Home Assistant

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?

matrim · 31-01-2018 12:07am

GaryCocs wrote: »

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?

Not sure what you mean by repo. There is a hive component so you should be able to configure it from the yaml configuration and have it work

Black_Knight · 31-01-2018 12:11am

GaryCocs wrote: »

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?

Yeah, I dont understand your use of "repo" either.

Hive seems pretty simple. Sign up on hivehome.com, and include the hive module in your config file.

https://home-assistant.io/components/hive/

randombar · 31-01-2018 12:44am

I guess that’s the part that I’m missing. Adding to the configure file. There was a couple of other add ons I installed just through the gui so I figured it was the same for others that weren’t listed.

Metric Tensor · 31-01-2018 1:04am

I think the confusion here is the difference between the "older" home assistant flavours and the the new Hass.io setup.

I don't run it but as far as I'm aware you can download "add-ons" for Hass.io in the same way as one would install add-ons in something like Firefox. For the other versions Add-Ons (if they could even be called that) consisted of installing various bits and pieces via the raspberry pi command line and then using those items from home assistant - the Samba one being an example.

This is different to capabilities that are already built in - aka components. You just call these by adding the relevant call-ups to your configuration.yaml file.

For those of us on the other systems we either SSH into the pi and edit the file called configuration.yaml in the old fashioned way using nano or such like. Or alternatively we use samba file sharing to see the file from our desktops and edit the file there.

I understand (but have no experience of it) that for Hass.io there's an add-on call configurator that allows you to edit the config file and add components such as hive. Alternatively I think you can edit it from the desktop if you install the Samba add-on.**

** N.B. - Anything I say about Hass.io is only from reading the webpage, I have not used it myself.

matrim · 31-01-2018 10:08am

Hassio has addons but they are for additional stuff that is normally external to the core home Assistant. As mentioned the common addons would be things like enabling ssh, https and bluetooth. They are normally for accessing something on your pi.

Your normal smart devices are done via components which you enable via the configuration. You access this configuration via ssh , network share (samba) or as mentioned the configurator add-on. Once changed you often have to restart home Assistant to pick up the change.

I'll try to post up some sample configuration later

THE ALM · 31-01-2018 11:23am

Actually adding the Hive component is pretty straight forward now as it is part of the home assistant core setup.

To enable it you will have to add the following to you configuration.yaml file:-

hive:
username: YOUR_USERNAME
password: YOUR_PASSWORD

where you add the username and password that you have setup for accessing Hive. Once this is done and you reboot your Hive components should be listed.

Edit: there should be two spaces before the username and password lines in the yaml file!

randombar · 31-01-2018 12:17pm

That's the job, mixing up components and add ons, so far so good guys, very nice in fairness.

Any recommendations?

Replacing my hue sensor with an aeotec one later.

matrim · 31-01-2018 12:20pm

GaryCocs wrote: »

That's the job, mixing up components and add ons, so far so good guys, very nice in fairness.

Any recommendations?

Replacing my hue sensor with an aeotec one later.

If your router is supported you can use it for presence detection (i.e. when your phone is on the WiFi), alternatively there is the bluetooth detection.

I found the bluetooth to be more reliable for detecting my phone but it caused issues on my pi where it would freeze up once a day

THE ALM · 31-01-2018 12:42pm

GaryCocs wrote: »

That's the job, mixing up components and add ons, so far so good guys, very nice in fairness.

Any recommendations?

Replacing my hue sensor with an aeotec one later.

As matrim says presence detection is great thing to set up and then you could add various automations based on this.

You could have it as simple bluetooth detection or nmap for detecting you presence on the local network. If you can set up remote access the the likes of the locative app set up can give you presence detection no matter where you are at, could set it up on several phones if you need to see where family/ friends are and this can be linked to the Google Geocode component which will give you a full address based on the location.

Automations based on presence detection like turning on lights when home, or when a motion sensor is triggered to turn on a light or plug are also useful and easy to get you started.

You can set these up within HA or use the likes of node-red to handle the automations, although I am still getting my head around all that this can do :eek:

paulbok · 31-01-2018 1:58pm

matrim wrote: »

If your router is supported you can use it for presence detection (i.e. when your phone is on the WiFi), alternatively there is the bluetooth detection.

