[HN Gopher] How I Use Home Assistant in 2025
___________________________________________________________________
How I Use Home Assistant in 2025
Author : ingve
Score : 128 points
Date : 2025-01-24 14:51 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (vpetersson.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (vpetersson.com)
| imp0cat wrote:
| Interesting, especially the IKEA stuff. Are there any high-CRI
| IKEA bulbs?
| derektank wrote:
| The TRADFRI has a CRI above 90
|
| https://youtu.be/1Xk7sTe29hs?t=3m21s
| vessenes wrote:
| Oh man. I love Home Assistant. But I think of it as a really fun
| hobby. Maintaining, getting dashboards working, integrating with
| wireless local network standards... It ends up very technical,
| very quickly, as Mr. Petersson so ably demonstrates. That said,
| using it has put me hard on the side of preferring home devices
| with open management platforms. I keep feeling there's a chance
| my smart home could stay off the cloud and have good automation
| if only I buy the right nerd tech..
| baby_souffle wrote:
| I have been using Home Assistant since before "Lovelace" UI was
| available. It has come a long way but there's still an ongoing
| maintenance demand. It's less than it used to be... but it's
| still not zero.
|
| > That said, using it has put me hard on the side of preferring
| home devices with open management platforms.
|
| I feel like this is the true purpose of HA and the ecosystem
| around it. Similar to how matter is forcing IPv6 adoption on
| micro-controllers, really.
|
| Every holiday season, I go looking for a bunch of cheap stuff
| on Ali express to tear down. Every year there's new LED light
| controllers and 2024 was the first year where the manufacturers
| were almost _bragging_ about how they label the GPIO pins and
| expose the programming interface so you can throw your own
| firmware on there if you want. Seriously, never before have I
| seen these controllers BRAG about how they support WLED
| natively. The FOSS / DIY / I'm not using _your_ cloud, I have
| one at home, already movement is ... actually being catered
| to!? That's _new_.
| alias_neo wrote:
| "Offline" has been my number one rule for home automation since
| I started using HA about a decade ago.
|
| I have a couple of hundred devices connected to it now, and the
| _only_ cloud integration I use is Spotify, for obvious reasons;
| I have been careful when buying smart things that they're
| completely offline, and anything I buy that _is_ smart but
| isn't offline-only gets hobbled into a "dumb" appliance; e.g.
| my new dishwasher has "smart" stuff, if I connect it to Wi-Fi,
| I found the maintenance menu and disabled the network interface
| entirely and it's just a regular dishwasher now, which is how I
| like it.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I try to avoid all smart devices, but I moved into a house
| that already had "smart" garage door openers installed, so I
| thought I'd try the smartness. It is indeed ridiculous in
| that it requires an Internet connection to work. Here I am,
| with a remote control device (my phone) that is on my LAN and
| a garage door opener that is on my LAN, but I need to do a
| round trip to the Internet to communicate with it? What idiot
| designs these things?
| alias_neo wrote:
| There has been some uproar lately about a particular
| manufacturer shutting down access to the API used for their
| garage door openers to HA, I forget the name but there was
| a Q in it I believe.
|
| The solution, as I understand it, is a little device which
| talks the protocol of the door opener that gives you fully
| local access the way it should be.
|
| I'll try and dig out the link now in case it's of use to
| you.
|
| EDIT: Here you go https://www.home-
| assistant.io/blog/2023/11/06/removal-of-myq... Hopefully
| that can point you towards a solution for your opener (and
| the state of affairs).
| ryandrake wrote:
| Yea, that's the kind I've got. I solved the problem by
| simply not using or caring about the "smart" feature,
| since it's pretty pointless. Why would I even need to
| open or close my garage with an "app" when the button is
| right there by the door?
| echoangle wrote:
| You could open your garage when coming home by pressing a
| button on your phone.
| fullstop wrote:
| I like knowing if the door is opened or closed from
| remote. Kids sometimes forget to close the door, and it's
| reversed direction before because the tracks needed
| lubricated and it raised the door again after I had
| pressed the button.
| alias_neo wrote:
| I don't have a garage door opener myself, but from what
| I've gleaned from US YouTubers is that they like to know
| the _state_ of the door, open/closed which is handy if
| you use home automation.
|
| I imagine if you're driving into the garage from outside
| you have a physical button in the car with you to open
| it, and if you don't run home automation, the
| "automation" part is likely not very useful.
| m463 wrote:
| > What idiot designs these things?
|
| This is carefully planned.
| wildekek wrote:
| For automating TRV's, I use Better Thermostat. It allows one to
| use external temperature sensors to offset the TRV temperature.
| https://better-thermostat.org/
| alias_neo wrote:
| Thanks for the link, I might need to look into this, it may be
| able to help me simplify my rather complex setup (I described
| in another comment) with a BLE temperature sensor in every room
| that I use to control the Z-Wave TRVs since the temperatures
| sensed _at_ the TRVs is way off reality due to proximity to the
| radiator.
| baq wrote:
| I control my downstairs - 4 TRVs and 3 window sensors in one
| open area. Zero problems, can recommend.
| pandora-health wrote:
| https://github.com/Alexwijn/SAT for your boiler (and
| thermostats)
| badlibrarian wrote:
| "This was before Home Assistant offered their own hardware...
| Home Assistant uses SQLite, and when you have a ton of sensor
| data flowing in, SQLite can start choking."
|
| Their $99 hardware works great. Some devices are chatty but it's
| two lines in the startup config to filter the bulk of it, with no
| useful functionality lost.
|
| If the data being generated by your living room is overwhelming
| SQLite on an eMMC, wow.
|
| Home Assistant is one of the few recent products to delight me
| during setup. The sheer number of weird things it found on my
| network was impressive. The number of them that are dropping off
| as various cloud vendors try to lock things down, even more so.
| It has definitely motivated my future purchase choices and pushed
| me to simplify.
| fullstop wrote:
| I had problems in the past with the sqlite database getting
| corrupted on shutdown. I moved it to a postgresql database on
| the same VM and it's been fine since.
