Home Automation and Security Systems

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Slash: Apr 7, 2011

Chumbawumba4ever97 posted:

I have a Logitech Harmony remote (the one with the LCD screen and has a hub) and I added my air conditioner to the remote since the air conditioner just so happens to be in the line of sight for the Harmony hub.

I can turn the air conditioner off and on just fine with the remote but I'd love to be able to do it with Amazon Echo/Alexa. Unfortunately it seems as though the only way to control it with Alexa is to add the air conditioner as its own "activity". What this means is that if I ask Alexa to turn on the air conditioner, it turns off the TV, receiver, and Android TV box before doing so. I guess because I'm "switching activities". Makes sense if you're switching between playing PlayStation and cable TV. Pretty dumb if you just want to turn an air conditioner on.

From doing a bit of googling it seems like Alexa cannot control Harmony devices, only activities, which is the cause of this issue.

Does anyone know of a round-about way I can accomplish what I want? If Alexa could control individual devices instead of only working with activities I'd be fine. I'd really appreciate any help on accomplishing this.

I think you could do something with Home Assistant. It integrates well with Harmony, and then you could send commands from Alexa to HA to Harmony to control the AC unit.

The proper integration for Home Assistant and Alexa costs a small amount each month for the cloud integration but lets you expose any scripts/devices/automations as scenes in the Alexa app.

# ¿ Jul 23, 2020 18:58

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 11:35

Slash: Apr 7, 2011

Chumbawumba4ever97 posted:

I don't mind paying a one time fee for things but a monthly bill annoys me to no end. Is there any way to do what I want with Home Assistant without adding another bill in my life?

There is a way but it's a lot more janky. You can configure HA to emulate a Hue Bridge and then create a dummy light bulb. You then add that light bulb into Alexa and set it's brightness in routines.

You then monitor the brightness of that bulb in HA and kick off different scripts based on that.

It works fine but it's really fiddly to configure, maintain and extend.

# ¿ Jul 24, 2020 13:09

Slash: Apr 7, 2011

Chumbawumba4ever97 posted:

I actually already have a real physical Hue bridge. Is there a less janky way of implementing it then?

Nope.

Thinking about it briefly you could maybe try something clever with brightness levels/colour levels of the hue bulbs to communicate between alexa and HA, but you'd be on your own and it's a pretty advanced configuration for someone just starting out.

The monthly cost of proper alexa integration is $5 per month.
https://www.nabucasa.com/

# ¿ Jul 24, 2020 17:54

Slash: Apr 7, 2011

Home assistant's "new" front end called Lovelace is perfectly fine for creating a fancy front end for a tablet.

# ¿ Jul 25, 2020 00:00

Slash: Apr 7, 2011

namlosh posted:

So, I'm still confused about hass.io vs homeassistant.

I want to run everything in Docker... so I pulled this image (latest):
docker pull homeassistant/home-assistant

and ran it
docker run blah blah blah...

But I can't use add-ons? I'd like to set up an MQTT server and a bunch of other stuff. I don't want anything cloud-based... like at all.

Do I have to create a generic docker container and install homeassistant into it or something? Just for info: I'm using macvlan on an ubuntu host, so the container will get its own ip and not ports should conflict at all.

Just to clarify, I don't see the "add-ons" in the supervisor panel mentioned here:
home-assistant addons

You can spin up another container for the mqtt server, I use one called Mosquito. The normal home assistant doesn't support add-ons, that only works with hassio.

# ¿ Aug 3, 2020 10:11

Slash: Apr 7, 2011

I think the easiest way would be to manually train the AC on/off commands and manually add them as buttons to the touchscreen on the remote for each activity.

Just checked and that works fine for me. In the Harmony App:
- Edit/Reset
- Edit Buttons
- Find a blank button and press '+'
- Select AC device then 'Power on' command
Repeat for off.

Creating a whole new activity will cause the buttons to act weird when you are in that activity as you won't be in the 'Watch Shield Tv' activity any more.