I found the bluetooth to be more reliable for detecting my phone but it caused issues on my pi where it would freeze up once a day

WiFi is unreliable for presence detection. If your connection drops while at home or your battery dies, it'll trigger any away routines you may have. I believe iPhones drop off your network automatically when not being used.

randombar · 31-01-2018 2:10pm

I might look at doing some of the home automation using locative, iphone house currently so don't want to be left in darkness when wifi drops.

Trying to add hue sensors, picked up the bulbs ok but not the sensors or switches, any ideas?

bk · 31-01-2018 2:24pm

paulbok wrote: »

WiFi is unreliable for presence detection. If your connection drops while at home or your battery dies, it'll trigger any away routines you may have. I believe iPhones drop off your network automatically when not being used.

To be honest, I really like the old fashioned, alarm panel at the front door, to trigger home/away. Easier then trying to rely on wifi, GPS, etc.

Perhaps a simple z-wave/zigbee button at the front door to trigger home/away routines as you come and go. You could use a button to trigger away and then the door sensor to trigger home (when already set to away).

Obviously not suitable for security use, just HA stuff.

Nest Secure actually has a quite smart setup. You arm it like a regular alarm system, with a keypad, however it also uses geofencing. If it sees everyone is out of the house via geo-fencing, but you forgot to arm it, it will send you a notification saying it looks like you are away but forgot to arm the alarm, do you want to arm it now?

A very good compromise to this issue IMO.

matrim · 31-01-2018 2:37pm

bk wrote: »

To be honest, I really like the old fashioned, alarm panel at the front door, to trigger home/away. Easier then trying to rely on wifi, GPS, etc.

Perhaps a simple z-wave/zigbee button at the front door to trigger home/away routines as you come and go. You could use a button to trigger away and then the door sensor to trigger home (when already set to away).

Obviously not suitable for security use, just HA stuff.

Nest Secure actually has a quite smart setup. You arm it like a regular alarm system, with a keypad, however it also uses geofencing. If it sees everyone is out of the house via geo-fencing, but you forgot to arm it, it will send you a notification saying it looks like you are away but forgot to arm the alarm, do you want to arm it now?

A very good compromise to this issue IMO.

That would only work if you have your main alarm pointing to your HA. If you had to do 2 buttons it would be too easy to miss. You also have the fact that that is a home / away for everyone instead of just for one person.

I mostly use the home / away for non-essential stuff. Currently, if someone connects to the camera and we are at home it plays a message as we only use the camera to check on the dog. I'm changing camera soon and with the new one I'm going to have it turn off when we are at home and on when we leave.

I also have some lights set so that if we are not showing as home they turn off after 30 minutes. That's normally enough for any WiFi glitch to sort itself out.

I would prefer to use the bluetooth tracker as I found it faster and more reliable but it looks like it won't work for me unless I swap to a wired connection for my pi.

bk · 31-01-2018 3:09pm

matrim wrote: »

That would only work if you have your main alarm pointing to your HA. If you had to do 2 buttons it would be too easy to miss. You also have the fact that that is a home / away for everyone instead of just for one person.

Yes, this is why I'm looking forward to the alarm companies getting their act together and joining the HA party.

Personally I think it is advantage that it would be home/away for everyone, versus just one person. I would consider that the norm, after all, you don't want to be arming the alarm system, turning off lights and turning off the heating if someone is still home.

I can think of some uses of per person home/away, but I would consider that to be a feature on top of straight home/away. BTW alarm systems can have per user PIN codes and/or per user RFID tags which would allow you to do per user home/away.

matrim wrote: »

I mostly use the home / away for non-essential stuff. Currently, if someone connects to the camera and we are at home it plays a message as we only use the camera to check on the dog. I'm changing camera soon and with the new one I'm going to have it turn off when we are at home and on when we leave.

Sure, I'm only using it for non essential stuff too, but only because it isn't very reliable yet. Make it reliable and I'm sure most people will use it for essential things too.

BTW I've my Logitech Circle 2 camera set up on a smart plug so that we can power it on or off as we come and go or by voice.

matrim · 31-01-2018 3:15pm

bk wrote: »

Sure, I'm only using it for non essential stuff too, but only because it isn't very reliable yet. Make it reliable and I'm sure most people will use it for essential things too.

