Home Assistant beginners

Definitely do the backup early on, and make sure you take regular backups - also ensuring it's backed up off device. You don't want to be spending countless hours building a config - especially with dashboards and then lose the lot because the install got corrupted after a power outage or dodgy update.

I do my backups outside of HA using proxmox snapshots. I absolutely love the ability to do a full restore in a couple of minutes, it's saved my bacon a few times when something catastrophic has broken during update. Most recently ZHA was failing to start, which would mean lack of control of lights and switches around the house. The WAF goes down very quickly when something simple like lights fail to work. Rather than spending hours troubleshooting, I can just restore it in a couple of minutes and deal with it later.
 
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I have mine backup to my NAS. One of the first things to setup.
I need to get around to doing a backup of the VM as well that would be an faster rebuild.
 
adencool said:
i have this https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0FDB51..._5&amp=&crid=1VI6BC7J5HKVR&sprefix=apolo&th=1

mounted on the wall - basically its a calendar, but runs android so has the app installed. if i could get a nicer layout for the calendar (to match the android widgets), i would have the ha front and centre
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This was essentially the brief that the wife gave me for what she wanted a dashboard in the kitchen to look like!

Available hardware was somewhat less impressive, though (a moderately premium 10" digital photoframe that was out of support), but I still got a pretty good result using Fully Kiosk browser, browser mod, and a whole load of Gemini manipulating code to format the layout and colours. It also uses 'Album Slideshow Camera' and a bit of automation to switch to a photo slideshow after a few minutes of inactivity.

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Went slightly more fancy with more informational cards on my desk based dashboard, which uses Fully Kiosk browser on a Fire HD 8 (2020) tablet. More automations to rotate between the different pages (including rotating the energy usage card on the first page between usage and cost every 15 seconds), and to overlay a popup of the Ring doorbell camera when someone presses the doorbell.

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After a good couple of hours I managed to flash it on the internal emmc, all this time it was booting of a usb and taking forever to prepare home assistant. When it was on the emmc it just went to the login page straight away.

Anyway do I need a tablet to create a dashboard with widgets, live camera, light control or I can start on my laptop and then transfer the config files?
 
Build the dashboards in the web browser on your laptop, then when you have a tablet for displaying you set the home page to the specific URL of the dashboard and use controls to hide the sidebar, etc

Edit: or you can use the app!
 
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dymetrie said:
Build the dashboards in the web browser on your laptop, then when you have a tablet for displaying you set the home page to the specific URL of the dashboard and use controls to hide the sidebar, etc

Edit: or you can use the app!
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Just ordered a tablet earlier today, maybe I'm getting carried away. I'm also looking to buy smart blinds and a few bulbs.

My Yeelight was added to HA with no issues but the Meross bulb doesn't. Wondering if this will work. https://a.aliexpress.com/_EuVjaiK or Tapo L530B which I've seen on marketplace for a decent price.
 
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kakarott said:
Just ordered a tablet earlier today, maybe I'm getting carried away. I'm also looking to buy smart blinds and a few bulbs.

My Yeelight was added to HA with no issues but the Meross bulb doesn't. Wondering if this will work. https://a.aliexpress.com/_EuVjaiK or Tapo L530B which I've seen on marketplace for a decent price.
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Those Aliexpress bulbs are Zigbee. To use them with HA you need a Zigbee dongle such as an SMLight SLZB 06. I'd also caution against buying cheap. I'm not saying the cheap stuff won't work but low quality components can cause problems further down the line.
 
For a Zigbee dongle I wouldn’t cheap out and recommend either one from SMLight or Nabu Casa, the HA developers. A dodgy dongle will just your life hell!

If you’re just playing about and finding your feet then find a bulb that works with Tuya. They come in WiFi and Zigbee flavours so watch what you buy. Personally, I’d skip the WiFi bulbs, get a good Zigbee dongle and pick up a couple of Hue Ambient bulbs. They’re not cheap by any standard but they’re good, natively supported and last for years.
 
Bluecube said:
For a Zigbee dongle I wouldn’t cheap out and recommend either one from SMLight or Nabu Casa, the HA developers. A dodgy dongle will just your life hell!

If you’re just playing about and finding your feet then find a bulb that works with Tuya. They come in WiFi and Zigbee flavours so watch what you buy. Personally, I’d skip the WiFi bulbs, get a good Zigbee dongle and pick up a couple of Hue Ambient bulbs. They’re not cheap by any standard but they’re good, natively supported and last for years.
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Thanks but hue is a bit too expensive. Interestingly my Yeelight which is more than 5 years old was picked up on HA and I can also change the colours on it. Just trying to figure out if Tapo would be the same as price isn't too bad.
 
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