Home Assistant

Jonathan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118822304#Comment_118822304

Fully on board with local access, but all of my devices so far are either WiFi or BLE. No Zigbee, yet. Any major advantages of the ConBee 2, over say some of the cheaper options on Amazon?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/CC2531-Zigbee2MQTT-Firmware-Antenna-Assistant/dp/B085MFRK9W/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/SONOFF-Universal-Gateway-Antenna-Assistant/dp/B09KXTCMSC/

donspeekinglesh

Is there a good combined z-wave/zigbee hub?

I'm currently using a smartthings hub, but it doesn't present the full functionality of some of the devices to HA (but they work perfectly in ST). I can't adjust the brightness of my z-wave Fibaro lights, or change the colours of my zigbee light bulbs.

Raoul

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118822575#Comment_118822575

Honestly I'm not sure. I was putting off using ConBee for a while but bit the bullet one day and just went for it because it is what I was seeing in all the videos. I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly it picked up my IKEA, Lidl and tuya stuff.

Actually one I was really surprised with was the Lidl extension lead. It picked it up as three separate sockets.

Jonathan

Reporting back for anyone that was interested:

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118812073#Comment_118812073

The Aqara blind controller arrived yesterday. It seems firmware version 1427 has broken HA support. I got it partially working using a ZHA quirk but this is no longer required as the quirk has since been rolled into 2022.4.0. The shade entity itself does nothing, but it can be controlled using a 0-100 analog output.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118822575#Comment_118822575

Went with the cheaper SONOFF Universal Gateway in the end and no issues so far.

John mac

installed Home assistant at the weekend , Vm on unraid server ,

all working as i would expect , however how do i add things to it .. im looking to add my drayton wiser setup ,

i have found a place on HA , but havnt a clue where to start , end up on a page in github , with a load of code ..

Tree

Ah yeah, hit up the communities forum and search there. You may want to see if it can be installed through HACS (it's like a home brew play store for Home Assistant), usually it's as simple as linking it to the github and restarting.

paulbok

Really liking the new Mushroom cards for creating snappy new dashboards.

Work in progress on one for my mobile

Raoul

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118986187#Comment_118986187

Did you see the everything smart home YouTube video?

Raoul

I currently have a very modest set up in my apartment but moving into a new house soon. Here is my current dashboard.

Can click into each room individually or long press to toggle the whole room and click into lights or switches.

paulbok

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118986275#Comment_118986275

Yeah, currently the best HA channel out there, imho.

Currently building each room & area, and deciding how to lay out each.

Can see myself copying and adapting it a few times for different devices, but it looks really good, without all the yaml work of the similiar Minimalist UI.

Raoul

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118986736#Comment_118986736

Yeah, great channel. Seems like a good guy too. Helps out a lot of people in the discord chat. I have followed a lot of his tutorials. The dashboard, external URL and Google home assistant without nabu casa being the best so far.

I used to like Paul Hibbert but not sure he is that trustworthy anymore as he seems to only do videos with paid promo

John mac

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118985682#Comment_118985682

thought that , i did find it , but i havnt a clue how to go about getting the code onto Home assistant . 💾

Raoul

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118988381#Comment_118988381

Not being funny but YouTube is your friend. Almost everything you want to do has probably been done on YouTube.

I only added hacs recently and I am fairly sure I just followed a YouTube video.

John mac

DOH ,, didnt even cross my mind.. will have a look this evening . 👍️

paulbok

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118988743#Comment_118988743

Everything Smart Home, Burns HA, Juan Mtec, Smart Home Junkie are all good for beginners and intermediate level users. They explain pretty much all you need to get up and running.

Then you have the likes of The Hook Up, Dr Zzzs for more advance setups and specific device setups.

Many others as well I've used to get this and that setup.

paulbok

Huge find for me today, I have finally got my 3 Nest Protect devices back into HA after a few years of not been able thanks to Google messing with Nest.

(fairly) new component on HACS - called Nest Protect. You just need to setup a Google Dev account to get an account token.

I know may others have been 'locked out' of their devices as well - I was actually looking into the Homebridge route of adding them when I came across the component

Above all devices, these are so important to have.

Raoul

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118989187#Comment_118989187

https://youtu.be/D6ZlhE-Iv9E

John mac

got it done last night , followed this video , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlaJrepZl2E ,

was able to then install the Drayton Wiser Integration for Home Assistant

from github ..

now have lots of info ..

(told the kids i was going to get them implants so they could turn on and off lights , scenes etc .. :) when they enter a room of leave the house .

garion

I've been using Mushroom aswell, following the guidance of Everything Smart Home and also some of the posts from the official dashboard thread.

I added chip cards above & below a mushroom template card, and used the "card-mod" & "Stack In Card" front-end add-ons to remove the borders.

