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stevewm posted:Agreed... So what would the performance benefit of this over a pi 3 be in practice? I thought the pi 3 was more than capable of running Home Assistant, but does it chug if you’re say trying to run some sort of NVR system? Is there some way to load balance requests to a second pi-3 to mitigate this and offer HA failover? Or would a second pi require an additional radio for failover functionality and potentially create stupid issues like split brain and wireless congestion? Or is the correct failover answer just regularly backup recovery image or database to NAS/cloud and have a spare pi on hand? Legit curious as I just ordered a USB radio and a new managed switch to re-architect some other stuff on my network and finally move off smart things. Sorry if this is a stupid question, I haven’t taken the deep dive into Home Assistant yet. E: I see the processing power question was answered in between when I started my reply last night and this morning lol. I’ll try a pi with the DB optimization first and scale up hardware as needed. Still curious about proper High Availability and Failover architecting suggestions though. Catatron Prime fucked around with this message at 14:04 on Apr 1, 2019 |
# ? Apr 1, 2019 13:57 |
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# ? May 14, 2024 20:58 |
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Hubis posted:For what it's worth, there's apparently some kind of bug in Hassio that causes the database to not properly purge old information, so you end up with a constantly growing local DB store that massively bogs everything down I was wondering why I had like an 8 gig DB file and lo and behold discovered it somewhere in the forums. The fix (for me at least) is to run an automation that manually requests a purge every night. My boot times, log requests, etc got waaay faster after I fixed that. I believe that bug was fixed already.. I know I don't run into that anymore. I have my purge days set at 14 and it seems to comply with the setting. When I first started using the Pi, it worked OK.. But as I added more and more devices, and then eventually started installing addons like NodeRed and Unifi, it just started to get slower and slower. I also started having problems with my Zwave network completely stalling requiring a reboot of the Pi to get it working again. This was when I decided to move it over the the PC. All my performance issues and problems went away. -
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# ? Apr 1, 2019 14:21 |
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OSU_Matthew posted:So what would the performance benefit of this over a pi 3 be in practice? I thought the pi 3 was more than capable of running Home Assistant, but does it chug if you’re say trying to run some sort of NVR system? Far as I know, HomeAssistant has not been designed with failover or load balancing in mind at all. However using the Snapshot feature in Hass.io, it is not difficult to move the HA setup to different hardware. Basically, install HA. Copy your saved snapshot over to the backup folder, and then inside Hass.io, tell it to restore it.
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# ? Apr 1, 2019 14:31 |
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stevewm posted:I believe that bug was fixed already.. I know I don't run into that anymore. I have my purge days set at 14 and it seems to comply with the setting. I think what might have been happening was corruption from the previous bug causing the purge to fail, so even though it had been fixed I had to reset my db for it to take effect. I could believe running the Unifi controller taking up a fair amount of power, depending on how much logging you're doing. Of course you could just buy a cloudkey for less than the lenovo box, but I appreciate the micro-form factor PC gives you more flexibility there.
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# ? Apr 1, 2019 16:44 |
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Hubis posted:I think what might have been happening was corruption from the previous bug causing the purge to fail, so even though it had been fixed I had to reset my db for it to take effect. Yeah is has kinda become my little home server in a ways. Since Hass.io is just Docker. I installed Portainer (available as a Hass.io addon too!) and have used it to setup some additional docker containers to play around with other things. I couldn't imagine still doing it on a Pi... Have also been experimenting with all the various dashboard options; planning on a wall mounted tablet by my front door.
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# ? Apr 1, 2019 16:50 |
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My solution to failover is not completely automated, but its easy. I've got two cheap machines like stevewm has posted about (along with the same zwave dongles), and I keep my HA config folder in sync between them. If something happens, I just fire up my HA docker image (not hassio) on the second machine and I'm back in business. Takes less than 5 minutes. I could probably script something that periodically checked the status of machine 1 and fired up HA on machine 2 when necessary, but its not really something I'm too concerned about. I'll do it eventually. edit: I actually simplified that description too much. I don't just have an HA docker image, I have a docker compose file that installs mosquitto, appdaemon, HA, and some other poo poo.