BTW I've my Logitech Circle 2 camera set up on a smart plug so that we can power it on or off as we come and go or by voice.

I went with a cheap enough TP-Link camera as I don't need recording / cloud and got a z-wave smart plug to control it.

I basically just needed something that I can connect to via the local LAN (with VPN for remote access). I'm still wary of having a camera that sends the video to the cloud.

Black_Knight · 31-01-2018 10:52pm

I use wifi as my home/away indicator. Also using owntracks to an mqtt server for GPS tracking too so that makes things a bit more stable. I only use location to turn on/off lights and the heating, and I leave a 20 minute delay from everyone leaving the house to the lights/heating turning off automatically.

Wifi gets me on the network quickly so the lights are on by the time I turn the key in the door. GPS keeps the lights on while im at the house. It's not failed me yet.

@bk, is your alarm panel at the door somehow hooked into HA?

bk · 01-02-2018 12:14pm

Black_Knight wrote: »

@bk, is your alarm panel at the door somehow hooked into HA?

At the moment no, I've got an old, completely non connected HKC system there at the moment. However that would be the goal eventually, to smarten it up.

Some folk have gotten some HA stuff working with traditional alarm systems from Comfort and Visionic, though it is all a bit hacky at the moment.

I do have a Xiaomi switch by the door, which I plan on hooking up to SmartThings, to trigger home/away routines. But that is separate to the alarm system.

Black_Knight · 01-02-2018 5:25pm

bk wrote: »

At the moment no, I've got an old, completely non connected HKC system there at the moment. However that would be the goal eventually, to smarten it up.

Some folk have gotten some HA stuff working with traditional alarm systems from Comfort and Visionic, though it is all a bit hacky at the moment.

I do have a Xiaomi switch by the door, which I plan on hooking up to SmartThings, to trigger home/away routines. But that is separate to the alarm system.

Switch at the door would be nice. We've a friend staying with us at the moment, and while I have her phone on the network so heating/lights turn on when she's home, I wake up/come home every day to switches turned off. A simple "on/off" switch at the door would be nice. ON = Set heating away mode to off & run some automation to turn on a light if needed. OFF = turn off all lights and set heating to away mode.

paulbok · 02-02-2018 1:38pm

Black_Knight wrote: »

I use wifi as my home/away indicator. Also using owntracks to an mqtt server for GPS tracking too so that makes things a bit more stable. I only use location to turn on/off lights and the heating, and I leave a 20 minute delay from everyone leaving the house to the lights/heating turning off automatically.

Wifi gets me on the network quickly so the lights are on by the time I turn the key in the door. GPS keeps the lights on while im at the house. It's not failed me yet.

@bk, is your alarm panel at the door somehow hooked into HA?

How good do you rate Owntracks for home/away? And for geo-fencing?
From what I've read up on it, it looks to be the best option to automate it.

Black_Knight · 02-02-2018 2:26pm

paulbok wrote: »

How good do you rate Owntracks for home/away? And for geo-fencing?
From what I've read up on it, it looks to be the best option to automate it.

Pretty good. Needs a kick on the phone every now and again, but looking at HA it shows I left the house at 8.16 and my wife at 8.17.

I remember having some teething problems to begin with, but i've had no complaints (or noticed anything wrong with it) this last few months.

paulbok · 07-02-2018 9:45pm

I had to bite the bullet and order another raspberry pi to run this. The power unit or a capacitor is shot, and won't stay powered up. the power led at best blinks intermittently instead of a solid green. Even got a replacement charger but to no avail.

randombar · 12-02-2018 12:12pm

Any recommendations for another smart plug that works with google, home assistant and doesn't require a hub? TP-Link not available on amazon and have a voucher.

Black_Knight · 12-02-2018 12:39pm

GaryCocs wrote: »

Any recommendations for another smart plug that works with google, home assistant and doesn't require a hub? TP-Link not available on amazon and have a voucher.

