homeassistant

Im falling down a hole here. Long story still long, but it started when got a Tuya remote and trying to integrate it. Im currently using the plain old Zigbee Home Automation (ZHA). The new remote got recognized fine, I could see button presses in events but I didnt know hot to use those to trigger events (nothing shows up when try to create an automation).

I found some Zigbee2MQTT blueprints that look like they might work. So I went to install that. Z2M failed starting and is telling me I have a version 12 and I need to update my firmware. So I go to find out the manufacturer wants me to update via a webpage https://smlight.tech/flasher/#home

How the hell do I do this on a headless raspberry Pi? I gotta install a fucking DE for this? ZHA doesnt recognize there is a update needed, hell I cant even tell what firmware version is installed (not that there is any indication what version the update will install).

This is frustrating as hell.

So I love DIY. I have built some crazy projects and while rebuilding a house while I live in it I have the opportunity to integrate some really cool things.

It's also getting to the point where I need to backup and document what I'm doing and how I'm doing it. As an added benefit I can easily share it with others. I'm currently doing a complete code rewrite so that I can have each device yaml pull from a single base configuration yaml file in a similar fashion as a secrets file and eventually contemplating a master IP file as well with a complete static IP setup.

Right now I have an example secrets file that I am using along with my base-config.yaml. I also have three projects included: my pulse output water meter configuration that includes the ability for a ESPHome usage alert, my 240V electric water heater controller, and the ESPHome configuration yaml that allows the dust integration of the CircuitSetup.us split phase energy meter. I have also included a prompt that you can use with an Ai to calculate the voltage and amperage gain calibration.

I will say that many of the projects deal with voltages and currents that are dangerous and should not be attempted without full understanding of proper electrical safety.

I've been using my water heater controller for over 5 years without issue. My energy meter has been in use for 3 years and my water meter has been in use for a little over a year.

I will also be including the yaml I'm using for some other projects and prebuilt devices I have converted to ESPHome in the future. My hope is that even if you don't use this for a project that is the same that the yaml will potentially help others with their projects.

I constantly forget to take showers due to depression. I know I'm not the only one 😂 summer is early here in Texas and I don't want to be the stinky dude

Uses the humidity readings of my bathroom to determine whether I was in the shower:

• A running 1 hour average of the bathroom humidity is measured.
• If the current humidity is 8% above the average, it is triggered as "wet".
• Then it marks down the last time, and then converts that to "days & hours since" last shower.

I have a badge at the top of my main dashboard that will let me know how long it's been. It's already been useful. If I see anything over 2 days I know it's past time for a shower

I got a false positive from washing my hands when it was set to trigger by 5% increases, so I changed it to 8%.

Happy to share my code if anyone wants to do the same!

Edit: code in a comment below!

I’ve been working on a custom integration to connect Navidrome with Home Assistant.

Navidrome is an open-source music server based on the Subsonic API, and the goal of this integration is to expose its state directly inside Home Assistant.

The project is currently in a testing phase. It already provides some sensors (for example, scan status) and a basic media player.

The media player does not allow playback control (play, pause, etc.). It only displays information such as the current track title and cover art. This is due to limitations of the Subsonic API used by Navidrome, which does not expose playback control in a direct way.

There are still things to improve, but it’s already functional for testing. Feedback is very welcome 🙂

Hi everyone. I recently started my Home Assistant journey by replacing Google Calendar and Keep Notes with Home Assistant. A couple of light bulbs burnt out and I want to replace them with bulbs that I can use exclusivity on Home Assistant and bypass the manufacturers app entirely. What brand should I look for?

These are standard wall mounted lights in my kitchen and my laundry room.

Edit: I'm looking to replace burnt bulbs anyway.

Hey all Just getting started on some smart home stuff - I'm looking to get some strip lighting and there is a lot of stuff out there and honestly I'm not sure what I should get. Ideally it would be RGB but I'm OK with white/warm light.

The ZBT-2 can do both ZigBee and Thread, and I haven't got any pre-existing devices so I can go either of those.