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# ? Apr 1, 2019 17:49 |
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Thermopyle posted:My solution to failover is not completely automated, but its easy. I've got two cheap machines like stevewm has posted about (along with the same zwave dongles), and I keep my HA config folder in sync between them. That is a pretty good idea! I may do that someday in the future. But right now I am not too concerned about HA. The majority of my lighting devices are ZWave switches, so at least the lights can still be controlled if HA is non-functional. I've only had to restore my system once. Back when I was using the Pi I had a SD card failure.
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# ? Apr 1, 2019 18:03 |
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I have a similar approach, which is having home assistant running inside of a VM on a proxmox machine. The VM gets automatically backed up in its entirety each night to a NAS, so if I have a failure I can easily move the VM to a different machine. Could probably use some of the HA features in proxmox to have it automatically restore and spin up on a different machine, but since I'll still have to manually move my zwave dongle, doesn't seem worth the effort.
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# ? Apr 1, 2019 18:06 |
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So far everything I have read has said that the Echo Plus / Show hubs suck and can't do anything more than the very basics for Zigbee devices. It looks like I am stuck buying a hub for anything, which sucks because I only need like, one door monitored.
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# ? Apr 3, 2019 05:29 |
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I got a Caseta Wireless Dimmer for Christmas, which I had put on my list because I thought it was using one of the Z protocols. I just finally had time to get it out and try to set it up, but apparently I was wrong and Lutron is doing some proprietary bullshit. I'm not buying their $90 hub just for one gadget, so do I have any other options or should I just hope Amazon will accept a four month old gift receipt? Also any other suggestions for a plug-in dimmer that I can control from Home Assistant? I have some track lights over my computer desk that I'd like to attach some automation to without having to resort to more Hue bulbs.
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# ? Apr 3, 2019 17:12 |
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Any input on the UniFi systems? I'm looking to put 2-3 outdoor cameras and would prefer to not pay a subscription fee but keep the storage in my house via some device (open to suggestion, although UniFi sells a solution too). Looks like they have a pretty good (on the surface) turn-key product that still has accessibility from your smartphones and developers in other countries won't be spying in on your cameras. Don't have too many key requirements other than the standards: nightvision, outdoor (I'm in Michigan, so cold performance needs to be there), prefer battery powered but I can run wires to outlets that are outside. Would want the battery to kick in if those were disconnected. Good enough quality where they're useful. Just jumping into this so not even sure if I know all of my requirements. Appreciate any input! Thanks!
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# ? Apr 5, 2019 17:17 |
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TraderStav posted:Any input on the UniFi systems? I'm looking to put 2-3 outdoor cameras and would prefer to not pay a subscription fee but keep the storage in my house via some device (open to suggestion, although UniFi sells a solution too). Looks like they have a pretty good (on the surface) turn-key product that still has accessibility from your smartphones and developers in other countries won't be spying in on your cameras. Just as a heads up all the unifi cameras with the exception of the G3-micro do not have any Wifi capabilities and must be powered by POE. So they not only need cat5 run to them, but they need a POE injector and an outlet if you don't have a POE switch feeding them. And the G3-micro (which I don't believe is rated for outdoor use), while having Wifi, doesn't have a battery option (that I am aware of). So if battery or battery backup are a hard requirement for you, Unifi isn't going to work unless you run a POE switch with a UPS to back it up. I have the Unifi Protect software running on a Cloudkey Gen2+ (that also is the controller for my full Unifi setup) - and it is indeed very simple and easy - although if you have more advanced needs than me (spying on my dogs when we're gone, checking the front door) - then it may be a little threadbare.
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# ? Apr 5, 2019 21:20 |
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ROJO posted:Just as a heads up all the unifi cameras with the exception of the G3-micro do not have any Wifi capabilities and must be powered by POE. So they not only need cat5 run to them, but they need a POE injector and an outlet if you don't have a POE switch feeding them. And the G3-micro (which I don't believe is rated for outdoor use), while having Wifi, doesn't have a battery option (that I am aware of). So if battery or battery backup are a hard requirement for you, Unifi isn't going to work unless you run a POE switch with a UPS to back it up. Thanks for the input, I hadn't realized all of that! I'm starting from a blank slate (other than having an Insteon smart home so hooks into that would be neat, but not necessary). Will need to take a closer look at what's out there. Not sure I can easily get to the eave on the back of my house without cutting through an upstairs bedroom wall.
