Home Assistant beginners

[katie279]

I'm very tempted to have a look into HA as I have various zigbee bulbs from various manufacturers, a Hue Hub, a broadcom RM4 Pro, a Lifl Zigbee Gateway, Tuya switches and some other bits and pieces and while most of it plays reasonable nicely with Google Assistant (I have home minis in most rooms), it's lacking some useful features like being able to trigger routines using devices and/or sensors (apparently it's coming to google home but who knows when).

Can most of this stuff be setup in HA alongside the existing setups with the Hue hub etc etc? That would be great as it'll allow me to keep using what I have while I tinker with HA. Also, does HA play nicely with Google Assistant for voice control and such like?

My ideal setup would be on a Pi 4 I think, so I'm hoping that by the time I have the spare time to tinker (currently studying in my spare time), they will be more widely available again.

Absolutely - doesn't interfere at all!

 

[katie279]

Yep givenergy and I have a solcast account which has been integrated into the givenergy portal. Furthermore I've also added the API from Octopus into givenergy app

Here you go, follow instructions and you should be away!

GivEnergy Solar Inverter

I wanted to announce a new custom integration for GivEnergy inverters, now available as a custom repository via HACS. Last week I had a GivEnergy Hybrid inverter installed on my property. I’d already clocked the other thread on here, and while there seems to have been some success, I didn’t...

community.home-assistant.io

 

[katie279]

Here you go, follow instructions and you should be away!

GivEnergy Solar Inverter

I wanted to announce a new custom integration for GivEnergy inverters, now available as a custom repository via HACS. Last week I had a GivEnergy Hybrid inverter installed on my property. I’d already clocked the other thread on here, and while there seems to have been some success, I didn’t...

community.home-assistant.io

This is quite handy too:

Understanding Home Energy Management

How to get started using home energy management in Home Assistant.

www.home-assistant.io

And this!

Energy cards

An overview of the energy cards that are available.

www.home-assistant.io

 

[katie279]

So the idea of this has always intrigued and been appealing to me, being able to have one centralised app where i can control and monitor all of my "smart" equipment.

What advice would you give to anyone who is starting their journey with this kind of automation and monitoring? I don't really know where to start or what to begin with.

At the moment the only "smart" or network connected equipment I have is a Sonos speaker, Sky box, TV and a Smart Plug (controlling a lamp via wifi through our phone). I like the idea of having more lighting that is centrally controlled and managed. Is it just a case of replacing a lot of my bulbs in the house with Hue or some of the Ikea bulbs? I'm thinking of getting motorised blinds for our kitchen and dining room, could something like that be controlled with HA? How do you know what can and can't be controlled?

In my head the most common uses for this are:

• managing lighting
• managing speakers
• monitoring and managing power usage and heating
• monitoring network stats
• monitoring and managing cctv/security
• im sure there are more but is there a list of all the most common use cases for this kind of thing?

I've read through most of this thread but still trying to figure out the best way to approach something like this as I don't want to just start buying things for the sake of it. I also have a slight concern about how much electricity setting up something like this will consume, if i'm buying tonnes of wifi enabled bulbs, switches, extra bits of kits.

I'm also

In terms of energy use, you're talking a raspberry pi and that's it, so tiny energy footprint. But I can say, very conservatively, it's saved me £600-700 a year. The ability to easily see what's using electricity, automatically switch on/off devices totally changes the game - ours for example does stuff that I could theoretically do, but never would - eg every night turn off all the devices on standby in the lounge, the gym, the study etc etc.

Pretty much everything can be controlled, it really is an enormous ecosystem - good tip is to simple search for it, eg 'my device home assistant '

I'd also start with simply getting home assistant set up, like most people, you'll be surprised at how many smart devices you actually have - eg your pc, your phone, your TV, etc

Then you can look at cheap options like IKEA Tradfri lights, buttons, switches etc to start your journey....!

 

[katie279]

But surely for those devices to be controllable through wifi or whatever they all need to be consuming some level of energy and "online" so to speak, so it isn't a Raspberry Pi can it?

Or are you saying it is more a case of the extra cost being negligible for someone who already has a lot of these devices controlled through different hubs/apps/systems and therefore to unify the control through HA it is only the addition of an RPi which is the added energy cost?