I thought about getting some IKEA lighting because I believe they use Thread now?

What's the prevailing wisdom out there?

Looking for ZigBee or 433MHz soil sensors!

Hello to #HomeAssistant gardeners! I'm unsure what's good right now as far as those go. Smaller sensors are better, not as small as coin cell, and especially if I can get illuminance as a sensor.

Just unsure what to pick. Reviews are mixed on so many options it feels like. Some complain ThirdReality's are too huge, some complain of disconnects.

Right now I've a generic larger ZigBee one and a tiny BLE MiFlora, and open to others.

@homeassistant

Hi everyone

I decided to give home assistant a go as I'm tired of the lifx app. Plus, it means I can move to different brands of lights and control it on the same app.

I am not overly tech savvy but I know enough to operate my TrueNAS server for my needs. That being said I'm always learning and emjoy it.

I installed it through the truenas apps page (basically just docker). Install was successful, I created a user account and logged in on my phone through the app. So far so good.

I went to search for lifx bulbs but it's not finding anything.

I'm wondering, have I missed any steps to ensure HA is able to discover bulbs?

Any advice appreciated

So I’ve seen all kinds of dashboards depicting all sorts of informations and functions to control ones home and I was wondering, what things you have depicted on yours which turned out to be really useful esp. for other family members. I would like to keep mine as small and simple as possible. So far I have planned to show the following:

Helpful esp. before leaving the house:

• turn off all lights
• activate alarm within n minutes
• current and upcoming rain and outside temperature conditions
• List of open windows and doors

Helpful during the day

• Current and set temperature inside
• Autonomy of car
• Remaining time of washing machine
• State of dishwasher (ready, running, done)
• State of mailbox (empty, full)

What’s on yours you and others in your household interact often with? Which have you removed?

I mostly understand the dilemma, but I want to see if someone has better success with their AI assistant. I use the Ollama integration and set up a conversation model. However, the default Home Assistant AI knows to use the home forecast entity whenever I ask about the weather. Whether I also set up an AI task model, toggle “control Home Assistant” on or off, or toggle “perform local commands” on or off - the Ollama models do not reference the home forecast the way the default Home Assistant can. I thought maybe keeping default commands on would enable this ability while answering all other queries with the Ollama LLM. I just want a smarter AI. Any suggestions?

Soo, someone was backing up their @homeassistant on its own local disk, instead of something outside the VM which runs HA 🤦‍♂️

#homelab fails

Cooking 1 cup of white rice in a Zojirushi rice cooker. I'm surprised at the slow intro/outro. This rice cooker only gives a countdown when it's within 10 minutes or so of being done, so I was wondering if you could tell more about how it's doing with a current trace.

Little did I know when I found a HomeKit lightbulb in the clearance bin at my grocery store for $3 what it would lead to. Here I am, though, adding to and re-jiggering my smart home set up. It's nothing earth-shattering, but it was fun, and I thought I'd share what I found out in case it's news to other folks. It started when I bought a handful of new Sonoff devices...

Mainly, I ordered the MINI-ZB2GS to install in the front hall. I have a 2-gang switch box there, with switches controlling the porch light outside, and the ceiling fixture inside. These are slick, little devices that fit in a standard electrical box, and convert your existing mechanical switches into smart switches. I ran into a head-scratcher, though, when I flipped the switch to test the porch light, and it cycled on and off several times before remaining off. I thought that it had to do with an interaction with the motion-sensor on the light itself, but as it turned out, it's because the MINI-ZB2GS supports momentary push-buttons, as well as switches. While tucking the unit into the box, I must have inadvertently pushed the button to put it in momentary-push mode. I just had to remove the face plate, and carefully push the button to cycle the mode back to 'switch'.

