Home Assistant beginners

katie279 · 11 Nov 2022 at 20:38

Hi all,

Few threads have asked for this, so quick thread to help anyone getting to grips with home assistant.

No questions too stupid, no thoughts too daft!

Ask away here and I'll try and collate some FAQs

How do I get started
Loads of great youtube videos, but pretty simple instructions on the site and always the most recent.

Home Assistant

Open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first. Powered by a worldwide community of tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts. Perfect to run on a Raspberry Pi or a local server.

www.home-assistant.io

What are addons, integrations, HACs etc?

Addons extend the application - eg add Samba, Zigbee connectors, turn your install into a VLC instance, add MariaDB etc
Integrations connect and ingest all your smart devices around the house - this is where the magic happens and you can get access to sensors, entities and controls for your Samsung Washing Machine, your Tesla, your Hue lights, Sonos speakers and literally thousands of other things.
Have a look here: https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/
HACS - there is also a very capable addon called HACS that allows even further integration - these are basically the non-official ones built by the community. Eventually the best of these become proper integrations.

What can I do with Home Assistant?
It's almost endless and much like saying 'what can you do with Windows', but sites like this give you a very small dip into the full capability:

Awesome Home Assistant

A curated list of awesome Home Assistant resources for automating every aspect of your home

www.awesome-ha.com

Best integrations/addons:
This list will never end, but I'll update as people ask questions/make suggestions.

ESPHome - if you like a bit of electronics, you can save a fortune here and make your house super smart. Instead of paying £50 for some Hue motion sensor, Samsung Temperature sensor etc, just get an ESP chip (around £10 on Amazon) and follow the really simple guides here:

ESPHome — ESPHome

ESPHome Homepage - Reimagining DIY Home Automation. ESPHome is a framework that tries to provide the best possible use experience for using IoT microcontrollers for Home Automation. Just write a simple YAML configuration file and get your own customized firmware.

esphome.io

All gets managed through Home Assistant and it'll keep everything up-to-date - very cool!
ZHA - lets you connect to all your zigbee devices. Suddenly those walled gardens of Hue, Ikea etc become accessible (note you also don't need to buy endless 'hubs' for each, save the money - this does it all!)

Zigbee Home Automation

Instructions on how to integrate your Zigbee Home Automation (ZHA) devices within Home Assistant.

www.home-assistant.io

Anyway - ask away any questions and we can all help each other - I'll pull stuff together on this first thread also!

LuckyBenski · 11 Nov 2022 at 21:33

Can I suggest some topics to cover?

Coordinators and comms types, could be a post for each and a summary/comparison: ZigBee, WiFi, lightwave etc and 433MHz

Cloud integration/external access

Mobile app/cards setup

Hardware to run it on e.g. virtual machine, dedicated Raspberry Pi, NAS etc

katie279 · 11 Nov 2022 at 21:40

Home Assistant Cloud / External Access

Lots of ways you can achieve this (eg if you've installed on your NAS, then you could use its external connectivity, but the easiest and standard way is:

Nabu Casa

www.nabucasa.com

This is Home Assistant's native cloud access - pretty low cost and money goes to developing Home Assistant further.

katie279 · 11 Nov 2022 at 21:42

Mobile App
Again there are options but easiest is:

iOS

‎Home Assistant

‎The Home Assistant Companion app allows you to access your Home Assistant instance on the go. Home Assistant is the smart home solution focused on privacy, choice, and sustainability. It runs locally in your home via a device like the Home Assistant Green or Raspberry Pi. This app connects to...

apps.apple.com

Android:

Home Assistant - Apps on Google Play

The official app for Home Assistant. Control your home anywhere in the world.

play.google.com

Remember, Home Assistant exposes itself as a web page on your network - so any laptop, tablet or phone will be able to access it just by using the URL. It's mobile responsive, so it'll work great.

I've got tablets around the house and embedded into the walls that basically are just showing the webpage and they work brilliant

katie279 · 11 Nov 2022 at 21:45

Hardware
Home Assistant has pointed towards Raspberry Pi as it's standard install, but no reason at all it needs to run on this.

I've got it running on a Raspberry Pi 4 8gb and it runs beautifully well - never any lag or slow down. Also works on Raspberry Pi 3.

You can also run it in a docker or on any NAS, use a mini PC or whatever else you fancy.

Essentially you want to run it as a server, so you want something low power, high up time and a reasonable amount of grunt.

katie279 · 11 Nov 2022 at 21:46

LuckyBenski said:
Can I suggest some topics to cover?

Coordinators and comms types, could be a post for each and a summary/comparison: ZigBee, WiFi, lightwave etc and 433MHz

Cloud integration/external access

Mobile app/cards setup

Hardware to run it on e.g. virtual machine, dedicated Raspberry Pi, NAS etc

Done! I'll copy/paste them into the main topic if enough detail/more generally useful.

Do you mind expanding on the coordinators/comms types point? (ie what sort of thing are you wanting to share/understand). Pretty broad topics and short answer is 'yes it does all of them'!

casper_uk · 11 Nov 2022 at 22:11

Great topic! Am looking forward to giving this all a bash when I move into my house (if I ever finish the every growing list of jobs)

LuckyBenski · 11 Nov 2022 at 22:12

katie279 said:
Done! I'll copy/paste them into the main topic if enough detail/more generally useful.