| badlibrarian wrote:
| Yeah, past experience with RPi/SD cards certainly gave me
| pause. No problems yet, knock wood. $99 well spent. Didn't
| see anything widespread in the forums and they made online
| backup a priority in the latest version. I like these folks,
| their priorities, and the community they built.
|
| Interesting that Google Nest and Tesla are pissing everyone
| off at the moment. The forum is a leading indicator of brands
| to avoid.
| hokumguru wrote:
| One issue I have with Home Assistant is the dashboard set up. I
| recently picked up a used crestron power over ethernet touch
| panel that I have mounted in my wall and I'm thinking I might
| have to write my own dashboard for my house because the Home
| Assistant default is not great. The system works best when it's
| mostly automated.
| goodlinks wrote:
| Anyone know what TRV they have purchased? I Can't follow that
| link as it has some kind of tracking built into it.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256807332587013.htm
|
| $13.75 - GIRIER Tuya Smart Thermostatic Radiator Valve ZigBee
| Thermostat Radiator TRV Programmable Temperature Controller
| Work with Alexa
| alias_neo wrote:
| Nice write-up OP.
|
| I've been using HA a little longer than yourself and took the
| exact same steps a few years ago. It's good to see we ended up at
| the same "conclusion".
|
| I decided to buy dedicated hardware for HA as opposed to the VM
| approach as I wanted it to be completely independent from my home
| servers running non-critical tasks. I bought a Minisforum mini-PC
| with far-far overkill performance, RAM and storage for HA, but
| that's just how I roll.
|
| With well over 100 devices, I switched to MariaDB and Influx too,
| I also solved the heating a couple of years ago, here's a quick
| summary:
|
| I have a BLE temperature sensor in every room of the house
| (Switchbot Meter Plus), and I have a Z-Wave TRV on each radiator,
| I grouped the values into upstairs and downstairs for day/night
| with some exceptions for home offices, and calculate a sort of
| "average" temperature.
|
| With some scripts to create a hysteresis, I turn the overall
| heating on/off when the "average" temperature is below set
| temperature - 0.2C or above set temperature + 0.3C, each room has
| an individual set temperature and I turn off the TRV if that room
| goes above the set temperature and back on if it drops below,
| again with some light hysteresis.
|
| I then have some automations to switch to day/night/away modes
| with different set temperatures and rooms on/off depending on the
| situation.
|
| As for lighting, I use "Circadian Lighting" which _does_ allow
| light groups, so I just specify the groups in yaml and it takes
| care of the group as a whole. I think it's probably lacking some
| functionality of the Adaptive Lighting plugin, but I haven't had
| to worry about differences in bulb types, I have a mix of Hue
| (80% of my bulbs) and IKEA (white only and colour).
| moepstar wrote:
| > on/off when the "average" temperature is below set
| temperature - 0.2C or above set temperature + 0.3C, each room
| has an individual set temperature and I turn off the TRV if
| that room goes above the set temperature and back on if it
| drops below, again with some light hysteresis.
|
| Until you discover the generic thermostat helper :)
| alias_neo wrote:
| I am using that already, I may have missed some features but
| it didn't seem to support the more complex requirements I had
| for my heating.
|
| I use the helper to manage the overall heating, by giving it
| my calculated "average" as the target sensor, and I use the
| home/away/sleep values.
|
| The complexity in my setup is managing individual rooms which
| I control independently of the overall heating state; it's a
| fairly large home for the UK and an old one, some rooms come
| up to temperature much quicker than others and I want them at
| different temperatures too, so each room is switched as a
| separate zone using its TRV and sensor.
| balloob wrote:
| Founder of Home Assistant here. Let me know if anyone has any
| questions about the project or the Open Home Foundation (which
| now owns Home Assistant, ESPHome etc)
| poutine wrote:
| Any plan to update the GUI for conditional logic inside of
| automations? It's really clumsy to do IF/THEN or switch style
| constructions. Too much visual space and clunky overall.
| Yossarrian22 wrote:
| Have you tried using the NodeRed plugin? That's worked really
| well for me
| ziml77 wrote:
| NodeRed is awesome. I didn't even bother with anything
| beyond very, very simple automations until I installed
| that.
|
| For me the flow design feels very natural and is easy to
| modify and monitor. And it's pluggable with custom nodes so
| if functionality is missing you can add it in. Like I
| installed a node that handles OAuth2 so I can have it log
| into a web service and check a status page.
| balloob wrote:
| We are working on the automations UI as we speak!
|
| (this can also be seen on our roadmap update
| https://www.home-
| assistant.io/blog/2024/11/15/roadmap-2024h2... )
| poutine wrote:
| Cool, thanks! Great work!
| bloqs wrote:
| What brand of smart lightbulbs do _you_ use? Thanks for all
| your hard work!
| luma wrote:
| Not the fella you asked but let me offer some wisdom: smart
| switches are a lot easier to live with than smart lights. If
| you also want color control, HA can do a decent job of making
| smart switches work well with smart lights.
|
| The core problem with a smart light is that it very likely
| has a switch somewhere. If someone turns that switch off,
| that smart light just lost power and became dumb. Turning it
| back on now involves a trip to the switch.
|
| A smart switch is smart so long as utility power is running
| and you never find yourself in a position where the managed
| device is in an unknown and/or uncontrollable state.
| hokumguru wrote:
| My solution was to add Shelly relays behind all of my
| "dumb" switches. They keep power always on and essentially
| turn the switch into a smart button to dim or brighten my
| Lifx lights. This way I get circadian & party lighting
| while still maintaining the convenience of physical light
| switches!
|
| And to parent question: Lifx still has the best
| color/brightness of any smart bulb and they're IMO the
| best. Just make sure your WiFi can handle it.
| giobox wrote:
| Even better, get smart switches that don't use wifi or IP
| addresses. I'm personally of opinion my homes core features
| should not rely on needing IP addresses, working DHCP or
| DNS etc just to turn a light bulb on and off.