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# ? Apr 6, 2019 02:37 |
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Something else you should be aware of about battery cameras: they are motion trigger. Like, you can't just have them up and watching what's going on or the batteries will be dead in no time. We're not quite there yet with battery technology to run a camera + wifi in a reasonable package. I'm running some inexpensive Windows software (Blue Iris) as a DVR and have a mix of mostly Reolink PoE cameras. I've found it's just the easiest way for me to go. I need to run one ethernet cable and have the right switch feeding it, and it's all set (feel the pain once running that cable and be done). The weatherproof dome cameras are like $50 on Amazon. I bought one of the $100+ PTZ ones and it's been sitting in the same position since about 3 days after I installed it.......turns out those features just aren't that useful to me. This all integrates pretty well into home assistant. To the point where I have my front facing camera on the driveway up on my Kindle "control panels". Motronic fucked around with this message at 02:51 on Apr 6, 2019 |
# ? Apr 6, 2019 02:49 |
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Thanks again for the feedback. Making me consider making the run for the Ethernet, which I may be able to make happen. Looks like it'll offer me the best balance of cost and flexibility of options. Just regular CAT5e? If I'm running it outside I'll need to get something with weather resistance or plenum?
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# ? Apr 6, 2019 15:02 |
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TraderStav posted:Thanks again for the feedback. Making me consider making the run for the Ethernet, which I may be able to make happen. Looks like it'll offer me the best balance of cost and flexibility of options. I run regular cat5e if it's inside. The outside cameras when mounted on a soffit or something I consider to be an inside run. If you're actually running outside, like you need to go basement to attic on the exterior of the building (a rain gutter downspout is a great way to hide to runs and is something that looks "normal" on a house) or you're doing a buried run to mount something on a post/tree, etc I'd use something like this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MA3OIML/?coliid=I35Z4XMSNGDLVU&colid=2QZ0KGEGECZ9T&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it It's awful to terminate because it's proper direct burial cable that is full of "ickey-pick". You need to clean it off with alcohol and be thorough about it when stripping. The first few times you do this you'll get it all over your hands, your tools, places you can't even imagine you touched but somehow you did........ Regular cat5e riser or plenum just won't stand up to UV.
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# ? Apr 6, 2019 16:01 |
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Motronic posted:I run regular cat5e if it's inside. The outside cameras when mounted on a soffit or something I consider to be an inside run. If you're actually running outside, like you need to go basement to attic on the exterior of the building (a rain gutter downspout is a great way to hide to runs and is something that looks "normal" on a house) or you're doing a buried run to mount something on a post/tree, etc I'd use something like this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MA3OIML/?coliid=I35Z4XMSNGDLVU&colid=2QZ0KGEGECZ9T&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it The cameras would be under a soffit but real challenging to get to as there isn't access to the eave. If I started from my second story there's a pretty clear shot and run down the j channels, but getting the Cat5 upstairs is now the challenge. Are there good solutions where I set up an access point upstairs to connect to my router downstairs wirelessly and then do the PoE from there to the cameras?
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# ? Apr 6, 2019 16:22 |
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TraderStav posted:The cameras would be under a soffit but real challenging to get to as there isn't access to the eave. If I started from my second story there's a pretty clear shot and run down the j channels, but getting the Cat5 upstairs is now the challenge. Are there good solutions where I set up an access point upstairs to connect to my router downstairs wirelessly and then do the PoE from there to the cameras? If the cabling really is an issue, you can use a couple of UniFi AP Pros. I'm not ready to trench to run new utilities out to my barn (along with a fiber run) so I put a second UniFi AP Pro out there, plugged it into a PoE Switch and plugged in the cameras on the barn. The UniFi software just found the drat thing, I was able to "adopt" it as part of the network and it immediately treated the ethernet ports on it as downlinks. It was ridiculously easy, and I'm streaming 3 HD cameras over that, 24x7, and it's got plenty of bandwidth left for me to use that AP when I'm out in the yard (it's carpeted the back yard with wifi coverage) and/or bandwidth left over for the inside AP that it's associated with. I thought it was going to be a suboptimal solution, but it turned out so well I almost question running fiber out there (but it would be stupid NOT to if I've already got a utility trench open).