What makes you say it has saved you £600-700 per year? Purely from switching things on and off?

Yes exactly, it is negligible - eg if you look how much it costs you to run, say your phone, each year they're super efficient devices. Adding Bluetooth, WiFi, zigbee to a device really doesn't add a huge amount of cost, so your washing machine before it was smart and after really doesn't change, the actual use is enormous.

Energy saving:
- smart lighting - eg turning off lights that the kids constantly leave on all day (eg bathroom etc)
- knowledge - spotting lights, heaters, pcs etc have been left on - we've got two high end pcs with triple monitors in our study (thank you overclockers!), so again simply being aware of when they aren't hibernating and being able to press a button to do so, saves loads
- schedules - again smart lighting, dimming lights in evening etc all saves a bit
- off peaking - I have octopus go, so washing machines, cars etc all turn on in middle of night to charge
- likewise, even switching off my NAS at night and restarting in the morning, they use around 250w on average, so saving six hours a day - if you do the maths, eg 20-30p per kW x six hours X 365 days (then divide by four to get KW), you're talking about 20 smart devices per year in terms of even buying them in the first place, let alone their relatively tiny running cost!

The list goes on and on, but hopefully a flavour?

 

[katie279]

Another random question. Can you ask Google to do something on HA? I.e. turn something on that's controlled by HA? I.e. I've got HA to send a WOL to one of my machines, can I link that back to Google to trigger it?

Lots of ways to achieve this - indeed you can even remove yourself from the cloud dependency entirely if you wanted, check out this:

Home Assistant Is Getting Local Voice Control!?

The State of the Open Home event was held a few days ago, which contained some really interesting news for Home Assistant users, including a preview of a new...

www.youtube.com

Nabu casa makes it simple if you want to use GA for the voice processing as Semple says - there's a few other approaches:

Google Assistant

Setup for Google Assistant integration

www.home-assistant.io

Use Google home with HA without paying for cloud?

Are there any ways to get Google home support for my HA devices without paying for home assistant cloud? Thanks Gershy13

community.home-assistant.io

Introducing Home Intent - the simple local voice assistant for Home Assistant!

This looks very cool, can it replace any of the functionality from here GitHub - maykar/plex_assistant: ❱ Plex Assistant is a Home Assistant integration for casting Plex media to Google devices, Sonos devices, and Plex clients with Google Assistant, HA's conversation integration, and more. ...

community.home-assistant.io

And many more - really depends on how you use, so more one to browse and pick what suits you best!

 

[katie279]

That's a much better use case than my car unlock/lock also triggering the dishwasher.

Or my husband or thought it'd be REALLY funny to create an automation that would change the sensor in our hall so it turned the lights red and starting playing scary music through all the sonos speakers in the house when home alone....

 

[katie279]

Holy **** I got it working. I can now tell google to turn on Plex, and it sends a WOL packet to my plex server which turns on! This is ******* awesome!

You getting my point now FF?? It is game changing once you start to get your head around it - and I love the community, you really need to get into the habit of searching '<name of device> home assistant' in google - even things that aren't smart and you're certain can't be integrated, there'll be someone who's worked it out. I've actually wasted a fair bit of money from NOT doing this enough - eg bought energy saving plugs when if I'd known that you could buy much cheaper ones that Home Assistant through ESPHome could flash the firmware and 'upgrade' for free (and get rid of dodgy chinese apps), bought wifi dongles, bluetooth extenders, things like my harmony hub that Home Assistant could do already....

 

[katie279]

Thanks will take a look too. I'm actually keen to see if I can integrate it with esphome as I've made smart blinds out of those and would be handy to also ask Google to shut the blinds.

Oh definitely - esphome is one of my favourite HA addons! It's brilliant at this sort of thing!

 

[katie279]

I'm running ZHA to control my devices, I've seen other people use Zigbee2MQTT to do similar, is there any benefit using one over the other?

It's a bit Windows vs Mac - so no huge difference. Z2MQWTT maybe has a tiny bit more stable integrations, but really not that noticeable. Meanwhile ZHA seems to be more 'the future' and HA seem to focus on it more, so in a year's time I'd imagine I'd say ZHA more confidently....