|
| Home assistant works amazingly well with zigbee devices,
| and these are plentiful and cheap etc, and don't rely on
| working wifi/IP infrastructure. When I sell up, my zigbee
| switches will work just fine as plain-ole light switches
| even with all my Home Assistant infra ripped out, leaving
| no issues for next buyer.
|
| You can add zigbee support to pretty much any Home
| Assistant setup with a 20 buck USB adapter, Home Assistant
| even make an official one:
|
| https://www.home-assistant.io/connectzbt1/
|
| The also sell Home Assistant servers with zigbee radios
| built in:
|
| https://www.home-assistant.io/yellow/
|
| The light switches are often cheaper than wifi equivalents
| too. Wifi bulbs should really only be considered by renters
| IMO - people who can't easily replace wall switches or
| similar.
| edelans wrote:
| What zigbee switch do you recommend ? I was considering
| Sonoff zbmini.
| giobox wrote:
| I've had great results with the Aquara zigbee stuff -
| almost all of them work fine connecting to HomeAssistant
| via generic zigbee USB adapters, and can be found online
| pretty cheaply. I have >50 of their switches and sensors
| at the moment.
| echoangle wrote:
| That's not an advantage of switches though. My smart
| bulbs are Zigbee, too.
| giobox wrote:
| The main drawback with keeping the switch "dumb" and only
| using smart bulbs is someone can turn off power to the
| bulb etc, which is why I and parent commenter focus on
| automating the switches. If someone turns wall switch off
| and its dumb, you can't turn the "smart" bulb on with
| home automation regardless of what tech is used inside
| it. Focusing on automating the switch generally has best
| returns on making most dependable system, as you will
| always be able to get the light back on. Again, I only
| recommend smart-bulb only if you are a renter or similar
| and can't mess with your switches.
|
| Zigbee access to the bulb is great for stuff like
| changing whitebalance etc though. In my own home I have
| the bulbs _and_ the switch on ZigBee so I can do this,
| but power on /off is solely preserve of the automated
| switch.
| fmajid wrote:
| Except IP works far better than Zigbee's alleged mesh
| networking, and all the other home network technologies
| because somehow home automation is a special snowflake
| that can't use the same network technology everybody else
| uses.
| BikiniPrince wrote:
| This is my next adventure because somewhere someone had
| left a light on! Those esp32 relays can fit right in a work
| box.
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| Can you do that yourself or would you need an electrician
| to sign off? What about your landlord?
|
| I agree in principle that this is much nicer in theory.
| Just like wired is more reliable than wireless. However,
| retrofitting all that is also much more difficult.
| luma wrote:
| Depends on where you live. In most jurisdictions in the
| US it's generally OK for a homeowner to perform "like for
| like" replacement work on their own residence without a
| license or inspection. This means you can replace an
| existing light switch, or an outlet, or a breaker. You
| generally cannot run new wire or new outlets without a
| permit.
|
| If you own a property but don't live there (eg, you're a
| landlord), it's essentially never legal. The best answer
| is to contact the local AHJ.
| balloob wrote:
| Like the other commenter said, smart switches are the way to
| go. I prefer the Shelly modules behind light switches. They
| are tiny, affordable and their new generation does
| Zigbee/Wifi/Matter/Bluetooth, so always something that suits
| your installation.
| nicholasjarnold wrote:
| Agree with your Shelly-behind-the-switch model. My one
| hesitation going all-in with them has been perhaps reaching
| an eventual state of "too much 2.4Ghz WiFi traffic on a
| narrow IoT-specific WiFi network", but I suppose that's
| easily solvable by buying another AP. Currently I'm happily
| running a few of them behind the wall plate in my switches
| (check the space in your switch box first!)...no issues
| after many many months of continuous operation. Didn't know
| about the new gen supporting Matter, that's great.
|
| Also, I too wanted to extend to you a really big THANK YOU
| from a very happy member of the HASS community. I came over
| from OpenHAB a handful of years ago and I couldn't be
| happier. Please keep up the good work! Good luck with all
| the hardware sales and Nabu Casa stuff!
|
| edit: clarified that I used to run OpenHAB
| bmicraft wrote:
| I'd just accept that 2.4GHz is forever tainted :)
|
| In real terms though, it not that bad. I've got about 25
| such devices always online and the traffic really is
| negligible. Most devices aren't sending anything while
| nothing is happening except for the periodic heartbeat
| like once a minute. Its not noticeable, even on my 20MHz
| wide network.
| from-nibly wrote:
| I use smart lights with smart switches in detached mode and
| they are not resilient to ha going down. I wish I could get
| smart bulb functionality (dimming, color change) with smart
| switches being the physical driver of them being on/off.
| roger_ wrote:
| Organizing devices and creating automations is still very
| tedious.
|
| I'd love to be able to add a device and describe it (where it
| is, what it does, etc.) and have HA automatically integrate it
| with existing automations or fuse it with other sensors. Maybe
| leveraging LLMs for this.
|
| e.g.:
|
| I buy a new leak sensor and add it to HA. I should just tell HA
| it's a leak sensor and it's in my laundry room and have it
| create an automation to send alerts, etc. when there's a leak.
|
| Or I add a temperature sensor in my living room and have it
| automatically be fused with other sensors to update my living
| room average temperate.
| balloob wrote:
| You're right. Home Assistant is the best toolbox out there,
| but people need to build things themselves. That's something
| we plan to tackle, but no timeline. Leak sensors, smoke
| detectors, CO2 sensors, garage door openers, they can all
| have benefit from some built-in automations to warn when a
| problem is detected.
| Carrok wrote:
| Are there any plans to add automations based on People and
| Areas (not zones)? I found the cool project Bermuda[0] and it
| triggers person entered/left area events based on bluetooth
| devices. This works great in my testing with a phone being
| tracked by Shelly switches. But I can't seem to find a way to
| actually make these events do anything. It would be even better
| if I didn't have to set up area specific automations at all and
| just be able to say "turn on the lights in an area to 20% if
| someone enters it after sunset".