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# ? Apr 6, 2019 17:07 |
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Not sure why everyone's so hot for Home Assistant. I'm just trying to set up my Zigbee stuff. It's obnoxious as gently caress, I might as well use an Abakus for home automation.
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# ? Apr 10, 2019 16:43 |
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Combat Pretzel posted:Not sure why everyone's so hot for Home Assistant. I'm just trying to set up my Zigbee stuff. It's obnoxious as gently caress, I might as well use an Abakus for home automation. you're not going to get much help with that amount of information. HA doesn't support zigbee per se. HA glues together other stuff that supports zigbee and other services. You have to have a hub or other hardware that supports zigbee.
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# ? Apr 10, 2019 20:24 |
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Zigbee is a bit of a mess really, for Home Automation purposes. Zigbee originally only defined the radio link and protocol, but not a way to actually control a device at the other end. So you had a way to talk to a light for example, but there was no standard way to actually control it. As a result many Zigbee devices are not interoperable and often require their own hub. Philips Hue is big example of this: uses Zigbee, but uses its own unique control protocol. This is entirely different from the competing protocol, Zwave, which from the start defined not only the radio and communications, but also defined a standard set of devices and the commands to control them. Because of this, all ZWave devices are interoperable, and any ZWave controller can control just about any ZWave device. There does exist a standard for HA devices in Zigbee called Zigbee Home Automation, or ZHA for short. But from my understanding it hasn't been used a whole lot until recently. And the Zigbee alliance only recently started pushing for interoperability among ZHA devices.
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# ? Apr 10, 2019 23:15 |
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Eh, YAML and the integration interface in HA is what's mostly annoying me. OpenHAB was more practical in regards to setting up devices. I'm only looking at it because my OH installation blew up and I always wanted to fiddle with Node RED.
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# ? Apr 11, 2019 12:15 |
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Combat Pretzel posted:Eh, YAML and the integration interface in HA is what's mostly annoying me. OpenHAB was more practical in regards to setting up devices. I'm only looking at it because my OH installation blew up and I always wanted to fiddle with Node RED. Whats annoying about YAML?
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# ? Apr 11, 2019 13:40 |
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Hubis posted:Whats annoying about YAML? Everything. I'm really liking Node Red. It's made HA so much better for me.
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# ? Apr 11, 2019 14:13 |
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I don't see how yaml can be annoying to anyone, but I know lots of people don't like it. You just write some words and let your editor take care of formatting it. I do see how using yaml to write scripts can be annoying. Coding via configuration files of any format is bad. That appdaemon exists is what got me to use HA. edit: oh yeah, speaking of editors, the HA plugin for VS Code is a great idea. Auto-completion of your own entity names and whatnot should eliminate a real pain point.
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# ? Apr 11, 2019 14:52 |
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Thermopyle posted:I do see how using yaml to write scripts can be annoying. Coding via configuration files of any format is bad. It's mostly this. And my hatred of YAML is not solely because of HA, but because of how often it's abused for this purpose or used in just plain nonsensical ways, along with the difficulty of debugging freaking indents. Yes, an editor can make up for some of this, but at that point you should be asking "why did I choose this format in the first place?"
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# ? Apr 11, 2019 15:00 |
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Motronic posted:It's mostly this. And my hatred of YAML is not solely because of HA, but because of how often it's abused for this purpose or used in just plain nonsensical ways, along with the difficulty of debugging freaking indents. YAML as a format is just incidental to the problem of using configuration for coding and I'm not sure an editor can make up for the core problem of that. The issue would be the same if they were using JSON, INI, or XML. The only time I experience any friction with writing YAML files for HA is when its in automation files...writing configuration files is just the same as if it was a JSON file or whatever. That being said, I'm not sure they ever intended YAML automation to go beyond the very most basic of things like "turn on light at 10pm". It's...OK..at that because even though the problems are the same, its just a few lines of text that pretty much make sense. I'm not familiar enough with the history of appdaemon to know if they always expected people to use appdaemon for more complex scripting, or if appdeamon came along as a response to the weakness of configuration-as-code.
