I have nine Aqara window sensors I use to turn thermostats on/off. They've been behaving erratically for the past few weeks, so yesterday I checked the battery status on one of them (can't remember which one) - steadily declining from >80% to around 35% now. Even showed the graph to my wife. So I bought ten new batteries - they came today. Earlier today I updated HA Core and restarted. Now, all my Aqara window sensor batteries read 100% - even for the entire last month! All of them! Can the Core update have messed with historical readings?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/46848072

I very recently became paralyzed in my left (and dominant) arm, fingers and foot, which believe it or not, was not planned for.

The timing was pretty bad, as I've just purchased a couple of ESP3266-boards, a soldering kit and two pressure mats with the the end goal of making a basic bad sensor (one mat for my girlfriend and my side). (Here's the guide I intend to follow: Make your own bed sensor)

The obvious issue is how one, as easily as possible, can accomplish this? Main issues right now are that I can't hold the board, the wires or anything in my hand.

Any and all tips are greatly appreciated.

Basically, I was super tired getting home from an event last night and didn't even notice the water hadn't stopped flowing normally. It's quiet so I don't normally hear it.

Apparently at some point a couple hours in a fitting in my drip setup blew, flooding my peppers planter entirely and in the process burning through nearly 4000 liters of water before I caught it on my way out the door to work this morning.

I've since learned there's a Z2M command to start watering on a timer, but I didn't know that before and trusted Whisper to not fuck this up. My fault.

Don't think my water bill company will be amenable to it. I'll call and ask but, fuck.

Basically, STT quality has kept me from switching to HomeAssistant's voice assistant features. The default matcher (Hassil) is waaaaaaay to strict, and LLMs are slow, constly, and/or a privacy nightmare, plus I don't like them.

I really thought there would be something available that just matches your STT output to the configured intents, but apparently not, so I've built in myself.

Finally convinced my GF to throw Alexa in the bin :)

Here's an excerpt from the README, and feel free to AMA:

🌲 Problem statement and solution

Speech-To-Text (STT) output, especially fast and local STT output, is often simply bad. HomeAssistant's own Hassil is incredibly picky: your STT output must match exactly to one of the configured intents.

There's two paths forward from this: Upgrade your hardware to support better STT, or try to figure out what the speaker probably meant to say from the garbled output.

This project does the latter.

With this custom integration, "Lights on in live in room" will actually turn on the lights in your living room. So will, for that matter, "lighrts on inn livainriomm".

Short demo, first with closest-intent, then with bare Hassil:

📜 Highlights

• Pattern expansion. Expanding <expansion_rules>, (alternatives|to), and [optional|alternatives] all work, including on HASS-defined lists like your home's areas and entities!
• Slot extraction. Both for wildcard slots (like for adding something to the shopping list, where the {item} is a wildcard), and against slots like {timer_hours:hours} with a fixed set of possibilities.
• Fuzzy slot resolution. For list-like slots and expansion rules (including your areas and entities!), fuzzy match the slot values to the available options. Allows "livikroom" to be corrected to "living room".
• Actual intent handling still done by Hassil. closest-intent simply corrects your STT output or typos to the closest matching intent, and then forwards a nice, canonical sentence to Hassil, who then deals with the intent just like if you had spoken/typed perfectly.
• 100% LLM-free. Just uses relatively simple fuzzy matching of the input against your intents, plus some clever-ish (well... working, at least) tricks to improve the results.
• Fallback agent support. OK, I said 100% LLM-free, but if you absolutely want to, you can use one as fallback. More on this below.
• Is fast :) (as in: basically instant for a couple hundred configured custom intents).

Note: closest-intent is completely language-agnostic. All the examples in this README are in English, but you can use it with any language you like; personally, I use it in German.

📋 Examples

Here's some examples of things I said, what my STT (wyoming-faster-whisper-base) understood, what HomeAssistant was able to do/answer after passing the STT output through closest-intent, and what the same STT output would have resulted in with just bare Hassil.