|
| Thanks for all your great work!
|
| [0] https://github.com/agittins/bermuda
| balloob wrote:
| Not from our side. You can see our roadmap here;
| https://www.home-
| assistant.io/blog/2024/11/15/roadmap-2024h2...
|
| Now the community should be able to create such things, as
| our automation engine is very powerful.
|
| I think the challenge in general with room presence detection
| is that these systems are not very common/reliable yet for us
| to aim to standardize.
| baq wrote:
| Check out espresense
| doctoboggan wrote:
| Hi Balloob, great project, thanks for all your work! I've been
| using it for over 10 years now.
|
| I am wondering if you've ever considered a change to your
| release rules. Monthly releases are great, but having breaking
| changes in every release can get to be a bit of a burden. I
| think it would make end users lives easier if you were able to
| limit breaking changes to only once (or twice) per year.
|
| I try to read the breaking changes list every time, but
| sometimes I don't mess with HA for a few months as it's all
| running smoothly. Then when I do log back in I have a large
| backlog of breaking changes to review. Usually at this point I
| just don't upgrade and the problem keeps getting worse. If
| instead I knew that certain upgrades do no include breaking
| changes I could more easily keep up to date, and only look more
| closely at the yearly (or bi-yearly) update that includes the
| breaking changes.
| balloob wrote:
| We've actively managing our backwards incompatible changes,
| but sometimes it's out of our control (ie an API change). For
| things we deprecate in Home Assistant, it is a minimum of 6
| months period where we print warnings with alternatives.
| Integrations set up via the UI, will only change for
| improvement if we can ensure there is a migration path
| (sometimes requiring adding some extra info).
|
| Some backwards incompatible changes like requiring a new
| Z-Wave JS version are also able to be managed automatically
| by Home Assistant. However, because of choice, there are many
| ways Home Assistant can be installed and we're not always
| responsible for the installation.
|
| I believe that we can do better in knowing what integrations
| you use, and mapping that against the integrations that
| require changes.
| Rooster61 wrote:
| First, thank you. Home Assistant is an outstanding example of
| having control of our electronics rather than giving money to
| data harvesting companies.
|
| Second, I'm curious, how often do you guys have to deal with
| negative actions taken towards you by those same data
| harvesting giants? I'd imagine they aren't huge fans of this
| technology. Any Cease and Desist or other fun examples you guys
| have had to defend yourselves from?
| balloob wrote:
| We have very good relationships across the industry,
| especially the bigger companies. I literally just came back
| from a meeting with Google Home :)
|
| Where we see the most pushback is from industries adjacent to
| the smart home, as they don't appreciate the openness. Think
| garage doors, cars, or cloud data providers for info that can
| be useful in the home.
|
| When someone complains, like Mazda [1], we pull their
| integration and communicate their stance to our shared users,
| and people considering buying into their products. We don't
| fight for access, as a manufacturer with a cloud service will
| always be able to find a way. If it is a local device though,
| our community tends to find a way[2]
|
| [1]: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/10/mazdas-dmca-
| takedown-ki... [2]: https://www.home-
| assistant.io/blog/2023/11/06/removal-of-myq...
| vpicone wrote:
| Putting things under the Open Home Foundation seems like
| interesting choice. Can you speak more on that and about the
| foundation generally?
| balloob wrote:
| Our launch post covers a lot of the original intentions and a
| good starting point:
| https://www.openhomefoundation.org/blog/announcing-the-
| open-...
|
| The way the world works, you need to be either a company or a
| non-profit to be able to partner with the industry. Just
| being an open source project is not enough.
|
| Since the launch of the foundation, we see a large uptick in
| companies and universities reaching out to partner with Home
| Assistant. A lot of manufacturers are very happy to see that
| an independent platform is being established as alternative
| to the big tech platforms. Universities want to collaborate
| on energy and privacy research for the smart home. We've also
| seen some industry donations (ie DuckDuckGo) to support our
| work.
| echoangle wrote:
| One question about remote access: Currently, it looks like
| there are 3 methods (https://www.home-
| assistant.io/docs/configuration/remote/):
|
| - Home Assistant Cloud (paid) - VPN - Port forwarding
|
| Is there any plan to make something like Home Assistant Cloud
| available for self hosting? Like a simple docker container to
| put on a VPS?
|
| I don't want to deal with DynDNS to expose my home network but
| would prefer a Server component on a VPS with a static IP which
| connects to my home server and allows remote control.
|
| Or is there already a way to do this?
| bananapub wrote:
| seems completely out of scope for HA? if you want to proxy it
| from the internet then you can just do that using any of the
| tools used for this - NGINX, wireguard, rathole, etc etc etc.
| echoangle wrote:
| But this functionality already exists in HA. There's a
| simple login page where I can connect to the HA cloud. The
| idea would be to start a docker container, set up a domain
| name where it's reachable, enter the domain name on the HA
| cloud screen and connect to it. It would be much simpler
| than setting up everything yourself.
|
| What would be the correct way to DIY it? You would need a
| VPN to connect you home network to the Proxy and then
| expose the web interface on the proxy, right?
| bmicraft wrote:
| Proxying home assistant is no different from any other http
| based service.
|
| You set up a reverse proxy (including websocket proxying) for
| your HA subdomain on your VPS and you're done.
| echoangle wrote:
| The problem is that my home server isn't reachable from the
| internet, so there's nothing for the proxy to forward. I
| would need to set up some kind of VPN for that, right? But
| this functionality already exists in HA, that's why I
| asked.
| orev wrote:
| VPN is the right solution here. Each app shouldn't have
| to develop its own remote access method when a generic
| solution already exists.
|
| It would be an issue if you're stuck behind double NAT,
| but I think tailscale can help with that.
| erinnh wrote:
| You can install wireguard or tailscale from the addon
| store.
