denverpilot
Tied Down
The forum has timed out and won’t allow posts to the old HA threads; so here’s a new one.
What have people done with their houses so far?
Recently I’ve gone Home Assistant crazy. Ha.
Current status:
- all public areas and two bedrooms and the office now have at least some controllable lighting. Some are WiFi bulbs, some are switches for lamps, and a few are color bulbs.
- Home Assistant : Started off running it on a RaspberryPi to see how I liked it. Liked it immediately and moved it to an old desktop machine for more horsepower and to get the thing off of the flaky flash card as a file system. That’s stupid for a database. Corrupted multiple times on the Pi, but it just keeps event history. Anyway...
The best part about HA, it will give you your best shot at fully local control if you buy things wisely. No cloud or internet needed for it all to work.
I went with hass.io on the Pi for ease of initial setup and decided to stick with it running in Docker on a lightweight Lubuntu distro. Many ditch hass.io and run HomeAssistant directly in Docker or even a virtual Python environment. There’s a million ways to install it. Hass.io has the advantage of having a community “store” (it’s all free) of Pre-configured Docker containers for their slightly odd ball HassOS that are literally a mouse click to install.
One of the best is a Google Drive backup system someone wrote. With that in place, the thing backs up a snapshot of the entire system to GD. That sold me. Way too easy.
With the sysadmin chores including doing a full restore from backup to prove they work, done...
Added:
All the lights.
A paid ($5 Mo) integration with Alexa and Google Assistant which also gives secure remote access without needing your own VPN and webhooks support for your own code running anywhere. The Alexa integration allows you to kill all of your skills for things HA can control locally and HA publishes them and their states to Alexa from its own skill instead so you’re moving all control local, but if internet is alive you can voice command everything. This also allows you to write complex automations and give them a name so Alexa can do them also. “Alexa do that thing that runs six different automations.” Done. The Google Assistant one does the same and works well but I don’t have Google devices, so I tested with the app on iOS. Works great. These integrations CAN be done manually but for $5 a month making keeping up with the API changes someone else’s problem? No brainer. Take my money. I’ll focus on my automations.
An internet based (boo!) integration with our commercial home alarm. Full status and control.
An integration with the Netgear Orbi that can track whether any device is online and also get all stats for bandwidth and such from it.
The beta version of the iOS device tracker that sets up tracking via Apple servers and can do location, a ton of phone status including whether it’s on cellular or wifi, battery level, charging state, and a ton more. Even pulls the fitness data if you allow it. Geocodes location to an address and allows multiple locations with geofences so iPhones always wake up and report when they cross a boundary.
Installed HAdashboard, an alternate dashboard engine for making dashboards for tablets. Idea is to hang them on the wall for local control and switches. Made a couple test boards. They work.
Integration with Dark Sky weather API for so called “hyper local” weather. The amount of data it can provide to HA is overwhelming but awesome. Want the lights to come on if someone is home and the clouds roll in? Easy.
Installed Node-Red. Life changing. LOL. It’s a visual code creator and integrated with HA you literally draw your automation flows with messages. HA natively does automations in YAML which I have experience with but it’s a pain. Like Python, super sensitive to spaces and code placement and lacking in syntactic sugar. Workable but Node-Red is awesome. I’ll probably build all of the major logic in it. And convert the few automations already done to it.
Integration with Blink cameras. Blink kinda sucks but, nice side effect. Every camera has a temperature sensor. That’s reported to HA and is useful for other reasons. Blink throttles API commands so some of the stuff I was trying to do didn’t work. I need to write a little logic state machine tracker that keeps hammering on them until the state I want happens with a big delay between commands. I’ll probably go with something else later for cameras but they work for now. Everyone in HA forums hates Blink for good reason.
Current automations:
Tinkering with lighting during day and night and whether anyone is home. Phone trackers and wifi for presence. Weather injection for day night and lighting by cloud cover. Some folks buy Lux sensors.