Note: These are actual results I got when speaking the "what was said" sentences in my phone. I'm a native German speaker, and so I do have an accent, but this pretty closely matches my experience when using the German-language version of whisper. The "bare Hassil" responses are what I got after 1:1 pasting the STT output into the voice assist chat window with closest-intent disabled.

| what was said | STT output | with Closest Intent | bare Hassil | |

|

|

|

| | start cleaning | Star cleaning. | ✅ Cleaning started. | ❌ Sorry, I couldn't understand that | | stop cleaning | Stop clenching! | ✅ Cleaning stopped. | ❌ Sorry, I am not aware of any device called clenching | | vacuum the living room | Vacuum Believing Room | ✅ Cleaning the living room. | ❌ Sorry, I am unaware of any floor called Believing Room | | clean the office | King the Office | ✅ Cleaning the office. | ❌ Sorry, there are multiple devices called Office (author's note: no there aren't, wtf?) | | vacuum the kitchen | Back here in the kitchen. | ✅ Cleaning the kitchen. | ❌ Sorry, I couldn't understand that | | how warm is it in the bedroom | Our all is in the best room. | ✅ In the bedroom, the temperature is currently.... | ❌ Sorry, I am not aware of any area called best room | | add milk to the shopping list | Add milk to the chauvinist. | ✅ "milk" added. | ❌ Sorry, I am not aware of any device called chauvinist | | put call dentist on my todo list | put call dentist on my tudu list | ✅ "call dentist" added. | ❌ Sorry, I am not aware of any device called tudu | | turn on the water pump | turn on the what her pump | ✅ Turned on the water pump. | ❌ Sorry, I am not aware of any device called what her pump | | play some music | Place on music | ✅ Playing music. | ❌ Sorry, I am not aware of any area called music | | resume the music | Renew Music | ✅ Resuming. | ❌ Sorry, I couldn't understand that | | pause the music | Post music | ✅ Paused. | ❌ Sorry, I couldn't understand that | | next track | next rack | ✅ Next track. | ❌ Sorry, I am not aware of any device called rack | | enable shuffle | an able shuffling | ✅ Shuffle enabled. | ❌ Sorry, I couldn't understand that | | disable shuffle | Disable to schaffen. | ✅ Shuffle disabled. | ❌ Sorry, I am not aware of any device called Disable | | restart the player | Reset the plan. | ✅ Restarting the player. | ❌ Sorry, I am not aware of any area called Reset | | play a random album | Player random album | ✅ Playing a random album. | ❌ Sorry, I couldn't understand that | | play a random artist | Player and Immartist. | ✅ Playing a random artist. | ❌ Sorry, I couldn't understand that | | play the latest tracks | Plan the ladder tracks. | ✅ Playing recently added tracks. | ❌ Sorry, I am not aware of any area called Plan | | play recently played songs | Player recently played so... | ✅ Playing recently heard tracks. | ❌ Sorry, I couldn't understand that | | play playlist NieR | Play playlist NEAR! | ✅ Playing the playlist NieR. | ❌ Sorry, I couldn't understand that | | play my daily briefing | and play my daily breathing | ✅ Here is your daily briefing: ... | ❌ Sorry, I am not aware of any area called and play | | what time is it | What the hell is it? | ✅ It is 16:36. | ✅ It is 16:36. (author's note: okay, know what? earned. did not expect that.) | | what day is it today | One day is today. | ✅ Today is Friday. | ✅/❌ May 8th, 2026 (author's note: that's the output for "What date is it?", but, eh, close enough) | | make the tv brighter | Make that CV brighter. | ✅ Screen is now bright. | ❌ Sorry, I couldn't understand that | | set the screen darker | The screen doctor. | ✅ Screen is now dark. | ❌ Sorry, I am not aware of any device called screen doctor | | what's the weather today | What's the matter with you? | ✅ Today, the weather is... | ❌ It is 16:36. (author's note: wait, WHAT?) | | how's the weather tomorrow morning | How's the better tomorrow? | ✅ Tomorrow morning, it will be... | ❌ Sorry, I am not aware of any area called How's | | what's the weather this week | What's the matter this weak | ✅ Monday:..., Tuesday:..., | ❌ It is 16:36. (author's note: sigh...) | | how's the weather at 5 o'clock | cast the red there at 5 o'clock | ✅ At 5 o'clock, it will be... | ❌ Sorry, I am not aware of any area called cast | | how windy is it right now | how windy is IR low | ✅ The wind is currently blowing with... | ❌ No timers. | | how windy will it be tonight | How will you be tonight? | ✅ Tonight, the wind speed will be around... | ❌ Sorry, I couldn't understand that | | how hot will it get today | How hard will it get today? | ✅ Today, temperatures will reach up to... | ❌ Sorry, I couldn't understand that | | will it rain today | with it right today | ✅ No rain is expected today. | ❌ Sorry, I couldn't understand that |

...you get the idea.

