homeassistant

So I moved a few months ago, and only just now had time between work and school to set up my smart home again. Which turned out to be a sort-of blessing, since HA did some updates and the one for sensor and binary sensor templates dramatically screwed me as I template a lot. It also gave me the opportunity to upgrade my Yellow's Pi module, and I found (though haven’t installed) an internal z-wave module for it, which I'll do when I'm off for Christmas and New Year.

However, since I am starting fresh, I thought I'd ask around on best practices. So I use the Orbi Pro 6 which has three primary and one guest SSID, and I have it behind a Google router in its DMZ because we have Google Fiber here. Which also turned into an advantage because I wanted to a.) do full IoT isolation and also b.) have someplace to put my singleboard computers and my servers that's safer but still have internet access plus c.) avoid wifi congestion (three VLANs plus the primary router's wifi takes care of that nicely).

On the Orbi: VLAN1 is primary and where I keep my singleboard computers, my servers, two TVs, X-Box, Switches, and my laptop. VLAN2 is for IoT hubs, cameras, Roomba, etc. VLAN3 is strictly lightbulbs, which sounds ridic but when I did a wifi analysis they really really super really take up a lot of wifi bandwidth, I've been slowly replacing with Hue and other zigbee, but it's in progress. I may move the cameras there as well.

What I need to figure out is the best way to connect everything to Home Assistant. What I was doing was attaching Yellow to VLAN1 by ethernet and VLAN2, VLAN3, and the primary SSID by wifi. On the Orbi router is an mDNS gateway page so I set it to connect my VLANs so they can exchange some data.

But now I have some time to design, and also, I can run multiple instances of HA on one of my servers. I had been doing that anyway to test any chances and test and run Add-ons that I wrote myself, just not a permanent one (again, test instance; I murdered it a lot and spun up a new one when things got weird).

So for anyone who deals with multiple SSIDs or VLANs (or just has an opinion): keep Yellow as is or go with the multiple instances and use Remote Home Assistant (which I used with my test instance and it worked very well) to send entities in the VLANs back to Yellow? Anyone?

I'm attempting to add a no-name chinese solar wifi soil sensor to my HA server and have a couple questions. I was able to pair the device to the Smart Life app, add the Tuya integration to HA, link my Smart Life account to the HA integration, and recognize the device from that integration.

The device in the Smart Life app shows sensor readings for temperature, moisture, and nutrient levels, but the only sensor reading available in HA is temperature. So I guess I have 2 questions:

1. How to get HA to recognize the other sensors from this device?
2. Is there any way directly connect a device like this to HA without linking to a Smart Life account?

A while back I ditched Windows for Linux desktop (long time Linux user, just not desktop) because I've learned to hate Microsoft.

I have 2 Sengled WiFi bulbs that I thought were useless now that Sengled is dead (although the app seems to be able to login again now, I'll never trust it). But then I found Sengled Tools which, among other things, documents a very simple way to communicate with Sengled bulbs using JSON over UDP. The sample light custom component is only ~100 lines of Python and adding the UDP and JSON from Sengled Tools would be maybe 50-100 more. I took this as an invitation to improve my Python and rescue the bulbs so I started reading up on Home Assistant development.

I now have this overwhelming VS Code install with devcontainers etc. etc. which seems crazy overkill for the task at hand and I really resent AI being shoved in my face every time I try to do something - especially when the main purpose of the exercise is to learn.

I run Home Assistant in a VM and I worked out I can virsh console hass and then docker exec -it homeassistant sh. I think there's maybe a sshd addon I could use and there is also the File Editor addon.

I guess I've answered my own question, and maybe I just wanted to have a rant about being "forced" back into the Microsoft ecosystem in order to develop for Home Assistant - but I would be interested to learn about other options.

Edit to add my solution for anyone that might come across this post in the future:

As usual, I rushed in without reading the documentation properly. I just started reading from the top and following the VS Code instructions. If I had scrolled down the page a bit I would have found the "Manual Environment" section. There are no instructions for my specific distribution, but it was clear enough that it could easily be adapted. I now have a copy of Home Assistant that I can simply run in a terminal and kill and restart etc. without impacting my "production environment". I've already installed vscodium, so will probably keep using it, but if I read the instructions properly I would probably just use vi.

