I have been using home assistant for about 6 months now.
Currently I am mainly using it to show what is happening around the home (device detection, adsl data usage, weather from my simple weather station, house power usage etc, local train level crossing state (barrier down/up))
Very impressed with how easy it is to add new items to the overview.
I have one smart plug, the intention is to control the Christmas lights this year. I did do this about 15 years ago with my old x10 system and it would be nice to try something a bit more advanced.
Some crossings in the uk are directly available as a state within the data, mine is not so I have to track the trains into and out of a region. When the train enters the region, I assume the crossing must be down and when it leaves, I assume it must be up.
Its about 30 seconds to a minute off, but for my purpose that's OK.
Out of curiosity, what is your purpose? Do the crossings stay down long enough to cause backups sufficiently large that you alter your schedule to avoid them?
There's a level crossing a few miles from me that has automated barriers. The tricky bit is the crossing is right next to a station and there will be various rules in force:-
* barriers must be down at least X seconds before a train is due to go through
* barriers must be down even if the train is coming in to the station to stop (before it gets to the crossing) - the barriers must be down in case it overshoots
* etc
Whilst the barriers can go up as soon as a train has passed there may be another one along shortly enough that it's not worth opening the barriers only to close them a few seconds later.
Combine those with a timetable that puts 10+ trains an hour each direction and the barriers will probably be down for longer than they are up in peak times. I've seen them down for 10+ minutes at a time.
Here's the google streetview that just happens to have a train that has already passed and stopped at the station: https://goo.gl/maps/jhzApjZHUAJ4FcSt6
As a pedestrian (or a cyclist without lots of luggage) it's often faster to use the footbridge to cross rather than waiting for the train(s) to pass and the barriers to rise.
Wow. There's a similar intersection near me in the bay area, and it always struck me as an incredibly poor design. I'm sort of surprised to see that there's another such intersection in the world. Fortunately (?), I don't think CalTrain runs any more than every 15 minutes, so the gates are rarely down for more than a couple minutes at a time.
According to wiki they filed for bankrupcy in 2013. Their www.x10.com website is still going - flogging the same stuff as 20 years ago.
I still have a few boxes of x10 hardware that I spent a small fortune on back in the 90's. I like that signals went through mains (vs. radio signals) but the reliability is poor.
I looked into it a few years ago when the radio-based stuff was still fairly immature/expensive, and it seemed like it was super low bandwidth. Like, fine for on/off operations, but not really fast enough to do things like have a light track a dimmer.
I have my old flat in 2000(ish) fully linked. This. Included PIR sensors, door sensors, and lamps, lights. I also had. The heating fitted with an x10 switch. This meant that I could turn the heating on and my kettle on remotely on the way home from work.
X10 was nice that it could communicate through main, but when I started to use Ethernet over power, it stopped working. It also was one-way. There was no confirm or status from the switch devices.
The nice thing about x10 is that most of the commands were idempotent. As such, I would send every signal once a second for 10 seconds. Usually the light came in within 3-5 seconds but sometimes it would be 10 seconds.
This is not the interesting feature of this system by the way. That is microgeofencing, knowing per room where people are. Yes, you know where you are in the house. However, your "smart" home does not.
Integration with home assistant is on the roadmap. We need a few more people to want it.
Yes, it's a shameless plug. However, there aren't many open source hardware products on the market, so I think it contributes to the discussion.
Definitely! It's the only open source smart speaker I know. Here in Holland there's also the Homey, but they locked most of it. It's benefit is that you can run local connections. Even the Google Local SDK does not support BLE connections to local devices.
> Yes, you know where you are in the house. However, your "smart" home does not.
I solved this in home assistant by adding sensors to my doors inside the apartment.
For example if the living room doors are closed, and after that there's movement inside, the room is marked as "occupied". It works really well.
Same could be achieved with straight line movement sensors on the door frames, if you're someone who keeps the doors open all the time.
And speaking of open source, my whole smart home setup (from sensors, lights, heating, etc) works offline and using open source software and protocols even if hardware isn't open source itself. Which I found to be a good tradeoff.
Yeah, then you've more data. It will work better because even if it doesn't see movements you know the door hasn't opened so the person has to be in there still.
I think you will run into trouble if there are more people in your household though. But it's a smart idea!
Most of them check to see if you're connected to the wifi, while some of them rely on your smartphone to report your GPS coordinates. I personally use nmap to look for my phone on my wifi network.
Assuming you’re a manufacturer, it would be really amazing if you were to adopt a system like this. Instead everyone currently tries to get you locked in the their own proprietary crappy system that’s going to be shut down in two years because everyone is smart enough to see through the scheme and doesn’t buy into it.
I looked at using hassOS as a base for my rpi project but I struggled with how exactly to do that. Looking at the readmes in that repo it doesn't look like anything has changed on the documentation front.
If I want something simple that either passes power through or triggers a switch in response to a configurable/trainable voice command that isn’t net connected, what’s my best bet?
I run it on a pi, but it is definitely not ready for primetime yet unless you want to write your own add-ons. But if you just need it to do one or two things it's pretty great at voice/intent recognition.
I thought it provides simple alternative (as asked) with voice commands. But when reading the details the voice processing is not offline (as asked).
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Note that in the 0.8 gateway release, browser-based voice commands are processed using Google’s voice assistant API, so the audio strings are processed in the cloud. The speech-to-text result is passed back to your gateway. If you instead type a command into the text field of the smart assistant screen, those commands are processed locally and do not require a connection to the Internet.
I absolutely love HA. Using Z-Wave mesh network to control most things, especially lighting and fans. From automating your smart TV, alarm and CCTV, HVAC, garden watering, etc.. It's pretty limitless and there seems to be an integration for everything.
You can get really smart about things by tying actions to complex combinations of states. I now often 'forget' to hit the light switch when entering rooms in other homes.
If it is done with solenoids they can only let water through when there is power applied and the spring should return the stopper whenever there isn't any power.
Yes so it's a Z-Wave valve which has been connected to a split off of the cold water line to my kitchen sink. Typically this valve could be used to control your mains but I'm just using it to feed some drip lines. Basically one small garden and then a few runs to individual planters with an adjustable dripper on the end.
I have automations to limit watering if it has rained recently, and also to increase watering if the day has been extremely hot. Still looking to make it even smarter but this has already been a great improvement.
Depending on what you want to do, maybe you don't need to overcome it. I'm a fan of these, which are "automated", but require no electricity: https://www.blumat.com/classic/uber-classic
I think there's a way to hook the latter up to mains water if you have a big install.
Basically, the soil moisture determines the watering rate via diffusion through a clay cone.
I was getting all ready to rig up some custom raspi sensor based watering thing when I found this and realized that my way would have been waayyyy more maintenance headache, more expensive, and probably not work as well.
I've really enjoyed using node-red together with Home Assistant. Home Assistant manages the connections to devices and allows me to set up a nice UI, while node-red allows me to do more complex automation logic.
node-red is available as a hass.io add-on [1], with the Home Assistant node-red plugin pre-installed
Back in June an animal chewed through the fiber line to my house. It took AT&T three trips and five days to fix it.
In those five days I became acutely aware of how internet dependent my home automation is. I vowed to no longer invest in home automation that requires non-local access.