 

[katie279]

Occupancy simulation! I’d love to have the time and knowledge to be able to “record” a weeks activity (I think it does this anyway) and then play it back whilst away for a week.

By default it'll do this, or if you want to be really cool, get some mmwave sensors that are so sensitive they'll detect you breathing in a room (good as normal motion sensors will only detect larger movements, so when you're sleeping, sitting down watching telly etc, they may not report correctly)

**edit sorry, misread your comment - thought you meant tracking occupancy. Yes it does, although this is handy more broadly in allowing you to create schedules for everything: https://community.home-assistant.io/t/scheduler-card-custom-component/217458

You could obviously do this all manually with automations, but handy view to have in one place when you're getting more complex (like occupancy simulation)

 

[katie279]

Ok here's a challenge for you experts - how does one do a remote shutdown command from HA for a PC?

I don't seem to have the HA Store for some reason? Is that because I installed it as a docker? That said, happy to do manual installation.

I take your shut down and raise you a 'complete control over your PC'

GitHub - LAB02-Research/HASS.Agent: Windows-based client for Home Assistant. Provides notifications, quick actions, commands, sensors and more.

Windows-based client for Home Assistant. Provides notifications, quick actions, commands, sensors and more. - LAB02-Research/HASS.Agent

github.com

Really neat app which will report an almost endless stream of sensors from your pc (CPU, ram, HD temp, current window - almost endless) and allow an endless list of commands (loads of usual - eg shutdown, hibernate etc, but can run any command at all), turns your PC into a media device to extend your sonos and tonnes more....

 

[katie279]

Im still a bit lost with this, i assume for washing machines, dishwashers, stuff like that, it needs to be a "smart" appliance? And you can't just do it with a bog standard Beko?
I still don't really know what i'd use it for over unified lighting, blinds and heating control...

Just try it....

To your point, some people get a cheap smart energy plug and plug their washing machine into this to track energy usage and so on. In terms of other things, it really depends - I've got views of local motorway webcams along my commute, so I can check traffic, Local weather with realtime satellite maps, computer monitors to check temps, network activity, constant broadband speed test (and ping) and loads more - so you don't just need smart devices....!

 

[katie279]

Superb thanks - that’s this Saturday sorted!

I do think if it’s logged it should be fairly simple to play it back automatically as long as the HA apis for the actions are similar enough to what’s logged.

Yeah exactly, it'd probably be interesting to throw together a page to show activity of your lights, music etc and then you can play with the schedule card for the action, then create a button entitled 'Home Alone Mode' and you're away... !

On a serious note, you could think about more than a single use for this - eg look at the patterns of lights you use in the morning, evening etc and then automate that for yourself, so not just for when you're away from home.

 

[katie279]

Super happy with this:



Is there an ELI5 to graph my energy cost data over the past 7 days?

Starting simple, just something like this:

Statistics graph card

The statistics graph card allows you to display a graph with statistics data for each of the entities listed.

www.home-assistant.io

Same as all the other cards to add, just change the values to suit (think it'll default to 24hrs, just change that to 7d)

There's obviously more complex and useful approaches, but I'm trying to break you noobs in gently.....

 

[katie279]

Cool, I got them for free so was worth a shot !

Again never heard of them, but they appear Google Assistant/Alexa compatible, so you'll be able to control them using HA's integrations for that.

Also they look suspiciously like some tuya ones that you can flash and upgrade using esphome, so could be worth having a good Google/asking in HA discord/forums?

 

[katie279]

Well I tried adding my nest door bell... needless to say my mind was somewhat blown at it! I might need a bit more coffee / time to work it out!

You follow these instructions?

Google Nest

Instructions on how to integrate Nest into Home Assistant.

www.home-assistant.io

 

[katie279]

Not sure it's coffee you need... Something stronger...

You can either just go into HA > Integrations > Add integration

Or you can click the 'Add Integration' on the above link?

That's pretty much it

 

[katie279]

Ah right, fair point - that's Google being asses, you only need to do that once, but is a bit of a nerd fest!

One for fresh eyes!

 

[katie279]

Some integrations go from 0 to 11 complexity pretty quick. SmartThings, for example...

Have set up smart things, can't recall it's complexity - you hitting any problems?