Home Assistant beginners

Bluecube · 25 Oct 2025 at 22:41

Mr_Orange said:
The lack of voice set alarms and moving back to bluetooth for speakers are bummers but I can live with that.

Check out Music Assistant. Although predominantly for broadcasting music to WiFi enabled speakers such as HomePod and Echo, it exposes those speakers to Home Assistant to use as you wish.

cokecan · 27 Oct 2025 at 10:08

darkgen said:
Thanks. I'm still tinkering and finding my feet with this. Cheers.

I looked at doing something similar a good while ago. ApexCharts has options to reverse the Y axis for a series and also auto-invert data points for a series so you don't need to create a new sensor for it. I did get it working but it just didn't look right for me because I was trying to show daily energy usage and the gas usage varies quite wildly throughout the year (almost no usage in summer, maximum usage in winter) where as electricity is fairly consistent all year. In the end I opted for two individual column charts that were stripped down to look more like the mini-chart-card. minimalistic/clean but with actual numbers on the columns to show usage.

Also just in case you haven't seen this yet, almost all of the ApexCharts config options will work in this card too even if they aren't listed on the apex-charts-card GitHub page: https://apexcharts.com/docs/options/

robj20 · 31 Oct 2025 at 18:51

Got Home Assistant installed on a Pi5 with a M.2, PoE adapter board.
It all seems to be working, connect a monitor and it says it's running and has an IP to proceed via browser or app.

But I can't connect tried both http://homeassistant.local:8123 and the IP version. I can ping both no problem.

I can connect to the :4357 and everything is correct.

I get an Error Code -6
net::ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED

Bluecube · 1 Nov 2025 at 05:51

Have you tried connecting with different devices and browsers? Also, do you have a firewall of any sort that may block access?

robj20 · 1 Nov 2025 at 06:37

Yes i tried all that, i have it running on my NAS as well and no issue accessing that so it wasnt network related.

Fixed it in the end with this set of commands.

ha > core stop
ha > login
# cd /mnt/data/supervisor
# mv homeassistant homeassistant_borked
# mkdir homeassistant
# CTRL-D (drop back to ha shell)
ha > core rebuild
ha > core start

And it worked, all sorted.

ScoobyDoo · 3 Nov 2025 at 15:59

Just installed LLM and Gemini AI.
Very easy to do, just going to have a play with some coding to see what it can do and what uses i can make of it.

Anyone else running AI and what are you using it for?

dtokez · 4 Nov 2025 at 20:54

hi all.
I reckon this is a simple issue but I can't sus it out even with the help of google!

I have an automation set up, to turn some lights on 10 mins after sunset - then a 3 hour delay then they turn off. Fine for summer, but I would like to have a condition where they stay on until around 22:30. How would I go about doing this?

At the moment it is as follows:

When
When the sun sets

Then do
Delay for 10:00
Switch 'Turn on' on Porch Fascia Lights
Delay for 3:00:00
Switch 'Turn off' on Porch Fascia Lights

Bluecube · 4 Nov 2025 at 21:23

dtokez said:
hi all.
I reckon this is a simple issue but I can't sus it out even with the help of google!

I have an automation set up, to turn some lights on 10 mins after sunset - then a 3 hour delay then they turn off. Fine for summer, but I would like to have a condition where they stay on until around 22:30. How would I go about doing this?

At the moment it is as follows:

When
When the sun sets

Then do
Delay for 10:00
Switch 'Turn on' on Porch Fascia Lights
Delay for 3:00:00
Switch 'Turn off' on Porch Fascia Lights

Try the following. Obviously change the light to your porch light. EDIT: I’ve only quickly thrown this together but it should work. If it doesn’t then it’s a sound basis to work with

YAML:

description: ""
mode: single
triggers:
  - trigger: sun
    event: sunset
    id: PorchLightsOn
  - trigger: sun
    event: sunset
    offset: "3:0:0"
    id: PorchLightsOff
  - trigger: time
    at: "22:30:00"
    id: PorchLightsOff
conditions: []
actions:
  - choose:
      - conditions:
          - condition: trigger
            id:
              - PorchLightsOn
        sequence:
          - action: light.turn_on
            metadata: {}
            data: {}
            target:
              device_id: 2e0e68dab574f2dd7c44621091dd1f88
      - conditions:
          - condition: and
            conditions:
              - condition: trigger
                id:
                  - PorchLightsOff
              - condition: time
                after: "22:29:00"
        sequence:
          - action: light.turn_off
            metadata: {}
            data: {}
            target:
              device_id: 2e0e68dab574f2dd7c44621091dd1f88

robj20 · 5 Nov 2025 at 10:29

Really happy with it so far. Lights seem to respond faster than they did via Hue.
Bonus of powering it via POE is that a van very easily cycle the power remotely should I need to.

