homeassistant

What I want to achieve:

I'm subscribed to Home Assistant Cloud, and I want better location history but integrated to Home Assistant.

What I've tried:

I've tried to setup the server integration, I have traccar running successfully, but I don't know how to reach traccar without exposing it to the internet too, is that even possible? I know there's a script that feeds a HA device's location to Traccar, but I would prefer to use the official integration if possible.

Questions

Can I avoid exposing Traccar server to the internet without using a VPN?

I've got a non-smart washer, but after a recent power outage I noticed that it resumes the wash cycle at it's current point when power is cut then restored.

Enter an IKEA smart button and smart plug.

I load the washer, get it started then press the button to kill power and enable an automation (currently on have 4 am and 3 pm).

At 4am or 3pm, the automation turns the power back on and disables itself.

Next step is monitoring the smart plug power monitoring to send a notification when the washer finishes.

This morning my kid asked the voice assistant to "Turn off the computers in this house".

I heard it, thought well that's a strange request but seems harmless because how is home assistant gonna turn off computers.

Me a little while later, "why is shit broken? What's happening!"

Turns out dumb me had adguard exposed to the voice assistant, it switched off all the adguard settings including the DNS rewriting that is the cornerstone of many of my self-hosted services.

I've since revoked that access.

So I have my AC connected to a smart plug and I'm trying to figure out what would be the best way to go about automating it.

Currently, I have it set to run every hour on the hour for 20 minutes if the time is between noon and 8 p.m. Which covers the hottest part of the day.

However, what I could do is have it run every other hour instead and have a couple of night runs along with the daytime runs.

Doing it that way would eliminate most of the 16-hour period currently that exists between the ending of one day and the beginning of the next.

Edit: Also, is there an easy way to automate every other hour using the time pattern or would I manually have to set up triggers for 2am, 4am, 6am, 8am, 10am, etc. using the fixed values?

Edit 2: looks like i can use "/2" to accomplish that

I'm tinkering with our ventilation over-pressure function in combination with an inline fan I run when 3D printing or soldering, to get the fumes and particulates out while simultaneously not creating a massive vacuum inside. The plan is to control it with MQTT from HA to a PLC that controls the ventilation via RS-485.

Therefore I'm looking for a simple but clean looking smart plug that I can integrate with HA to let me know when the fan is on (pulling power, actual wattage is irrelevant) to automatically enable this function.

I know Sonoff makes some, but I always prefer personal advice over random search results.
Preferably Zigbee or WiFi (offline) as I don't have any Matter/Z-wave hub/dongle. Compact design and black would be nice, but not a must. Stability and ease of setup matters more than added functionality.

Does anyone have any personal experience to share?
I'm grateful if you do. Thanks!

I would like to use device names such as "NBR-NW1 (John's AC)" which is shorthand for "North Bedroom North Wall1 (John's AC)". However, it appears as though when I ask the assistant to "turn on John's AC", it does not match it to anything.

I've got an extra tall living room, and without a 15' ladder there's no way I can actuate the pull down shades. I would be annoyed to have to climb up to change batteries a few times a year. What I would ideally want are some kind of window shade or blinds with a remote or HA controllable, and a little solar panel to collect the juicy rays of the sun.

I have found hard wired shades, battery powered shades with remotes, and zigbee etc shades, but not exactly what I'm looking for.

Any suggestions?

I don't actually HAVE any automation at home beyond some hated Alexas, but these shades would be a great place to start.

Thanks in advance.

I currently have a lot of my light automations setup by first having an automation that turns the light on at a certain time, then another that turns the light off at another time. This works, and it has for years, but I'm imagining there must be blueprints or other methods to do this on/ off behavior in a single automation rather than having them in pairs (this is not scaling very well).

Anyone have suggestions? The image is a blueprint I have for turning lights on/ off based on a time window which is very handy, and I'm hoping there's something similar out there for my needs.

It's already 25DegC in my home office.

The best cooling automation I have so far is to turn the fan on when it's 25 for >5mins.

Is there a nice zigbee / ESP32 evaporation cooler that I can enjoying setting up with HA?

Sorry if this goes against the community rules, I haven't included links or descriptions to anything just in case.

I have a few smart switches that I "tasmotified" and an air purifier that I re-flashed for ESPHome. I'm moving overseas and I feel like selling them on craigslist or facebook would be a pain if they end up in the hands of someone that's not into home automation.

I don't know if it would be ok to post them here or if someone knows of a more dedicated community where they would be a good fit. Would appreciate the help.

I realized I have some old hue bulbs laying around, and they're working well enough with my Zigbee controller (no bridge), but if I decide to scale up I definitely don't want to pay the Hue premium.

Anyone have a Zigbee bulb brand they recommend? I hear Third Reality is nice?

I got paranoid after seeing my windows and doors being open when I was not at home, turns out I was looking at a graph with time in UTC. 😃

I used to just update stuff when I could see an update was available. This changed dramatically when a few months ago, I updated Zigbee2mqtt to version 2 and my whole house stopped working. That marked the moment when the other inhabitants in my house decided that the home automation project had gone too far.

Since then, when I saw an update was available, I've waited - preferably until I had seen other people reporting that stuff still worked. But now I've realised, that if I wait too long with an update, another update just comes along...

Can I somehow configure HA to always automatically install e.g. update 2.1.3 once update 2.1.4 becomes available? Or is that a nogo too? I realise that the only sure-fire way to do this is with a staging environment, where everything is tested out before updating the production environment. But how many of us has that kind of a setup?