💡 How it works

closest-intent is registered in HomeAssistant as a conversation agent. On startup, it parses (by default) all user-defined intents (or optionally, also the builtins ones). In this process, it also expands all rules, like <expansion_rule>, (alternatives|to), and [optionals], and notes where {slots} are located, and whether they are wildcards or belong to some list (like areas, entities, or the numbers 1-100).

When a user request comes in (via voice command or the chat box), closest-intent fuzzy-matches that request against those expanded rules. If the rule does not contain a slot, it is picked immediately. If it does contain a slot, closest-intent performs a sequence of fancy magic steps to find the best-fitting slot value among a range of possible positions within the top-scoring matched sentences. In practice, this often means "smallest slot-value on a word-boundary", but the extraction is not limited to that.

With the best match found, we then reconstruct the "canonical form", i.e. a sentence that Hassil will actually understand. If in your configured intents, "Play some music." exists, and closest-intent got "Place on music" and matched that to the intent, it will simply forward "Play some music." to Hassil. If the intent contained a slot, the extracted value will be substituted.

This guarantees that the sentence passed to Hassil will actually be understood, and allows us to not have to worry at all about performing actions, running scripts,...

If no matching intent could be found, we pass the exact input we got to the configured fallback agent. By default, that is simply Hassil (which again allows us to be lazy and not worry about proper error responses), or another agent, like a LLM.

I had a set of Davis Instruments air quality sensors that I kluged to work with HA. The one I use outdoors is no longer working, so I'm looking for a replacement. Can you recommend any particulate sensors that work directly with HA?

For the DI sensors, they have a local API that I wrote a custom script for that would get the various particulate readings and calculate the AQI. I'm not really in the mood to jump through all those hoops at the moment, so if there's one that runs off zigbee or z-wave?

Did anyone here get one of those Trmnl dashboards? I’ve been wanting to build an e-ink dashboard for years but it keeps not happening, so I ordered a Trmnl X as soon as I read about it.

There’s a bit of a delay on shipping, and early adopters on Reddit were negative, but I’m excited!

— apparently one of the issues was magnets not sufficient to hold it to a fridge. THE CASE HAS MAGNETS! AND THEY'RE UPDATING THEM!

There is a big list of plugins, including apple calendar and HA dashboard, which I’m most interested in

Anyhow, if you got one, please share your experience

Does anyone know if the ARC6 and Arc8 rainbird irrigation controllers work with home assistant? The Integration mentions that it works via the LNK Wifi module which is an add on module for older devices. The ARC6 and ARC8 have wifi built in and use the same phone app. It sounds like Rainbird did a firmware update to add a bunch of cloud stuff and changed the API, there was recently a fix for the new firmware but I'm still not sure if I buy an ARC6 or ARC8 today if it will work with HA.

Does anyone have an ARC6/8 that is working with HA?

I’m looking for testers for a closed Google Play test of a shopping list app for Home Assistant.

The app connects directly to your Home Assistant instance and is aimed at making shared shopping lists simpler and faster to use on mobile.

Current features:

• Connects to your Home Assistant instance
• Displays and manages your shopping list
• Add, check, sort, rename and remove items quickly
• Access to all lists configurated in your HA instance
• Automatic sync with Home Assistant
• Offline caching

If you’d like to join the test, please send me your Google Play email address via private message. I’ll then send you the opt-in link.

Edit: Testers just need to install the app and keep it on their phones for 14 days. (Really, that's all that google asks for....). Only after that I'm allowed to publish it.

Edit2: It's also available on github: https://github.com/robNice/HA-ShopList

Just don't install the playstore-apk, as that version lacks the in app updates via github.

Testers I found so far: 3/12

Came across it while looking into Sendspin. Has anyone set it up? How is it? Use it? Better than Jellyfin?

E: Thanks everyone for the replies, it was informative!