Slash fucked around with this message at 22:54 on Aug 16, 2020

# ¿ Aug 16, 2020 22:48

Slash: Apr 7, 2011

Skyarb posted:

Perhaps I am not being clear, I apologize. Basically yes, in theory I could get a different fixture, but this one matches all my other lights. It is low profile and I would like to make it work. I just want some kind of device that sits between the light, and the wiring in the ceiling and acts as a switch that receives its state remotely (via smartthings if possible)

To return to this subject. I have something setup like this. I have a wall-switch which when turned on/off sends a signal to Home Assistant, which then turns toggles some Hue bulbs. This way the hue bulbs are always powered so can be toggled by app automations as well as physical switch. There is basically zero latency.

This was achieved by installing a Shelly https://shelly.cloud/products/shelly-1-smart-home-automation-relay/ into the backbox behind the switch. I then set the switch to "detached" mode and the relay to be powered on. If I want to change the fixture/bulbs in the future I can just reconfigure the Shelly back to a normal switch.

Home assistant monitors the state of the Switch (over MQTT) and toggles the Hue bulbs over the Hue integration.

# ¿ Oct 30, 2020 11:40

Slash: Apr 7, 2011

kynikos posted:

I recently switch from SmartThings to Home Assistant and am having trouble figuring out one automation I was using. Essentially, I am trying to figure out how to have a plug turn on when everyone in the house leaves and turn off when everyone arrives back home. In ST, I had it working well with the presence sensor using the app tracking location. I've messed around with the Home Assistant map and also OwnTracks, which seem to track people well enough but can't figure out how to set up an automation that would work. Any suggestions?

Probably best to set up two automations. Unless I�m missing something complex it should be as simple as:

You can either add more device trackers as triggers. Or create a group of device trackers to aggregate their state into one entity.

e: You�ll also need your �home� zone set up correctly.

# ¿ Jan 7, 2021 11:37

Slash: Apr 7, 2011

kynikos posted:

Thanks! Looks like I was way off. If I added another trigger with that configuration, say another person's phone, would the two automations wait for BOTH phones to arrive/leave before turning off/on the switch?

kynikos posted:

Thanks! Looks like I was way off. If I added another trigger with that configuration, say another person's phone, would the two automations wait for BOTH phones to arrive/leave before turning off/on the switch?

In this case either device changing state would trigger the automation. If you want to wait for both Phones to be "away" then add them to a group, and use that groups state as the trigger. e.g.

If you have a group of device_trackers, the state of the group will be "home" if anyone is home, and "away" if everyone is away.

If you want to make more complex automations then you'll need to start writing them in yaml. Ref: https://www.home-assistant.io/docs/automation/trigger/

Here's an example of my automation which triggers when anyone comes home:

code:

- id: '1549564291181'
  alias: Security off When Home
  trigger:
  - entity_id: group.family_bt
    platform: state
    to: home
  condition:
  - condition: state
    entity_id: input_boolean.security_system
    state: 'on'
  - condition: state
    entity_id: input_boolean.guest_mode
    state: 'off'    
  action:
  - service: input_boolean.turn_off
    data:
      entity_id: input_boolean.security_system
  - delay:
      seconds: 4
  - service: notify.alexa_media
    data:
      target:
      - media_player.hallway_tablet
      data:
        type: tts
      message: Disabling security systems.

# ¿ Jan 7, 2021 20:53

Slash: Apr 7, 2011

SEKCobra posted:

Has anyone used monitor.sh? It seems like eactly the sort of presence detection I want, but the documentation is lacking and pretty much ends after setting up the script, but I still need to implement it in Home Assistant.

Do you mean this? https://github.com/andrewjfreyer/monitor

I�ve used it for a while and it works flawlessly. I have HA set up to trigger a scan when the front door is opened and a raspberry pi zero plugged in near the front door running that script.

# ¿ Feb 13, 2021 10:03

Slash: Apr 7, 2011

It uses MQTT to communicate. Do you have an mqtt server running(I use the mosquitto docker image) Or you can use the in-built home assistant one.

# ¿ Feb 13, 2021 15:43

Slash: Apr 7, 2011

Baxate posted:

Is having multiple profiles on Echo devices supposed to be absolute garbage?

My girlfriend likes to switch to her profile on the Echo so she can listen to her music but if she wants to control anything it tells her she has to switch to my profile to turn the fuggen lights off or whatever. Or I have to switch from her profile to mine so I can turn the lights on. It's so loving stupid I'm getting a Homepod.

The solution to this is to add the relevant Smart Home skills to her Alexa account as well. For some reason they are account specific.

