Anybody playing with home assistant?

I have HA on a Pi that sits in the corner of the house - its probably been there for a year or so. It found a heap of stuff in my house.

I havent been doing much with it at all - until the last few days, where I wanted to get my power consumption in it. I have an EMU-2 (which I've had 8 or 9 years), thats connected to my meter - and yesterday finally found a (working) integration that has my power consumption being recorded - every 10s or so.

With the black friday sales, I invested in some ring items (first time) - which also show up in HA - which is a good way to see some stats and history without opening the ring app.

Unfortunately, bluetooth seems to have an error - I'm wanting to see if I can use my iphones presence (or lack of) to control some automation...


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On 07 Dec 2023, deon said the following...

Anybody playing with home assistant?

I do. Extensively. Actually use two different HA systems. Homeassistant and Homeseer. I've run Homeseer since 2001 and just started using HomeAssistant about two years ago. Not quite as familiar with it as I would like. Use NodeRED to connect the two.

I have HA on a Pi that sits in the corner of the house - its probably
been there for a year or so. It found a heap of stuff in my house.

I stopped using a Pi after the first year. Had played with Home Assistant more than once over the years and one of the things I found is that when you have occasional power outages the SD card can get corrupted and then you have to deal with formatting, backups if you have them, etc... I moved my HomeAssistant instance onto an intel nuc. It flies compared to the RPI. Bought it off ebay back in April for $106 + an $18 power supply. Not much more than a Pi with all the bells and whistles nowadays.

-=>Richard Miles<=-
-=>Captain Obvious<=-
-=>bbs.shadowscope.com<=-

... Can you repeat the part after 'Listen very carefully'?

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Re: Home Assistant
By: Captain Obvious to deon on Wed Dec 13 2023 11:37 am

Anybody playing with home assistant?

I do. Extensively. Actually use two different HA systems. Homeassistant and Homeseer. I've run Homeseer since 2001 and just started using HomeAssistant about two years ago. Not quite as familiar with it as I would like. Use NodeRED to connect the two.

What do you get your home assistants doing?

Mine really hasnt done much. Since I've added some Ring devices, I'm finding it useful to keep an eye on their batteries. I added the solar charger around the doorbell, but its not really in a good spot to get sun. We've had some crappy weather the last week, so its really hasnt got any charge from it - but I was surprised to see it did get a boost of charge from it about a week ago.

I've just managed to get it hooked up to my electric smart meter. It was on my list to do a loooong time ago, but worked on it last week, and happy it is pretty reliable getting the meter data now (via an EMU-2, which is zigbee to the meter, and serial port to ha).

I really wanted to get the bluetooth working, so that it knows when my wife and I are home (if possible) - and based on somebody being home automation can do some stuff (like randomly turn on lights)...

Might have to explore the bluetooth dongle route...


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Hi deon,

I'm using HomeAssistant for a while now, I've also started on a RasPi
but moved the installation to a VM on my home server.
I mostly use it as the central hub for my Zigbee devices (using a
"ConBee II" Zigbee USB stick), but also use some other integrations.

Some automations are eg.:
- display incoming phone calls (landline, via a "Fritzbox" (DSL
router) integration) on Android TV devices via "Notifications for
Android TV" integration
- activate Xiaomi air purifier for 15mins after the front door is
closed (triggered by Zigbee open/close contact on the door)
- start/stop TV, Pioneer AVR and nVidia Shield Android TV box using
one Zigbee button, but via infrared (Zigbee IR blaster), LG
integration and Android TV integration
- create a "poor woman's web radio" device using a "Chromecast audio",
the HomeAssistant web UI and a old bookshelf hifi device (switched on
via Zigbee switched socket and IR afterwards)

Also the web UI is used as a nice dashboard for some temperature
sensors and to control the heating in some rooms via Zigbee valves.
And my car (Renault Zoe) reports its status and can be pre-cooled/
warmed via the web UI.

I have the impression that 'home automation' is the 'model railroad'
of the 21st century :) you can build endlessly on it without it ever
being finished :)

Regards,
Anna

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Re: Re: Home Assistant
By: acn to deon on Thu Dec 14 2023 02:42 pm

Hey Anna,

I'm using HomeAssistant for a while now, I've also started on a RasPi
but moved the installation to a VM on my home server.
I mostly use it as the central hub for my Zigbee devices (using a
"ConBee II" Zigbee USB stick), but also use some other integrations.

Wow, you really are using it...