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# ? Apr 11, 2019 15:09 |
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Maybe it's just all this zigbee2mqtt bullshit that soured me, but beyond Zigbee basic device discovery, I've had to edit YAML to just rename the devices, and then some internal YAML to make it work past a reboot (otherwise I had "entity unavailable" all over the place). All the setup tinkering I did until now is all via YAML. That poo poo should be abstracted away with graphical interfaces in this decade. At this point, I'm even surprised that it has a web interface at all. Also, integrating it cleanly with InfluxDB requires more writing of YAML, because with default entity rules, it just pukes all over it with random groupings and what not.
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# ? Apr 11, 2019 16:04 |
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Motronic posted:It's mostly this. And my hatred of YAML is not solely because of HA, but because of how often it's abused for this purpose or used in just plain nonsensical ways, along with the difficulty of debugging freaking indents. Yeah, YAML is Good (in my opinion) but abusing it to code behaviors is Bad. It would be Bad if if it were XML too, just a lot more annoying. I've honestly shied away from any complex scripting of automations until I have a chance to set up AppDamon so I can just write Python like Guido intended. BTW, if you have trouble dealing with the indents you can just use curly braces. JSON is in fact a proper subset of YAML, and any valid JSON will be equivalent valid YAML. Combat Pretzel posted:Maybe it's just all this zigbee2mqtt bullshit that soured me, but beyond Zigbee basic device discovery, I've had to edit YAML to just rename the devices, and then some internal YAML to make it work past a reboot (otherwise I had "entity unavailable" all over the place). All the setup tinkering I did until now is all via YAML. That poo poo should be abstracted away with graphical interfaces in this decade. At this point, I'm even surprised that it has a web interface at all. A good GUI would be nice, but I don't find editing YAML for simple configuration to be a problem in general. Personally I'd rather have a robust and flexible config system (which it has via YAML) than a half-assed GUI, and given the age and nature of the project I feel like they made the right decision. That being said, all signs point to them moving to more of a "GUI front-end with a configuration database" approach. They've made a bunch of moves in that direction in the last few major revisions, and I expect we will see more of that to come. I agree that renaming devices specifically is a stupid cluster that they are only now just beginning to unfuck. With Z-Wave you had to shut down HA so that it wouldn't overwrite your modifications, then modify at least two files, then reboot and hope you did things correctly. I think this is getting better, but it's still a little bit awkward. Hubis fucked around with this message at 16:53 on Apr 11, 2019 |
# ? Apr 11, 2019 16:48 |
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Fun fact, YAML is a superset of JSON, so you can just write JSON instead of YAML, if you prefer. You do lose some YAML niceties if you do that though, like anchors. I can understand not wanting to write in a config language though, especially if you're used to point and click style config.
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# ? Apr 11, 2019 16:52 |
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Combat Pretzel posted:Maybe it's just all this zigbee2mqtt bullshit that soured me, but beyond Zigbee basic device discovery, I've had to edit YAML to just rename the devices, and then some internal YAML to make it work past a reboot (otherwise I had "entity unavailable" all over the place). All the setup tinkering I did until now is all via YAML. That poo poo should be abstracted away with graphical interfaces in this decade. At this point, I'm even surprised that it has a web interface at all. FWIW, zigbee2mqtt isn't associated with HA. But yeah, HA is moving towards more and more stuff configured via the UI rather than YAML. It's made huge strides in that direction in just the past 6 months. The thing to remember is that HA did this exactly right. A project should start out with configuration files for configuration while they work out the core functions of the product and then, where it makes sense, work towards pulling stuff into the UI. This "pulling stuff into the UI" stage is where HA is at right now.
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# ? Apr 11, 2019 16:59 |
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I don't use Zigbee at all, but as of a few releases ago (0.8x something) isn't Zigbee more or less natively supported by HA without the need for zigbee2mqtt? I thought I read something like that in the release notes. Speaking of which, I just migrated all my custom sensors and poo poo from MQTT to ESPhome. Anyone else done that yet? It's really, really cool and convenient despite that you're basically back to coding in YAML although it's very abstracted. You can still use regular arduino/C++ code for custom stuff if needed.
