Home Assistant beginners

[katie279]

I'm new to HA but have done some tinkering but it does seem sluggish at times, and my log does show lots of warnings - fairly often it will lose bluetooth and hence knock out govee humidity/temp bluetooth sensors
I have it running on a pi 3b+ running from an external SSD and I think the RAM usage is close to capacity. Do you you think its worth updating to pi4 for stability?

KIOSK
Secondly, I have an amazon fire 7 kicking around doing nothing, and would like a permanent display for home assistant display (now that my smart meter IHD is redundant due to not being able to cope with changing daily electricity costs).
Has anyone repurposed a kindle to be a HA display/kiosk? Any good guides?

I've got one for the Fire 10...

Make a wall mounted control panel for your Home Assistant – Hands on Katie

Ever wanted to make your smart home smarter? With this guide, transform your Kindle Fire 10 into a sleek wall-mounted Home Assistant touch screen using a custom 3D printed frame. Let’s get started!

handsonkatie.com

Hopefully you might get some ideas from this and obviously PM me if any extra questions/bits not clear!

 

[katie279]

Well now that's fairly straight forward. I might give the fire toolbox a go first as the fire7 is pretty sluggish. I've seen guides with pages of info on how to actually link kiosk and HA with integrations and the like - what did you do, or did you simp just put the HA URL and left it on the Lovelace dashboard?

Yes exactly right, really simple really just load the URL and that's it - there's a few tweaks you can make for convenience (eg I use the webcam to wake the tablet when I pass, but purely optional).

I'm pretty sure using firetoolbox will improve the performance of the fire 7 also as it'll take a lot of bloat away, so wins all around!

 

[katie279]

Hmm weird, what's the message you're getting?

 

[katie279]

@katie279 - Love this idea and wondered if you might be able to help with getting HA to play music from a plex server to a specific device to work as your setup seems to work?

Hey, sorry what idea what this, I've lost the thread, but happy to help!

 

[katie279]

Ooops, forgot to add the link: https://handsonkatie.com/rfid-smart-paintings/

Think I've figured it out, though I'm still a bit fuzzy on using play with HA

Ah got you!

Well shout if you need any help, think for Plex it'd just be changing the media play string to something like:

entity_id: media_player.plex_playermedia_content_type: MUSICmedia_content_id: '{ "library_name": "Music", "artist_name": "David Bowie", "album_name": "Greatest Hits", "track_name": "Starman" }'

Hopefully all above is relatively simple to understand, but PM if any questions!

 

[katie279]

I've been looking at doing this with a spare Fire & I have knocking about. I've got it set up with Fully Kiosk but have read a few bits about tyhe fire tablets not being ideal for the software for various reasons, including not being able to disable the lock screen, is this something you've had with yours? Or have you found a way round this?

Fire tablets are not ideal for a variety of reasons, like the lock screens etc, but think you'll find tutorial on my site solves that with the various software solutions!! (Firetoolbox is awesome!)

No issues at all on mine - basically just works like an ordinary tablet!

 

[katie279]

I got.it set up on the fire 7 but the dashboards are so slow to populate the data - no idea why the tablet should be slow as this would surely be a networking thing? The same dashboards show up near instantly on my phone and desktop.

Oh, and the battery died overnight - so yeah the fire7 isn't going to be the display I ultimately use!!

Heh, well it sounds like it was more the hardware than the software then - sounds like it was on its last legs!

 

[katie279]

Anyone got any ideas of more things I can do or cool integrations/addons I may not be aware of?

Oh don't get me started....

Couple of projects from this year:

Smart ornaments in your home - mine shows solar usage, generation, battery levels and more, but could naturally show anything:

Breathing life into ornaments: the smart LED dragon – Hands on Katie

This post will guide you through how I made a smart connected, LED glass dragon that you can use to convey any information around your home with infinite possibilities. Picture this: a dragon, not just your typical, fire-breathing reptile, but a work of art that is truly one-of-a-kind, a...

handsonkatie.com

Also could make smart art, touchpads etc to trigger HA automations - eg music on paintings in my case:

RFID Smart Paintings – Hands on Katie

Two challenges: 1) I wanted to produce some custom art to suit my dining room 2) I could never be bothered to dig out my phone and create a playlist whenever we had guests or were having a meal. Two birds, one stone....!

handsonkatie.com

Outdoor weather forecasting?

It's endless fun!

 

[katie279]

<dupe>

 

[katie279]

@katie279 Just found this thread. Looks like i have a lot of reading to do!

Heheh! Monster unleashed!

 

[katie279]

Has anyone else had issues with HA causing premature SSD failure? I think because of the continuous writes to the database it hammers them, I had quite frequent failures when running on an RPi4 but haven’t had any since switching to a Proxmox VM on a HP Mini PC, so fingers crossed…

I've never had this myself, indeed ran off an SD card for three years without any issues which again is meant to be a weak point - very heavy usage also (masses of devices and data gathering).

Might be lucky, but I generally just a) ensure I've got a decent regular backup so I can restore quickly if required and b) use HA as my 'heaven' for SSDs (ie when the boys in the hardware forum entice me to upgrade one of my pcs, I'll 'retire' the older SSD to one of these uses... so I'll always have a steady supply....

 

[katie279]

I've used kasa mini plugs for years, work perfectly with HA!

 

[katie279]

Apparenlty the TP ones with new firmware disabled HA ability on it aka blocking is API access....

Really, you got a link? Think mine are all updated firmware and working absolutely fine?

 

[katie279]

https://publish.reddit.com/embed?ur...meassistant/comments/15yxgy0/comment/jxe1buz/ read it here

Ah yeah, saw that blip - if you read the thread and around it a bit, you'll see TP Link were forced to put access back - instructions in the sub link.

Lots of good alternatives now, so don't blindly recommend Kasa - plenty of other options regardless!

 

[katie279]

Ah so is it still not working? Thought they'd folded.

Agree entirely regarding the blacklist - think that's a great idea, might muse it a bit as working on some stuff!

 

[katie279]

There seems to be a few bugs introduced in latest version 2.4.3 - few folks have resolved by downgrading (most suggest 2.4.1) - have you tried this?

Then just give it some time and upgrade once bugs ironed out?

 

[katie279]

Hmm, sorry just checked and it looks like a bit of a pain - know integrations has been radically improved in recent times, so was thinking of that (just click and choose version). Forgot GivTCP was an add-on, so its a bit of a pain/messy process - basically uninstall, download version from GitHub and install locally - not ideal.

Might be worth posting your bug in the GivTCP GitHub first and see what the Devs say?

 

[katie279]

Ah, yes had the same thought tonight - ie were you using pi and with SD card. No issues with Pi (I've used one for years with zero issues), but SD cards really aren't meant for long time server-like use. I had similar saving errors on a different bot of software once, I suspect the SD card is starting to bork. SSD solved it for me...!

 

[katie279]

Yeah makes sense.

To be honest the only person I allow a Dream Machine to is ChrisD and MAYBE Katy.

MAYBE?!?!!?!

They are awesome - hard to justify, but the best interface and features by sooooo many miles....!

And I love complete control!

 

[katie279]

Couldn’t even spell your name right

I know, basically @dlockers has besmirched himself forever....