Home Assistant beginners

[katie279]

Any thoughts how I go about setting up an automation that turns a switch on at 7:30 - 16:00 Mon-Fri for two weeks then on the third week switch on at 10:00-18:00 for a full week?

Ooh that's an interestingly weird one! Bound to be lots of ways depending on exactly why you need it - you could set out your year's calendar and run that way.

If it was truly predictable (ie always this way), then I'd probably think about setting up two very simple helper values that are:
- just a 0 or a 1
- then another as a countdown for the two weeks or one week

Then you can have an automation that says 'if helper = 0' (ie we're in the 14 day cycle), then set the countdown to 14 days and once it equals 0, then add 1 to the week cycle helper and set it to 7. This would effectively give you the cycle.

Then you could just set up your two automation patterns one called 'weekly cycle' and one called 'fortnight cycle' or whatever and call these at a relevant point in above (or you could use the scheduler card which is really nice) https://community.home-assistant.io/t/scheduler-card-custom-component/217458

Does this make sense? Bound to be a more eloquent way, just trying to stick to simple WYSIWYG components for beginners!

Tutorial on helpers here:

Using Helpers in Home Assistant

In my journey to build a smarter home, I am always thinking about how to improve the user experience especially when so much of what my house does is without...

www.youtube.com

 

[katie279]

Gave me after reading the summary page but it involved being a premium member and setting up an API broker iirc.

Ah right - Google and Samsung are pretty poor in their behaviours (ie trying to make it hard for people to use anything other than their own) - they all have free routes, just need to google around and step through instructions etc. I'd imagine matter should improve this - although am sure they'll still be playing anti-consumer games....!

 

[katie279]

I've thought of a a good thing I'd like to explore.

If we've had a good solar day and the myenergi solar diverter has heated up the hot water, I'd like it to turn off / pause the hot water schedule on my hive. If the water temp drops too much to renable the hive schedule (it comes on for 20 mins in the morning and 20 mins in the evening), or potentialy it could boost give for 15 mins or so. In the winter I forsee using gas generally - but some days we've had enough sone for some solar heating.

Interesting thought - apologies for the stupid initial question, but does this not happen automatically anyway?!

ie even our really, really old boiler heater would heat the water to a certain temp and then turn off (rather than just heating and heating until it boils!).

So playing your example:
- eddi heats water on a sunny day - water temp gets all the way to 65C (the temp you want)
- now the hive schedule turns on the boiler - it clicks into action, realises the water is already there and clicks off

Sorry if I'm being dim (I'm not even blonde!)

 

[katie279]

So if I have the gas on schedule and the water is hot it won't turn on? I've never tested it to be fair and never even considered it! Makes perfect sense! In fact that kinda explains the birds nest of cables in the junction box, one of them does go to the thermostat. I'll need to take a closer look.

Yes, I'm no expert, but really can't imagine how it could work without a shut off sensor of some sort.

Why don't you set up your hive and your Eddi in HA and you can create some graphs to track when they come on throughout the day for a week or two and this should answer it?

 

[katie279]

The problem I found is the thermostats aren't very forgiving - i.e. if it's 64.7C it'll fire the boiler up and try to get to 65C...

Yes that's true - you can absolutely do this - and add the margin or rounding into your automation, I'm just not sure of the mechanics of plumbing myself!

For example is above even a problem - ie if the boiler fires up and starts heating, then it'd surely turn off after a few seconds/minutes as it's made the 0.3C difference, so again no major money lost?

Sorry if I'm being thick here - genuinely no real idea on how they all work (I'm more electronics and stuff!)

 

[katie279]

Hive and Eddi are both set up. I haven't worked out how to do graphs yet! I'm sure you'll say it's easy and blow my mind with some stuff!

Yeah it's easy, just synchronise the confabulator, then maximise the deflubberalator.....

This would be a good chart to use for this:

History graph card

The history graph card allows you to display a graph for each of the entities listed.

www.home-assistant.io

Just pick your two sensors/entities - just select from drop down and that should be it!
Oh and change 'hours to show' to whatever you need - eg 72 might be handy for a few days view - or you could create two cards, one showing 24 hour view and then duplicate it and just tweak the second to show a longer time frame also - both view probably helpful

 

[katie279]

Hello guys, very "simple" one here
I am trying to set a TV to turn off at 2am. I can turn the TV off in the dashboard using power button (it is a basic samsung smart TV), but I cannot find an associated action to turn it off to automate this. Is this possible?

Hi ShivP,

Of course - you just need to create an automation, this lets you create the trigger (eg when time equals 2am) and you'll be able to select your TV power button as an entity.

Have a look here for a quick intro, but shout if you need any help!

Understanding automations

A breakdown of what an automation consists of.

www.home-assistant.io

 

[katie279]

It's really strange, my tvs and air conditioners don't have a power off entity, yet on the dashboard I can turn them off using a button...

Hard to tell without seeing it, it could be a stateless entity (eg think how some TVs just toggle power and don't actually send an explicit on/off command).

Can you edit the button on your dashboard and look under the settings what it's triggering? Should be something like entity.tvoff or event.samsungoff etc?

 

[katie279]

Cheers both, it was under call service!

Ah, makes sense! Glad you got it fixed!

 

[katie279]

What do you mean by default dashboard? You can just create what you want and have a full screen camera view if you want?

 

[katie279]

Yeah, but the card sizes i mean e.g.