There is a setting in Plex that will allow it to work without authentication for any devices connecting from a defined subnet. So I just set this to my home network's setup and can use it without issue whether I have an Internet connection or not.
I confirmed this when I tested my Plex server on a Raspberry Pi out in a cabin in the middle of nowhere and it streamed fine without an Internet connection.
Not sure quite what you mean unless you weren't already signed in or something. When my internet goes out my plex server works perfectly fine. My TV is already signed into my account though.
I thought it did work with local media, no? Did it used to?
AirPlay seems like a good local alternative, but I’m hesitant to fully invest in it because it would lock me into Apple products and I fully hate to be locked in, despite having an iPhone at the moment.
I need to do more research on that. The people behind Emby seem to understand and are trying to minimize the blow-out by making 'as many features in stand alone open source modules as possible'.
Jellyfin is an open source fork of Emby. I've been trying it out after the Plex mobile app "forgot" I paid for it, and will be migrating over soon. I haven't used Emby so I can't speak to the differences, but it seems to work very well. In some ways it's even better than Plex- turning on subtitles doesn't seem to hit performance as hard
I just checked, and Plex happily played my local media with my internet connection powered down. I'm using Plex 1.16.5.1554 running in a jail via the FreeNAS plugin and playing from a Roku Stick+.
Only hiccup was the Roku client took unusually long to bring up my list of local content; I could imagine it timing out on DNS connections.
I've never connected it to the Plex servers ("associated it with my Plex account"), perhaps thats the difference?
Oh that's cool. This happened to me a few years ago, we'd moved house in December and had no internet all Christmas/new year due to all the contractors being on holiday. I was emotionally scarred enough to still remember it today!
Maybe that behaviour's fixed now, or maybe I just hadn't found the setting mentioned in the comments below.
To answer your question, yes it appeared to be attempting to authenticate with their servers, even though my Plex server was local
As others have said this is incorrect. I live in a bus and sometimes stay in places with a bad phone signal / slow internet connection. I download Youtube videos to my local file server and watch them via Roku and Plex in these cases. It works fine offline. Roku warns you before launching the Plex app but it works fine.
I found Home Assistant after being burned when Google bought Revolv. I spent $299 on a device that google literally bricked when they acquired the firm and had no recourse. It started out just controlling my Sonos speakers but now controls a whole Zwave mesh I've been slowly building throughout the house.
The only real downside of Home Assistant is just how active the community really is. Each upgrade is a huge avalanche of changes and they're occasionally (but documented) breaking. Do yourself a favor and use Hass.IO (https://www.home-assistant.io/hassio/ ) to manage Home Assistant upgrades and backups. It is really nice.
Edit: changed "dearth" to "avalanche" thanks to braindeath for the cluebat.
I mean use it as a gateway. Then the rest of your house is covered by the same WiFi, but you have a metric set so that if the normal internet works all your devices use that, but when it goes down they all use the phone.
I have been at pains to tell managing agent that a "upgrading" our security gates to use GSM as trigger to open is not an upgrade from the standard remote. We are just introducing a whole lot more failure points.
I love home assistant, but find the automation subsystem to be lacking in both ease of configuration and features.
I found a happy middle ground by installing Node-RED [0] on the same machine and linking it to home assistant via the home assistant websocket plugin [1].
It allows me to create visual workflows for automations, which I find much better to use than raw yaml files.
I hadn't seen that before, but I don't think it addresses my biggest problem with HA automations: it's not a GUI.
When I'm developing my automations I often need to do a lot of testing and debugging when things don't work as expected.
I find that Node-RED allows me to do this extremely easily as I can click on nodes and see what values are being passed around, and what state things are in.
AppDaemon would be great for that, as the callback methods it requires for listening to state changes or scheduled timer can be independently unit tested and debugged.
Automation is an area of pretty active development. While visual workflows aren't a thing in HA, you definitely don't need to write yaml in order to create automations. The UI has supported it for quite some time (and is quite usable, in my opinion).
There's some NLP involved since the latest version got released (0.102), so you can just type some simple automation like "turn off lights when I leave home".
Powered by Stanford's Almond, which you can install yourself, as an Hassio addon, or use the cloud version: https://almond.stanford.edu/
I used OpenHab2 in the past. But its quite heavy, and bulky. However it works well... What i did notice is z-wave commands where slow on the raspberry pi..
I moved to Home Assistent and i'm not moving back. I did like the more plugin-like architecture & technical design of openhab better... But that makes it bulky. Openhab feels more mature, but also has a lot more legacy... HA is just movign faster...
The purpose of Home Assistant is to first observe all data flowing through your house, by connecting all existing sensors, switches, gateways and anything else that has a digital pulse.
The second step is control, having centralized access through a web or mobile app to all moving parts of a home.
However, the power of HA comes from the third step: automation. The best interface is the one you can forget exists.
I've been running HA for over two years. Aside from being lazy about upgrading to newer versions and adjusting to breaking changes, it's been working great and has spoiled me and my wife. We now expect every house we visit to automatically unlock before we reach the door, for the lights to turn on (and gradually off) automatically as we move through rooms, and for our phones to notify us when the best time to open a window would be, to naturally cool during the summer. It's great to have cold light during the day and warm, lower level light as the evening progresses.
Together with the Python environment provided by appdaemon, there's almost no limits to what you can do, provided you instrument your house with sensors and switches as best as you can.
Motion sensor on patio. When it detects motion, check if your phone joined the network in the last minute and that a few minutes ago you were not in the gps area of your house. Send command to unlock the lock. Send a push notification that it unlocked so you know if it triggered on accident (incredibly unlikely when using motion + gps + wifi).
The motion sensor isn't strictly necessary, you can use the phone joining the network as a trigger. It's just an extra filter to ensure there are no accidental unlocks. It will also prevent unlocks if you come home, park, and then leave without attempting to enter.
That's how I would do it, all easily doable in home assistant.
Id want another authentication level like fingerprint in the action so if I drop my phone its not still a key. I like the general plan, but two levels of identification if possible.
More secure than keys—you can't remote-wipe keys. (And, presuming the network requires a password, remote-wiping the phone would make it not join the network any more.)
kevinsundar below is entirely correct, that's how I have mine set up as well. However, instead of network detection, there are multiple GPS-based device tracker methods for proximity.
I just wanted to saythat I totally agree with part:
> However, the power of HA comes from the third step: automation. The best interface is the one you can forget exists.
I have the interface just for my carers and PAs et cetera, almost all of my interactions with the house are done via voice or other scripts triggered by various things. I would post a picture of my dashboard but it is horrendously messy contain hundreds things!
I use a Z-Wave 6-in-1 multisensor from Aeotec in each room, strategically placed in the corners so as to cover only motion in a single room. That takes care of motion sensing, temperature, humidity and luminosity (not used for automation, purely informative). The other two are UV and vibration sensors that are not as useful.
Setting a short motion detector rearm time lets me start a decay timer for the light that just turned on. If no motion is detected again, it starts lowering the intensity gradually over 10 minutes and finally turning the light off. I added a button in HA to override this and keep the light on when needed.
I use Aeotec Z-Wave Multisensors permanently connected to USB power (they can also run on battery). However, any PIR motion sensor would work, such as the cheap models from Xiaomi (but there's the extra cost of battery changes).