So, I have an automation that checks the month and applies a scene accordingly. I could never get it to work quite right though. Every time it was supposed to trigger a specific scene, it would just default to a base scene. I ran it through DDG AI and it found a single line that was causing the "choose" to fail and defaulted to the default scene. Not a fan of LLMs/AI but this actually helped.

I still have trouble understanding how to add an MQTT device without YAML. It seems there's an elaborate GUI flow made to deal with this, so why is this so complicated?

I have MQTT messages coming in. Their topics are e.g.

wx/temperature wx/humidity wx/light_lux wx/rain_mm wx/wind_dir_deg

How do I tell Home Assistant to just add the bloody device, and let me configure units afterwards and not type out 600 lines of YAML manually?

I'm completely out of the smart lights loop and I'm looking for light bulbs that allow me to set brightness, color temperature and possibly the color in general using HA.

I see a lot of people recommending zigbee bulbs, which is fine, I just need to buy a dongle, but I already have an isolated wifi network with no internet access that I use to control smart stuff from my home server, so something with wifi would be ideal. I want something that I can just screw in and control from my server with no proprietary apps needed for the initial configuration.

Can you give me some recommendations?

Thanks

TL;DR: How do I make the thermostat send a 'heat' request to the boiler without making the boiler use way too much gas?

Hi all,

I have a question about automating central heating. My current setup:

Ground floor:

• Main thermostat linked to boiler (Honeywell T6 on WiFi through Honeywell integration)
• One radiator with Sonoff TRV-ZB, zigbee
• Three radiators with non-smart knobs that are usually open
• The main room has a Sonoff Presence sensor

First floor:

• Three rooms that can be occupied with Sonoff TRV-ZBs.
• Two of three rooms have Sonoff Presence sensors

All rooms that can be heated smartly are controlled through a blueprint once shared here called 'Advanced heating control V5'.

I have a helper called 'Comfort Temp' which is a slider that controls the setpoint on the main thermostat and the TRV of an occupied room.

So the obvious question is: is there any good way to get the main thermostat to send a heating request to the boiler?

I've seen something about a WiFi module that you can put in between the main thermostat and the boiler that offers more control (Nodo OpenTherm Gateway, OTGW). Does anyone have experience with this? Or do I solve this with more TRVs on my ground floor? I've heard about central heating systems not enjoying a fully thermostatic valved circuit. More TRVs also means I have to replace the valves on a couple of radiators.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

I am rebuilding my system and I have a few questions related to network set up. I have installed a new Unifi system, set up IoT VLAN and opened port for HA. That part I THINK is right. My questions lie with setting up DuckDNS and Let's Encrypt. I plan on doing more self hosting stuff in the future. Can/Should I be doing things like Dynamic DNS and certificates via an entity outside of HA such as my router or some other container in the "system" or is it better to handle HA's requirements inside of HA itself?

Additionally, in my current config I can only reach the HA brain via the DuckDNS URL. What sort of set up is required to have the unit accessible when the internet is down? Seems with the mobile app it is the URL or nothing. What do I need to be doing for internal access when on local LAN?

I am running it on the HA Blue hardware and I plan to rebuild from scratch if that matters. I am sketchy on the network set up and making sure things are all secure. Bit paranoid lol. So if you have any good set up guides on this portion it would be appreciated. Thanks.

Here's how to automate an Itho mechanical ventilation unit (e.g. CVE ECO 2SP) to auto adjust ventilation speed according to bathroom humidity levels.

All thanks to Arjen Hiemstra's Itho WiFi add-on module (Dutch), and Home Assistant.

We bought a house! And with it, an Itho mechanical ventilation unit that did not yet auto adjust ventilation speed according to bathroom humidity levels.

So, I automated it! See my blog post for details: https://kroon.email/site/en/posts/home-assistant-itho-cve/

All thanks to Arjen Hiemstra's Itho WiFi add-on module (Dutch), and @homeassistant

#homeassistant #opensource #ithodaalderop

Wife gave me a heads up that she expects we'll get a Roomba from her parents for Christmas - most likely a Roomba Max 505 or 705 (or the Costco variations on those).

