Home Assistant beginners

Hodders said:
Really enjoying learning about this!

Are there any downsides to having 12 spots on one supply (all left on) and relying on smart bulbs to setup zones?
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I don't see why not - you'd do that with dumb switches (12 bulbs on one lighting circuit).

I suppose have a look at the supply and make sure it's up to the current drawn by all 12 bulbs?

This is assuming you'll/other inhabitants will never go back to 20 or 50 watt halogen bulbs I guess.
 
Home Assistant is one of those things I've always wanted to try. I'm undecided whether to pickup Home Assistant Green or pickup a cheap Raspberry Pi 5, although I'm going towards the Green. Anyone used either of these?

Edit: I've gone with the Green as I feel like this would better serve my purposes
 
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hamesy said:
Home Assistant is one of those things I've always wanted to try. I'm undecided whether to pickup Home Assistant Green or pickup a cheap Raspberry Pi 5, although I'm going towards the Green. Anyone used either of these?

Edit: I've gone with the Green as I feel like this would better serve my purposes
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Green is a good choice and will last you longer should you wish to start doing more complex tasks involving more integrations and add-ons.
 
Managed to get it to pulled in all my devices apart from an Amazon smart plug that they were giving away when you bought an Echo years ago. I can't for the life of me figure out how to get it to show in Home Assistant.

Hopefully my Octopus Mini arrives today and I can start pulling in that data.
 
It can be, sometimes if you try to write multiple commands too quickly, they don’t all take. That’s my experience anyway.

I’ve switched over to Predbat from manual automations and I’ve not had any issues since.
 
I've plugged in the EV and it's forced battery charge. I did this after resending date/time info on the givenergy cloud portal.

I seem to recall that was the cause last time
 
Looking to get into this Smart Home stuff starting with the Thermostat, last winter it was having to be reprogrammed quite often, manually increasing temps at times when it was chilly. Would be very handy to have it app based.

I'm keen to go open source or open protocol so I dont have to replace stuff when suppliers discontinue stuff or go bust. So I assume Home Assistant is the way to go for the overarching control/integration.

I'd like to eventually have:

Solar Panels + battery
Radiator smart TRVs
Possibly an ASHP
Electric Vehicle

But I want to start with changing my Thermostat.

What would I need to get started? Do I need to find a decent thermostat and buy the Home Assistant Green (dont fancy doing my own box)? Any recommendations on Thermostat if you are going from a blank slate?
 
There are entire thermostat products, or you can just set up a temperature sensor and a contactor for the wire from/to the boiler.

You can use a HA Green or a Raspberry Pi if you don't want to get into virtualization.
 
Okay so I've ordered a HA Green.

From reading a bit more about various thermostats, I'm leaning towards the Honeywell T6 Pro as it does not use the cloud/internet connection and can just be programmed/controlled locally. Will require a Z-wave adapter for HA Green though? However I will play around with HA when stuff arrives and consider the options a bit more.
 
If you are planning an ASHP, don’t bother replacing your TRV’s because you shouldn’t use them unless absolutely necessary. You’ll just run them fully open (setting 5/6 on a traditional TRV) all the time. You still need TRVs fitted though for EPC points…

Your radiators will be re-sized correctly to the room and your flow temperature will vary depending on the outside temperature (and therefore the heat loss) so the room should never over heat unless it gets considerable solar gain.
 
Now got HA set up and running, got delivery of a smart thermostat last night so will install that over the weekend. Also got a Tapo doorbell - I have linked it up but can't get video to feed through to HA, though not a big deal really. I may change it later on to a different model that can link up a bit better but its fine for now.

A couple of things I have thought about now doing:

Lighting - I do struggle with the lack of light in the winter and thinking of getting some dimmable smart bulbs that HA can then turn on if its still dark at 7am, so I can wake up 'naturally' with the light. I see it tracks sunrise/sunset but would need to look at whether it can gradually increase light with a dimmable smart bulb.

I think ASHP will be far down the list so will probably get Smart TRVs at some point next year.
 
@piggeh as you’re just starting off, I’ll say one thing - always try and get Zigbee devices whether it’s lights, radiator valves, smart plugs, whatever. Although Zigbee devices may be a bit more pricey, Zigbee is far more stable and less power hungry than WiFi. I’m not sure if the HA Green has a Zigbee adapter built in but if it doesn’t then buying one will be a worthwhile investment
 
piggeh said:
Lighting - I do struggle with the lack of light in the winter and thinking of getting some dimmable smart bulbs that HA can then turn on if its still dark at 7am, so I can wake up 'naturally' with the light. I see it tracks sunrise/sunset but would need to look at whether it can gradually increase light with a dimmable smart bulb.
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I've currently got a couple of Hue lights that do something similar via HA. They turn on around 6am and gradually increase the brightness. Took me a while to figure out the settings.

The Green doesn't have a Zigbee built in so you will need to have a dongle. Currently using my Hue lights via the Hue bridge, but planning on getting rid of that in favour for a Zigbee dongle.
 
Bluecube said:
@piggeh as you’re just starting off, I’ll say one thing - always try and get Zigbee devices whether it’s lights, radiator valves, smart plugs, whatever. Although Zigbee devices may be a bit more pricey, Zigbee is far more stable and less power hungry than WiFi. I’m not sure if the HA Green has a Zigbee adapter built in but if it doesn’t then buying one will be a worthwhile investment
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It doesn't have zigbee built in but I bought a zigbee adapter at the same time.
 
hamesy said:
I've currently got a couple of Hue lights that do something similar via HA. They turn on around 6am and gradually increase the brightness. Took me a while to figure out the settings.

The Green doesn't have a Zigbee built in so you will need to have a dongle. Currently using my Hue lights via the Hue bridge, but planning on getting rid of that in favour for a Zigbee dongle.
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Do they communicate directly with the zigbee dongle if you have one?
 
piggeh said:
I picked up the Tado v3, seemed reasonable enough although would have liked it to be totally local.
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It takes some work but it can be made to run completely local. You need to connect them using the HomeKit Controller in HA and basically duplicate all the smart features of the Tado app using HA Automations and something like the HA Scheduler integration to sort your heating schedules. From memory, I think there's a limitation with getting the battery status doing this but I'm sure you can still run the cloud integration along side this to get that if you really wanted.
 
piggeh said:
Do they communicate directly with the zigbee dongle if you have one?
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You didn’t ask me but I can answer this question if you don’t mind me butting in! Hue lights are Zugbee based and can talk direct to your Zigbee dongle. In @hamesy ’s case he says he controls them via the Hue Bridge which is supported by Home Assistant but is controlled via the cloud
 
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