A Hall sensor on each window (aka open/close sensor), plus temperature sensors in each room and one placed outside.
When the window is closed, but the outside temperature is lower that inside, it sends a notification to open the window. The opposite happens when the outside temperature exceeds the one inside, unless the window is already closed.
This is all written in Python via appdaemon since it's easier than defining the same automation via the UI (although that's also doable nowadays).
I ditched HA automation as it is very limited if you want something more fancy (or less lines to type). I moved teh AppDaemon (https://appdaemon.readthedocs.io/en/latest/) and use HA mostly for managing teh decvices and keepipng state (and MQTT for messaging).
If someone can program basic Pythin it is really, really worthwile to try it out.
When I built the house I decided that I was looking for a Home Automation system that was going to be:
a) Open source, or open standards
b) Everything can be done entirely locally
I settled with using the KNX system for the primary actuators for the house, with Home Assistant for automation and control.
One nice property of KNX is that it's distributed, you don't need any central manager for the system to work, so if you press a light switch, then that sends a packet on the KNX network directly to the light actuator. Then there is an IP/KNX bridge to allow you to interact with the KNX network to hack on it.
All the "light" automation in the house is all done using KNX programming. For example, walk into hall, light turns on. You don't need a central authority for that. The motion sensor just talks to the light directly.
For anything more complex, Home Assistant get's involved for all the more "global" automation via the IP/KNX bridge.
And of course you can control everything through it's app. I love how fast and responsive it is since it's local. It's maybe 100ms at most from clicking the button in the app to the light being on.
The main thing I can't do without the cloud is voice control. I'm using Google Homes for it which Home Assistant exposes all my devices to. Local voice control systems really suck compared to Google unfortunately.
Another thing I'm happy I did is just put sensors for everything everywhere through the house. Here is a screenshot of most of them.
I actually have more data then this that I haven't bothered to hook up yet since it hasn't been important. Like the motion sensors also provide light levels and so on.
Overall, I would definately recommend Home Assistant.
I'm curious, what kind of motion sensors are you using? I looked into hooking more of them in my home, but I could not figure out an affordable way of doing that.
> Local voice control systems really suck compared to Google unfortunately.
> The main thing I can't do without the cloud is voice control. I'm using Google Homes for it which Home Assistant exposes all my devices to. Local voice control systems really suck compared to Google unfortunately.
have you looked at picovoice? been pretty impressed by their wake word (Porcupine) and STT (Cheetah) on phones/pi's etc. seems like this could be integrated as a local STT provider with ada.
I have over 500 sensors integrated into my home and when all done will have over 1k. I find the biggest problem when you get big is that home assistant has no way to deal with back pressure of updating networked sensors. Once you have issues with say 5-6 sensors it starts cascading.. you hit 10 which could be just ecobee sensors or homekit it can bring down homeassistant.
Every room has a minimum of 7+ sensors (motion, occupancy, light sensor, nightlight, sound, mic, temp, humidity, smoke & carbon (and all related nest sensors like battery, last check, status..., path lighting (not included)). Then light switches are all smart + have occupancy + dimmer level etc... It adds up quick...
I have some crazy node red sub flows where I use state machines to turn on based on conditions and I can do whole home announcements as well as level audio and use it for custom security solution. I have smart bulbs too in some rooms and everything is 100% local with no external dependencies (if voice assistant stops working it doesn't affect anything and I'm going to probably move everything to almond). I built everything around sub flows and I made it easier to debug by adding friendly toggles that actually let me do some crazy accessibility stuff like announce motion or lights turning on etc.. If you were blind you'd know exactly where you were at.
I'm also doing local facial recognition (lots more todo) and I'm starting to integrate those into custom automations based on whose in the room (wife or me). It also greets us when we get home. It's been my dream since I was a little kid to have a smart home, and by smart I mean work for me and be quality of life improvement while being dumb for everyone (progressive enhancement). Home should alert you to dangerous weather or do the proper thing if a fire happens (open windows/ doors, turn on path lighting, announce what direction to go to the exit, etc).
If you’d be willing to open github issues for home assistant with your problems I guarantee you the dev team would want to know about and fix them. I’ve met Paulus in real life and he deeply cares about the community.
I've been eyeballing this problem space for a while now and came to the exact same conclusions as you did, KNX for everything "important" + Home Assistant for nice to haves.
Just waiting for the build a house/completely renovate an apartment to put it to practice.
Can you give some more information about the sensors you use, especially for CO2/VOC measurements?
I'm in the process of building a house and am thinking of going the KNX route. I'd prefer critical things to be hardwired rather than rely on wireless, just because it's more reliable.
I'm interested to know if you installed everything yourself or had a contractor do it? My understanding is it is expensive to get someone to do the work (as usually it's hotels or offices having this done), but the actual hardware doesn't cost much more than the z-wave equivalent.
Oh and your Room of Requirement definately needs more explanation :-)
I had a contractor and he did all the electrics as well. This meant that the cost for labour wasn’t really much more than getting all the “dumb” electrics done.
Ultimately wiring for KNX doesn’t take a lot more than just running a single extra wire through large sections of rooms since it’s a bus based system.
We worked on an hourly rate + cost of materials, rather than a fixed contract.
All the other home automation people I talked to didn’t really “get it”. This guy opened up to me about the importance of open standards from the first time I talked him and was happy at the concept of me programming the KNX devices myself, so I knew as soon as I met him that he was the right guy for the job.
I worked really closely with him (a daily catchup every day) in order to make sure everything was perfect.
I was really happy with the process, but it relied on getting a guy I could work really well with.
In Germany, there are lots of people who plan and program the KNX system themselves. The actual wiring is carried out by a professional but the commissioning etc can be done by anybody. KNX requires a specific software (ETS).
As KNX is a global standard this procedure becomes more and more implemented. We have published an ebook about how to get started with KNX, ETS 5 and ETS Inside (cheaper version of it) and share best practices.
Kind of off-topic but has any work been done on possibly extracting and re-using the voice ML model Pixel phones download (for things like live caption[0] and audio recorder[1])? I imagine there would be some legal issues but personal use probably would be fine.
which local voice assistants have you tried? is Snips one of them? I'm thinking of setting that up for my next raspberry pi project but I havnt really done a whole lot of research on it either so maybe it's a waste of time
The text in that image on Imgur is barely readable due high compression. Please consider hosting the image on your site next time or someplace where they don't compress that much.
Yes, on mobile. Now it's ok, it seems to be a direct link now. Previously it was terrible, really barely readable, in a thumbnail mode like this https://imgur.com/a/oKm3fP1 which presented this https://i.imgur.com/BOB10kkg.png . Never mind...
Hi there,
are you based in US? KNX is not fully certified in US, right?
I spent fair amount of time trying to find good switch actuator that is US gang compatible. But did n't find anything good.
Also this says nkx is not certified in us: https://www.cepro.com/news/will_european_knx_home_automation...
Functions so far: circuit breakers for mains, water valves, district heating PID control, intercom metering, door lock/sensor, curtain bobbin servomotor, thermometer, aircon control, smoke/co detector, lighting and rgb mood light. AV control is being worked on
I'd be interested to know how they handle remote controlling the HA instances. I spent a little bit of time trying to come up with a prototype hub running Home Assistant but kept coming back to the deployment and remote control problem - for instance the REST HTTP API would allow me to send commands in but then I'd need to do something like MQTT to get an event stream from the device. It ended up being too complicated for me to implement.
