Home Assistant

niallb · 13-03-2017 9:59pm

I had lots of troubles earlier today setting this up for the first time.
I'd installed all the packages I needed and could see them from the shell.
I had to edit the python environment file before homeassistant would use them:

home = /usr/bin
include-system-site-packages = true
version = 3.4.2

the include variable was set to false by default.

The function that wasn't working for me was z-wave support.

matrim · 14-03-2017 12:54am

niallb wrote: »

I had lots of troubles earlier today setting this up for the first time.
I'd installed all the packages I needed and could see them from the shell.
I had to edit the python environment file before homeassistant would use them:

the include variable was set to false by default.

The function that wasn't working for me was z-wave support.

You probably didn't activate the virtualenv before installing the packages.

Typically you would do something like

$ virtualenv /path/to/envname

This creates the virtual env under the folder /path/to/envname

$ source /path/to/envname/bin/activate
(envname) $ pip install package

This activates the virtualenv in your shell and in the second command the brackets show what env you are using to run your commands. The packages would install under /path/to/envname/lib/site-packages

If you didn't activate the virtualenv before running pip the packages would have been installed to your local python environment and you would need include-system-site-packages to find them

Black_Knight · 17-03-2017 5:07pm

I'll have to fix up my HA env at some stage. For now i've hacked it to work and im ok with that... until I update HA and everything breaks. I'll still have my config files though.

Black_Knight · 24-04-2017 10:45pm

Upgraded HA to 0.43.0 just now and I can't access it at all now. Seems to start up fine, no errors, but not getting anything in the browser, and the log file has nothing in it (Seriously, just 2 lines)

EDIT: Fixed it. Not sure what did it.

THE ALM · 25-04-2017 9:42am

Playing around with it the last few weeks and some of it takes a while for me to get my head around, patience is key.

Working currently:

Hive Heating
Chromecast Audio
Kodi
Enigma2 combi receiver
Weather Underground
Google Calenders

Have these grouped and under three tabs for location, media and heating. Hoping that there will be a way to add the hive bulbs, plugs and sensors in the future. Have 0.43 running at home on an old laptop running linux lite but will get another rpi3 to run it on and also have it on a work pc running windows 10.

Anybody running any location apps on android phones and have them mapped on home assistant, how have you found it?

Metric Tensor · 25-04-2017 10:28am

I had a nightmare of a job using the all in one installer for HA on my new Raspberry Pi. It just would not run. In the end I had to reinstall the virtual environment and after some pricking around got it to start.

But then I lost it again when I was making changes to the config file so I had to start from scratch and the second time I ended up having to do it the non all in one way. This is about three weeks ago to the all in one installer might be changed since.

Nothing running on it at the moment though - ran out of free time!!

Roen · 25-04-2017 11:49am

THE ALM wrote: »

Playing around with it the last few weeks and some of it takes a while for me to get my head around, patience is key.

Working currently:

Hive Heating
Chromecast Audio
Kodi
Enigma2 combi receiver
Weather Underground
Google Calenders

Have these grouped and under three tabs for location, media and heating. Hoping that there will be a way to add the hive bulbs, plugs and sensors in the future. Have 0.43 running at home on an old laptop running linux lite but will get another rpi3 to run it on and also have it on a work pc running windows 10.

Anybody running any location apps on android phones and have them mapped on home assistant, how have you found it?

I'm running an MQTT server on the same NUC as HA. I'm using an iPhone OwnTracks client though rather than an Android. Oddly enough it was far easier to set up OwnTracks on iPhone than on the missus's Android (think it was a self signed cert issue at the time).

Maps integration was the first thing I got working on HA. OwnTracks > MQTT > HA hasn't skipped a beat.

I recently set up Let's Encrypt signed certs too as the iPhone HA app stopped working as I was using a self signed cert. Another little victory

Roen · 25-04-2017 11:53am

THE ALM wrote: »

Playing around with it the last few weeks and some of it takes a while for me to get my head around, patience is key.

Working currently:

Hive Heating

Actually The Alm, was this how you got Hive shipped into HA?
https://community.home-assistant.io/t/hive-heating-uk/3178/6

THE ALM · 25-04-2017 2:44pm

Roen wrote: »

Actually The Alm, was this how you got Hive shipped into HA?
https://community.home-assistant.io/t/hive-heating-uk/3178/6

That's is the one Roen, downloaded the three files and set up as described, worked straight off.

Off to stand in a river now for a bit of ðŸŽ£

the merchant · 29-04-2017 8:25pm

Hi guys,

I'm pretty new to all of this but here is mine...

Sensors are Dublin Bus, Yahoo Weather, and a ping to a client's server.

I have Kodi, LG WebOS TV, Bedroom Lamp which is a relay contolled by the PI's GPIO, and an Ikea Tradfri as the main bedroom light (this works really well)

Does anyone know how I rename the tradfri light?

Cheers.