I took the opportunity to upgrade from a ZBDongle-E to a ZBDongle Max. This is what turned into the really enjoyable part! The ZBDongle Max can operate as Zigbee coordinator over USB, ethernet, or WiFi (though not recommended). I mounted it in a convenient location where it has good connectivity to the rest of the Zigbee network, and ran a cable to my PoE switch. Home Assistant picked it up right away, it was just a few clicks to add it to ZHA, and a few more clicks to migrate the network to this new coordinator. I realized that with the HA server physically de-coupled from the Zigbee coordinator, it doesn't need to be located in the living room any more. It could live anywhere that has a network jack. Since HAOS is running in a virtual machine, I could even temporarily migrate the VM to other hosts (like my desktop machine), while moving the usual host out of the living room. (Also, this dongle allegedly supports firmware that can do Zigbee and Thread simultaneously. I haven't tried it, since I don't have any Thread devices yet.)

The ZBDongle Max has WiFi AP functionality for up to 8 devices. It's limited to devices that connect outbound, because it won't route incoming connections, nor forward mDNS announcements. That's perfect, though, for connecting the ratgdo, since it connects to HA with MQTT! That decouples the garage door from my main WiFi AP. I have a few RGB LED light strip controllers that use WiFi, but the Magic Home integration discovers them with mDNS. If only there were some way to have them connect outbound, instead. And, as it turns out, there's OpenBeken firmware. These are BL602 devices, which can be flashed over-the-air, so I did that. Now, they connect to HA via MQTT, too, so they can get off my main AP, too. OpenBeken supports MQTT discovery for HA, so it was a snap to connect them. There used to be a noticeable delay when operating them with the Magic Home integration, but now they are lightning-quick. I can push the button on the remote, and it sends a Zigbee message to the coordinator, which forwards it to HA over the LAN, which triggers an automation, then HA sends a message back over the LAN to the ZBDongle Max, which sends it to the LED strip via WiFi. And it all seems to happen instantaneously.

Just for fun, I also added a CAM Slim Gen2 to my order. I was disappointed to later notice that Sonoff doesn't list Home Assistant compatibility for it; you're meant to use the eWeLink app. BUT, there's thingino to the rescue! It's a BusyBox-based firmware which you can flash the camera with, and then add it to Home Assistant using the ONVIF integration. Supposedly, you can use the two-way audio via a WebRTC integration, but I haven't set that up yet.

Perhaps the most mundane thing (to me) was adding the open/closed sensor to my freezer door. Sometimes, it doesn't seal all the way when closed. By very carefully locating the sensor and the magnet, HA now knows whether the freezer is closed all the way, and quick 'n dirty automation alerts me when it's not, using a voice announcement on the smart speaker.

In the process, I also discovered the UPnP functionality of both my router and switch, and the HA UPnP integration. It was a good day.

Maybe not the correct place but I know a lot of folks use NFC tags to trigger automation.

Does anyone have experience with a tag in-between their phone and the wireless charger? I have a few wireless charging stands I'd like to set automations to (ie: "I've set my phone on the nightstand charger, X,Y,Z lights should be set to red if they're turned on now"). I'm just not sure how close the freqs both use are (and even less sure of how much interference causes issues).

So yeah, has anyone used an NFC tag in-between their phone and wireless charger without melting either?

I have a few sneaky tiptoeing but loveable miscreants as part of my family and I would like to keep them out of my office. I'm sure some of you can relate.

My problem is that most of the locks I'm finding are big, heavy, super-secure deadbolts. I don't care about the actual security, I just want a simple interior lock that I can open with a pin/NFC/fingerprint and also log entry and exits in HA. Does anyone know of a lock that's more "lightweight" than the common options. After all, if they make it into my office there will be evidence all over in the form of fingerprints on the window of my PC case! :-D. I just need a mild deterrent.

The wife already nixed a motion sensor turning all the lights red and triggering horror movie sounds.

I am surprised to see how overwhelmingly popular Tuya devices are for Home Assistant users. It appears that devices using the official integration are very combersome to setup, they are cloud dependent, and they will often need to be re-setup due to a re-acceptance of the ToS.

Are people actively buying these devices? Are a lot of homes setup with legacy Tuya devices?

I personally have no Tuya devices in my home and after reading the integration page, I would actively avoid them. https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/tuya

The integration page shows that Tuya is used by 29.2% of active installations and the number of devices from the graph show a huge gap between Tuya and all other devices. This leads me to think that these devices would be prioritized by the developers. Am I missing something? Are these devices so cheap that they are just worth it for many to deal with the consequences of the cloud and apparent hassle of setup?