Big problem is wiring, I think the biggest problem.
Retrofit cost n times the cost of electronics.
And in new building, wiring labour still makes the most expense because electrical and smart home wiring topologies don't match exactly. You either have to do a lot of wiring, or a lot of wall cutting.
You can then go to each integration and on the right if it says "IoT Class: Local Push" you can be fairly certain it can be locally controlled without the cloud and that it reports state without the cloud. In this scenario, it'd be DoorBird. You can be fairly certain you can block internet access at your router for this device and it'll work just fine. Don't quote me on that for Doorbird though.
This can be a good first place to look, but don't rely on it.
Many integrations have their local access via reverse engineered APIs, and they often go away when they get popular enough.
I wrote the Samsung Family Hub smart fridge integration for home assistant and one day Samsung removed the local access in a fridge update and now there is no way to access it without their android or iOS app.
Ah yes I agree, I've had the most luck with the above method if I block network connectivity to prevent automatic updates. But thats not always possible / you have to give up many other features potentially.
I greatly prefer Mozilla’s solution. Home Assistant seemed to have some critical issues when I used it for my two switches and one light bulb. Even turning them on and off on a schedule was dubious. It would forget a device or two and leave it as-is indefinitely. I found it odd that Home Assistant would not alert me to a lost device. Not only does WebThings work for me but it also has a UI that has some thought put into it instead of just spitting its API into a Material interface. It is much easier to use on a small mobile device because of its intentional responsiveness. Maybe it just did not play well with my devices but Home Assistant felt like an MVP that was not up to the task of dependability.
When did you last try home assistant? It improves very rapidly and the new “Lovelace” interface is insanely customizable along with being excellent on mobile.
If you're interested in a similar solution (albeit closed sourced and managed) that works in a non-cloud, fully off-line (re: internet) environment. Take a look at http://www.hubitat.com. It supports zigbee, zwave and wifi devices and has strong compatibility with the smartthings ecosystem.
Just wanted to say that my life as a quadriplegic would be 13.4 million percent more crap without Home Assistant. Being quadriplegic and having something as open as Home Assistant is absolutely amazing, I have automated absolutely everything in the house and home assistant has not choked once.
Couple that with one of the friendliest communities for newbies I have come across in a long time and you have something really awesome.
I've been using it for a couple of years, I have tried all the other open source alternatives but nothing really comes close for me. I'm actually fiddling with my installation right now as it were.
I cannot plug my phone in to charge it up myself obviously, so I am writing a little automation that will check who is in the house and announce through the speakers my phone needs charging up or send them a text message if I have their phone number when my mobile phone charge gets below 20%.
Totally cool beanz and I am totally serious about how much easier this makes my life as a quadriplegic.
I thought somebody might ask, so I am just sanitising my config files and then they will be available on my Github[1] hopefully in about an hour. Was there any particular automation you were interested in?
No problem, in about an hour things will start appearing And I will include usefulness et cetera.
The most commonly used automation by a very long way are the lights, because I use voice operated computer people were continually coming into my asking if I was okay because they could hear me talking. This obviously was crazy makin.
So now they ignore all talking unless they see:
All of the lights pulse on and off in a blue colour, which means can you please give me a hand when you have a minute I would like a drink or something similar and it is not urgent.
Or
All of the lights pulse on and off in a red colour, which means drop and come running as I am having and episode of autononmic dysreflexia, my hair is on fire or something equally problematic. It is a very much urgent.
after that I would say that these three are the most used, I'm sure there is a way of pulling that information out of the database but I'm not sure how. If someone from home Assistant Team would like to tell me, that would be great!
* Battery Level on iPhone is below 20%, get someone to plug it in
* Notification asking that the basement be closed when it starts raining, or if someone opens the window when rain is predicted to please close it
* Logging whenever the medication draw is opened and closed and keeping a running tally (this one is super important)
Thanks for your comment. I came to this discussion with my blinkers on, so to speak, pre -judging how I need less automation in my world, and you give concrete evidence how someone's "meh" can be balanced by untold advantages (13.4 million, in fact) of such a system.
Thanks for making me eat humble pie and broadening my views. Sometimes more tech is helpful indeed.
Ps: The way you're applying it is creative and awesome too!
No need to eat humble pie at all! it has been my experience thatEngineers And other reprobates like the ones that haunt can use don't know anything about this stuff, but the second it is brought to their attention I pretty uniformly had positive responses along the lines of "hmm, that is an interesting engineering question" and away we go. :-)
It is one of the wonderful things about this place, who gives a crap about the emotion being quadriplegic (I certainly don't) let's just solve the logistical problems! And as far as I'm concerned all of the problems that disability has introduced into my life have solutions that revolve around logistics, which project/process/company/widget do I need to buy/invent/collaborate on to make this thing work. It's great.
I cannot plug my phone in to charge it up myself obviously
Do you mind if I ask how much precision your conveyance of choice has? I've built docking stations for small mobile robots by mounting qi receiver pads [1] on the robot and compatible phone chargers [2] on walls where the robot can drive up to them to recharge. If you have enough precision you might be able to do the same thing, mount a pair of pads somewhere, run a cable from the pad to your phone, and dock them together to recharge.
Hmm. Not sure what to do if you don't have enough precision to dock a pair of charge pads like that. Maybe... put the one on the wall on a horizontal rail at the correct height and add a motor to run it back and forth until it starts charging? Maybe mount it on a small robot arm?
Can you clarify what you mean by "conveyance of choice has" please?
Apple has a very very awesome accessibility software, it is seriously the best of the world and I have tried all in the decade since I became a full-time wheelchair driver. I use a chin controller to drive my chair, and I also use the chin controller to access Apple's Switch Control[1] using the Tecla Bluetooth bridge. As soon as funds permit I will be updating to the new Tecla as it is an amazing device, it really is the missing link.
This means that anything you can do on an iPhone I can do the same, it is not some subset of commands like most other mobile platforms. Once a new phone or any of the other Apple offerings is taken out of the box, I can get my designated hands to turn on the accessibility software and from then on I can do it all myself. There is literally no the company where this is true. As far as I know.
If I understand you correctly, it might be cool when my iPhone is connected to my wheelchair to be able to drive up to something while I am working and have it charge. It would have to be pretty robust as I will drive into it at some point!
Ah, sorry, I didn't know what kind of wheelchair or control scheme you were using so I didn't know whether you'd be able to align yourself precisely enough to get the thing to charge.
> If I understand you correctly, it might be cool when my iPhone is connected to my wheelchair to be able to drive up to something while I am working and have it charge. It would have to be pretty robust as I will drive into it at some point!
I think that that's doable, yes! Above, I linked the amazon page for a receiver pad that's designed to be mounted to cell phones to let them use wireless charging even if they don't have it built-in. If you mount one to your wheelchair somewhere and connect it to your phone, you should be able to mount a matching phone charger pad on your desk or the wall so you can drive up to it and your phone will charge as if you'd placed it on the pad. It might be a bit slow - it'll probably only charge at 5W, which looks like it'd take about 4 hours to fully charge an iPhone while it's in use - but it should work.