Roen · 29-04-2017 11:35pm

I use a customize.yaml to change the names of everything into friendly stuff.
Can explain further when I get to the laptop.

On another note. I shipped Spotify in to HA today. Have the component in both the kitchen and bar as that's where I have the echoes.
Also only noticed you can do random and looped colours with hue now!

Roen · 30-04-2017 9:40am

Under your initial homeassistant block at the top of configuration.yaml stick this
[HTML]customize: !include customize.yaml[/HTML]

Then create the customize.yaml in the same directory as your configuration.yaml file.

Edit the customize file to your hearts content.

Sample:

[HTML]sensor.living_room_nest_protect_co_status:
friendly_name: Living Room CO Status
icon: mdi:heart-pulse[/HTML]

As ever indentation is all important with yaml.

the merchant · 30-04-2017 10:46am

Thanks a million Roen but I'm a bit confused about the breakdown of the fisrt line.

For instance here is my tradfri entry

tradfri:
host: 192.168.1.###
api_key: #################

How should this be added to the customize.yaml file?

Cheers again.

lawred2 · 30-04-2017 10:47am

mudabi wrote: »

Anyone here using Home Assistant?

Its very good. Its an open source, python based hub for all of your home automation. It runs on multiple operating systems (I have mine on a Raspberry Pi 3).

At the moment I have enabled:
Phone presence detection using snmp Phillips Hue Nest Rfxtrx tranceiver and Lightwave RF RF sockets for lamps Owl Energy Monitor Oregon Weather Station PiHole Monitor Plex Samsung TV Cameras

You can use it to script and automate just about anything, check it out.

Thanks. I was looking for an RPI project.

matrim · 30-04-2017 10:57am

the merchant wrote: »

Thanks a million Roen but I'm a bit confused about the breakdown of the fisrt line.

For instance here is my tradfri entry

tradfri:
host: 192.168.1.###
api_key: #################

How should this be added to the customize.yaml file?

Cheers again.

You don't add the tradfri details to your customize.yaml, you add each light you want a nice name for e.g.

light.tradfri_bulb_e27_opal_1000
  friendly_name: Living Room

Roen · 30-04-2017 11:10am

the merchant wrote: »

Thanks a million Roen but I'm a bit confused about the breakdown of the fisrt line.

For instance here is my tradfri entry

tradfri:
host: 192.168.1.###
api_key: #################

How should this be added to the customize.yaml file?

Cheers again.

Right. So that bit shouldn't be added.

What you need to do is go to the gui and look for the <> symbol under the developer tools. That lists everything that HA is aware of. This then gives you the ID for the gadget you want to customise.
The <> might be hidden and you'll need to click on the burger menu to see it. That's the three horizontal lines under one an other. Should be top left.

Edit. What Matrim said ^^

the merchant · 30-04-2017 1:12pm

Success!

Thanks guys - It took me a while to realise that there needs to be a colon on the end of the first line.

light.tradfri_bulb_e27_opal_1000lm: 
  friendly_name: "Main Bedroom Light"
  icon: "mdi:lightbulb"

Roen · 06-05-2017 11:49am

I decided to ship some HA data into Influxdb and from there back out into Grafana for visualisation.
Only messing about with Grafana at the mo but once you get the hang of it it's easy enough to cobble together something useful.

Here I just added a few graphs from the Netatmo weather station's indoor and outdoor modules.

THE ALM · 21-05-2017 1:37pm

For those with hive bulbs along with the heating, currently testing these in HA and so far so good. Hoping plugs and sensors will be added soon.

THE ALM · 27-05-2017 11:34am

For those interested, the new Hive integration files are now available here.

georgewickstaff · 15-07-2017 4:25pm

HI,

Playing around with this a bit, all working fine...

- Philips Hue turn on an hour before sunset.
- Device tracker using Asuswrt
- Plex dims the lights when watching a movie / series
- Kodi
- Smart TVs
- Chromecast

Ok, it works fine... hell of a lot of effort but my question is.. Apart from turning the lights on and off what the hell else does it do?

What is the point of having the media players in it? I have to say the Kodi Huelights add on is way better then the Homeassistant automation..

I like the idea of it, I am comfortable using it but I'm not sure what to do with it...

What are you guys doing? Anything fun / cool / useful?

Metric Tensor · 17-07-2017 9:59am

My medium/long term plan to use it for the central heating but haven't installed anything yet!

Black_Knight · 17-07-2017 11:12am

Metric Tensor wrote: »

My medium/long term plan to use it for the central heating but haven't installed anything yet!

I need to use mine to set my home/away-ness for my nest. Far too often nest says im at home when im not, and the nest app doesn't let me see a history of when I was at home or not, so it's only when I happen to open the app on my phone when im away, and I discover that it says im home that I see these errors.