Looking at the Roomba Integrations page for HA, I saw this line:

It currently does NOT work with the newer x05 Wi-Fi models, such as Roomba 105, 405, and 505

I was wondering if anyone had tinkered with any of those candidate models and had any success getting them to work with HA?

If I were to install window motion sensors, glass break sensors, door sensors, and cameras, I've basically got my own home security system. But how would you go about mimicking the remote monitoring functions that a company such as ADT or SimpliSafe would do?

The type where if your alarm goes off, you get a phone call and are asked for your code word, and if you give the incorrect code word, the police are summoned or whatever.

I see a lot of HA users using the Ring Keypad to arm/disarm their alarm over Z-Wave. I'm suspicious of Amazon, probably overly so. I just tore out a Ring doorbell. Having said that, if this thing can work entirely free of cloud dependencies, it may still work for me.

Can the ring keypad phone home or exfiltrate telemetry data about my network? Does it connect to this Amazon sidewalk network they've created?

I don't want to give Amazon any window into my home.

cross-posted from: https://discuss.online/post/31434838

Reddit post

HAKboard, a comprehensive Home Assistant integration for Kanboard, a free and open source Kanban project management tool.

• Roadmap
• Repo
• Screenshots

Features:

Interactive Lovelace cards

Integrates project, task and people data into sensor entities

Documented entity schema aids in dashboard and automation development

Supports multiple instances, enabling blue/green deployment

Configurable replication and project filtering settings per Kanboard instance

Zero YAML editing required

Functionality:

In this initial release, it is a one-way sync of Kanboard data into HA, with deep-linking to Kanboard projects from the HA dashboard. It will create an entity for every project that provides aggregate data for tasks, task status, assignees, columns etc.. giving you an excellent birds eye view of your environment, as well as the ability to create automations from the sensor data.

A very near release (see Roadmap in the repo) will introduce the creation of entities for each task and person, and likely others. We wanted to ensure the core entity generation system is rock-solid before opening it up to potentially thousands of new entities and thought it prudent to stagger this functionality.

If you use Kanboard (or want to try it), this turns your HA dashboard into a real-time project hub.

Repo & Docs: https://github.com/aktive/hakboard

⚠️ IMPORTANT INSTALL NOTES: I'm still working through the HACS repo approval process. In the meantime, please follow these instructions if you would like to install (existing Kanboard server required):

HACS > ⚙️ (Top right) > Custom Repositories > Add: https://github.com/aktive/hakboard as type Integration

Configure your Kanboard instance via Settings (Bottom left) > Devices & services > Add (Bottom right) > Search for HAKboard

NOTE: If HAKboard does not appear (either as an integration or a dashboard card), please refresh your browser or restart HA.

I've wanted to illuminate my kick plates for a long time, starting with my master bathroom, and rolling out to my secondary and kitchen

Finally started today, with a 100w 24v converter, and a gledopto ZigBee controller

Installation was easy, and the controller was quickly picked up. I previously installed a GFCI protected outlet under my sink, so I just plugged it into there.

I don't have a motion sensor yet, so it's just a timed automation:

Day: bright white, about 40% brightness Evening: warm white, about 20% brightness After 10: almoast amber, and about 1% brightness, just enough to pee by.

Levoit Air Purifier Integration for ESPHome with link to github page below. Now I patiently wait for the Levoit 6000s Humidifier.

https://github.com/acvigue/esphome-levoit-air-purifier

Supported models:

• Levoit Core 200s
• Levoit Core 300s
• Levoit Core 400s

cross-posted from: https://lazysoci.al/post/37937592

cross-posted from: https://lazysoci.al/post/37937579

TLDR: I learned the hard way that, at some point, my nightly backups were switched to being encrypted. As far as I can tell, it seems like it was part of an update and not a lot of users noticed it. Thankfully (and concerningly?), the key is stored in plain text if you can recover data from your SD card.

A storm came through my area yesterday and caused the power to drop multiple times. The first time, my HA Pi rebooted fine as it always does, but the second time it failed to boot because it couldn't mount the HassOS boot partition.