| baq wrote:
| Tailscale solves this, and a few other things. Amazing
| product with an amazing free tier for personal use. Super
| easy setup, too.
| kcb wrote:
| I run a very small vps running caddy and tailscale. Then just
| expose any service I need externally through that. Very easy
| to setup.
| dzikimarian wrote:
| Cloudflare Tunnels is what you're looking for. Or ngrok
| maybe.
| whalesalad wrote:
| Just wanna say thanks for leading such a strong and
| comprehensive open source project. A lot of open source tools
| are wonderful in and of themselves (being that they are free)
| but might not always live up to expectations or offer a whole
| lot. With Home Assistant, I feel like it is the opposite and
| the capability/power of the tool (particularly out of the box)
| is really quite impressive. So keep it up and thank you again!
| mongol wrote:
| Completely unrelated to the article but at least related to home
| automation: is there something that can be used to detect if a
| door is locked or not? I am sure there is something that replaces
| the entire lock to allow automation, but I am thinking of some
| kind of sensor to attach close to an existing lock. But it seems
| like a complicated problem to solve easily. There are many kinds
| of locks and so on...
| tgamma wrote:
| There are key turners, such as Nuki, that piggyback on the
| actual lock/key and sense the lock's state.
| TheBicPen wrote:
| You could probably glue a flat magnet to the end of deadbolt
| and place a reed switch inside the box. Though you'd have to be
| careful to never apply force to the door as you're unlatching
| the deadbolt to avoid detaching the magnet. And you'd need to
| run wires to the reed switch, which means drilling holes in the
| door frame.
| alias_neo wrote:
| This is a "problem" that's on my list of things to solve;
|
| The solution I've come up with but haven't yet put into action
| is to use an ESP device, with some sort of contact switch which
| sits _in_ the hole where the lock goes and detects whether the
| lock (bolt?) is physically present.
|
| This solution isn't likely to be pretty, unless it could be
| shrunk down to fit within the "hole", but I imagine some sort
| of ribbon coming from the "device" which should ideally look/be
| sized similar to a door/window sensor, and goes into the
| opening in the frame; Main concerns for a DIY solution are
| battery life and longevity of the switch/contact being smashed
| into by the lock/bolt each time.
|
| EDIT: A sibling comment mentioned reed switches and magnets,
| which I had considered, but felt would be either too bulky
| (reed switch plus magnet) or too fragile (do reed switches come
| in non-glass form?).
| Mister_Snuggles wrote:
| > The solution I've come up with but haven't yet put into
| action is to use an ESP device, with some sort of contact
| switch which sits _in_ the hole where the lock goes and
| detects whether the lock (bolt?) is physically present.
|
| Another option is to disassemble a door/window sensor and
| replace its reed switch with a contact switch, much like you
| want to do with the ESP.
| tibbon wrote:
| I recently noticed that entities can be tagged/labeled in Home
| Assistant, and then selected on those (I use auto-entities).
|
| Instead of relying on a brittle naming convention, I can tag
| devices as 'rgb_led' or 'humidity' and then target all of those.
| Entities' naming can now be more natural and intuitive.
| nicce wrote:
| Does SQLite really start choking? I feel like the issue is on
| configuration/ code side rather than on the database itself. It
| should handle thousands of writes per second, even on older
| Raspberry.
|
| For this use-case, you can even likely implement own writer queue
| for every sensor type, and then batch insert them.
| CT4u8798 wrote:
| I would like further detail about this also. I suspect that
| SQLite wasn't choking and it was something else. I cannot
| imagine a single home being able to overwhelm SQLite [0].
| Unless the OP has a couple thousand devices all looking to
| write to it at the same time and they cannot queue and take
| turns.
|
| [0] https://sqlite.org/whentouse.html
| jmmv wrote:
| Came here to question this too. I have trouble with this claim
| because I do not see how a bunch of sensors could produce so
| much data as to overwhelm a Raspberry Pi...
|
| Maybe the problem was having the database on a super-slow
| micro-SD card?
| baq wrote:
| Yeah the microSD will die eventually even if it's a high
| endurance one - but it's fine for a small installation, I've
| been running a quality one until I really started building
| out the sensor network. With just switches it was fine. Now
| running on a mid tier usb3 ssd.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| For me the number one priority is to make the "smartness"
| additional, and not change how I interact with my home in
| general. This is mostly to satisfy the SO-acceptance factor and
| also not to confuse visitors, especially elderly like my parents.
|
| In particular:
|
| 1) there are light switches that work as expected
|
| 2) you can adjust the temp on the TRVs
|
| 3) if the HA instance blows up, shit should still work
|
| What this means in practice:
|
| 1) I have motion sensors in some rooms that might turn on the
| main lights or some smaller lamp in a corner if it's past
| midnight (eg in kitchen), but the light switch will always turn
| on/off the main lights. If no motion is detected for X minutes
| all lights turn off.
|
| 2) if my mom comes to visit and feels cold in the evening, she
| can just turn a dial like she did her entire life. No app, no
| touch buttons on the TRV, no "hey Google... Or was it sori? Siri?
| Son, help me out!" The smartness lies in having a general
| schedule, and then again motion detectors that reset the TRVs
| back to that schedule if they were adjusted manually and no
| motion was detected for 15 minutes.
|
| 3) This means I don't have smart bulbs, but relays in the light
| switches that do _not_ run in detached mode. For TRVs this
| obviously works since they have dials.
| connicpu wrote:
| Personally I consider the fact that my DIY thermostat has no
| buttons to change the temperature a feature, but lots of people
| have varying feelings on who's allowed to be adjusting the
| thermostat and it's good to have options :)
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| At least in the guest room I think you might want that,
| people have widely varying preferences for sleep temp, but I
| feel similar about the other rooms. This is why the "reset on
| no motion" was important to me, so my mom won't turn up the
| heat in the living room at 10pm and then the next morning I
| discover my living room has turned into a sauna. ;)
|
| I might have to add that our house is really old and has
| shitty insulation, so having a schedule that lowers the temp
| at night or when at work is also important. Keeping the temp
| up at acceptable levels 24/7 would be rather expensive. So
| when you unexpectedly are at home during those down times
| it's nice to be able to adjust directly at the TRV. I'm still
| thinking about whether I want to automate this more via
| motion, but since heating is not instant like turning on or
| off lights, you don't want to toggle the trv all the time as
| you enter or leave rooms...