I did buy some zigbee things a while ago - that I could put behind light switches so that you can turn lights on and off via automation or the switch - might dig those out and see if I can get that going.

Did you by chance create a SVG map of your house, so that you can touch on things in the picture to control them? Wondering what/how to use that - might make it super simple to use (and fun for the kids).

Thanks...


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On 14 Dec 2023, deon said the following...

What do you get your home assistants doing?

Voice control with Google and Amazon. At some point when the technology gets better I'll use a local only solution for that. There's just not anything as good as Alexa and Google Home (which is a barely passable home assistant as it is in this context). I am able to do it using Tasker on my phone but that's not a great solution around the house.

Voice announcements. Coffee is done, laundry is done, based on power usage. Reminders to take medicine, take the garbage to the street.

Reminders if we are leaving and the back door (that the dogs use) is open. Get those via voice, text and email, that way if it lags for some reason and we're a block away we can go back.

Pause TV when the doorbell rings. When the TV is powered on the backlighting automatically turns on.

I've got a Telegram chat tied to Nodered and then Homeassistant so that I can query or control anything in it from wherever.

Different lighting control based on location and occupancy, holidays, etc.

The system monitors what doors/windows are open and will turn off my hvac if they are open for longer than a few minutes.

Altogether probably have north of 500 events and a ton of virtual devices between the two home automation systems. 20 years worth of tinkering. Some stuff works and makes sense, some the wife hates and I usually will end up disabling those, or any where the hardware isn't reliable.

-=>Richard Miles<=-
-=>Captain Obvious<=-
-=>bbs.shadowscope.com<=-

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On 14 Dec 2023, deon said the following...

I really wanted to get the bluetooth working, so that it knows when my wife and I are home (if possible) - and based on somebody being home automation can do some stuff (like randomly turn on lights)...

I do track whether we are home or not but rather than bluetooth I use whether our phones are connected to the wifi or not, as well as the locations of our phones. I use Tasker for mine but Life360 for the rest of the family. Have just recently started fooling around with presence sensors (as opposed to motion sensors, which I have used for a long time). The presence sensors are more accurate and combined with where are phones are can give me a pretty good idea of who is where in the house. Not everyone keeps phones in their hand all the time though so definitely not a foolproof system.

Since we moved a couple of years ago I still have not set my CCTV system back up but used to have that tied in as well. Person detection makes that stuff much easier.

-=>Richard Miles<=-
-=>Captain Obvious<=-
-=>bbs.shadowscope.com<=-

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A49 2023/04/30 (Windows/32)
* Origin: * Shadowscope BBS * (21:1/157)

On 15 Dec 2023, deon said the following...

Did you by chance create a SVG map of your house, so that you can touch
on things in the picture to control them? Wondering what/how to use that
- might make it super simple to use (and fun for the kids).

You could probably do that. Never have personally, I find just pure automation and voice to take care of 90% of everything. I do have fire tablets mounted at two of my doors so that my wife can set/disarm the alarm rather than doing via voice. The rest of the home assistant dashboard is accessible on them but neither of us have every used any of it that way.

I've seen some pretty nice dashboards that way though. Way beyond my capabilities to draw. Could probably download a generic one but then it wouldn't match the house lol.

-=>Richard Miles<=-
-=>Captain Obvious<=-
-=>bbs.shadowscope.com<=-

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Am 15.12.23 schrieb deon@21:2/116 in FSX_GEN:

Hallo deon,

I'm using HomeAssistant for a while now, I've also started on a RasPi
but moved the installation to a VM on my home server.
I mostly use it as the central hub for my Zigbee devices (using a
"ConBee II" Zigbee USB stick), but also use some other integrations.

Wow, you really are using it...

Well, a little ;-)
It still feels "small" to me :) And I don't use it to automate
everything --many people use eg. presence sensors or location based automations-- but more to have some central control over things. Like
an advanced "universal remote control" :)

I did buy some zigbee things a while ago - that I could put behind light switches so that you can turn lights on and off via automation or the
switch - might dig those out and see if I can get that going.

That's more or less how I also started some years ago, using IKEA
smart lightbulbs and switches :)

Did you by chance create a SVG map of your house, so that you can touch on things in the picture to control them? Wondering what/how to use that - might make it super simple to use (and fun for the kids).

No, I don't use a map.

Regards,
Anna


--- OpenXP 5.0.57
* Origin: Imzadi Box Point (21:3/127.1)