Which isn't available on Amazon?
HS100
https://www.amazon.co.uk/HS100-Assistant-Required-Anywhere-UK/dp/B01I3ZCBFK

HS110 (energy monitoring)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/HS110-Monitoring-Assistant-Required-UK/dp/B01IBUF48S

Both in stock

EDIT:
Oddly, the TS110 is showing as £37 but I can add to cart for £25

randombar · 12-02-2018 12:43pm

Black_Knight wrote: »

Which isn't available on Amazon?
HS100
https://www.amazon.co.uk/HS100-Assistant-Required-Anywhere-UK/dp/B01I3ZCBFK

HS110 (energy monitoring)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/HS110-Monitoring-Assistant-Required-UK/dp/B01IBUF48S

Both in stock

EDIT:
Oddly, the TS110 is showing as £37 but I can add to cart for £25

Oh FFS. Just pulled the trigger on harveys for 35.

The product was off the site for the last week, even raised a ticket about it.

THE ALM · 22-02-2018 5:09pm

Taken a bit of playing around with but starting the last couple of days to get floorplan set up on Home Assistant, a lot to do and figure out.

Metric Tensor · 22-02-2018 5:11pm

Absolutely love that The Alm!

It's on my long term plan but a bit down the road yet!

THE ALM · 22-02-2018 5:21pm

Thanks Metric Tensor, have a lot to learn with it yet but happy so far.

Black_Knight · 22-02-2018 5:23pm

THE ALM wrote: »

Thanks Metric Tensor, have a lot to learn with it yet but happy so far.

Much of a learning curve to getting it going?

I only came across floorplan the other day, so I've not yet even looked at the component. I've a tablet mounted on the wall in the kitchen so it'd be ideal.

Wossack · 22-02-2018 5:27pm

Its a snazzy add on

Im looking at the simplier 2D layout, as per screenshots in:

https://community.home-assistant.io/t/floorplan-for-home-assistant/17394

But that 3d one looks ace - well done

THE ALM · 22-02-2018 5:40pm

Black_Knight wrote: »

Much of a learning curve to getting it going?

I only came across floorplan the other day, so I've not yet even looked at the component. I've a tablet mounted on the wall in the kitchen so it'd be ideal.

Black_Knight, I just followed the instructions from here and set it up as a custom panel, just copied the default files supplied to make sure it worked ok, can be fussy with the type of browser that you are using and I found it didn't much like firefox.

Once I was happy that is was running ok then I started looking at doing my own floorplan. Was lucky that I found a copy of the original floorplan for the house online in the local county council offices website. Using that as a template I used a free program called Sweet Home 3D to draw the floorplan as a 3d image and then output this image which I then used as a base layer in another program called Inkscape. Used Inkscape then to create the SVG file with icons etc that is used in Home Assistant. Used the original floorplan.yaml file and tweaked the entities to match those that I have.

Looking at the tablet options also so just messing around to get everything set up.

randombar · 23-02-2018 3:37pm

Off topic from above but tp links plug in well, only problem is you have to put the ip's into the config. Would prefer the mac address.

paulbok · 28-02-2018 1:57pm

Did anyone using a pi 3 have problems getting a stable power supply with hassio?
When I switched from an older HA install on a pi 3 to a clean hassio install, the pi became unreliable. Power led blinked green and red, and couldn't get a stable connection to hassio from another laptop, and if I restarted hassio, the pi crashed completely.
I looked this up and everything pointed to the power lead not supplying enough power ( needs to be stable between 4.75v to 5.25v.
I was using the raspberry pi power lead, and swapped with several chargers I had at home but same happened. Got a new official pi lead and same happened.
Got a tester for the leads and both show 5.28v.
So, believing the pi was faulty, I ordered another but the same is happening.
Have just checked the boards with a multi meter, and each show just the minimum of 4.75v with no accessories or sd card installed (using p7 test point). Dropped to 4.71v and 4.72v with an SD card installed.
So chargers seem to be providing enough juice but losing half a volt just being plugged in.

Will redo the older install, install Linux and then HA on top of that and see if that still works.
Anyone with similar issues?
What leads/chargers are you using?

matrim · 28-02-2018 3:10pm

paulbok wrote: »

Did anyone using a pi 3 have problems getting a stable power supply with hassio?
When I switched from an older HA install on a pi 3 to a clean hassio install, the pi became unreliable. Power led blinked green and red, and couldn't get a stable connection to hassio from another laptop, and if I restarted hassio, the pi crashed completely.
I looked this up and everything pointed to the power lead not supplying enough power ( needs to be stable between 4.75v to 5.25v.
I was using the raspberry pi power lead, and swapped with several chargers I had at home but same happened. Got a new official pi lead and same happened.
Got a tester for the leads and both show 5.28v.
So, believing the pi was faulty, I ordered another but the same is happening.
Have just checked the boards with a multi meter, and each show just the minimum of 4.75v with no accessories or sd card installed (using p7 test point). Dropped to 4.71v and 4.72v with an SD card installed.
So chargers seem to be providing enough juice but losing half a volt just being plugged in.