It's gotten better of late, but previously there was about a 60% chance it'd say I was home when I wasn't. Can't be having that in the depths of winter

Metric Tensor · 17-07-2017 11:35am

The Nest smoke alarms have a presence sensor because you can set them to light up when you are underneath but the battery powered ones won't allow you to use that sensor for "home/away" detection whereas the wired ones will. I presume it's to save the battery life.

iba · 09-11-2017 9:08pm

Hi,

I'm brand new to Home Assistant and I'm having trouble installing it on Win 10 and would be grteful for some help please.

I installed the Windows x86-64 executable installer from here:

https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-363/

Then I opened command prompt and entered:

python -m pip install homeassistant

after that had completed I entered:

python -m homeassistant --open-ui

but after this had finished running this page opened:

http://192.168.0.137:8123/states

and reported:

''Invalid Config

The following components and platforms could not be set up:

discovery

Please check your config.

Dismiss''.

This is where I'm stuck and don't know what to do. I don't know what this 'config' is about and how to fix it.

Thanks

THE ALM · 10-11-2017 11:20am

iba wrote: »

Hi,

I'm brand new to Home Assistant and I'm having trouble installing it on Win 10 and would be grteful for some help please.

I installed the Windows x86-64 executable installer from here:

https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-363/

Then I opened command prompt and entered:

python -m pip install homeassistant

after that had completed I entered:

python -m homeassistant --open-ui

but after this had finished running this page opened:

http://192.168.0.137:8123/states

and reported:

''Invalid Config

The following components and platforms could not be set up:

discovery

Please check your config.

Dismiss''.

This is where I'm stuck and don't know what to do. I don't know what this 'config' is about and how to fix it.

Thanks

I am no expert and have been playing around with it also.

I am assuming that the page 192.168.... opened ok and you are seeing the home screen of home assistant with the invalid config message. The message appears as the discovery component in home assistant will try to automatically discover certain components like google cast, apple tv, phillips hue etc. You can dismiss this message and not cause any problems, I'm playing around with a Win10 installation on the work pc and get the message every login. You could remove it from the config file altogether.

The config that it is mentioning is a file in the homeassiatant directory called configuration.yaml. This is the main file that you will be editing and would be an advantage if you know yaml but not necessary, I don't. This file is where you will be adding the various components that you would like to appear and control with home assistant. I currently display the local weather, control volumio which is running on a rpi in work, control hive heating, displays the time and date and my various google calenders, amongst other things.

The home assistant forums are a good place to check out for various ideas along with you tube.

It is a bit of a learner curve and I plan on running it on a rpi3 long term once I get it set up how I want.

Black_Knight · 10-11-2017 12:49pm

The guys on discord have been really helpful to me any time i've had problems.
https://home-assistant.io/help/

iba · 10-11-2017 11:07pm

THE ALM wrote: »

I am no expert and have been playing around with it also.

I am assuming that the page 192.168.... opened ok and you are seeing the home screen of home assistant with the invalid config message. The message appears as the discovery component in home assistant will try to automatically discover certain components like google cast, apple tv, phillips hue etc. You can dismiss this message and not cause any problems, I'm playing around with a Win10 installation on the work pc and get the message every login. You could remove it from the config file altogether.

The config that it is mentioning is a file in the homeassiatant directory called configuration.yaml. This is the main file that you will be editing and would be an advantage if you know yaml but not necessary, I don't. This file is where you will be adding the various components that you would like to appear and control with home assistant. I currently display the local weather, control volumio which is running on a rpi in work, control hive heating, displays the time and date and my various google calenders, amongst other things.

The home assistant forums are a good place to check out for various ideas along with you tube.

It is a bit of a learner curve and I plan on running it on a rpi3 long term once I get it set up how I want.

Thank you very much for your detailed reply.

I did as you suggested and clicked on Dismiss - now its asking for a password.

So I'm stuck again already, what the hell is the login password please if you know?

Thanks

THE ALM · 11-11-2017 11:18am

iba wrote: »

Thank you very much for your detailed reply.

I did as you suggested and clicked on Dismiss - now its asking for a password.

So I'm stuck again already, what the hell is the login password please if you know?

Thanks

If you look at your configuration.yaml file you should see this text -

http:
# Uncomment this to add a password (recommended!)
api_password: xxxxxxxxx
# Uncomment this if you are using SSL or running in Docker etc
# base_url: example.duckdns.org:8123

and you want to put in you own unique password where xxxxxxxxx is shown, save the file and restart home assistant. When it restarts put in the password you created.

I did look at bit further into the error message which is caused, it seems, by netdisco not being installed in windows. I have tried a few recommendations for installing it without any luck. I think the general consensus is that windows is not the ideal platform to run it on and better off using linux or a rpi image. I am only playing around with it on a windows machine but also have it running on a linux machine which is easier to manage.

randombar · 30-01-2018 11:45pm

Hey guys, just installed, for a while looking at the blank screen on the computer thinking WTF.

Sooooooo have a few things installed (Basically Hue and Plex), now I need to try and figure out how to install hive.

I get the idea that you can add your own repo etc. etc but is that how people are adding the addons? Scripting them into their own repo file and fetching from there?

Home Assistant

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