Hello

I recently started using tasks.org on my phone to handle everyday tasks. The tasks themselves are stored via CalDAV, and I've added the list to HomeAssistant as well.

I'd like to have HA add some tasks automatically (e.g. "empty washing machine" when it finishes). But in the generic to-do.add_item action, I can only set the name, description and due datetime.

Does anyone know if there is a way to set things like priority, tags or other metadata for a task in HA? Is there an advanced integration?

I found this one, but I haven't had time to fully check it out yet.

Does anyone have feedback on how well these work?

I have fire alarms on different floors of the house and I'm wondering if this device will be able to listen for the alarm from another floor. The alarm is still quite loud throughout the house but the instructions say it needs to be right next to an existing alarm.

I'd rather not have to buy a bunch of these if possible.

For quite a while I had been longing to measure the waterlevel in my well.

The first attempt with a HC-SR04 failed due to distance (4 meter deep well) and problems of how to mount it in the well. Then I came across the JSN-SR04 sensor. It's all running on an esp2866 (I found it to have better wifi than the esp32). Several parts re-used from old projects. Added small solar panel to keep it all self contained. Data is sent to homeassistant (mqtt) and a bit of log/debug data to syslog.

Due to circumstances had it been lying on my desk quite a while, but finally, today I was able to install it!
I screwed a drainpipe cap to the lid of the well and mounted the sensor in another. A simple pipe connector in between works like a charm.

My home assistant setup is super simple: pre-configured Home Assistant Green box, Zigbee dongle and some assorted Zigbee devices scattered around my home. I have the Home Assistant app on my phone to see the Dashboard while I'm at home, but since I never configured the box to be accessible from outside of my network, I obviously can't see the Dashboard if I'm not at home. Very basic stuff so far.

A few weeks ago, I built a little automation. I shoved a vibration sensor into my doorbell box (it's one of those that uses an electric motor to hit an actual bell) and when it detects the doorbell ringing, it flickers my light and sends a notification that says "ding dong" to my phone. The purpose is just to hear the doorbell ring when I have headphones on. The lights work perfectly fine, the notification is a bit delayed sometimes because I probably don't give the App enough permissions to hang out in the background all the time. I've never felt like fixing it though, since the lights are good enough by themselves.

Now I'm on my first longer trip since setting up that automation and I've noticed that I occasionally get the "dong dong" notification on my phone. First few times I've ignored it, because I assumed it's just old notifications that got queued while I was home but didn't fire until the app was allowed to sync. But the notifications started coming in at way too reasonable times and I checked in with my husband at home -- turns out they're actually completely correct and I'm getting actual real-time notifications for the doorbell ringing.

But like - how?! I thought my Home Assistant Green box isn't set up to send anything to the outside world?! I can't see my dashboard from other networks, so why would notifications be any different? Does anyone have any ideas as to why I'm getting those notifications?

edit: Thought it would make sense to include a screenshot of my settings; As you see, my home assistant URL is a local IP address. I have no idea why my phone would be able to talk to that? It can't talk to my local-IP-only Jellyfin server either, so why would this be any different?

One automation for each battery was getting crazy. A temperature sensor in most rooms, motion detectors and a handful of door/window sensors. This blueprint creates an automation that manages all batteries dynamically. Really is amazing.

What blueprints do find useful?

https://community.home-assistant.io/t/low-battery-notifications-actions/653754

After a power outage this weekend, when HASS came back up I lost all automations related to my Sonoff Orb 4-Way smart switch, and one of my GE 800 Z-Wave switches no longer responds, though it still works manually pressing the switch.

I’ve re-entered the automations, but I can’t get the switch so come back to home assistant. Is the only path forward deleting, resetting it, and re-adding it? I’ve never had this happen. I’m not 100% sure the power outage caused the issue. I updated the core this weekend also. I think that was before the outage, but I hadn’t checked to see if everything was there after the update/before the outage.

ETA: Thanks for all the help. Wound up removing, resetting, and re-adding it. Entity ID is the same, so I expect existing automations should still work.

I finally found out you can use the Android Debug Bridge integration to play specific YouTube videos on Smarttube (adfree youtube app)!

This is triggered when I get home, along with my lights turning on. I have additional actions to set the volume low as well.