Arming Alexa Guard, and Blink if not on when everyone away. Flakiness in the iOS tracking has me holding off on arming the main alarm. Also need to check state on that since it needs internet and send push notifications to phones if it doesn’t arm. And also need to add turning off all lights.
Playing with announcements of people arriving home or leaving via Alexa. Can also do this by geofence. “Nate left work.” Probably won’t keep but it’s good practice for coding these and fun for a while.
To do: Guest mode. Disable automations that require tracking us.
Garage door. Open when arriving, close when leaving. Notifications for didn’t close and also if left open for X time or after a certain time at night. Perhaps different by day of week. The method I’m looking at using would also give vehicle in garage or not presence.
LED strip light control. Various toys coming from. China for ESP8266/NodeMCU development and such.
Wall mounted tablets and/or LED indicators for various things. Example: Karen wants a light in the garage that tells whether the alarm system is armed or not. Easy peasy. NodeMCU or Weimos D1 board and LEDs.
Oh yeah. Awesome integration with VSCode. The coders will appreciate that one. Ha. Love it. Literally runs inside a frame in the HA web interface. Fully integrated. Nice.
Other stuff coming. Some cheap Wyze motion sensors and their hub on order and someone reverse engineered their protocol so $6 motion sensors that work and are fast. Will give ability to turn lights on at night by walking around.
Making dumb appliances smart. Easy. Plug into a controllable outlet that’s supported that also has energy measurement. Ignore the switch. Just graph the energy use and you’ll know what mode the thing is in and what it’s doing. “Dryer is finished” “Washer is finished” announcements via Alexa. Wooot!
Other stuff coming. Probably also find a less power hungry machine to put Docker on. This one was just laying around and is for prototyping all of this.
Fun stuff! Look up Dr Zzzs on YouTube for a fun guy who has been tinkering with it for years. Anesthesiologist who makes stuff but isn’t technical at all. He just has fun with it. Live stream every Sunday when he isn’t working.
Having a blast with it. Way better than the Samsung hub or any of the commercial stuff. Totally write whatever you want. Or draw it in Node-Red as a logic flowchart.
What have people done with their houses so far?
Recently I’ve gone Home Assistant crazy. Ha.
Current status:
- all public areas and two bedrooms and the office now have at least some controllable lighting. Some are WiFi bulbs, some are switches for lamps, and a few are color bulbs.
- Home Assistant : Started off running it on a RaspberryPi to see how I liked it. Liked it immediately and moved it to an old desktop machine for more horsepower and to get the thing off of the flaky flash card as a file system. That’s stupid for a database. Corrupted multiple times on the Pi, but it just keeps event history. Anyway...
The best part about HA, it will give you your best shot at fully local control if you buy things wisely. No cloud or internet needed for it all to work.
I went with hass.io on the Pi for ease of initial setup and decided to stick with it running in Docker on a lightweight Lubuntu distro. Many ditch hass.io and run HomeAssistant directly in Docker or even a virtual Python environment. There’s a million ways to install it. Hass.io has the advantage of having a community “store” (it’s all free) of Pre-configured Docker containers for their slightly odd ball HassOS that are literally a mouse click to install.
One of the best is a Google Drive backup system someone wrote. With that in place, the thing backs up a snapshot of the entire system to GD. That sold me. Way too easy.
With the sysadmin chores including doing a full restore from backup to prove they work, done...
Added:
All the lights.
A paid ($5 Mo) integration with Alexa and Google Assistant which also gives secure remote access without needing your own VPN and webhooks support for your own code running anywhere. The Alexa integration allows you to kill all of your skills for things HA can control locally and HA publishes them and their states to Alexa from its own skill instead so you’re moving all control local, but if internet is alive you can voice command everything. This also allows you to write complex automations and give them a name so Alexa can do them also. “Alexa do that thing that runs six different automations.” Done. The Google Assistant one does the same and works well but I don’t have Google devices, so I tested with the app on iOS. Works great. These integrations CAN be done manually but for $5 a month making keeping up with the API changes someone else’s problem? No brainer. Take my money. I’ll focus on my automations.