The hardware itself is pretty durable. The receivers are designed to be mounted underneath phone cases, so you can do the same thing to the one you mount on your wheelchair. The pads are designed to have phones tossed at them every afternoon for several years; I've never had one get even close to breaking. If it does have trouble, the wireless charging tech is designed to be able to run through cell phones' shells and cases and you can build version two with a polycarbonate cover that'd survive a charging battlebot.
You probably could. I personally wouldn't attempt it because I mostly do software and wouldn't want to risk draining it dry overnight or voiding the warranty or something, but if it's a just a car battery it shouldn't be hard for someone with more EE knowledge.
Another option might just be to mount an entirely sperate power system just for the phone and any other devices. Buy a huge USB power bank off Amazon and mount it to the carriage or something, might not even need duct tape.
That was my first thought too. If there's a 12v battery on the chair, a car USB adapter could power the qi pad. Then the issue is how to move phone to pad and move it off the pad for use. There would be virtually no chance of running down the wheelchair battery with this setup; the motors use much more energy than a USB charger.
Aeotec and Fibaro Tend to be my go to companies when I want to buy some sort of sensor, anything from door and window sensors to motion sensors. Overall they have been the most solid and well performing in my experience.
It (or something in my stack) has choked for me a few times. The power went out at my house for an hour last week. and my kitchen lights somehow dropped off my network? I had to reconnect my lights to my network, and then i had to completely remove TPLink from my server, reboot the server, and then connect TPLink back to be able to control my lights.
Barring an extended power outage though, I would agree, it is pretty amazing.
Was looking at going with OpenHAB for a bit, but something about home assistant ease of use really got me.
I'm automating my house because I nearly ended up being quadriplegic[1] and I want to be prepared next time if I loose my mobility.
I'm largely doing it with 433Mhz hardware, Raspberry Pi and python scripts. I didn't use Home Assistant because I presumed large project might be overhead and inhibit my choice of hardware; your comment has made me to rethink my strategy.
Raspi is definitely a good starting place for Home Assistant (the Hassio distro makes Home assistant particularly easy to pick up). If / when you grow out of it, an older laptop or desktop would probably be more than enough for you. I’m a big fan of Home Assistant!
And how do you interface to it? Do you send what you caught to MQTT?
I am considering having something else as the RF receiver but would need to forward what it received to MQTT (I can write that part myself - it is really the interface to the dongle I would like to understand)
A Pi is fine, but don't rely on the SD card for storage. Home Assistant is very write-heavy (since it logs state changes, etc), and will kill an SD card pretty quickly. You're better off using the SD card as a read-only boot device and then use an external drive for the actual system.
Thanks, that's important information. What kind of Pi should I use? Got a Pi 1 laying around which could be nicely powered by my router, but I doubt that will be enough...
I connected a 1TB SATA SSD to one of my RPI machines with the Element 14 "PI DESKTOP - HAT AND ENCL". ($50) It's a nice RPI case with some extras.
See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gh7AFRIdGi8
Can anyone comment on pros and cons of running it virtualized on a Linux host? I have capable hardware and would like to run it on that rather than on a separate Pi device.
I recently installed hassio in docker on a VM on a fitlet2 (also running asterisk and pi-hole on the same machine each in a separate VM).
So far no problems controlling a TV and some z-wave light switches.
I use the official HA docker version (not Hassio). It exactly replicates a manual installation of HA.
Works great, I use it in network host mode because I did it by mistake initially and suddenly discovered a few devices which joined via broadcast (my Logitech Hub especially).
I spun this OS up as a VM and it does not detect my Wemo smart plugs. However, I'm also not able to detect them from my current phone (running v1.24, I believe, of the app). However, my former phone, which is still running v1.23.1 of the app, _is_ able to see them and connect to them.
I've switched a lot of my existing light automation over to esphome [0]. I flashed it on various cheap LED Wifi bulbs that have been 'liberated' via tuya convert [1]
After going through zigbee and zwave, I feel like I finally arrived at a solution that allows me plenty of reasonably priced selection and extreme customization (e.g. just using the warm/cold white LEDs on a RGB+white bulb).
Great experience so far and completely automated integration within homeassistant.
I hope that the esphome-configs project [2] will grow over the next little while and provide more and more copy+paste configurations for various hardware.
I found that home assistant does not appear to have native integration with Google home the last time I looked? I ended up using openhab which has native Google and Alexa integration, although I am not a fan of openhab as it feels ludicrously over-complicated for even the simplest of things.
My lesson learnt after several years going through smartthings, home-brew stuff with raspberry pis, home assistant, demoticz, and openhab using ZigBee or zwave is to make sure your core infrastructure (i.e. things you want to control) is MQTT-based running over wi-fi/ethernet and all your plugs/lights/etc are independently controllable via sending raw MQTT commands on your home network.
If you need to rely on a working internet connection, or too many third party things (e.g. IFTTT) you are going to have a bad time when things inevitably break/change/have an outage/become inexplicably slow/get shutdown etc. Once you standardise on MQTT you can switch out HA/OpenHab/others with minimal fuss, and you have great controll and backup options. WiFi just seems rock-solid Vs ZigBee or z-wave that just seemed so troublesome and unreliable.
Tasmota (1) + mosquito running on a RPi has finally given me a reliable set up after years of struggling. It is some rock-solid MQTT compatible firmware for ESP8266 devices.
As a disabled person, I couldn’t even begin to describe how much of a tangible improvement HA has had in my life. Being able to turn all the lights off from my bed before I go to sleep, or have the heater in the kids room turn on automatically if temps drop, etc etc, has quite literally saved me immeasurable amounts of physical pain.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 208 ms ] threadCurrently I am mainly using it to show what is happening around the home (device detection, adsl data usage, weather from my simple weather station, house power usage etc, local train level crossing state (barrier down/up))
Very impressed with how easy it is to add new items to the overview.
I have one smart plug, the intention is to control the Christmas lights this year. I did do this about 15 years ago with my old x10 system and it would be nice to try something a bit more advanced.
https://wiki.openraildata.com//index.php?title=Main_Page
Some crossings in the uk are directly available as a state within the data, mine is not so I have to track the trains into and out of a region. When the train enters the region, I assume the crossing must be down and when it leaves, I assume it must be up.
Its about 30 seconds to a minute off, but for my purpose that's OK.
There's a level crossing a few miles from me that has automated barriers. The tricky bit is the crossing is right next to a station and there will be various rules in force:-
* barriers must be down at least X seconds before a train is due to go through
* barriers must be down even if the train is coming in to the station to stop (before it gets to the crossing) - the barriers must be down in case it overshoots
* etc
Whilst the barriers can go up as soon as a train has passed there may be another one along shortly enough that it's not worth opening the barriers only to close them a few seconds later.
Combine those with a timetable that puts 10+ trains an hour each direction and the barriers will probably be down for longer than they are up in peak times. I've seen them down for 10+ minutes at a time.
Here's the google streetview that just happens to have a train that has already passed and stopped at the station: https://goo.gl/maps/jhzApjZHUAJ4FcSt6
As a pedestrian (or a cyclist without lots of luggage) it's often faster to use the footbridge to cross rather than waiting for the train(s) to pass and the barriers to rise.
I work in the traffic industry.
If we can slow people down before they reach the queue, then we can reduce the impact of them joining the queue (co2 etc....).