You just need to have ADB enabled on the TV and enter it's IP in the integration setup (leave port as is)

Now I am wondering if I can set it up to play my favorite shows in Stremio, starting where I left off last.

action: androidtv.adb_command
metadata: {}
target:
  device_id: 31ecf6603ac8b90769db6a689d0bbeb9
data:
  command: >-
    am start -a android.intent.action.VIEW -d
    "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VT0uftcDICg" org.smarttube.stable

I was having zigbee device dropping issues and I've been looking at the zbt-2. I was hesitating due to the price. I went to take another search this evening and there's one listed at a huge discount. I'm not going to post the link here as I'm unsure of the rules, but it's easy to find on Amazon.ca.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but...

Buyer Beware! Aqara hubs use the Zigbee protocol, but lock out 3rd party devices!

A few months ago, I bought an Aqara hub and went deep into their ecosystem. I saw their hub and sensors had good reviews, plus they were using the Zigbee open protocol, so I figured I'd stick with their stuff. I had no reason to try other devices until recently.

I picked up a tilt sensor for my garage door from a 3rd party. I made sure it was also using the Zigbee protocol, so I assumed it would be compatable. Unfortunately, when I tried connecting it to the hub, I was wrong and it wouldn't connect. Turns out, Aqara uses the Zigbee protocol, but locks out 3rd party devices. [source]

If anyone has a workaround to integrate a 3rd party device with an Aqara Hub (IIRC, I have the M3?), I'd love to hear about it. But until then - I'm looking for a refund. I would have never picked up their hub if I had known about their shennanigans; and consequently, I wouldn't have picked up so many of their sensors.

Hi all,

I'm looking for zigbee temp and humidity sensors that work with HA, are pretty accurate and either are mains powered or have use a battery that can be recharged e.g. AA or AAA.

I like the Sonoff SNZB-02D, but they use disposable coin cell batteries.

One I found that looks like it might fulfill these criteria is

https://3reality.com/product/temperature-and-humidity-sensor-with-digital-lcd-display/

But they're kinda spendy. Anyone have any recommendations?

Hi all,

I’m looking for a reliable smart plug with current/energy monitoring that meets these requirements:

• Ideally <1s time resolution (I need fast updates, not just averaged every few seconds.)
• Wi‑Fi connectivity preferred, with MQTT client support out of the box (similar to how Shelly devices can publish to a local MQTT server when the load current changes. I'd rather not have to poll a device's HTTP endpoint a few times per second.)
• Provisioning/config: Bluetooth for setup would be a big bonus (I think the Shelly Plug S Gen3 can do this, too.)
• Reliability/manufacturer: Needs to be from a well‑supported brand or at least something that’s proven stable and not a "cheap no‑name" option.

I’ve been testing a few devices already. Most average power consumption over longer periods, while e.g. newer Shelly devices come frustratingly close to being exactly what I need.

Does anything on the market provide sub‑second resolution for current measurement? Most consumer plugs I’ve tried either average readings or only publish once every few seconds, which isn’t quite enough for my use case (measuring transient behavior and categorising operating modes of certain appliances).

Has anyone come across a plug that ticks these boxes? Or maybe a hidden configuration with Shelly devices that I’ve missed?

Thanks a lot for any help!

Edit: What I’m actually looking for is a fast response time to significant changes in power consumption (by more than a set amount or a percentage), so a high sample rate within the plug. A constant delay until the message is sent out wouldn’t be a problem at all.

Does anyone have much experience with robot lawnmowers? I've been considering one, but trying to find info now involves digging through a lot of AI slop.

Id prefer one that plays nicely with HA, as well as not internet dependant. It's also for a small garden (50m²).

The best bet I've seen so far is to modify a yardforce mower with open mower. What other (good) options are there?

Hi,

What I'm trying to do is that if someone sends a message on my telegram with the text: "/todo (name-of-task) (due-date) (due-time)" (example: /todo empty the dishwasher 16-08-2025 14:00)

to get that in node-red and put that in vikunja via an http-request (or if you think there's something better, please advise)

I'm getting problems in the form of "message not found" and/or "malformed token" (that last one is a bit longer but you get the point)

The token works with a curl command, so I guess it's ok. I tried adding the headers to each http request in my flow and also tried leaving the headers empty and putting them in the function. Same result.

Can you help me out?

code located at: https://pastebin.com/suT710Yn