An internet based (boo!) integration with our commercial home alarm. Full status and control.
An integration with the Netgear Orbi that can track whether any device is online and also get all stats for bandwidth and such from it.
The beta version of the iOS device tracker that sets up tracking via Apple servers and can do location, a ton of phone status including whether it’s on cellular or wifi, battery level, charging state, and a ton more. Even pulls the fitness data if you allow it. Geocodes location to an address and allows multiple locations with geofences so iPhones always wake up and report when they cross a boundary.
Installed HAdashboard, an alternate dashboard engine for making dashboards for tablets. Idea is to hang them on the wall for local control and switches. Made a couple test boards. They work.
Integration with Dark Sky weather API for so called “hyper local” weather. The amount of data it can provide to HA is overwhelming but awesome. Want the lights to come on if someone is home and the clouds roll in? Easy.
Installed Node-Red. Life changing. LOL. It’s a visual code creator and integrated with HA you literally draw your automation flows with messages. HA natively does automations in YAML which I have experience with but it’s a pain. Like Python, super sensitive to spaces and code placement and lacking in syntactic sugar. Workable but Node-Red is awesome. I’ll probably build all of the major logic in it. And convert the few automations already done to it.
Integration with Blink cameras. Blink kinda sucks but, nice side effect. Every camera has a temperature sensor. That’s reported to HA and is useful for other reasons. Blink throttles API commands so some of the stuff I was trying to do didn’t work. I need to write a little logic state machine tracker that keeps hammering on them until the state I want happens with a big delay between commands. I’ll probably go with something else later for cameras but they work for now. Everyone in HA forums hates Blink for good reason.
Current automations:
Tinkering with lighting during day and night and whether anyone is home. Phone trackers and wifi for presence. Weather injection for day night and lighting by cloud cover. Some folks buy Lux sensors.
Arming Alexa Guard, and Blink if not on when everyone away. Flakiness in the iOS tracking has me holding off on arming the main alarm. Also need to check state on that since it needs internet and send push notifications to phones if it doesn’t arm. And also need to add turning off all lights.
Playing with announcements of people arriving home or leaving via Alexa. Can also do this by geofence. “Nate left work.” Probably won’t keep but it’s good practice for coding these and fun for a while.
To do: Guest mode. Disable automations that require tracking us.
Garage door. Open when arriving, close when leaving. Notifications for didn’t close and also if left open for X time or after a certain time at night. Perhaps different by day of week. The method I’m looking at using would also give vehicle in garage or not presence.
LED strip light control. Various toys coming from. China for ESP8266/NodeMCU development and such.
Wall mounted tablets and/or LED indicators for various things. Example: Karen wants a light in the garage that tells whether the alarm system is armed or not. Easy peasy. NodeMCU or Weimos D1 board and LEDs.
Oh yeah. Awesome integration with VSCode. The coders will appreciate that one. Ha. Love it. Literally runs inside a frame in the HA web interface. Fully integrated. Nice.
Other stuff coming. Some cheap Wyze motion sensors and their hub on order and someone reverse engineered their protocol so $6 motion sensors that work and are fast. Will give ability to turn lights on at night by walking around.
Making dumb appliances smart. Easy. Plug into a controllable outlet that’s supported that also has energy measurement. Ignore the switch. Just graph the energy use and you’ll know what mode the thing is in and what it’s doing. “Dryer is finished” “Washer is finished” announcements via Alexa. Wooot!
Other stuff coming. Probably also find a less power hungry machine to put Docker on. This one was just laying around and is for prototyping all of this.
Fun stuff! Look up Dr Zzzs on YouTube for a fun guy who has been tinkering with it for years. Anesthesiologist who makes stuff but isn’t technical at all. He just has fun with it. Live stream every Sunday when he isn’t working.
Having a blast with it. Way better than the Samsung hub or any of the commercial stuff. Totally write whatever you want. Or draw it in Node-Red as a logic flowchart.