# ¿ Apr 28, 2021 23:10

Slash: Apr 7, 2011

DaveSauce posted:

Speaking of Home Assistant, does anyone have any good UI examples? I still only have the default UI.

Here�s my latest version of HA. Ring, Nest, Hue, Shelly light switches, Smart cat flap, Xiaomi window and temperature sensors, Sonos a few custom sensors and other integrations. Happy to answer questions about it.

e: happy to answer questions about home automation and Lovelace config

Slash fucked around with this message at 22:28 on Dec 9, 2021

# ¿ Dec 9, 2021 22:02

Slash: Apr 7, 2011

odiv posted:

What are your cats' names?

Ha, I�m not giving you my wifi password!

# ¿ Dec 9, 2021 22:08

Slash: Apr 7, 2011

Crunchy Black posted:

I need to know more about this smart cat door.

https://www.surepetcare.com/en-gb/pet-doors/microchip-cat-flap-connect
That's the one we have, it scans the cats id chips to permit or deny them access. You can set up individual curfews and permissions for each cat. For now the home assistant integration only lets you read the status of the cats (in/out), but it's useful to know whether they're in or not. Batteries seem to last about a month depending on how often the stupid cat sits looking through the cat flap.

Gyshall posted:

What are you using for the TV expandable card? Looks sweet, I'm stealing some of this

This one: https://github.com/kalkih/mini-media-player

WhiteHowler posted:

I would love any good resources for getting started on this. My HA dashboard looks terrible. It's hard to get the tiles to sort the way I want, since the vertical size can dictate which column they get stuck in.

And is there a way to have separate layouts for the browser-based version and the mobile app? I have different elements I want to see/prioritize depending on which device I'm using.

I don't believe you can change how it looks on mobile, but you could set up multiple pages/tabs, and then change which page you open on each device?

If you use tiles and nested vertical/horizontal stack cards you can have a lot more control over how stuff is arranged. For the floorplans I used a picture element card and then manually positioned stuff around. It's fairly time consuming to set up initially, but you only need to do it once.

They also have a bunch of cool demo dashboards you can use for inspiration set up here: https://demo.home-assistant.io/#/lovelace/0

Slash fucked around with this message at 14:19 on Dec 13, 2021

# ¿ Dec 13, 2021 14:11

Slash: Apr 7, 2011

We use Ring Stick up cams. They have wifi and batteries, and store video in the cloud. There is a monthly subscription though, but it�s not very much. They work well and the app is very good.

# ¿ Jan 13, 2022 19:08

Slash: Apr 7, 2011

Bobstar posted:

How are your Xiaomi sensors connected to HA? Via their own hub, or direct to a Zigbee dongle?

I finally got round to setting up a managed network with dedicated IoT and NoT VLANS, so if they need a hub that's doable, but I also found a very long HA thread talking about direct integration of random Zigbee stuff.

NB I haven't actually got HA running yet, I'm shopping around for what I want in the long term

Using the XiaoMi hub. But I had to dismantle it and do some soldering so that I could shell into it and change its firewall settings, which is a pretty complex/advanced process. I�ll probably convert them over to a Zigbee/Zwave usb dongle at some point but it works flawlessly at the moment.

# ¿ Jan 15, 2022 06:07

Slash: Apr 7, 2011

TraderStav posted:

Hey all, I feel like I'm SO close to putting the puzzle pieces together to get my HA to work the way that I want to with some future switches that I need to install. I have several of these Hunter Simpleconnect fan/lights in my home that are wired back to a toggle switch that simply sends or kills power to the fan. I posted in here a few weeks back about getting a switch that only sends commands to HA to control the lights, fan, speed, dim, etc. and got some great suggestions.

Question for today is: I have the fans all showing up in HA properly and can create buttons that toggle the lights and fan, as well as be able to control the speed when I interact more with the button. However, when I got to program a hardware switch, I'm going to want a push of a certain button on it to do 'speed down' or 'speed up' or 'off/on'. The latter I can sort out, but can't see how to get to the former two. Any hints on where I should look?

I'm looking to identify the control mechanism in the webGUI and then will get the appropriate hardware and map the buttons on the hardware to that command, if any of this makes sense.

Appreciate any help in advance!