According to wiki they filed for bankrupcy in 2013. Their www.x10.com website is still going - flogging the same stuff as 20 years ago.
I still have a few boxes of x10 hardware that I spent a small fortune on back in the 90's. I like that signals went through mains (vs. radio signals) but the reliability is poor.
X10 was nice that it could communicate through main, but when I started to use Ethernet over power, it stopped working. It also was one-way. There was no confirm or status from the switch devices.
https://twitter.com/annevanrossum/status/1200478825458622464...
This is not the interesting feature of this system by the way. That is microgeofencing, knowing per room where people are. Yes, you know where you are in the house. However, your "smart" home does not.
Integration with home assistant is on the roadmap. We need a few more people to want it.
Yes, it's a shameless plug. However, there aren't many open source hardware products on the market, so I think it contributes to the discussion.
I solved this in home assistant by adding sensors to my doors inside the apartment.
For example if the living room doors are closed, and after that there's movement inside, the room is marked as "occupied". It works really well.
Same could be achieved with straight line movement sensors on the door frames, if you're someone who keeps the doors open all the time.
And speaking of open source, my whole smart home setup (from sensors, lights, heating, etc) works offline and using open source software and protocols even if hardware isn't open source itself. Which I found to be a good tradeoff.
I think you will run into trouble if there are more people in your household though. But it's a smart idea!
Plenty of options for presence detection: https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/#presence-detecti...
Most of them check to see if you're connected to the wifi, while some of them rely on your smartphone to report your GPS coordinates. I personally use nmap to look for my phone on my wifi network.
It's the kind of tooling that is a lot of work even though it might not seem like it at first sight.
* https://www.home-assistant.io/hassio/
* https://github.com/home-assistant/hassos
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Note that in the 0.8 gateway release, browser-based voice commands are processed using Google’s voice assistant API, so the audio strings are processed in the cloud. The speech-to-text result is passed back to your gateway. If you instead type a command into the text field of the smart assistant screen, those commands are processed locally and do not require a connection to the Internet.
https://iot.mozilla.org/docs/gateway-user-guide.html
EDIT: But hopefully they will move to something like offline Common Voice in some future release.
You can get really smart about things by tying actions to complex combinations of states. I now often 'forget' to hit the light switch when entering rooms in other homes.
I have automations to limit watering if it has rained recently, and also to increase watering if the day has been extremely hot. Still looking to make it even smarter but this has already been a great improvement.
I haven't tried these, but they might be more suitable for an outdoor garden, and I've heard good things: https://www.blumat.com/tropf/das-tropf-blumat-system/vorteil...
I think there's a way to hook the latter up to mains water if you have a big install.
Basically, the soil moisture determines the watering rate via diffusion through a clay cone.
I was getting all ready to rig up some custom raspi sensor based watering thing when I found this and realized that my way would have been waayyyy more maintenance headache, more expensive, and probably not work as well.
node-red is available as a hass.io add-on [1], with the Home Assistant node-red plugin pre-installed
[1]: https://github.com/hassio-addons/addon-node-red
First seal to see Then seal to control
Home assistant is the "see" bit. Then you use it (or something else) to control the process
In those five days I became acutely aware of how internet dependent my home automation is. I vowed to no longer invest in home automation that requires non-local access.
This will definitely help accelerate the process.
I confirmed this when I tested my Plex server on a Raspberry Pi out in a cabin in the middle of nowhere and it streamed fine without an Internet connection.
Local Auth only.
AirPlay seems like a good local alternative, but I’m hesitant to fully invest in it because it would lock me into Apple products and I fully hate to be locked in, despite having an iPhone at the moment.
Only hiccup was the Roku client took unusually long to bring up my list of local content; I could imagine it timing out on DNS connections.
I've never connected it to the Plex servers ("associated it with my Plex account"), perhaps thats the difference?
Maybe that behaviour's fixed now, or maybe I just hadn't found the setting mentioned in the comments below.
To answer your question, yes it appeared to be attempting to authenticate with their servers, even though my Plex server was local
I found Home Assistant after being burned when Google bought Revolv. I spent $299 on a device that google literally bricked when they acquired the firm and had no recourse. It started out just controlling my Sonos speakers but now controls a whole Zwave mesh I've been slowly building throughout the house.
The only real downside of Home Assistant is just how active the community really is. Each upgrade is a huge avalanche of changes and they're occasionally (but documented) breaking. Do yourself a favor and use Hass.IO (https://www.home-assistant.io/hassio/ ) to manage Home Assistant upgrades and backups. It is really nice.
Edit: changed "dearth" to "avalanche" thanks to braindeath for the cluebat.
Dearth refers to scarcity. Maybe that’s what you meant, but it didn’t sound like it.
But the range won’t cover the whole house and then I can’t use the phone.
I found a happy middle ground by installing Node-RED [0] on the same machine and linking it to home assistant via the home assistant websocket plugin [1].
It allows me to create visual workflows for automations, which I find much better to use than raw yaml files.
[0]: https://nodered.org/ [1]: https://flows.nodered.org/node/node-red-contrib-home-assista...
When I'm developing my automations I often need to do a lot of testing and debugging when things don't work as expected. I find that Node-RED allows me to do this extremely easily as I can click on nodes and see what values are being passed around, and what state things are in.
Nonetheless, I'll look into AppDaemon :)
Powered by Stanford's Almond, which you can install yourself, as an Hassio addon, or use the cloud version: https://almond.stanford.edu/
I moved to Home Assistent and i'm not moving back. I did like the more plugin-like architecture & technical design of openhab better... But that makes it bulky. Openhab feels more mature, but also has a lot more legacy... HA is just movign faster...
The purpose of Home Assistant is to first observe all data flowing through your house, by connecting all existing sensors, switches, gateways and anything else that has a digital pulse.
The second step is control, having centralized access through a web or mobile app to all moving parts of a home.
However, the power of HA comes from the third step: automation. The best interface is the one you can forget exists.
I've been running HA for over two years. Aside from being lazy about upgrading to newer versions and adjusting to breaking changes, it's been working great and has spoiled me and my wife. We now expect every house we visit to automatically unlock before we reach the door, for the lights to turn on (and gradually off) automatically as we move through rooms, and for our phones to notify us when the best time to open a window would be, to naturally cool during the summer. It's great to have cold light during the day and warm, lower level light as the evening progresses.
Together with the Python environment provided by appdaemon, there's almost no limits to what you can do, provided you instrument your house with sensors and switches as best as you can.
The motion sensor isn't strictly necessary, you can use the phone joining the network as a trigger. It's just an extra filter to ensure there are no accidental unlocks. It will also prevent unlocks if you come home, park, and then leave without attempting to enter.
That's how I would do it, all easily doable in home assistant.
> However, the power of HA comes from the third step: automation. The best interface is the one you can forget exists.
I have the interface just for my carers and PAs et cetera, almost all of my interactions with the house are done via voice or other scripts triggered by various things. I would post a picture of my dashboard but it is horrendously messy contain hundreds things!
How are you doing this? Is it built in motion sensing in the lights, or some other solution?
Setting a short motion detector rearm time lets me start a decay timer for the light that just turned on. If no motion is detected again, it starts lowering the intensity gradually over 10 minutes and finally turning the light off. I added a button in HA to override this and keep the light on when needed.