Do you mind expanding on the coordinators/comms types point? (ie what sort of thing are you wanting to share/understand). Pretty broad topics and short answer is 'yes it does all of them'!

So worth going over the benefits and weaknesses e.g. ZigBee - no internet access needed, low power, doesn't busy up network IP map, but needs a coordinator somewhere. WiFi - already in your home, easy to access, 2 way communication, may be less secure. Same for 433MHz and lightwave stuff but I'm less familiar

FWIW my main goal is to not overcrowd 2.4GHz and to avoid having millions of devices on my WiFi network.

Uhtred · 11 Nov 2022 at 22:28

I've been using home assistant for about 5 years now. I set it up initially because I wanted the ability to automate my hue lights. It also allowed me to integrate my home-made boiler controller and have it scheduled in google calendar. My favourite automation is to dim the living room lights when we start playing something on the tv

When I started the automations were frustrating for a newbie, it was all done in yaml and home assistant had to be restarted after every change (back then restarting took a loooong time). Eventually I switched my automations to node-red (flow based) which can make complex automations really easy to work with. However, it's a learning curve all in itself, and now that the automations in home assistant are much more user friendly, I don't think there's much need to use node-red.

The home assistant community is very friendly and helpful, and the forums are very active

katie279 · 11 Nov 2022 at 22:29

LuckyBenski said:
So worth going over the benefits and weaknesses e.g. ZigBee - no internet access needed, low power, doesn't busy up network IP map, but needs a coordinator somewhere. WiFi - already in your home, easy to access, 2 way communication, may be less secure. Same for 433MHz and lightwave stuff but I'm less familiar

FWIW my main goal is to not overcrowd 2.4GHz and to avoid having millions of devices on my WiFi network.

Ah right, that makes sense, so less about Home Assistant (as it'd work with all of them), but more about home automation choices more broadly.

I guess in short:

Wifi - universal and built in as you describe - if you're planning on loads of devices (eg room sensors), then whilst esp8266/esp32 chips are perfectly happy on wifi, can risk clogging up your wifi network. Probably only if you're talking 25+ devices I'd say.

Zigbee - great, really easy to install to home assistant. Various approaches, but I've used a usb Conbee II - just plugs into my raspberry pi and set up the addon. REally low power and high response speed. The Conbee will detect all your Ikea switches, Hue lights and anything else Zigbee based. You can also browse all the home assistant blueprints:

Blueprints Exchange

Blueprints are reusable automations and scripts that can easily be shared. For more information, see <a href="https://www.home-assistant.io/docs/blueprint">the blueprint documentation</a>.

community.home-assistant.io

These are just really easy 'templates' for all those 3rd party devices - many of them let you do more than you can do with the original supplier's apps.

Lightwave devices - I have a few of these, these just integrate into HA through an integration - works great, far better than the actual manufacturer's app which has always been buggy as heck!

katie279 · 11 Nov 2022 at 22:32

Uhtred said:
I've been using home assistant for about 5 years now. I set it up initially because I wanted the ability to automate my hue lights. It also allowed me to integrate my home-made boiler controller and have it scheduled in google calendar. My favourite automation is to dim the living room lights when we start playing something on the tv

When I started the automations were frustrating for a newbie, it was all done in yaml and home assistant had to be restarted after every change (back then restarting took a loooong time). Eventually I switched my automations to node-red (flow based) which can make complex automations really easy to work with. However, it's a learning curve all in itself, and now that the automations in home assistant are much more user friendly, I don't think there's much need to use node-red.

The home assistant community is very friendly and helpful, and the forums are very active

Spot on - very similar to myself. Agree it was a 'programmers' tool five years ago, it's now almost entirely a UI tool.

Agree regarding node-red too - this is great, but automations are so integrated now, very few use cases in general for node-red - it's all out of the box.

Great point re Scenes/Automations - really neat to be able to do this.

katie279 · 11 Nov 2022 at 22:35

NFC Tags

Home Assistant Tags

Power your home and life with NFC tags, now a first-class citizen in Home Assistant.

www.home-assistant.io

These are great as they're super cheap and require zero batteries - you can buy stickers off any major site as well as printable cards, credit card tags, key fobs etc.

Basically you can then either get a reader and put it somewhere in your house or just use your mobiles.

This means you can tap your phone to a tag as you go into the kitchen to set to a mood lighting, play music play lists, adjust heating etc etc.

We have created a bunch of little cards for the kids to tap to dim their lights and play bed time stories or music in their rooms - allows us to control what they're listening to a bit more and makes it really simple for them.

Likewise I've got stickers in lots of places in the garden that I can tap my phone to turn the outside hose on and off (saves me walking back and forth).