I think the HA way to do this would be to define a script for increment and decrement fan speed, and then wire up an automation so that when the hardware button gets triggered the appropriate script gets executed.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2022 13:59

Slash: Apr 7, 2011

Kalman posted:

Take a look at https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/fan/ - the automations under increase/decrease fan speed are pretty much what you want.

This is a better suggestion than mine, didn�t realise that the fan integration already had all the actions defined. The examples on there look exactly what you�re looking for.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2022 23:49

Slash: Apr 7, 2011

I use an old Kindle Fire running Fully Kiosk Browser, I 3D printed a wall mount for it and leave it permanently powered. It works ok, it can be a bit slow to respond but it is an old low powered model.

Not sure if you have to sign in, I have because then it also acts as an Alexa receiver.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2022 14:12

Slash: Apr 7, 2011

BigFactory posted:

I have some Feit bulbs and they suck. Have to constantly reconnect them and you have to either use the horrible Feit app or smart life (also horrible). Maybe the dimmers are better but I�m not impressed.

If they use the Smart Life app then they�re probably based on the Tuya chipset, so you may be able to flash them with custom firmware such as tasmota. Might be worth looking into.

# ¿ Feb 16, 2022 18:59

Slash: Apr 7, 2011

adnam posted:

I just installed a bunch (3) Aqara water sensors and an M2 hub for HA integration. These things are great. But having realized how many places I'd like instant water damage notice...has anybody purchased a dozen or more of these guys or had any issues?

Not the water sensors, but i have about 20 of the Aqara door/window sensors, and 4 temperature sensors around the house with no issues.

# ¿ Mar 4, 2022 11:30

Slash: Apr 7, 2011

Has anyone recently added a Z-Wave/zigbee USB dongle to Home Assistant? I think I want to ditch the Xiaomi & Hue hubs and integrate the whole lot natively into HA.

What is the currently the "best" USB dongle to get which supports both zigbee and Z-Wave?

Alternatively i think both Hue and Xiaomi use zigbee, so a zigbee only transceiver would also work, just with less future expandability.

# ¿ Apr 7, 2022 11:13

Slash: Apr 7, 2011

Great thanks, I'll give that one a go.

edit:
Seems that one is difficult to get in the UK (or expensive). As i really only need Zigbee i think i'll give this Sonoff one a go:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sonoff-Uni...aps%2C58&sr=8-3

edit2:
It also seems that the Nortek one only supports US (not EU) frequencies.

Slash fucked around with this message at 14:48 on Apr 7, 2022

# ¿ Apr 7, 2022 14:30

Slash: Apr 7, 2011

Gyshall posted:

Any recommendations for a star/galaxy projector for my kids room that is hopefully compatible with Home Assistant?

Just hook it up to a smart power socket?

# ¿ May 6, 2022 21:47

Slash: Apr 7, 2011

wolrah posted:

A temperature sensor would be hard to calibrate to respond reasonably quickly while also not false alarming because someone put some warm leftovers too close to it.

Not saying a temperature sensor wouldn't be neat information to have and also useful to alarm on for any variety of fridge failure, but it would definitely not be my choice for the primary "did someone leave the door open?" sensor.

Bear in mind that a Freezer is a pretty good Faraday Cage, so any wireless temp sensor that you put inside the freezer is going to have difficulty communicating.

# ¿ Nov 22, 2022 12:19

Slash: Apr 7, 2011

SomeDrunkenMick posted:

No it doesn't, but it does need to fit on a 3 gang faceplate in a double back box, space is tight. Also needs to be 230/240v uk/ireland rated device. Lutron do one for the UK market but you require their hub and its very spendy. The selection of uk/ireland specced smart switches is pretty poor compared to the US unfortunately.

Hi fellow UKian. I have fitted Shellys into every light switch in my house, sometimes I had to install a spacer to move the faceplate out to get enough room. Screwfix sell the spacers if you're looking.

https://www.screwfix.com/p/schneide...wE&gclsrc=aw.ds

# ¿ Jan 12, 2023 01:54

Slash: Apr 7, 2011

SomeDrunkenMick posted:

Had a shelly to try out on order but cancelled it, as I don't think 3 will fit. Do they throw off much heat in use? 3 of them packed in a back box might be bad for heat retention. Got the sparky to show me where the first light in each loop of downlights is, so at least I'll know if I end up wiring something in there.