When the window is closed, but the outside temperature is lower that inside, it sends a notification to open the window. The opposite happens when the outside temperature exceeds the one inside, unless the window is already closed.
This is all written in Python via appdaemon since it's easier than defining the same automation via the UI (although that's also doable nowadays).
If someone can program basic Pythin it is really, really worthwile to try it out.
2017: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15521743
https://i.imgur.com/pJAGAZT.png
When I built the house I decided that I was looking for a Home Automation system that was going to be:
a) Open source, or open standards
b) Everything can be done entirely locally
I settled with using the KNX system for the primary actuators for the house, with Home Assistant for automation and control.
One nice property of KNX is that it's distributed, you don't need any central manager for the system to work, so if you press a light switch, then that sends a packet on the KNX network directly to the light actuator. Then there is an IP/KNX bridge to allow you to interact with the KNX network to hack on it.
All the "light" automation in the house is all done using KNX programming. For example, walk into hall, light turns on. You don't need a central authority for that. The motion sensor just talks to the light directly.
For anything more complex, Home Assistant get's involved for all the more "global" automation via the IP/KNX bridge.
And of course you can control everything through it's app. I love how fast and responsive it is since it's local. It's maybe 100ms at most from clicking the button in the app to the light being on.
The main thing I can't do without the cloud is voice control. I'm using Google Homes for it which Home Assistant exposes all my devices to. Local voice control systems really suck compared to Google unfortunately.
Another thing I'm happy I did is just put sensors for everything everywhere through the house. Here is a screenshot of most of them.
https://i.imgur.com/5VeMuE1.png
I actually have more data then this that I haven't bothered to hook up yet since it hasn't been important. Like the motion sensors also provide light levels and so on.
Overall, I would definately recommend Home Assistant.
Are you using separate sensors for humidity/temp/air quality? If so, which ones?
Do you assemble these yourself (eg connecting a sensor to a network enabled board) or are they connected out of the box?
Would really appreciate anything you've got in terms of parts list.
> Local voice control systems really suck compared to Google unfortunately.
Have you checked the latest updates on this? Home Assistant is getting its own voice assistant: https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2019/11/20/privacy-focuse...
It does motion in 3 directions using infra red, and gives you light levels and temperature as well.
They can sense really damn far, and actually I had to turn most of them down in sensitivity to make them useful.
I use the same sensors for triggering the alarm system. They look way more attractive than those ugly corner sensors most security systems use.
https://www.gira.com/en/gebaeudetechnik/systeme/knx-eib_syst...
You can see what one looks like in place here in the middle of this picture. I use black ones for my wood ceilings.
https://i.imgur.com/pTCOKJx.png
On the left hand side is one of the air quality sensors.
have you looked at picovoice? been pretty impressed by their wake word (Porcupine) and STT (Cheetah) on phones/pi's etc. seems like this could be integrated as a local STT provider with ada.
I have some crazy node red sub flows where I use state machines to turn on based on conditions and I can do whole home announcements as well as level audio and use it for custom security solution. I have smart bulbs too in some rooms and everything is 100% local with no external dependencies (if voice assistant stops working it doesn't affect anything and I'm going to probably move everything to almond). I built everything around sub flows and I made it easier to debug by adding friendly toggles that actually let me do some crazy accessibility stuff like announce motion or lights turning on etc.. If you were blind you'd know exactly where you were at.
I'm also doing local facial recognition (lots more todo) and I'm starting to integrate those into custom automations based on whose in the room (wife or me). It also greets us when we get home. It's been my dream since I was a little kid to have a smart home, and by smart I mean work for me and be quality of life improvement while being dumb for everyone (progressive enhancement). Home should alert you to dangerous weather or do the proper thing if a fire happens (open windows/ doors, turn on path lighting, announce what direction to go to the exit, etc).
Just waiting for the build a house/completely renovate an apartment to put it to practice.
Can you give some more information about the sensors you use, especially for CO2/VOC measurements?
Unfortunately all the other KNX ones I looked at were super ugly/huge. The more ugly ones also had better features like particulate matter as well.
These are a super discrete and small brushed aluminium circle on the ceiling.
Other than that I have PIR sensors in every room that I mentioned in a sibling comment with presence, temp, light level.
One sensor I’m super happy with is the infrasonic water level sensor for the water tank, so I always know how much water I have left.
I also have a weather station connected in with a pile of measurements for outdoor stuff like light, humidity, temp, pressure.
I'm interested to know if you installed everything yourself or had a contractor do it? My understanding is it is expensive to get someone to do the work (as usually it's hotels or offices having this done), but the actual hardware doesn't cost much more than the z-wave equivalent.
Oh and your Room of Requirement definately needs more explanation :-)
Ultimately wiring for KNX doesn’t take a lot more than just running a single extra wire through large sections of rooms since it’s a bus based system.
We worked on an hourly rate + cost of materials, rather than a fixed contract.
All the other home automation people I talked to didn’t really “get it”. This guy opened up to me about the importance of open standards from the first time I talked him and was happy at the concept of me programming the KNX devices myself, so I knew as soon as I met him that he was the right guy for the job.
I worked really closely with him (a daily catchup every day) in order to make sure everything was perfect.
I was really happy with the process, but it relied on getting a guy I could work really well with.
As KNX is a global standard this procedure becomes more and more implemented. We have published an ebook about how to get started with KNX, ETS 5 and ETS Inside (cheaper version of it) and share best practices.
Check yourself: https://www.knxtutorial.com/
>The main thing I can't do without the cloud is voice control.
Mozilla has been working on a google voice replacement btw
0: https://youtu.be/v8cLk2W3vY8
1: https://youtu.be/RVMqB4W_EH4
I suspect the format would be quite proprietary
Functions so far: circuit breakers for mains, water valves, district heating PID control, intercom metering, door lock/sensor, curtain bobbin servomotor, thermometer, aircon control, smoke/co detector, lighting and rgb mood light. AV control is being worked on
Retrofit cost n times the cost of electronics.
And in new building, wiring labour still makes the most expense because electrical and smart home wiring topologies don't match exactly. You either have to do a lot of wiring, or a lot of wall cutting.
Wireless obviously doesn't work.
Massive? Samsung has been building smart apartments for over a decade now. Those are way bigger
Let's say you're looking for a smart doorbell. You'd go here: https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/#doorbell
You can then go to each integration and on the right if it says "IoT Class: Local Push" you can be fairly certain it can be locally controlled without the cloud and that it reports state without the cloud. In this scenario, it'd be DoorBird. You can be fairly certain you can block internet access at your router for this device and it'll work just fine. Don't quote me on that for Doorbird though.
Many integrations have their local access via reverse engineered APIs, and they often go away when they get popular enough.
I wrote the Samsung Family Hub smart fridge integration for home assistant and one day Samsung removed the local access in a fridge update and now there is no way to access it without their android or iOS app.
I wonder if you could return the fridge once they update claiming it stopped working for your purposes.
Couple that with one of the friendliest communities for newbies I have come across in a long time and you have something really awesome.
I've been using it for a couple of years, I have tried all the other open source alternatives but nothing really comes close for me. I'm actually fiddling with my installation right now as it were.