| ryandrake wrote:
| It doesn't help that half of the population seemingly doesn't
| understand how to use a thermostat. More than one person in
| my family treats it like an on-off switch. When they feel
| hot, they turn it down to the lowest temperature, and when
| they feel cold, they turn it up to the hottest temperature,
| and basically repeat this all day. No amount of explanation
| helps, about how you're just supposed to pick a comfortable
| temperature and it will maintain it.
| Gooblebrai wrote:
| Isn't the problem that "comfortable temperature" is
| personal and circumstantial?
| echoangle wrote:
| Sure, but then you should still try to set you current
| (estimated) comfortable temperature as the target. If
| it's 23degC and you feel warm, you should set it to
| 20degC for example and not do 0degC just to get the
| heating to turn off.
| progbits wrote:
| Set it few degrees lower than average preference. Put on
| socks or hoodie when cold, take them off when hot.
| Instant regulation, efficient energy usage.
| orev wrote:
| Generally the problem in this situation is that the
| person wants a different temperature _now_ , and they
| think that setting a higher number will make it get there
| faster.
| jp191919 wrote:
| It _can_ make it get there faster depending on how many
| stages of heating /cooling you have.
|
| Problem we have at work is people that are cold
| temporarily adjusting the heating setpoint too high
| (above the cooling setpoint), now when it goes back to
| normal operation after the override expires, the temp of
| the space is above the cooling setpoint, so the cooling
| turns on. And now people are wondering why it's in
| cooling in the winter.
|
| But I agree that's not the desired operation.
| connicpu wrote:
| One of the nice things you can actually solve with a
| thermostat on your LAN! I have a button for "Just run the
| heat/ac for 30 minutes because I'm hot/cold in the moment",
| without changing the actual set point.
| echoangle wrote:
| An ultra-smart thermostat could have buttons and temperature
| display but have a setting so it doesn't actually do
| anything. So people can feel like they are doing something
| and feel good, while still not messing up anything.
| connicpu wrote:
| Haha, good idea for my next revision
| WorldMaker wrote:
| > This means I don't have smart bulbs, but relays in the light
| switches
|
| In my experience, many good smart bulbs have the option to act
| like dumb bulbs on regular light switches. Some just return to
| the state they were last in when power returns, others to a
| "default boring light". It's one of the things that keeps me
| buying the more expensive smart bulbs because they are easier
| to configure between such options (and the third option: stay
| off when power returns; avoid the "bright flash wakeup" in
| overnight power outages in bedroom lights, for instance).
|
| You can also emulate that somewhat easily enough in software,
| even if the bulb doesn't support it right, if your hub notices
| a light disappeared from the network and then came back, it can
| default the light to some useful state.
| deanputney wrote:
| The trouble with the bulbs is that if you turn off the
| switch, now your automations can't control the bulb.
|
| I've got one bulb that occasionally loses connection. Then I
| have to turn it off on the switch, and the next time I go to
| turn it on with the automation I've got to turn the switch on
| again and let it connect first. This is not a seamless
| system.
| alias_neo wrote:
| I got around this by replacing my light switches with a
| mixture of toggle switches (ones that spring back when
| pressed) combined with Zigbee relays that support them, and
| smart switches that can be set to coupled or uncoupled.
|
| My home office for example I set the Aqara switch to
| uncoupled and toggling it switches on/off the desk lamp,
| ceiling, bookshelf LEDs, Uplight and wall-strips behind my
| SKADIS, all of which are smart lights. Since it's _my_ home
| office, if HA is down and I can't toggle any of them using
| that switch, I'm probably not worried.
|
| Areas of the house which are used by the rest of the
| family, have the spring-toggle switches and operate non-
| smart bulbs so they will function just like a normal
| switch/light if HA happened to be down and I'm not home to
| fix it.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Definitely an experience that varies with model of bulb and
| type of network/hub. As I mentioned, I know I bought into
| one of the more expensive sorts for reasons like knowing
| that automation starts working again just about as soon as
| the dumb switch is flipped back on, between a tiny bit of
| "memory" in the bulb firmware and a reasonably
| reliable/quick reconnection.
|
| It's not always a seamless system, and it varies so much in
| actual practice on hardware. I definitely understand why so
| many prefer smart switches over smart bulbs.
|
| I also know that the silly things I want to do with colors
| across a day/week push me to wanting fun smart bulbs more
| than smart switches.
|
| The one thing I really want is covers for some of my dumb
| switches, and I've seen them for cheap on places like
| Amazon, but haven't actually bought any or installed them,
| because I'm also in a situation where I don't really need
| SO/friend/guest buy-in/confusion-saving having people over
| so rarely in the last few years.
| Volundr wrote:
| I have Inovelli switches that have a "smart bulb" mode that
| lets them send commands instead of physically switching the
| build. I use that to make my smart bulbs respond like dumb
| ones to a switch, but means I also make them do smart things
| based on holding the switch down, double tapping, etc.
| _spduchamp wrote:
| I love Home Assistant and run it in Proxmox. The USB zigbee and
| z-wave dongles work without any problems.