My 3rd Gen Rev A Apple TV (Model A1469) has been sitting around in a drawer for a long time and I was considering recycling it. But it works perfectly (minus the drawbacks of it having old technology) and I can’t stand the idea of wasting something useful. Is it possible to repurpose it for Home Assistant? I’m still working on getting started with HA - is it possible to use this to run the OS?

How else could I repurpose this? Has anyone else successfully done something like this?

Any help that explains like I’m 5 will also be especially appreciated since I am still learning these things 🙏🏻

Thanks!

Starting to think about setting up my home camera surveillance system and what to avoid making poor decisions, so need to tap into community experience ... you guys :-)

Frigate seems like the direction to take if I want to strike a good balance between cost, integration and reliability. Hardware is a key issues. I could install HA and Frigate on my VM running on my Truenas server but I feel I'm putting all my eggs in one basket so thinking of having a dedicated machine for HA + Frigate. The Frigate website advertises this little beasts with a Coral PCIe unit. That about 300€ if I'm lucky, but I could live with that.

For camera I definitely do not want chinese-call-home/cheap stuff. The Lorytas advertised on the Frigate website seem to be difficult to get hold of (are these not chinese btw?) in Europe so was wondering what other peoples experience is. Cameras need to be comparable to these Lorytas in terms of quality and functionality (no chinese, no call home, good image quality, good relibility, weather proof)

Keen to hear whether others have tried the hardware/setup recomended on the Frigate website and whether there are people out there that have actually got even better setups.

This guy is recommending that the Frigate unit is separate from the HA unit. I'm unlikely to have more than 5 cameras installed and it feels a bit overkill to have two separate machines?

I previously hacked together an Ikea sensor which worked well for the price, but was not weatherproof, and my solution caused the temperatures to be very inaccurate.

I'm looking for something that can be used offline (connects to HA via WiFi, Zigbee, etc but does not need WAN access) and is plug and play. I see some solutions like this, but am not sure if they will work in an 'offline' mode. Anyone have any suggestions? Something with wind speed, etc would be awesome.

cross-posted from: https://aussie.zone/post/19637893

Wifi networks and home automation systems are expected to last 50+ years.

I was reading up on the life expectancy of different building materials when I came across this gem.

Screenshot is of page 122 https://www.portseattle.org/sites/default/files/2025-02/SEA-SIPP%20Technical%20Report%20Appendix%20C%20Life%20Expectancy%20of%20Building%20Materials.pdf

I guess the ethernet cables could last that long, but they rate house wiring to a lower lifetime. Ethernet cables are not "wireless", however.

The only other wireless systems I can think of are garage door openers, but they are definitely not expected to last 50 years.

I've been running Home Assistant for three years. It's port forwarded on default port 8123 via a reverse proxy in a dedicated VM serving it over HTTPS and is accessible over ipv4 and ipv6. All user accounts have MFA enabled.

I see a notification every time there's a failed login attempt, but every single one is either me or someone in my house. I've never seen a notification for any other attempts from the internet. Not a single one.

Is this normal? Or am I missing something? I expected it to be hammered with random failed logins.

I used Home Assistant to create my very first automation today. It's really stupid simple, but I feel as though things will only get crazier from here.

Context: i have an old dumb window AC that has 2 physical dials. One turns fan- low, fan-high, cool-low, and cool- high while the other is labeled from 1 to 8 with 1 being warm and 8 being coldest. This AC is either on or its not. Even if the compressor is not running the fan runs 24/7 until it is physically switched off.

My current automation checks once per hour, and if the temperature is above 80 degrees, it will notify me to turn on the air conditioner.

I intend to buy one of the third reality smart plugs soon and switch the action from notify to "turn on the third reality plug for 10 minutes". Then I will just leave the unit itself on Cool High and let the plug manage the power.

Eventually, I think I will also buy a third-reality temperature sensor and set the trigger to if the temperature sensor says that the room itself is above 80 degrees instead of using the forecast.

Text summary of the State of the Open Home stream.

How do you guys run home assistant?

I tried out home assistant using virtual box on my main pc and I enjoyed what I could do with it so far. So, I ordered a mini pc (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C89TQ1YF/) with the intention of running home assistant's OS so that it's always running regardless of Windows doing what it wants with my PC.

I run other things all the time on my main pc too, plex, isponsorblocktv, tartube, things like that. Is running just home assistant on that mini pc going to be overkill? Should I just put Linux on it and run home assistant on there some other way so that I can also run some of these other things there? Will home assistant take a noticeable performance hit?

Edit: For anyone curious, I installed Linux mint and run home assistant in virtualbox on there. I'm not experiencing any issues. I moved isponsorblocktv to the mini pc, and added the mini pc as a server to my plex. It doesn't have enough space for me to comfortably move plex entirely off my main pc. With plex limiting remote play to plex pass I'm probably going to just use jellyfin which i already had setup on my main pc. At some point maybe I'll add an external hard drive and run jellyfin on the mini pc instead. I've done this for a short while and Windows has already restarted my main PC of it's own free will, so 👍

I was trying to add a Matter device from my phone but it kept saying I needed to install the companion app from the Play store even though I was in the companion app (from f-droid). I've installed the Bluetooth proxy app as well but it made note difference.

Does anyone know what's going on?

Sorry if I am being a bit thick, but I have now subscribed to Nabu Casa and the remote access works great over the web, but I am confused how the companion app is meant to work. I assumed it was meant to “failover" to remote access when I left the home network. What am I missing?

#HomeAssistant

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