No idea, my light switches don't get warm but I only have single Shelly's in each back box. For dual-gang switches I used a Shelly 2.5, because I didn't need dimming.

# ¿ Jan 12, 2023 23:58

Slash: Apr 7, 2011

priznat posted:

I just discovered this while trolling amazon for deals and I love it

https://www.amazon.ca/SwitchBot-simple-switch-smart-White/dp/B07B7NXV4R

I don't think I have any use cases for it but I think that's cool

I use that to control my portable A/C unit remotely. It works great.

# ¿ Jul 13, 2023 14:33

Slash: Apr 7, 2011

This HACS addon is very good for changing your light colours. I use it so that the Hue lamps in the lounge start Bright White during day time, and then fade down to a dull orange by bed time. It happens so slowly you don't notice it. Should be able to configure it to do what you want.

https://github.com/basnijholt/adaptive-lighting

# ¿ Nov 2, 2023 16:59

Slash: Apr 7, 2011

Henrik Zetterberg posted:

Speaking of, I have a couple TP Link smart plugs and the ones with native HomeKit support suck rear end. They constantly drop off my network, while my non-HK knew that I control via Homebridge work perfectly. Annoying.

Replaced my (unreliable)TP-Link smart plugs with Sonoff ones and they've been rock solid.

# ¿ Dec 28, 2023 17:14

Slash: Apr 7, 2011

ToxicFrog posted:

That said, HA really doesn't want to be run as a service or in a container, it wants a dedicated system and is happiest either on bare metal or in a VM. I ended up migrating it from a virtd VM on that server to a separate low-power proxmox host just to make it easier to administer.

Not sure why you'd say this? Home Assistant runs just fine in a container, I've been running it under docker on my Synology NAS for several years with no issues.
You lose the ability to add-ons if you run it in a container but it operates just fine. I've never felt the need for any of the add-ons anyway.

Here's the difference in functionality between installation methods:

From here: https://www.home-assistant.io/installation/

# ¿ Jan 9, 2024 15:59

Slash: Apr 7, 2011

bobfather posted:

That big red X in the container column for "Add-Ons" means that you're sacrificing the ability to easily install an INSANE number of HACS pacakges. In most cases you can still manually install and update those packages, but installing on bare-metal or virtualizing is definitely much easier.

HACS works fine in a container. These are the Add-Ons which aren't available https://www.home-assistant.io/addons/ and I've never felt the need to use any of them.

# ¿ Jan 9, 2024 17:29

Slash: Apr 7, 2011

therunningman posted:

I am just getting into smart home stuff so it is all pretty new to me.
I have up a Google Home to use voice commands for various things and I have run into a problem with music I'm not sure how to solve.

My desired operation is this.

1. I am sitting in my hobby room touching my committee and listening to my Spotify account.

2. My ~*wife*~ or kids walk up to the Google Home speaker and give commands to listen to podcasts, Taylor Swift, Ministry, etc

3. The speaker plays this stuff using a "house account", not using the individual devices.

My problem is that whenever someone gives a command to the speaker it uses my own Spotify account.
I have tried to set up a new Google account for the Google Home with its own Spotify account I can use as the "house account" but I don't understand how get it to use this Spotify amount whenever voice commands are given at the speaker.

Anytime dealt with a similar issue? If so, how did you solve it?

I can only speak from an Alexa perspective, so this may be useful or irrelevant. As part of adding the Spotify Skill to your alexa account you have to login to a spotify account and authorise the linking. So my suggestion would be to remove the "Spotify Skill" from your google home account and re-add it, when asked to login to spotify use the credentials for your new "house account".

I used to have a "house spotify account" setup on my alexa, but it meant that i couldn't control music from the app(using spotify connect) on my phone unless i logged into that account. This was enough of an annoyance that i just set the home alexas to use my personal spotify account.

# ¿ Jan 15, 2024 11:59

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 11:35

Slash: Apr 7, 2011

I think this thing might do what you want:
https://uk.switch-bot.com/products/switchbot-hub-mini

It can learn IR signals and integrates with smart systems, but probably uses cloud access from my brief scan of the product page if that's a deal breaker.

# ¿ Jan 30, 2024 19:08

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