IDK how else to describe it.

About a week ago I noticed one of my ZigBee air purifier fans turning on and off. Odd but I ascribed it to maybe some sort of smart mechanism to avoid burning out the motor. Perhaps if there's not enough airflow it pauses and tries again? It could be a thing. So I ordered new filters and unplugged it.

Shortly thereafter I noticed my other ZigBee air purifier turning on and off. Okay... Makes sense... Filters are about the same age... Let's just wait for the shipment to come in. Unplugged.

Almost immediately after unplugging I noticed ANOTHER ZigBee device turning on and off, but this time it was a smart power outlet! No filters on that motherfucker, and that's when it dawned on me that this could somehow be a command and not just random.

Long ago I had a ZigBee outlet set up to turn on/off on a pattern over and over throughout the day.

I realized that these devices seem to all be following that pattern, which is strange because that automation ran for months but has been disabled since March of last year.

Now as far as I can tell this means one of three things:

1. Home Assistant has gone rogue and is sending dormant/backlogged commands to unrelated devices

2. A device on my ZigBee network had held those commands for passing them along, forgot about it for 11 months, then forwarded them in the order received to a semi-random device in the network.

3. Aliens? Ghosts? Somebody trying to communicate through the multiverse?

Starting with the first 2 assumptions, is anyone aware of a means to listening into the ZigBee network to see which device, bridge or middleman, is sending these on/off commands?

Is there a way to tell all devices in the network to flush their command history? Should I reset the ZigBee network? Reset each individual device?

I'm one ADHD hyperfocus away from rebuilding my entire HA system and all automations from scratch.

Hi All,

Bargain outlet near me had a bunch of the “monster smart illuminessence” stuff at a price that made me try one.

A few hours later and I have them running properly on LocalTuya. I went and scooped up a bunch more given the success.

My question is: When is the local key issued and when does it change?

I’d like to get them all taken care of and put in the box with key written down so I can delete the official tuya app, and also not have to worry about if Tuya will change it’s dev policy so I can’t get access to the keys anymore.

As a side note, I’ll give Tuya credit, I can easily see where that is a great tool for folks looking to offer smart goods… it’s also exactly why I’ll always be local only.

Hello all,

I've been fighting with razberry7 pro on top of rpi4B and it just doesn't work reliably (if at all). I've dug around the internet, tried different software on it, verified that firmware is up to date and so on and even fed my logs to LLMs in hopes they could spot something. Currently my z-wave devices are practically useless (gladly I got devices with physical controls too) and based on discussions around I'm not alone.

So, I think it's time for me to just get something better. Ideal device would be wired over ethernet and have z-wave and zigbee hubs and possibly POE, but I haven't found any which would also be fully supported by HA.

ZWA-2 should be pretty solid choise, but I'm running HAOS in a virtual machine on my proxmox host and I'd really like to have an option to migrate VM to different hardware as needed but that would require also physically moving the USB plug from one host to another.

What are your experiences, what I should get? I'm in EU, so frequencies need to match, but otherwise I'm pretty open for suggestions and having a rock solid z-wave network is a top priority. If it means using ZWA-2 or some other USB gadget I can work with it, but, again, ideally I'd like to have something wired to the network. Wifi is of course an option, but good old ethernet would be preferred.

Local integration, no cloud preferred.

As the title says, I'm having one hell of a time getting HAOS to see my Conbee II.

I have HA running in UTM, which works fine, but I simply cannot get HA to see the Conbee. UTM can see it, and says it's passing it through, but HA can't see it. I figured that perhaps UTM is the issue, so installed it in VMWare Fusion then restored my most recent backup.

Same problem.

VMWare says it's sharing the Conbee, but HA can't see it.

On both setups I have the USB set to 2.0, and I've tried connecting both directly and through an extension lead, but the end result is always the same: HA can't see the dongle.

Am I missing something?