For most rooms the top chip card row is reserved for lights and the bottom row is reserved for heating. If heating is on, the icon colour changes and it shows the current & the target temps. If a trv in a room return a low battery indicator I show the battery icon. I use the spare space to the right of the "Rooms" title to show conditional chips - counts the number of lights on, if the blankets are on in one of the bedrooms and anything else I want to highlight.

Still tinkering with it and looking forward to seeing how the Mushroom dashboard evolves - would love a better thermostat controller as the stock climate card is pretty ugly.

kaisersose77

Is anyone monitoring their gas usage in Home Assistant, and if so how?

Newtown90

Due to Covid I've had time this week to set up HA on my new Raspberry Pi 4 which has been in the drawer since Xmas.

Electricity Monitoring - is anyone using the Shelly EM to monitor their usage?

https://shop.shelly.cloud/shelly-em-50a-clamp-wifi-smart-home-automation-1?_gl=1*ehqaja*_ga*NjAzMjAzNTYzLjE2NTYwNjkzMTU.*_ga_RG1ZWH9CCQ*MTY1NjE1MzA1OS4yLjAuMTY1NjE1MzA1OS4w#139

Cameras - finally moving away from Tuya Cameras to Eufy Cameras. There seems to be no straight forward way to integrate the Eufys yet from what I can see.

theBOFH

Not exactly the EM but using the 3EM. It fits neatly into the fuse board, integrates nicely with HA and the three inputs work well to monitor solar, mains and a heat pump

kaisersose77

Yes just started using Shelly EM last week, working fine so far and nice to see the overall electricity usage and give you an idea what the high power items are using. Gone with Tapo cameras myself which are cheap and have good home assistant support. Using the frigate addon for camera monitoring.

Regarding my post regarding monitoring gas usage, some people are just modifying aqara door/window sensors. I seem to have the same type gas meter - Elster BK-G4.

https://community.home-assistant.io/t/gas-meter-from-xiaomi-aqara-door-sensor-zigbee/348032

https://www.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/comments/eno3jn/tutorial_my_gas_monitoring_solution_with_home/

cromelex

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119247565#Comment_119247565

I am using a Shelly EM with a 120A + 50A CTs (120A on the "grid", the 50A on my A2W heatpump), they are working fine.. Have it integrated in HA and the measurements match what I am seeing on the smart meter.

one2go

Hi,

I'm new - can anybody recommend a server to use home assistant on please?

Most people seem to be using HA and am interested in something stable and future proof - prefer plug and play ;-)

Thanks

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119363571#Comment_119363571

I started with a Raspberry Pi but have since moved to Docker on a home server. You could buy one of these

https://www.odroid.co.uk/Home-Automation

one2go

Hi,

Thank you for the link. Are you using one of these?

Can you give me an idea of memory requirements. I have been reading up on the various drivers/scripts and they seem resource hungry? How long is a piece of string, I know but I want to manage a heat pump, 3 zone radiator network, an air ventilation system, measure how much power is going to the grid, battery level, HW temperature. I'd also like to integrate cctv cameras as well as a door bell I bought cheap direct from china - it works! air temp, humidity and co2. I did buy a few bulbs from lidl when they had them, lux levels, and maybe a house alarm. I have some ip cctv cameras as well. A mixed bag I'm afraid and I'm sick of swapping to the different apps - HA, I hope is (a) the solution.

Any advice/direction would be appreciated.

Thanks again.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119365469#Comment_119365469

No I have a HP micro home server, I've had it for years. Tbh you should probably start with a raspberry pi, you can easily move your config to better hardware as you outgrow the pi

paulbok

I'm currently using an old Dell Optiplex as my HA server, installed on Proxmox.

I am planning to swap it to a mini Lenovo pc that currently runs my plex server. There's enough processing power in the Lenovo for HA, and will reinstall Windows on the Dell, to run Plex, Frigate or Blue Iris for a camera NVR and one or two other services.

Unless you already have a Raspberry Pi lying around, I wouldn't recommend using one. They were fine to start off with when they were under €50 but as they are hard/expensively got now, better putting that money into a second hand desktop pc or mini pc. A Pi also can have stability issues with its SD card (constant read/write puts a huge strain on even high quality cards and the cards often fail). They would also struggle with camera processing as well or when you enevitably expand your setup (more sensors , devices, media players etc)

one2go

HI,

Thats a lot of info - Thank You.

I have a couple of old laptops - I'm going to pull them out and see what I have got. Thanks for the tip about the Raspberry Pi - I had got the impression that they were under strain with HA installed. I have just learned what Proxmox is - thank you. So, I would be better running HA on a laptop - if they are able :-) ? I will be starting from scratch - so when you have time you might offer directions (please?) I have not worked in IT for over 15 years and have retreated to apple machines to avoid major errors and viruses...... If the laptops are useless I'll go for a secondhand desktop. I'm off to check the laptops - if we still have them, THANK YOU.