After work, I pulled the SD card and connected it to a linux VM on my laptop to see if I could recover the backups from it and just restore from a clean install because I didn't want to spend my night chasing down boot issues. The first thing I did was dd to dump the card to an image before I tried to mess with anything. I found the nightly backups, copied them over to my system, briefly tried to fix the boot issues, gave up, and then wiped and reinstalled Home Assistant OS with Raspberry Pi Imager.

Imagine my surprise when I go through the setup process, get to the "Restore from Backup" screen, and I am then prompted to enter the encryption key for my backup. My backup through Nabu Casa also conveniently had an error when I tried to load it, I assume that one is encrypted as well, but I didn't even get that far.

I have always been pretty good about copying encryption keys into my password manager when I get them, so I was really confused when that prompt came up. I tried my account password and a few others that I might have used if it was a key that I set manually, no luck. After some research, the keys are in the form of XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX, which I definitely did not have, and the SD card had already been wiped, so any hope of finding it died.

At that point, it was getting late and I was getting frustrated, so I threw in the towel and gave into doing a fresh Home Assistant, not looking forward to rebuilding my automations and all that fun stuff.

When I woke up this morning, I had the epiphany that I had dumped the SD card as my very first step, so I grabbed the dump, mounted it, did a few find and greps, and found my encryption key in a json file called <mount path>/supervisor/homeassistant/.storage/backup. I copied the key, pulled up the restore page on my blank Home Assistant, put everything in, and it immediately began the restore process and has been happy all day.

Lessons Learned:

1. Save your encryption key and emergency kit at <server>/config/backup/settings
2. Look into remote backups because next time the SD card might be totally dead and I had bad luck with my Nabu Casa backup, I am going to install this Google Drive add on as a simple start
3. You can always trust that someone, somewhere will leave an encryption key in plain text

I've been running Home Assistant for a while and have wifi, zwave and zigbee networks. My zigbee is on a ZBT-1. I was happy until this week.

I bought some ESP32-C6 development boards to learn about ESP32 etc. with the goal of making some zigbee lock sensors (mechanical switch to report if a deadbolt is closed).

When I put the sample zigbee code on the board it won't connect to the network from my study, but if I take it closer to the coordinator it will connect and it continues working if I take it back to my study. The desk in my study is only about 16' from the coordinator but it is through 3 wood framed, gyprock lined, walls.

I know the answer is "probably, maybe", but I'd be interested in any insight people have about optimizing Zigbee networks. I could remove one of the walls from the equation by using a longer USB cable and bringing the ZBT-1 out of the utility closet? I already have routers close to 2 of the 3 doors I want to put my sensors in - I could maybe add a Zigbee lamp near the 3rd location?

The new Home Assistant Connect ZBT-2 is here.

I just bought and setup the Connect ZBT-1 a few weeks ago... 😭

Go back up your HA installation right now.

I, like many others, was running HA OS on a raspberry pi with whatever sd card I happened to have at hand at the time when I started to play with the whole thing.

It has since became a part of my household with light automations and other stuff and with everything going on in life it's been on a back burner to impove automations more, include more data, manage proper backups and so on. And specially the backups are the one I've been slacking on and now I have no one else to blame than myself.

Sd card eventually died yesterday evening and today when I started to study why the server went down but still responded to ping I was greeted with a docker error that exec format is wrong (or something along those lines). At first I thought that maybe some upgrade went sideways and decided to grab a image of the card before messing around it so I have something to come back to which failed almost immediately with IO errors on dmesg.

Gladly I could get a backup off from the card from october, so at worst I lost some automation tweaks on HA side but what I'm still afraid is that I might've lost Z-wave keys. Ddrescue is running on the card right now so I don't have the final results yet but I'm not too hopeful that it'll create a working image.

So, I did what I should've done already ages ago and installed HA on my proxmox server and added that to backup cycle so that's been taken care of properly and now I'm not limited to Rpi3 performance with addons either. I still need to get a new installation for the pi with Z-wave JS due to RaZberry 7 hat but that should be pretty straightforward task, assuming I can retrieve the keys from broken card.

So: Don't be like me, verify that you have proper backups of your stuff.

I just made the switch to a beefier host and I'm trying to figure out what to do with the green I have now that I'm not using.