Will redo the older install, install Linux and then HA on top of that and see if that still works.
Anyone with similar issues?
What leads/chargers are you using?

I had a problem that when I used both bluetooth and WiFi the board would drop off the network after about a day and needed a reboot to reconnect. I disabled bluetooth as a workaround

paulbok · 28-02-2018 3:18pm

Will try that, is that a config file edit or is there another way?

matrim · 28-02-2018 3:21pm

paulbok wrote: »

Will try that, is that a config file edit or is there another way?

In hassio you have to enable an addon to turn on bluetooth. Make sure that is disabled You should be able to find it from Hass.io > Addons > Bluetooth BCM43xx. Then make sure it is not installed or disabled

randombar · 01-03-2018 11:10pm

So far so good with the Aoetec Sensor. My advice would be to use it plugged in as you can only get 60 min reports from battery. Also restart the hassio a few times to get all the config installed and looking good.

randombar · 03-03-2018 11:52am

Anyone have a "turn on light if detect presence" sample script, would like to have the turn off part in it as well with a timeout etc.

Could come up with it but I want to go out and play in the snow

matrim · 03-03-2018 11:58am

It's not presence but here's a YAML automation that turns on 2 lights, waits 15 minutes and then turns them off.

The triggers for it are if a door opens. And it will only fire if the sun has set and the light isn't already on.

- action:
  - data:
      entity_id: light.back_downstairs_hallway
    service: light.turn_on
  - data:
      entity_id: light.hallway
    service: light.turn_on
  - delay: 00:15:00
  - data:
      entity_id: light.hallway
    service: light.turn_off
  - data:
      entity_id: light.back_downstairs_hallway
    service: light.turn_off
  alias: back door open
  condition:
  - condition: state
    entity_id: sun.sun
    state: below_horizon
  - condition: state
    entity_id: light.back_downstairs_hallway
    state: 'off'
  id: '1515966627063'
  trigger:
  - entity_id: binary_sensor.door_window_sensor_158d0001bf8645
    from: 'off'
    platform: state
    to: 'on'

Black_Knight · 03-03-2018 11:24pm

GaryCocs wrote: »

Anyone have a "turn on light if detect presence" sample script, would like to have the turn off part in it as well with a timeout etc.

Could come up with it but I want to go out and play in the snow

Not sure if this is the best way to go, but I had to write 2 automations. 1 to active when I get home, if its passed sunset. The other to active if sunset occurs and im at home.

- alias: Turn on lights when home if after sunset
    trigger:
      platform: state
      entity_id: group.all_devices
      to: 'home'
    condition:
      condition: state
      entity_id: sun.sun
      state: 'below_horizon'
    action:
      service: light.turn_on
      entity_id: light.downstairs_hall_lamp

  - alias: Turn on lights when sunset if someones home
    trigger:
      platform: state
      entity_id: sun.sun
      from: 'above_horizon'
      to: 'below_horizon'
    condition:
      - condition: state
        entity_id: group.all_devices
        state: 'home'
    action:
      service: light.turn_on
      entity_id: light.downstairs_hall_lamp

  - alias: Turn off lights when everyone leaves
    trigger:
      platform: state
      entity_id: group.all_devices
      to: 'not_home'
    action:
      - service: light.turn_off
        entity_id: group.all_lights
      - service: switch.turn_off
        entity_id: switch.attic_light

Black_Knight · 03-03-2018 11:28pm

I now have a philips hue sensor outside (sheltered) which gets my the lux units and I use this to define whether it's bright out or not (binary sensor). I use this now rather than the sun. I found that on cloudy days i'd want the lights on earlier than the sun was down.

FYI. I used the 'from'/'to' conditions in the trigger so the automation only fires once per day. Otherwise you'd end up in a scenario where you turn off the lights (bedtime or whatever) and the automation would turn them back on for you.

Home Assistant

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