelight ceiling lights in most of our rooms, so just stick their big battery-powered switch/dimmers either next to or over the existing light switches, or use Shelley relays in light switch enclosures to make non-Xiaomi lights automation-compatible. Home automation examples that make people's everyday lives worse are unlikely to be adopted.

MarkM536

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Ultimate Geek

#3274468 22-Aug-2024 13:34

Home Assistant turns to a hobby by itself...

I use mine for logging and sensors. Hardly any lights are controlled through Home Assistant and not motion/presence sensors inside of my house are connected.

DIY with ESPhome is my go-to. Then some integrations for my router, CCTV, Google sheets, Node Red and Alexa.

Out of the fun things, logging my DIY weather station's values to a Google sheet for a year has been great. NodeRed also saving local CVS files in case Sheets API fails.

My latest add-on has been BirdNET-Pi to detect species of birds using a CCTV's microphone: https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumId=141&topicId=315830

The most absurd device I have setup is a thermal CCTV camera watching my electronic scooter. Thermal cam has a siren and Home Assistant picks up temperature values through it's API.

Already been a saver when I had some Ni-MH batteries get far too hot an hour into charging (charger was in view of the thermal camera, to the side of my escooter).

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