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# ? Apr 11, 2019 20:39 |
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Z-Wave roolz, Zigbee droolz.
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# ? Apr 11, 2019 22:51 |
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Yeah it has some native support via ZigPy... Only ZHA compatible devices from my understanding. And I've done the ESPHome thing too. Converted a few custom sensors, and made my garage door controllable via HA. It's fantastic. It's so much more stable. Have not had a single lock up or failure since switching them to ESPHome.
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# ? Apr 11, 2019 22:53 |
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azurite posted:Z-Wave roolz, Zigbee droolz. I'm inclined to agree. It just.. works... Pair, add the newly created entities to your UI, and done. I have several zwave switches, bulbs, energy monitor, and door/window sensors. I'm still surprised at the door sensor battery life. A few are over 2 years old and on the original batteries. Battery level still over 80%
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# ? Apr 11, 2019 23:02 |
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CheddarGoblin posted:I don't use Zigbee at all, but as of a few releases ago (0.8x something) isn't Zigbee more or less natively supported by HA without the need for zigbee2mqtt? I thought I read something like that in the release notes.
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# ? Apr 12, 2019 04:16 |
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zigbee2mqtt is working fine for me with home assistant. I originally renamed entities via the zig2mqtt yaml configs, but it got a bit confusing with the HomeAssistant entity Id and friendly names not being a two way sync. So when I moved over to HASS.io and started afresh, I didnt rename anything and just leave everything on the zig2mqtt side as automatic with the '0x00158dXXX' names and then sort out friendly names via the Home Assistant UI. It's working as well as my Zwave stuff, but that is run from HA, via a Vera device, which throws us some idiosyncrasies of it's own. As for Node Red, I've played with it a few time, but I'm still waiting for that eureka moment as it's not quite clicked for me yet. I dont have a coding background but have managed to automate in YAML pretty well so far. Has anyone tried the sonoff 443mhz bridge? For about £10 it seems like a pretty straight forward way of making my existing 443mhz door bell 'smart'. And I think I've got some old 443 plugs in a drawer somewhere too that I could bring back to life.
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# ? Apr 12, 2019 13:20 |
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Does anybody know of an off/on outlet that will work with either a Philips Hue or a Lutron Cassetta setup? I have some Wemo outlets but those only work with my Alexa. I need one that will work with Hue or Cassette because I want one that will turn my subwoofer on and off when I turn on my entertainment system with my Harmony Elite remote (I even tried IfTTT but there were no "recipes" that did what I wanted). Oddly enough neither Philips nor Lutron make on/off outlets that I can find.
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# ? Apr 12, 2019 15:12 |
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The main problem with zigbee is that it isn't zwave. The main problem with zwave is it's not wifi. The main problem with wifi is it's too power-hungry. (also zwave is too fuckin expensive when I can buy xiaomi zigbee sensors and buttons for 10 bucks) (also, if you like dickin around with nerd stuff ESP32s and ESP8266s are great IoT thingies especially with ESPHome)
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# ? Apr 12, 2019 15:52 |
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# ? May 14, 2024 20:58 |
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Hoobastank4ever97 posted:Does anybody know of an off/on outlet that will work with either a Philips Hue or a Lutron Cassetta setup? I have some Wemo outlets but those only work with my Alexa. I need one that will work with Hue or Cassette because I want one that will turn my subwoofer on and off when I turn on my entertainment system with my Harmony Elite remote (I even tried IfTTT but there were no "recipes" that did what I wanted). Oddly enough neither Philips nor Lutron make on/off outlets that I can find. I can't find one either, both of those systems seem focused only on lighting. Most modern subwoofers I've been around go into a low power standby mode until they detect a signal. Mine barely pulls 1/2 a watt in standby mode. Not worth putting on a switched outlet. A wemo probably uses double the amount of power that the standby mode of the subwoofer uses. Of course if your sub doesn't have this feature I could see wanting to turn it off. On but with no signal mine uses around 7 or 8 watts.
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# ? Apr 12, 2019 19:35 |