| freedomben wrote:
| On the subject of under-powered hardware, this will be a minority
| opinion, but I don't even bother self-hosting on Pis anymore. I
| started using more powerful systems like NUCs and that was good,
| but I still kept running into hardware limits with things like
| Jellyfin. What I do now, and IMHO what the holy grail is (for
| some with a finite budget) is to build a great desktop PC and do
| all the self hosting on that. I built a beastly "gaming" rig that
| ran me about $3800 (though $2k of that was the damn GPU because
| it was early 2021 at the time). With a Ryzen 9 5950X 16-Core
| Processor and 128 GB of RAM, and a RX 6900 XT, it easily handles
| everything I throw at it, and occasionally when there's an
| intensive job like a long re-encode, it blazes through it in
| record time. Currently I could rebuild a similar system for about
| <$2k. I put Fedora on there, and I then use this rig for:
|
| 1. A normal desktop experience with multi-monitor for work during
| the day.
|
| 2. A remote dev workstation. I use neovim & tmux so can do
| development completely headless, so I SSH into this rig for doing
| dev work. It compiles and runs tests blazingly fast and with up
| to 32 threads so I rarely have to wait for compilations. It's
| also great to have something that's "always on" so I can SSH in
| from anywhere and instantly be dropped right into the last state.
|
| 3. Running all my self-hosted stuff like HA, Jellyfin,
| Audiobookshelf, ArchiveBox, and many more. Some run in containers
| on the host while others run in VMs. Even the heaviest of stuff
| runs very well and I never have to worry about OOM or max CPU.
|
| 4. A VM server that I can use to quickly spin up any sort of VM I
| want, permanent or transitive. I have a handful of different
| distros set up in a "freshly installed" VM snapshot and can near
| instantly clone and have a full install of that distro.
|
| 5. A gaming rig for the occasions I want to play a game. It works
| great physically (i.e. at-the-desk) and also remotely using Steam
| Link. I can use the Steam Link app on my Chromecast w/ Google TV
| to remote in and get high-res/high-fps rendering with practically
| no latency. My biggest complaint with that is the controllers
| don't often work great with the Chromecast, but I recently bought
| a USB-to-ethernet converter so I can plug the 8bitDo dongle in
| near me and have it get reliable long-range all the way back to
| the desktop. I've been quite happy with it!
|
| I also routinely find other ways to get utility out of this rig.
| I like to say that the best ideas are ones that seem obvious in
| hindsight, and that is definitely how I feel about this setup.
| bityard wrote:
| How many watts does it pull at idle?
| freedomben wrote:
| Between 50 to 100 watts when idle. It's rarely truly idle
| because I use it throughout the day and my family also uses
| it (via Jellyfin et al) but that could be a big downside
| depending on power cost and utilization.
| 369548684892826 wrote:
| Doesn't this idle at about 100 watts though? Which would be
| about PS25/month for me. I found a lower spec Ryzen 5700 system
| which idles at about 20 watts is more than enough for Jellyfin
| etc.
| freedomben wrote:
| Yes great point, if power is expensive then this can be a big
| downside. Depending on what it's running it idles between 50
| and 100 watts. I leave it on all the time so the constant
| draw does start to add up. My kids and extended family to
| some extent use it too so it is engaged in delivering content
| most of the time even when I'm not using it, so I think it's
| worth it, but the power use is definitely a consideration.
| fullstop wrote:
| I have to reboot desktop PCs, especially those used for games,
| far more often than I do small dedicated ones. My NUC idles at
| around 5W, which is definitely waaaay less than a desktop PC.
| baq wrote:
| It makes sense if it never crashes and you also need a small
| space heater. It gets rather expensive otherwise.
| cyrialize wrote:
| I'm not a huge smart home guy. I just have a doorbell camera, a
| camera, a smart plug, a smart switch, and a light bulb - all
| running through an Apple TV.
|
| When I originally bought my home I was thinking of making
| everything smart, but I realized all of this was enough for me.
|
| That being said - I'm absolutely STOKED that there are smart
| thermostatic radiator valves.
|
| I will say for OP though - it may be worth having an expert come
| in and check on your radiators to help balance your system (or
| you could do this yourself).
|
| Checking to see if radiators have the correct pitch, if you have
| the right sized radiator for your home, if you have the right
| pipes insulated, etc.
|
| My impression was that if you get all the balancing right - you
| won't really need to fiddle with the valves again (unless of
| course you want to change the temperature in a room versus
| keeping it consistent).
|
| I've also heard people say that it's generally a good idea to not
| have an adjustable radiator valve with the radiators by your
| thermostat - I think because when set wrong your thermostat will
| trigger and turn off the boiler.
|
| I've been meaning to rebalance my home, with my first goal being
| to adjust the valves closest to the radiator so that they fill up
| the slowest.
|
| We're in different countries so obviously you won't be able to
| use the contractors I used - but mine were wonderful. Their
| specialty is steam heat - nothing else. To get a new boiler they
| had me measure all of my radiators and say what type each one
| was. This helps figure out the correct boiler size, since most
| houses don't have the correct ones.
| pandora-health wrote:
| Wait until you discover https://github.com/Alexwijn/SAT your
| smart autotune thermostat!
| _spduchamp wrote:
| Smart temperature control with rads sounds unfeasible because
| rads are slow. Maintain a certain level of heat with rads, and
| then perhaps add some smart controlled infrared radiant heating
| panels for fast responding cozy comfort.
| camgunz wrote:
| I would use HA only to get off limited/bad "smart home" apps, but
| we've been using it in my home for ~6mos for a handful of things
| and we love it. Probably gonna go ham this year: switches,
| sensors, the whole thing. I think my most in-depth project is
| wiring up some temperature-sensitive PWM fans inside an IKEA
| cabinet that houses a bunch of tech stuff (gaming consoles,
| voltage converter, modem, router, HA machine, laser printer, etc)
| to keep it from overheating, which I'm very excited to get going
| on. Other pie in the sky plans/ideas:
|
| - Wireless plant water sensors
|
| - Blind/curtain management
|
| - Ventilation management based on PM/VOC/CO2
|
| I'm not that into smart locks or doorbell cams... or cameras in
| general? Feels a little creepy, but I can see the appeal I
| suppose.
| alias_neo wrote:
| We use Frigate with our cameras and doorbell cam, it can detect
| people, animals etc depending on how you configure it; We've
| got our doorbell cam set up to announce via TTS how many people
| are approaching the door before they even get close enough to
| press the doorbell; great for delivery people who leave parcels
| on the door step and don't ring, as well as general security.