I cannot plug my phone in to charge it up myself obviously, so I am writing a little automation that will check who is in the house and announce through the speakers my phone needs charging up or send them a text message if I have their phone number when my mobile phone charge gets below 20%.
Totally cool beanz and I am totally serious about how much easier this makes my life as a quadriplegic.
[1]: https://github.com/robotsandcake/homeassistant
I’m curious to know how you’d rank them by usefulness.
The most commonly used automation by a very long way are the lights, because I use voice operated computer people were continually coming into my asking if I was okay because they could hear me talking. This obviously was crazy makin.
So now they ignore all talking unless they see:
All of the lights pulse on and off in a blue colour, which means can you please give me a hand when you have a minute I would like a drink or something similar and it is not urgent.
Or
All of the lights pulse on and off in a red colour, which means drop and come running as I am having and episode of autononmic dysreflexia, my hair is on fire or something equally problematic. It is a very much urgent.
after that I would say that these three are the most used, I'm sure there is a way of pulling that information out of the database but I'm not sure how. If someone from home Assistant Team would like to tell me, that would be great!
* Battery Level on iPhone is below 20%, get someone to plug it in * Notification asking that the basement be closed when it starts raining, or if someone opens the window when rain is predicted to please close it * Logging whenever the medication draw is opened and closed and keeping a running tally (this one is super important)
actually,
Thanks for making me eat humble pie and broadening my views. Sometimes more tech is helpful indeed.
Ps: The way you're applying it is creative and awesome too!
It is one of the wonderful things about this place, who gives a crap about the emotion being quadriplegic (I certainly don't) let's just solve the logistical problems! And as far as I'm concerned all of the problems that disability has introduced into my life have solutions that revolve around logistics, which project/process/company/widget do I need to buy/invent/collaborate on to make this thing work. It's great.
Do you mind if I ask how much precision your conveyance of choice has? I've built docking stations for small mobile robots by mounting qi receiver pads [1] on the robot and compatible phone chargers [2] on walls where the robot can drive up to them to recharge. If you have enough precision you might be able to do the same thing, mount a pair of pads somewhere, run a cable from the pad to your phone, and dock them together to recharge.
Hmm. Not sure what to do if you don't have enough precision to dock a pair of charge pads like that. Maybe... put the one on the wall on a horizontal rail at the correct height and add a motor to run it back and forth until it starts charging? Maybe mount it on a small robot arm?
[1] https://smile.amazon.com/Wireless-Charging-Receiver-Qi-Stand... [2] https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B07MZPCC7X
Apple has a very very awesome accessibility software, it is seriously the best of the world and I have tried all in the decade since I became a full-time wheelchair driver. I use a chin controller to drive my chair, and I also use the chin controller to access Apple's Switch Control[1] using the Tecla Bluetooth bridge. As soon as funds permit I will be updating to the new Tecla as it is an amazing device, it really is the missing link.
This means that anything you can do on an iPhone I can do the same, it is not some subset of commands like most other mobile platforms. Once a new phone or any of the other Apple offerings is taken out of the box, I can get my designated hands to turn on the accessibility software and from then on I can do it all myself. There is literally no the company where this is true. As far as I know.
If I understand you correctly, it might be cool when my iPhone is connected to my wheelchair to be able to drive up to something while I am working and have it charge. It would have to be pretty robust as I will drive into it at some point!
[1]: https://gettecla.com/blogs/news/15538916-what-is-switch-cont... [2]: https://gettecla.com/
> If I understand you correctly, it might be cool when my iPhone is connected to my wheelchair to be able to drive up to something while I am working and have it charge. It would have to be pretty robust as I will drive into it at some point!
I think that that's doable, yes! Above, I linked the amazon page for a receiver pad that's designed to be mounted to cell phones to let them use wireless charging even if they don't have it built-in. If you mount one to your wheelchair somewhere and connect it to your phone, you should be able to mount a matching phone charger pad on your desk or the wall so you can drive up to it and your phone will charge as if you'd placed it on the pad. It might be a bit slow - it'll probably only charge at 5W, which looks like it'd take about 4 hours to fully charge an iPhone while it's in use - but it should work.
The hardware itself is pretty durable. The receivers are designed to be mounted underneath phone cases, so you can do the same thing to the one you mount on your wheelchair. The pads are designed to have phones tossed at them every afternoon for several years; I've never had one get even close to breaking. If it does have trouble, the wireless charging tech is designed to be able to run through cell phones' shells and cases and you can build version two with a polycarbonate cover that'd survive a charging battlebot.
Another option might just be to mount an entirely sperate power system just for the phone and any other devices. Buy a huge USB power bank off Amazon and mount it to the carriage or something, might not even need duct tape.
Barring an extended power outage though, I would agree, it is pretty amazing.
Was looking at going with OpenHAB for a bit, but something about home assistant ease of use really got me.
I'm largely doing it with 433Mhz hardware, Raspberry Pi and python scripts. I didn't use Home Assistant because I presumed large project might be overhead and inhibit my choice of hardware; your comment has made me to rethink my strategy.
[1]https://abishekmuthian.com/i-was-told-i-would-become-quadrip...
Generally speaking the main problem is the RF part (to be able to catch it somewhere, and reuse)
I am considering having something else as the RF receiver but would need to forward what it received to MQTT (I can write that part myself - it is really the interface to the dongle I would like to understand)
[1]https://github.com/merbanan/rtl_433
What hardware are you people running the system on? Raspberry Pi? Or something more beefier? Or less?
I think they recommend a RPi 4 for the latest release...
Works great, I use it in network host mode because I did it by mistake initially and suddenly discovered a few devices which joined via broadcast (my Logitech Hub especially).
Anyone else experiencing this same thing?
After going through zigbee and zwave, I feel like I finally arrived at a solution that allows me plenty of reasonably priced selection and extreme customization (e.g. just using the warm/cold white LEDs on a RGB+white bulb).
Great experience so far and completely automated integration within homeassistant.
I hope that the esphome-configs project [2] will grow over the next little while and provide more and more copy+paste configurations for various hardware.
[0] https://esphome.io/
[1] https://github.com/ct-Open-Source/tuya-convert
[2] https://esphome-configs.io/
My lesson learnt after several years going through smartthings, home-brew stuff with raspberry pis, home assistant, demoticz, and openhab using ZigBee or zwave is to make sure your core infrastructure (i.e. things you want to control) is MQTT-based running over wi-fi/ethernet and all your plugs/lights/etc are independently controllable via sending raw MQTT commands on your home network.
If you need to rely on a working internet connection, or too many third party things (e.g. IFTTT) you are going to have a bad time when things inevitably break/change/have an outage/become inexplicably slow/get shutdown etc. Once you standardise on MQTT you can switch out HA/OpenHab/others with minimal fuss, and you have great controll and backup options. WiFi just seems rock-solid Vs ZigBee or z-wave that just seemed so troublesome and unreliable.
Tasmota (1) + mosquito running on a RPi has finally given me a reliable set up after years of struggling. It is some rock-solid MQTT compatible firmware for ESP8266 devices.
1 - https://github.com/arendst/Tasmota
You might want to look into https://github.com/OpenZWave/Zwave2Mqtt and other projects like it to give you the nice mqtt control over zwave.
Thank you so much.
However I use Home assistant.
Why, because it shows me what is going on....
Its a dashboard for my house.