Just another thought!

dlockers · 11 Nov 2022 at 22:38

ELI5 though - I have a Hue Hub, several Hue bulbs/sensors. What do I do? Download something to a Raspberry Pi? Does this then connect to my Hue gear?

katie279 · 11 Nov 2022 at 22:46

dLockers said:
ELI5 though - I have a Hue Hub, several Hue bulbs/sensors. What do I do? Download something to a Raspberry Pi? Does this then connect to my Hue gear?

Spot on - follow instructions in first link and this sets up Home Assistant. Think of it like a router for your smart devices - it detects and connects to them all and then will walk you through everything, so it'll 'discover' your hue bulbs on first boot and ask if you want to integrate them.

Once done you can then start building dashboards with switches, colour controls, usage charts or whatever else you fancy. All done via the front end.

Does this make sense?

You can get ideas just by googling like this:

home assistant hue - Google Search

That search reminded me that we have automations to gradually fade up our bedroom lights in the morning for example!

dlockers · 11 Nov 2022 at 22:53

katie279 said:
Spot on - follow instructions in first link and this sets up Home Assistant. Think of it like a router for your smart devices - it detects and connects to them all and then will walk you through everything, so it'll 'discover' your hue bulbs on first boot and ask if you want to integrate them.

Once done you can then start building dashboards with switches, colour controls, usage charts or whatever else you fancy. All done via the front end.

Does this make sense?

You can get ideas just by googling like this:

home assistant hue - Google Search

That search reminded me that we have automations to gradually fade up our bedroom lights in the morning for example!

So does it decomm my Hue Hub? Or does my Pi speak ZigBee already?

katie279 · 11 Nov 2022 at 22:58

dLockers said:
So does it decomm my Hue Hub? Or does my Pi speak ZigBee already?

Whatever you want - by default it'll just seamlessly integrate with your hub, so that's the easiest route.

If you had a ZigBee stick, you could plug it into your pi and it'd be able to talk to your hue devices directly without a hub.

This isn't that useful for you at the moment, so I wouldn't bother - but in future, you could save yourself the money for these hubs and all those connections to your router.

Likewise, if Phillips starts playing silly b*ggers by discontinuing support, charging for hub services, forcing you to upgrade etc etc, then easy enough to detach yourself from their services.

Hue app and service is pretty good, but have a fair few of these devices from other companies that I've been glad to be able to detach from...!

1pudding1 · 12 Nov 2022 at 08:54

Great timing for this thread for me. I just took delivery of a HP T530 slim client in order to install HA on. Currently have an old RPi3 running Domoticz and PiHole from an SD card which has needed resetting every few days, so am wanting to migrate everything over before the SD card gives up the ghost. Mainly use it for automating LightwaveRF bits, and have an RFXcom 433Mhz transceiver connected to it rather than using the Lightwave hub, which is gathering dust somewhere in our garage. How do others use HA with Lightwave bits, still using the Lightwave hub, or another 433MHz transceiver? Any tips on this aspect would be great.

FerretBoy · 12 Nov 2022 at 09:19

A couple of automations that work well for me:

Unlock front door - disables alarm and puts lights on.

Car returns home - unlocks front door.

Office visit planned (Google calendar) - automatically books parking space and desk space once available.

Office visit planned tomorrow - Car charges to 80% and preconditioning enabled to ensure its warm/cool/defrosted in the morning. Navigation destination set to office.

Person seen on drive - Flash (on or off) internal lights

katie279 · 12 Nov 2022 at 11:14

1pudding1 said:
Great timing for this thread for me. I just took delivery of a HP T530 slim client in order to install HA on. Currently have an old RPi3 running Domoticz and PiHole from an SD card which has needed resetting every few days, so am wanting to migrate everything over before the SD card gives up the ghost. Mainly use it for automating LightwaveRF bits, and have an RFXcom 433Mhz transceiver connected to it rather than using the Lightwave hub, which is gathering dust somewhere in our garage. How do others use HA with Lightwave bits, still using the Lightwave hub, or another 433MHz transceiver? Any tips on this aspect would be great.

Hi Pudding,

Yes, you can do either basically - you can plug in your RFXcom transceiver and learn all the lightwave commands or plugin your lightwave hub and Home Assistant will integrate it. Either way it removes the need for Lightwave's fairly awful software and works just the same.

I've got mine running with the hub - mainly out of laziness than anything else (already had it set up before I installed HA, so it just integrated automatically).

There's lot of good stuff in the HACS plugin: https://github.com/bigbadblunt/homeassistant-lightwave2

Eg you'll see you can teach to recognise double, triple, quadruple etc presses as distinct commands. This is handy for room lighting so I have one press turns the lights on normally, double press is usually dimmed lighting, triple press is bright (blue light) etc

martin363 · 12 Nov 2022 at 15:32

I am also interested in Thread and Matter. I am trying to research a little on them as they seem to be the future, given they also 'unify' the walled gardens into one box, at least that seems to be the idea and can operate a bit like a WIFI Mesh network I think, but from what I can tell are not backward compatible with Zigbee or Zwave.

Obviously Thread is now available in Apple TV, and has been I believe for a while in HomePod and Google Home, but has anyone started to use it? and can offer advice re. benefits and drawbacks? I am investing in HA now and want to future proof myself where I can.

thanks