Home Assistant beginners

Just adding a note here that you can feel free to ignore - using HA to control your heating is a very deep rabbit hole to venture down that can soak up a lot of your time. If you can find a ready made system that suits your needs then go for it/ stick with it.

I only created my own set up because Hive was annoying me at the time. I’d already had a lot of automations and schedules set up already before I made the jump. I wouldn’t like to start from scratch!
 
Bluecube said:
Just adding a note here that you can feel free to ignore - using HA to control your heating is a very deep rabbit hole to venture down that can soak up a lot of your time
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Definitely
I've had the sonoff trvzb's for a couple of years, the only benefit I got out of them is helping me to balance the radiators and more useless stats to look at :cry:
Having said that, they have been rock solid for me, not had to replace the batteries and just checked to find that the batteries are still > 90% !

I've seen complaints about the trvzb - maybe it's all down to the their zigbee network performance but as I said - no issues for me
 
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I've stayed away from using HA to control my heating for fear of losing wife approval. She's fine with a light or automation occasionally not working as expected but she'd be rightly unhappy to wake up to a cold house with no hot water.

As much I like tinkering in HA, this is one thing I'm staying well clear of.
 
Bluecube said:
What brand and model do you have? The shoddy TRVs I got needed replacement batteries about twice a year
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Sonoff TRVZB ... the battery will run down on the device that is doing the most valve switching ... I can see this on one TRV that is at 87%.
In my setup there's not much switching happening which explains the battery longevity
 
robj20 said:
If it's anything like my Evohome ones those more expensive lithium batteries make a Huge difference over standard AAs, rechargeable are a no go as well.
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The Hive TRVs I have use standard AA batteries and last a lot longer than the cheap ones I tried. Batteries in the Hive last about 9 months for me which is fine. It's no hardship to change batteries every 9 months. Every couple of months is just plain annoying though
 
Bluecube said:
The Hive TRVs I have use standard AA batteries and last a lot longer than the cheap ones I tried. Batteries in the Hive last about 9 months for me which is fine. It's no hardship to change batteries every 9 months. Every couple of months is just plain annoying though
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About the same for Evohome maybe a year or more. But the lithium ones I have some going on 2 years now. It helps having a system that can use a low flow temp the valves don't need to be constantly adjusting they're just mostly open by a set amount.
 
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Jimbeam3678 said:
So I need a zigabee usb connector for my NUC. Temperature/humidity sensor, trv valve anything else? Anything wrong with going all with Sonoff via Ali express?
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robj20 said:
If you use generic TRVs how does HA go about controlling the boiler in an efficient manner.

I have Evohome because I wanted a self contained offline system but able to control remotely.
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If DIYing, what you want is known as a contactor. It does the same thing that a normal switch does that you'd put behind a light. However instead of switching its own live supply onto the output, it uses a relay which has separate connectors for the in and output, rather than bridging the power supply and input.

In many boilers the thermostat wire is just 240V anyway but it wouldn't be fun if your boiler uses a 24V signal wire and you feed it 240V.

I have a ZigBee contactor from AliExpress - can't remember the brand name but I don't think it's Sonoff as I usually prefer that brand and couldn't find one.
 
ShivP said:
Has anyone wall mounted any tablets for HA and have recommendations?
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Mi use Amazon Fire tablets. Use Firetoolbox to remove bloat. Then run HA via Fully Kiosk Browser. Can control the tablet via HA, screen on/off, brightness etc which I’ve automated. Fully can use the selfie camera for motion detection also.

I removed the batteries from the tablets and gave them 5v power directly. They’ve worked faultlessly for a few years now with no real lag or anything. They handle a cctv stream just fine too.

Not going to say they are the best option, but the value proposition is certainly there.
 
LuckyBenski said:
If DIYing, what you want is known as a contactor. It does the same thing that a normal switch does that you'd put behind a light. However instead of switching its own live supply onto the output, it uses a relay which has separate connectors for the in and output, rather than bridging the power supply and input.

In many boilers the thermostat wire is just 240V anyway but it wouldn't be fun if your boiler uses a 24V signal wire and you feed it 240V.

I have a ZigBee contactor from AliExpress - can't remember the brand name but I don't think it's Sonoff as I usually prefer that brand and couldn't find one.
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That's exactly my point, that's such an old fashioned and inefficient method of controlling a boiler. Ideally you want something like Opentherm which uses loads balancing and rather than simply cycling the boiler on and off requests a specific flow temperature.
 
robj20 said:
That's exactly my point, that's such an old fashioned and inefficient method of controlling a boiler. Ideally you want something like Opentherm which uses loads balancing and rather than simply cycling the boiler on and off requests a specific flow temperature.
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OpenTherm is boiler specific. My boiler is only six years old yet doesn’t have it and the only way to retrofit it was too complex (for me anyway) If anyone finds a simple way to add OpenTherm to an existing boiler, please let me know!
 
Bluecube said:
OpenTherm is boiler specific. My boiler is only six years old yet doesn’t have it and the only way to retrofit it was too complex (for me anyway) If anyone finds a simple way to add OpenTherm to an existing boiler, please let me know!
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Doesn't have to be Opentherm, Weather Compensation does similar. Other brands have their own protocols as well, they don't all want to use an open source based one.

I'm sure with enough effort you can get HA doing it all or at least a lot of it. Evohome takes into account individual room demands, wether or not the rooms are south facing and get sunlight, the weather forecast for the day, if windows or doors are open, learnt room behaviour. All results in a very efficient system.
 
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Well this is a first for me

Code: 
2025-12-25 09:59:07.775 INFO (MainThread) [supervisor.api.proxy] [d5369777_music_assistant] Home Assistant WebSocket API proxy running
2025-12-25 09:59:21.641 INFO (MainThread) [supervisor.api.proxy] [d5369777_music_assistant] Home Assistant WebSocket API closed
2025-12-25 09:59:24.814 WARNING (MainThread) [supervisor.homeassistant.core] Watchdog found Home Assistant failed, restarting...
2025-12-25 09:59:24.824 INFO (SyncWorker_4) [supervisor.docker.manager] Starting homeassistant
2025-12-25 09:59:24.914 INFO (MainThread) [supervisor.homeassistant.core] Wait until Home Assistant is ready

Maybe this is causing it

play.google.com

HA TV Dashboard - Apps on Google Play

The "unofficial" HA TV Dashboard
play.google.com play.google.com
 
Got these recently:

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