The white boxes are camera streams. I want them to be bigger, maybe two cards wide and high. Is that possible?
The tutorials etc I've watched don't show resizing cards

Yeah, this is more about web design than HA (ie same in Bootstrap, Material and so on).

You can set to panel:true for a full screen CCTV or for two columns as you describe, look at the grid card instructions/examples.

You've got four columns and it's stretching to max size (which is naturally the size it's got already!)

 

[katie279]

Thanks, that's useful. However, I don't know if I'm expecting too much but it would be nice to do like...


Blues are cameras, oranges other random stuff eg climate...

Yup, as above - look at the grid card:

Did Grid Card kill the Horizontal and Vertical Stack? - Grid Card Tutorial - Home Assistant

New Grid card in Home Assistant 0.118! Learn how to use itSponsor me: https://github.com/sponsors/zsarnett---------------------------------------------------...

youtu.be

This tut is pretty much exactly that layout

 

[katie279]

Been working on an updated dashboard for my wall mounted tablet this evening, far from finished yet as I'm not happy with a lot of things. But it's coming together. Would like to improve on alignment of things and got a few bits to add yet also.

That's really nice Andy!

Haven't seen that weather bar chart - assume the coloured bits show min and max ranges?

 

[katie279]

Fair enough, quicker to get the ideas elsewhere I guess

Along those lines, are you using wallpanel integration to make the dashboard full screen (without the side panel and top panel) on your tablets?

I use fully kiosk - great wee app!

 

[katie279]

There’s many people way more creative than I am

I’m using a combination of fully kiosk browser and browser-mod for it.



I’m using a Fire HD10 (9th Gen I think). Used firetoolbox to debloat it and it’s perfectly ok. Screen is perfectly good enough.

I ripped the battery out of it and soldered some wires up inside to run it directly off a 5v transformer. Did not want the hassle and risks of a battery either being on charge or constantly cycled.

Ooh, hadn't heard of firetoolbox, does this make a noticeable difference?

 

[katie279]

That is the obvious answer thanks, what an idiot I am not to think of that being an HA fan!

Exactly what I did with the tablet we embedded into the wall!

 

[katie279]

I need to look at making the interface more use friendly a bit like @ShivP was doing. Need to find some time to do some fiddling (i.e. I don't have any!) But I'll get there. What I'd like to do is enabled my wife to control things better too.

Ultimately I am interested in data from the sensors (so that I can see what's going on and make decisions) but also need to think about automations which to be honest I've never done in anything in my life as I'm a bit of a control freak. Other than being able to reply to the 30+ emails I get per day automatically!

I don't want to force automation for the sake of it, it has to be something which will help life. However what's amazing so far is having everything in one place and not have to go half dozen different apps to be able to check, turn on, and do various things. Still a massive learning curve to do but considering I can commit 1hr to it every few weeks it will be a while!

Delighted to have been introduced to it though I think long term it'll be really useful. Thank you to Katie and others for all your help to date.

Great to hear it's helped - of course, just post your musings/ideas and sure everyone can help reduce the learning curve a bit!

 

[katie279]

Hi

I have HA running in a docker on my synology nas. I need to install HACS and it's not as easy as it is on HA OS. I can't actually login to a terminal to run any commands. I get an invalid user / pass. I'm uising the same credentials that I can log into the gui with.

Does anybody have any ideas?

Thank you.

Hmm, this is just a Synology password question then - are you sure you're logging in using your Synology user/password for your 'admin' account? (Ie not your HA gui one?)

This will be you full access one that'll give root access - think from here you can access your instance of HA.

 

[katie279]

Ok, i'm rolling. Gave up using the docker terminal from within DSM...just enabled ssh on the nas and now i'm in. Running the scripts to get hacs installed and there's no zip on a synloogy, just 7z. More googling to work out how to do that and gave up.

In the end this thread solved it for me. I could manually download the hacs zip and reading the scripts workled out where they should be extracted to.

https://www.synology-forum.nl/firmware-algemeen/error-unzip-is-not-installed-via-ssh-op-ds/15/ I ca't understand a word of Dutch.

Glad you got it sorted - apologies, that's what I thought you meant originally - missed the docker part. I must confess I've never quite grasped Docker myself - I know it's meant to make everything easy, but seems to introduce more complexity to me - like above!

Anyway, you're away!

 

[katie279]

Ok, how do I get my solar generation numbers into pvoutput?

Publishing solar production data to pvoutput.org from Home Assistant

PVOutput is a website in which you can share your solar production data. Home Assistant is an open source home automation solution that can be run in Raspberry Pi among other options. Sharing photo…

javiermugueta.blog

I've followed that and then I get to step 4. I feel step 4 and 5 need several more steps as for a n00b like me i'm completely lost.

Hi John,

No worries - probably the quickest way is to just add it to your configuration.yaml file. Do you know where this is? (I can walk you through if not).

Below is what I have in my configuration.yaml file - just paste it right at the bottom and change the bits in caps to your ID and API Key

## Solar Output to PV Output
shell_command:
  pvoutputcurl: >
    curl -d "d={{now().strftime("%Y%m%d")}}"
         -d "t={{now().strftime("%H:%M")}}"
         -d "v1={{ (states('sensor.pv_energy_today') | float * 1000)  | int }}"
         -d "v2={{ states('sensor.pv_power') }}"
         -d "v6={{ states('sensor.grid_voltage') }}"
         -H "X-Pvoutput-SystemId: MY SYSTEM ID"
         -H "X-Pvoutput-Apikey: MY API KEY IN HERE"
         https://pvoutput.org/service/r2/addstatus.jsp