Home Assistant beginners

I picked up an SMLight SLZB-06-A PoE Zigbee dongle from Aliexpress recently just for fun. I already had a rock solid Zigbee network running from a Sonoff Zigbee 3 USB dongle so I was a bit worried about transferring my 32 strong Zigbee network over. I just followed the instructions on the zigbee2mqtt website and was up and running in 5 minutes with no need to re-add all the various Zigbee devices.

For £30 I highly recommend the SMLight over a USB dongle especially as the firmware is easily (and seemingly regularly) updated. The only negative is that although it can be powered by USB and connected to the network via WiFi, it really needs to be powered/ connected via PoE for the necessary robust performance.
 
Bluecube said:
I picked up an SMLight SLZB-06-A PoE Zigbee dongle from Aliexpress recently just for fun. I already had a rock solid Zigbee network running from a Sonoff Zigbee 3 USB dongle so I was a bit worried about transferring my 32 strong Zigbee network over. I just followed the instructions on the zigbee2mqtt website and was up and running in 5 minutes with no need to re-add all the various Zigbee devices.

For £30 I highly recommend the SMLight over a USB dongle especially as the firmware is easily (and seemingly regularly) updated. The only negative is that although it can be powered by USB and connected to the network via WiFi, it really needs to be powered/ connected via PoE for the necessary robust performance.
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I don't think you can count that as a negative.
The fact that it is clearly labeled as a PoE device means that being able to power it by USB and connect to WiFi as well is a bonus surely.
 
964rs said:
I don't think you can count that as a negative.
The fact that it is clearly labeled as a PoE device means that being able to power it by USB and connect to WiFi as well is a bonus surely.
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Maybe as a temporary measure but the increased latency and unreliability introduced by using a WiFi solution means I wouldn’t consider an ideal long term answer.

I actually need to check whether the USB port is for power only or whether it allows attachment to the Home Assistant server
 
Bluecube said:
Maybe as a temporary measure but the increased latency and unreliability introduced by using a WiFi solution means I wouldn’t consider an ideal long term answer.

I actually need to check whether the USB port is for power only or whether it allows attachment to the Home Assistant server
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Yes i fully agree it should be used as a PoE device but its nice to have back up connectivity even if its not as good
 
My HA PC stopped working last week, might have been due to a slight power surge (I'm sure of this as my internet dropped for around 10 seconds that evening and HA was working prior to this). Fortunately I do backups each night so had the prevoius nights backup to restore. I was planning to move HA to a VM on proxmox soon so this forced me to do it. Thankfully restore worked fine for eveything apart from frigate which needed slight changes to my frigate config file to get the cameras working and recording again.
 
Not strictly HA related, but does anyone run a UPS for their router/HA device etc?

With being in relatively rural areas we get pretty ropey supply and multiple power cuts. Hopefully this will be fixed when we get our house built and have 100% solar/battery, but wondering if i should invest in something cheap for the meantime just to avoid any damage?
 
I have a basic APC UPS. Think the model number was 1200 or thereabouts. According to the stats it’s good enough to keep a fat server, a low powered Proxmox server, router, switch and wireless access point going for 40 minutes.

Bought it because of two power cuts in a row a few years back. Since then I’ve never had a power cut…

EDIT: it cost £120 at the time and I think they’re still similarly priced.
 
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Added my first smart switch today.
Other than the PITA of digging out the backbox to accomodate a 35mm one, this works quite nicely.

Only small flaw I've found is that the LED bulb I had in there (Osram, ancient though) flickers at the edge of perception with the light *on* which is the opposite of what people normally seem to report.
For the minute, I've stuffed a CFL in there which is fine- Has anyone else come across this?

Not got any other bulbs to hand.
 
leezer3 said:
Added my first smart switch today.
Other than the PITA of digging out the backbox to accomodate a 35mm one, this works quite nicely.

Only small flaw I've found is that the LED bulb I had in there (Osram, ancient though) flickers at the edge of perception with the light *on* which is the opposite of what people normally seem to report.
For the minute, I've stuffed a CFL in there which is fine- Has anyone else come across this?

Not got any other bulbs to hand.
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If that same bulb doesn't flicker on a normal light switch, then it sounds like your smart switch is dimming in some way and isn't just switching the light on/off..

What smart switch is it?
 
It's just a standard generic Tuya thing.
From what I can hear when changing the switch, it's a relay inside, which confuses me even more...

No dimming capability.

Of course there's always the possibility it's cheap Chinese tat being tat, but I can't think of a cause.
 
Home Assistant to the rescue!

I wanted to repurpose my Phillips Hue Outdoor Motion sensor to trigger my Govee perm outdoor lights to just light up the Porch area and EV Charger..

Whilst the Govee official integration doesn't allow full control, just simple on/off, I was at least able (within 5 mins) to get HA to turn on the lights between sunset and 10PM, and then after 10PM it's on motion sense until the Lux level > 50..

Perm lights in Halloween mode:
sII3jGYl.jpg



Perm lights just lighting up porch/charger and using Motion sensor:
MaGXqhOl.jpg


I will install one of the Govee LAN API add-ons and then I can switch scenes automatically and get it a bit more integrated so will do that for Xmas..
 
So, I've been running HAOS for a year or so now, all going well. Bought a NUC initially, a HP thin client T530, 4GB RAM and added a 256GB SSD, which I think is now struggling with everything I've added. Ive got Frigate on there, with 6 cameras. I added an M2 Coral which helps, but also have Predbat, Adaware addons, and lots of use with solar/batteries/car/lights/thermostats etc and using this little template I just found:-

Sensors: {{ states.sensor | count }}
Lights: {{ states.light | count }}
Switches: {{ states.switch | count }}
Binary sensors: {{ states.binary_sensor | count }}
Automations: {{ states.automation | count }}

Found out I have 562 sensors, 27lights, 135 switches, 120 binary sensors and 31 automations. Using the Glances add-on, can see my CPU usage never really drops below 80-90% and a few dashboards take quite a while to load, the predbat calculation takes a few minutes sometimes etc! So, I've gone and bought this from ebay which should be a nice performance boost.

Dell OptiPlex 3060 Micro PC 8th Gen i5 8500T 8GB RAM 256GB M.2 SSD Win 11 PSU​


So my questions is basically, whats the best/easiest way to get the new hardware setup? I use the Google drive addon for backups, so 1 option is to use Balena etcher to flash the HAOS image onto the SSD in the new Optiplex then load a backup. Or could I simply pop my current SSD into the Optiplex or would that not work? Cheers!
 
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