Question, I mistakenly set the boot up to m.2 first then SD card in hindsight I should have left it as SD card first. How do you get back into the settings of a Raspberry pi while using Home Assistant?

the-evaluator · 6 Nov 2025 at 07:29

I've got a frustrating issue with Home Assistant and am not sure when it started.

We've got a recessed ceiling in our living room which has an RGBWW LED strip in it, HA has been happily talking to that strip for a few years using the Magic Home integration. Last week I noticed that the LED strip was showing as unavailable. However, it's just HA that's having issues here. I see the LED strip online in UniFi (with the same IP that HA has for it), the Magic Home app sees it and can control it fine as can Alexa.

So network connectivity looks fine, zero packet loss but HA still doesn't like it. This morning I removed the LED strip from HA, told it to discover but it couldn't find it. I gave it the IP but again, it said it couldn't discover.

Is anyone else using Magic Home and having issues with it?

dtokez · 6 Nov 2025 at 11:56

Bluecube said:

Try the following. Obviously change the light to your porch light. EDIT: I’ve only quickly thrown this together but it should work. If it doesn’t then it’s a sound basis to work with

YAML:

description: ""
mode: single
triggers:
  - trigger: sun
    event: sunset
    id: PorchLightsOn
  - trigger: sun
    event: sunset
    offset: "3:0:0"
    id: PorchLightsOff
  - trigger: time
    at: "22:30:00"
    id: PorchLightsOff
conditions: []
actions:
  - choose:
      - conditions:
          - condition: trigger
            id:
              - PorchLightsOn
        sequence:
          - action: light.turn_on
            metadata: {}
            data: {}
            target:
              device_id: 2e0e68dab574f2dd7c44621091dd1f88
      - conditions:
          - condition: and
            conditions:
              - condition: trigger
                id:
                  - PorchLightsOff
              - condition: time
                after: "22:29:00"
        sequence:
          - action: light.turn_off
            metadata: {}
            data: {}
            target:
              device_id: 2e0e68dab574f2dd7c44621091dd1f88

Thanks mate, I'll see if I can work out how to edit the yaml and try it out - I'm pretty new to HA but slowly starting to find my way around it

Mr_Orange · 6 Nov 2025 at 12:19

Does anyone know a way of setting alarms via voice on the HA Voice PE? i.e. saying "set alarm for 9am tomorrow"

It's the last big thing on my want list for HA.

Bluecube · 6 Nov 2025 at 13:08

dtokez said:
Thanks mate, I'll see if I can work out how to edit the yaml and try it out - I'm pretty new to HA but slowly starting to find my way around it

Start a new automation then click on the three dots at the top right. Select "Edit in YAML". Copy the YAML code I wrote and paste it into the text field. Change nothing!! Then select the three dots again and this time "Edit in visual editor" which should take you back to the easier to use editor. YAML can be a pain to copy and paste due to indentations but it should be OK.

tres · 7 Nov 2025 at 12:37

Anyone proud enough to show off your dashboards? Looking for inspiration!

Hunterlit · 7 Nov 2025 at 17:22

robj20 · 7 Nov 2025 at 17:28

Haven't done anything with the dashboard yet, not something I use really, it's more behind the scenes functions.
I like the idea of a wall mounted screen with it all on eventually, heating, lights and CCTV.

I had a quick look there doesn't look a way of bringing smart meter info into HA.

1pudding1 · 7 Nov 2025 at 18:35

No, even though your smart meter may have the Zigbee logo on, its a proprietary form which cant be read and integrated into HA. If you have an Octopus Mini, that would do it, or some CT clamps linked to something that can integrate. Quite a few ways. Think I'm using my Zappi car charger for the grid in/out measurement.

1pudding1 · 7 Nov 2025 at 18:41

Here's a load of mine.

And then this one is for controlling lights thats on a touchscreen linked to a miniPC in the lounge.

robj20 · 7 Nov 2025 at 18:43

1pudding1 said:
No, even though your smart meter may have the Zigbee logo on, its a proprietary form which cant be read and integrated into HA. If you have an Octopus Mini, that would do it, or some CT clamps linked to something that can integrate. Quite a few ways. Think I'm using my Zappi car charger for the grid in/out measurement.

Think I have an Octopus Mini, little purple/pink device for live data.
I had thought linking to the Bright app would work, seems a few people got that working but doesn't look easy.

NutritioN · 7 Nov 2025 at 18:48

Bright app linking was easy enough, from memory. I couldn't do it any other way as I'm in a building where my smart meter is out of signal range. The HA integration however, I think was deprecated for a bit or stopped and was picked up by a different person.