| camgunz wrote:
| Wow that's wild, hmm OK might reconsider.
| poisonborz wrote:
| Like many other commenters here say, however nice and
| increasingly better Home Assistant is, in effect you will manage
| 10, 20, 50+ devices that may receive updates, live in your
| network - whether wifi or zigbee, all have their issues -
| interfere with each other or just plain break.
|
| I love the possibilities, it's often calming and nice to show
| off, but like with all things personal infrastructure, I have an
| increasing nausea and regret, along with the sunken cost fallacy.
| CT4u8798 wrote:
| I've never got the reason for home automation over setting the
| heating to come on half hour before I get out of bed in the
| winter. I'm quite happy manually turning on lights, etc; and
| keeping things simple and off line. I also turn most stuff off,
| fridge/heating system excluded, before leaving the house or going
| to bed. I definitely don't see the point in smart lights and
| things like that.
| robby_w_g wrote:
| The overhead and maintenance involved in setting up these home
| automations have always seemed to spend more time than it
| saves. I'm not convinced that automatic lighting is better than
| just flipping a light switch.
| CT4u8798 wrote:
| Beyond the "cool" factor I'm with you. I don't know what the
| benefits would be but I can definitely see it being a pain to
| maintain and the extra cost in both time and money for
| running these automation do not seem worth it. I would
| definitely like to be proven wrong, but I have not seen
| anything to date.
| jjeaff wrote:
| Do you live with other people? Kids? I love being able to
| quickly turn off all the lights in the house as we leave.
| m463 wrote:
| I remember automating the lights in my house decades ago (the
| X10 era!).
|
| The first time I had someone over, I got into bed and hit
| all-lights-off, only to hear "Hey! I'm in the bathroom and
| all the lights just went out!"
| CT4u8798 wrote:
| I just either do that manually or, better yet, make them do
| it.
| Cheer2171 wrote:
| setting the heating to come on a half hour before you get out
| of bed is literally home automation
|
| your thermostat just happens to support that internally. not
| everyone's thermostats are 'smart' like that.
| CT4u8798 wrote:
| I can assure you there's nothing smart about my 15 year old
| boiler and it's thermostat supports that functionality
| externally, though the name escapes me it looks like this
| [0]. No need for any fancy nonsense, networking, "smart"
| anything. Simple and easy to use.
|
| [0] https://www.ncelectrical.co.uk/product_images/FT24H-HiRes
| .jp...
| Cheer2171 wrote:
| it's literally smart home automation, just analog. you like
| the functionality of automation, you just have a
| fashionable allergy to it in its digital form
| empiricus wrote:
| That moment when you order several hardware devices, search and
| flash random firmware from the internet, search countless forums
| for instructions, spend hours looking at logs in the dumbest html
| logviewer, just to get a single bit from a switch (this is
| homeassistant).
| m463 wrote:
| > I've already purchased these TRVs but haven't had time to
| configure them yet.
|
| lol. Story of many (most?) of my projects :)
| grahamj wrote:
| Fellow HA enthusiast here _high fives_
|
| I've been upgrading my adaptive lighting over the past few days
| so this is neat timing. I'm taking quite a different approach
| though. While I do have a script that can be called to set a
| light to the "right" value (based on a global ideal brightness
| and kelvin values calculated elsewhere plus params for multiplier
| and offset) I call that for each light or group from individual
| room handler automations.
|
| The reason is that every room is different. Besides the obvious
| off or presence states, what is the brightness of the room? Are
| the curtains open? Is the TV playing? Is it late at night? Is the
| vacuum in this room? Do we have guests? The answers are all
| unique to the room.
|
| So each room handler can figure those things out and call the
| light set script with parameters that offset the brightness, and
| in some cases like an interval, nudge the current brightness
| towards the ideal without fully overriding what someone might
| have set manually.
|
| Fun stuff :)
| moogly wrote:
| Pro-tip: use zigbee2mqtt's groups for targeting multiple lights
| (but I'm guessing OP is using ZHA).
|
| I've also used HA for quite a few years, and I have several
| hundreds of devices. I just (this week) decided to move Mosquitto
| and z2m out of HA to LXC containers in Proxmox (where HA is
| already running) and it was very easy. Now I don't have to
| restart the entire world whenever I have to restart HA (usually
| updates).
|
| Next is to move Node-Red out to its own container. I already do
| not use HA's automations because they are very poor compared to
| Node-Red, and I'm starting to change all flows to use MQTT
| directly instead of passing through HA.
|
| So in the end HA will be relegated to run non-MQTT integrations
| and dashboarding and not be a single point of failure.
| joshstrange wrote:
| Oooh the Adaptive Lighting Integration looks very cool, just
| installed it. That was my next step on my lights but I was going
| to do it myself via automations. So glad I found this instead.
|
| My most recent HA journey has been replacing all bulbs in my
| house with smart bulbs so that I can dim them all to 1-5% by
| default and then use motion to bring up the lights. It feels
| magical walking into a room and being able to see but a little
| dim then the lights fading up. I have it set to use a different
| brightness at night so it's not blinding. The lights all stay on
| for ~5min then fade back down.
|
| I've had motion lights for a few years but it's rather "harsh" to
| have the lights snap on from 0->100% and the "click" from my
| smart switches was a little annoying. This smart switch+bulb
| setup is the best of both worlds for me. I do not pair my
| switches with the lights, I never touch the switches in my house,
| they are there for other people and as a final fallback if HA
| stops working (all bulbs will go white/100% when turned on).
|
| Home Assistant is really awesome and I encourage more people to
| try it out but for the love of god, do not use a Raspberry Pi. It
| can sort of handle small workloads but HA is going to stress it
| too far and you will have a bad experience.
| psyclobe wrote:
| I can't imagine living in a house that isn't fully automated with
| HA.
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